World Notes

BRITAIN The Cabinet and the Choppers

In one of the most dramatic episodes ever to take place during a British Cabinet meeting, Defense Minister Michael Heseltine stormed out of 10 Downing Street last week and resigned. Heseltine was angry over Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's refusal to ensure that the country's only helicopter manufacturer, troubled Westland (1985 losses: $137 million), would remain entirely in European hands. Connecticut-based United Technologies Corp., which owns the helicopter maker Sikorsky, has together with Italy's Fiat offered $105 million for a 29.9% share in Westland.

Arguing that "Britain's future as a technologically advanced country" was at stake, Heseltine supported a bailout by a rival consortium of British, French, Italian and German firms that came up with a nearly identical offer. Thatcher, who is ideologically opposed to state intervention in private enterprise, insisted that the matter be left to Westland's board and shareholders. Now that he is out of the Cabinet, the dynamic, thick-maned Heseltine, 52, will probably remain a strident Thatcher critic, and, some Tories believe, could eventually challenge her for party leadership. SOUTH AFRICA A Blow for Black Unions

The 30,000 blacks working at the Impala mines in Bophuthatswana, which produce about 25% of the world's platinum, seemed a natural constituency for the National Union of Mineworkers. But last week 23,000 of those miners found themselves more in need of a job than a union. The General Mining Union Corp. had fired them in the largest mass dismissal in South Africa's history.

The miners had walked off the job Jan. 1, demanding higher pay, better working conditions and union representation. Wages for black miners average only $100 a month plus room and board in single-sex dormitories. The company refused to bargain and ordered the strikers to return to work. When they failed to do so, management issued them their final paychecks, bused them home and vowed not to rehire any of them.

The union said it hoped to persuade the company to change its mind. But unemployment in Bophuthatswana, a nominally independent homeland, is high. The South African Chamber of Mines, which recruits workers throughout the region, already has 400,000 job applications on file. NORTHERN IRELAND Protestants Vent Their Rage

The march began as a peaceful protest against the two-month-old agreement between Britain and Ireland, which grants Dublin a say in Northern Ireland's affairs. But after 2,500 Protestants arrived at the gates of Maryfield House, the headquarters of the Anglo-Irish secretariat outside Belfast, the march became a melee. Toughs hurled paving stones at Royal Ulster constabulary, injuring 26 officers. Unionist leaders denounced the violence but warned of a "complete collapse of government here" if Britain did not end the accord.

British cooperation with Ireland, however, appears to be growing. Michael Nicholson, a Roman Catholic, was named to Northern Ireland's High Court, making him the third Catholic on what will be a ten-judge bench. Irish and British representatives also met in London on Dec. 30 and reportedly discussed a hunger strike by three Irish National Liberation Army terrorists in prison near Belfast. Last week the prisoners began eating again. The British deny that they made concessions, but Irish officials were confident that the men had won one demand: early appeals on their murder convictions. WEST GERMANY Settling a Painful Debt

Among the countless horrors committed by the Nazis during World War II was the use of slave labor from concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, many of them Jews, were forced to keep vital war industries running. In the decades since the war, several German companies, among them Siemens, I.G. Farben, Krupp and AEG-Telefunken, have paid compensation to these ill-treated workers. But one major company had resisted making reparations: the Flick group, the largest privately owned firm in West Germany until its takeover this month by Deutsche Bank. Its founder, Friedrich Flick, was convicted by a U.S. war-crimes tribunal in Nuremberg in 1947 of crimes against humanity for, among other things, using slave labor, and spent five years in prison. Still, his company refused to acknowledge any guilt.

Last week Flick finally paid at least part of its debt. The German company, which is now called Feldmuehle Nobel A.G., assigned about $2 million to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The money will be distributed among an estimated 1,300 former Jewish slave laborers. EUROPE An Island No More

Describing the English Channel as "a ditch that will be leaped whenever one has the boldness to try," Napoleon once dreamed of digging an underwater tunnel to Albion's shores. Neither he nor anyone else ever managed that formidable task. But next week, in the northern French city of Lille, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Franc,ois Mitterrand will confer their blessings on one of four competing plans to build a fixed link across the Channel. In all likelihood, they will settle on either a $3.6 billion proposal for constructing twin railway tunnels or a $3.7 billion scheme involving parallel pairs of rail and road tunnels. The project, in terms of its sheer scale and cost, would be one of the engineering marvels of all time.

The French lean toward the rail-only plan, largely because it would boost their national railway system. Thatcher, on the other hand, prefers the road-rail option. She is concerned that a railway could be shut down too easily by a strike. A possible compromise: agreement on a rail system now with a road link to be added later. Either way, by the early 1990s, if all goes well, the "Chunnel" will be a reality at last.