European Diary, 1977-1981 (52 page)

SATURDAY, 9 DECEMBER.
East Hendred.

Left at 11.30 to drive to Warwick University for the honorary degree they were giving me. We arrived for an agreeable lunch with Leslie Scarman, the Chancellor, whom I much like, and a perfectly easy occasion. I made a short impromptu speech after lunch and there was no speech at the ceremony.

MONDAY, 11 DECEMBER.
London and Brussels.

A Labour Committee for Europe lunch at the Charing Cross Hotel. 3.35 plane to Brussels. There I saw Calvo Sotelo, the Spanish Minister for Europe. Two points primarily were dealt with. First, I had to tell him how badly the Commission had reacted to the attempt on the part of the Spanish Government to say that they didn't like our suggestion of an Italian called Papa, who had been our delegate in Ankara, as the head of our Madrid office. Their objection was apparently based on the fact that he had been an active member of the Italian Socialist Party, and they therefore thought he would interfere in Spanish politics. I said that this had not created a good impression at all in view of the extent to which we were firmly saying what a pluralist democracy Spain had become. He took this quite well and said he would consult the Foreign Minister and reflect upon it. The second point was that he stressed to me that it would be a great advantage for Spain if they could have the formal opening of the negotiations by March, and that if this could be achieved they would then be content for nothing much to happen for several months after that.

TUESDAY, 12 DECEMBER.
Brussels and Luxembourg.

Excellent news during the morning that the Italian Government had firmly decided to enter the EMS; a considerable retrieval of the previous position.

Avion taxi to Luxembourg, which produced the worst flight which I have had on any occasion in the past two years. We bounced around in the new turbo-prop Conquest, fortunately for only thirty-eight minutes, but it was extremely disagreeable. I was not feeling sick, as Hayden and Laura were, but was mildly frightened,
as they were also, and definitely felt rather unsteady when I got out. The pilots obviously thought that it had been fairly rough and apologized profusely, though in fact they had managed a feather landing despite being unable to get the plane straight on a line with the runway as the wind was blowing so hard that they had to go in crab-wise.

A meeting with Emile Noël who told me that Tugendhat's speech on the budget controversy had gone rather badly, but I didn't take that too seriously. Then I presented 112 medals to those who had served twenty years or more. I then staggered off to talk to the Political Committee (of the Parliament) about the results of the European Council and to answer a number of questions, some good, some rather foolish.

I then went briefly to a drink at the British Embassy as I had not been there since the new Ambassador, Patrick Wright, ex-Number 10 Foreign Office Private Secretary,
⁶⁵
had taken over. I liked both the Wrights very much. I had a brief word with Thorn but not to any particular point, and rather more sensible words with various other people about the state of opinion in the Parliament on the budget issue.

WEDNESDAY, 13 DECEMBER.
Luxembourg and Washington.

Another day of pouring rain and howling gale. An easy Commission meeting, a short speech to the Parliament, a late quick lunch, an attempted afternoon sleep in the hotel, from which I awoke feeling gloomy and mildly intimidated by the prospect of the evening's solitary journey,
⁶⁶
and then an avion taxi to Charles de Gaulle at 6.00. Changed to the Concorde and took off at 8.10 for Washington. I worked furiously the whole way, being very behindhand with the American briefs, and was no more impressed with the comfort or food of the nearly full Concorde than I had been coming east eight months before. Worst of all, it was slow, nearly four hours for the
trajet.
As a result we never quite caught up with
the day; we could see it vaguely hovering over the tropics in mid-Atlantic and we could see it disappearing in the west as we came over land between Boston and New York, but it was quite dark when we got on the ground at Washington.

We were met by various protocol people, plus Fernand Spaak, Deane Hinton, Crispin, etc., and drove to the Hay Adams Hotel, where we arrived at 7.15 American time. We talked for an hour or so, and then, with a great act of will, I declined to go out for dinner, let Crispin and Fernand go alone, and went to bed instead. As a result I slept remarkably well until 6 a.m.

THURSDAY, 14 DECEMBER.
Washington.

The Hay Adams is a comfortable hotel, subject on this occasion to two remarkable deficiencies, (i) the kitchen had been burned down so that they could produce no breakfast, and (ii) there was one pane missing from the window in my room, which for me was a slight relief as I like fresh air, but would have driven most Americans into a state of insanity as it was fairly cold outside. It was a most beautiful morning. The dawn was golden and the sun came up out of a cloudless sky. I worked until 7.45 and then Crispin and I walked up the road and had a very good breakfast at the Carlton Hotel. Then at 9.15 we went to see Bob Strauss and the inevitable Ambassador Henry Owen in Strauss's Special Trade Commissioner's office.

First, Strauss and Owen got me alone and asked me to endorse their handling of a request by Jean-François Deniau, the French Minister of Trade, to come to Washington and, as it were, do a bilateral MTN deal on the side, seeing Strauss and the President as well. They had refused this but said that Henry Owen would go to Paris and see Deniau on the following Monday morning.

Were they not right in refusing to let Deniau see the President? (A remarkably undiplomatic question, I must say.) I replied that it was no part of my duty to decide which ministers of member states the President of the United States saw, but that I had no complaint to make about what they had done. I obviously thought the negotiations should be with Haferkamp and his team, though equally I thought it would be foolish to refuse information which might be helpful to the French, and that I therefore welcomed the discussions which they had offered in Paris. The whole issue, on
which the Americans are quite capable of reporting my remarks back to the French, was a frightening minefield for causing trouble between us and Paris.

Perhaps with this in mind I used the semi-formal meeting which followed to make the point strongly that the French were not in as isolated a position as the Americans thought; it was quite wrong to think in terms of eight to one, it was much more the shading of a spectrum and that if we didn't get a better package than was now available, it would not just be the French, it would be several other countries, perhaps the majority, who would be against it. But if we got a good package I thought we could carry everybody along, and this was more important than the date, though the time was ripe for us to try to conclude the negotiations by the end of the year.

On this relatively happy (and, as it turned out, rather too optimistic) note we separated. I had hoped to have forty-five minutes to myself for a little further reflection before seeing the President, but Henry Owen, who can be egregious as well as ubiquitous and inevitable, said that he wanted to come with us, so we took him to the Hay Adams, whose incinerated kitchen was incapable of producing even coffee, before driving across to the White House just before 11.00. We had the usual hold-up at the gate, when the guards looked amazed at any suggestion we were expected, and became very suspicious of Henry Owen when he said he worked there, but eventually let us through, after which with unexpected speed I was in the Oval Office with the President.

He greeted me as warmly as ever, seeming I thought more at ease than on previous occasions. We had about ten minutes together, he, Crispin, Owen and me, before we proceeded to the larger meeting. He was mainly concerned to talk about the Deniau point, and a bit about Guadaloupe,
⁶⁷
and to ask me how Callaghan stood after his defeat in the House of Commons the night before—a few issues of that sort—and to express general friendship and desire to keep very close relations. Then we proceeded to the Cabinet Room and had our across-the-table meeting with a total of about twenty people. He made a speech of welcome, I responded, and then we went into a discussion of issues, MTNs, the European Monetary System (for which he expressed at this stage—differently from
Bonn—warm and unqualified approval), followed by our sub-agenda of scientific items.

Towards the end, rather unexpectedly, he enquired about our relations with China, camouflaging it a little by also asking about our relations with Comecon and Yugoslavia. But it was the China answers he was interested in, enquiring exactly what was the ‘framework agreement', when I was going there, etc., which should have alerted me to the events of the following evening
⁶⁸
more than in fact it did.

Then to the State Department, where we had an early lunch, presided over by Warren Christopher, acting Secretary of State (Vance being in the Middle East). Christopher, whom I had met only once before, is an extremely sensible and nice Californian, who organized the lunch very well. It was a working occasion, with discussion pretty well the whole time, but he did not make me talk too much, so that I was able to eat something, and he orchestrated it well so far as participants and subjects were concerned, between people on their side like Press, the President's Scientific Adviser, Cooper of the State Department, and Bergsten of the Treasury.

Disturbing news from Luxembourg that Vredeling (acting President in my absence—it rotates between the vice-presidents) had called an emergency Commission for 11 p.m. to pronounce on the budget crisis which had developed between the Parliament and the Council. I doubt if a night meeting under his emotional chairmanship is likely to promote cool reflection.

Our next appointment was with Schultze, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and we found him depressed though fluent in his always overheated office. He thought that growth in the US economy might well be down to zero and even possibly technically a recession (two quarters of negative growth during the year).

Then Blumenthal, who had Tony Solomon
⁶⁹
with him, and was slightly more optimistic. He was firmly pro-EMS, quite different from his Bonn position. The US Government had at least coordinated itself on this, although there was a slight suspicion in my
mind that their firm benevolence was a matter of tactical teeth-gritting rather than spontaneous enthusiasm. This I think was certainly so with Solomon, who fastened on one vulnerable point, about the level at which gold deposits were to be valued, and the general effect of this. Blumenthal, whom I always like, was very willing to admit past errors about the dollar but also anxious to express total confidence for the future, saying the whole position since 1 November was qualitatively different.

On from there, flagging slightly by this time, to the Federal Reserve Board, to meet Miller,
⁷⁰
the Chairman, for the first time. Crispin, who is normally at least as critical as I am, was rather impressed by him. I was not. I thought he produced a fine series of clichés in a not very well-structured conversation, but no doubt this was at least as much my fault as his. The following meeting, at 5 o'clock, was with Larosière
⁷¹
and the five or six top officials of the IMF, which he, Larosière, had asked for and at which they wished to sniff around with reasonably benevolent suspicion at the possible impacts of the EMS on them.

Fernand Spaak's dinner for me, which was a large and fairly well-chosen affair of thirty-six: the Chief Justice, who looks more and more like Asquith, and who, in spite of his not very liberal reputation, I much like, partly because he talks well about historico/legal matters on both sides of the Atlantic; also a couple of fairly important Congressional figures, as well as a good Georgetown sprinkling—Kay Graham,
⁷²
Evangeline Bruce, Alsops, Bradens,
⁷³
Brandons,
⁷⁴
etc. It was a good dinner, my only irritation with Spaak—and it is rare for him to cause one—being his
placement,
in which he decided, saying it was necessary on protocol grounds, despite my expressed scepticism, to give me both the Congressional ladies. I think it was a mistake on any grounds; it would have been
much more sensible to give me Kay Graham on one side, who certainly considers herself, as do I, a more important lady. However, the two Congressional ladies were not in fact too bad, although one of them was a religious maniac and the other appeared to be slightly drunk.

FRIDAY, 15 DECEMBER.
Washington and New York.

German Embassy at 9 o'clock, where I was due to brief the ambassadors of the Nine. Despite the diplomatic pre-eminence of Washington, they were not on this occasion a very impressive group, though it was perhaps unfair to judge them as both the Frenchman, Laboulaye, and the German, Von Staden, were away. Peter Jay, who now looks very much the part, certainly has the best appearance. He asked no questions round the table, but was forthcoming afterwards. Of those who spoke, the Dane was the best, and the French substitute, the commercial
attaché
, the worst. Then to Capitol Hill, where I had a meeting on MTNs with Ullman's committee. Fortunately we didn't get into too much technical or controversial detail, but discussed mainly the timetable with general expressions of goodwill.

Then there was an interval before my luncheon at the National Press Club. Fernand Spaak's other untypical mistake of the week had been to announce at our conversation on the Wednesday evening that the essential rule for a National Press Club speech was to open with an extremely funny story. At that stage I took it calmly, but as the time approached I found it totally impossible to think of any remotely appropriate joke.