European Diary, 1977-1981 (64 page)

TUESDAY, 24 APRIL.
Brussels, Frankfurt and Strasbourg
.

I flew to Frankfurt to speak at a European Election demonstration in the Rathaus there. There were about five speeches, including a good one from the Minister President of Hessen. We then motored down past Heidelberg and Karlsruhe and got into Strasbourg at 5.30. I had Fellermaier, the leader of the Socialist Group, and Manfred Michel, the secretary, to dinner. Fellermaier, absolutely typically, turned up an hour late, with some less than adequate excuse. However, I had a useful period of preliminary conversation with Michel about Socialist Group affairs and likely figures in the new Parliament.

WEDNESDAY, 25 APRIL.
Strasbourg
.

Saw Cheysson at 11.30, partly to rebuke him for the ridiculous telegram which he had sent to Nkomo the week before, which was singularly ill-judged.

John Ardwick
⁴³
to lunch. He is a nice and intelligent man who has been very helpful in the European Parliament and it was intended as a thanks on departure. Quite what he will do in the future I don't know. Interesting gossip about King, Cudlipp, Wilson, Gaitskell, etc. He remains a very firm old Gaitskellite in spite of the curiously close personal relationship which he had with Wilson over a large number of years.

Then I saw Christopher Tugendhat to talk about some of his budgetary problems, mainly next year's. This year's budgetary dispute between Parliament and Council has resolved itself well, the only disadvantage being that our additional applications for staff have got lost down an
oubliette
, though I don't think there is much we can do about that at this stage.

THURSDAY, 26 APRIL.
Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels
.

I saw Rowling, the ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand and currently leader of the Opposition, for a slightly inconsequential chat, and then motored to Nancy with Nick Stuart. Nancy was absolutely magnificent. Curiously I had never been there before, though often through it by train. The Place Stanislas is one of the supreme urban sights of Europe.

After lunch we drove on to Luxembourg, where I delivered a direct elections speech, with questions, in the television headquarters building before a smallish, but quite notable, audience. Accompanied by the excellent Mart, the Luxembourg member of the
Cour des Comptes
, who would make a good Commissioner, I dined
à trois
with the Grand Duke in his Palace. Very good dinner and engaging
tour d'horizon
conversation. The Grand Duke I found agreeable, relaxed and intelligent. Avion taxi back to Brussels at midnight.

FRIDAY, 27 APRIL.
Brussels and East Hendred
.

A long meeting with the President of Bangladesh. He was a reasonably amiable military gentleman who said that he was very inexperienced in politics, and who was also slightly slow and inarticulate, but sensible and seems resolved (we will have to see what exactly happens) on returning the country to democracy. They seem also to be beginning to make a little economic sense.

Rue de Praetère luncheon for Calvo Sotelo, with his Ambassador and one other Spaniard, for a discussion of the Spanish position, the form of negotiations, etc. Calvo Sotelo, as always, impressive, sensible, and francophone.

Evening plane to London for an unexpected weekend at East Hendred. This was because we had decided, four or five days before, to postpone an Egyptian visit as there wasn't much to discuss with them, the meeting was rather badly set up (thanks largely to their incompetent ambassador in Brussels whose only possible qualification is that he is the brother of the Prime Minister), and the Egyptians, no doubt because they had a lot of other things on their minds, hadn't given the long-previously requested
agrément
to our delegate in Cairo, so we had nobody to organize things there.

MONDAY, 30 APRIL.
East Hendred and London
.

Lunch with the Gilmours at Isleworth. Ian thought the Conservatives were probably winning the election, though wasn't overwhelmingly confident, and told me more strongly than when I had seen him before Easter that he was pretty committed to accept the number two job at the Foreign Office, under Carrington. The night
they had won the no-confidence vote in the House of Commons, he had rashly agreed over a late-night drink with Carrington that he would do this, which greatly strengthened Carrington's claims to the Foreign Office, which now seem fairly clearly established. The difficulty is that whoever is number two there ought not to do Europe. The Foreign Secretary ought essentially to do that himself, and this makes the job, apart from the disadvantage of not being head of a department, in my view a less good one than Ian ought to have.

Sir Michael Palliser for a serious talk at Brooks's from 6.45 to 8.00. Acting on the assumption of a change of government, which both of us thought likely but neither of us thought certain, we then discussed how things should be played. He thought that Carrington was likely to be Foreign Secretary and would be marginally better, because more experienced, than Pym. Quite a good and sensible talk with him, including a satisfactory interchange about Crispin's future. I said very firmly that Crispin should be given a substantial embassy as soon as he came back from me (and a KCMG too) in order that he might have the opportunity to move up fairly quickly to one of the three top jobs by the end of his career, which he was certainly good enough to deserve. Palliser has Mexico City in mind for him.

TUESDAY, 1 MAY.
London and Brussels
.

To the Maudling memorial service at St Margaret's. It was absolutely packed, and a good, rather moving service. Ted (Heath) gave an impressive and generous address, done remarkably without notes, and there was also a good reading by Sandy Glen.
⁴⁴
I walked out with David Steel and told him how well I thought his campaign had gone and that he really had done the best of the three, though I had no idea how many votes it would bring him. I had a brief word with Harold Macmillan and with Ted afterwards.

Plane to Brussels with Jennifer where we had a rue de Praetère dinner for Senator Ed Muskie,
⁴⁵
whom I had not talked to since the memorable occasion in Douglass Cater's house in Washington
seven and a half years ago when he had been so completely carved up by Dean Acheson, the last occasion on which I saw Acheson. We also had Hinton, the American Ambassador, one person whom Muskie had brought with him, and Edmund Dell, who is one of the
trois sages
, plus his assistant, a very bright Foreign Office lady called Alison Bailes, who had been sitting in the car with Sykes when he had been assassinated in The Hague. It was altogether an interesting dinner. Muskie was very agreeable and more impressive than when I had seen him with Acheson; rather protectionist, however, despite being very close to the President. Dell seemed friendly and reasonably sensible on his affairs.

WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY.
Brussels
.

Pressing messages from Philippe de Rothschild saying he must see me urgently on some highly important personal matter. I thought it was to do with Jean-Pierre de Beaumarchais and therefore thought I should see him, and persuaded Jennifer a little reluctantly to have him to lunch. And then during the morning he kept ringing me up about the arrangements and also asking if he could bring Joan Littlewood
⁴⁶
with him. I agreed to this reasonably enthusiastically as I thought she might be quite interesting; she turned out to be moderately so. The only thing he wanted was to try and get me to sponsor some wine (i.e. Mouton) art exhibition in London.

In quick succession at about 7.30 I had frantic telephone calls from Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams, both of whom had had Number 10 on to them saying there was a tremendous rumour circulating in the City that I was about to come out with a pro-Tory statement. I assured them that I was coming out with no statement at all during the election. They seemed relieved. (Nor did I vote. Jennifer voted Liberal.)

Dinner, rue de Praetère, with John Harris who was staying, Jennifer and Laura. John pretty convinced, but by no means absolutely so, that the Tories would win. He and I stayed up talking about the future and what I might or might not conceivably do in politics.

THURSDAY, 3 MAY.
Brussels
.

A rue de Praetère luncheon party for the Chinese Ambassador and his wife. We also had Thea Elliott who was staying with us and was an old China hand, having had one child born in Peking in the late 1950s, plus Denmans, Tickells, and Plaja, the Italian Permanent Representative. I was surprised and pleased that the Chinese had come to lunch on their own, without any ‘interpreter'. The Ambassador showed no signs of resentment that the follow-up to my Peking talks are not as yet going terribly well, mainly because of the French taking up a very restrictive view on the textile agreement and one or two other governments being difficult on GSP.

A visit from Lathière, the French head of the Airbus consortium. He is the most surprising man,
Enarque, Inspecteur de Finance
, had been
Chef de Cabinet
to Jacquet when I was dealing with him on Concorde in 1964–5, looked like a butcher, talked a most undistinguished English fluently, and was obviously an extremely effective head of Airbus. Then just after 7 o'clock I went to the Brussels Hôtel de Ville and made a brief direct elections speech and then wandered around the stalls which had been laid out in the Grand'Place, one for each of the numerous Belgian parties competing in the election. But my insular mind was slightly more on other elections that day.

Sat up listening to the results with Jennifer, Laura, Thea and Celia, which began to come in seriously about 12.40 Brussels time. I eventually went to bed at 5.45, having waited to hear the Stechford result, but, Birmingham being as incompetently late as ever, had failed to do so. It was clear that the Tories were set for a substantial majority which would last a full Parliament. I had mixed feelings at the end, though on the whole I think a change of government is better for Britain's relations with Europe, but I cannot find pleasure in it. Thea I think was the most solid Labour supporter amongst us, though we were all somewhat torn.

FRIDAY, 4 MAY.
Brussels
.

In the afternoon I heard the totally unexpected and dreadful news of Shirley Williams's defeat, and then went home for a sleep before the Beaumarchais' arrived to stay at about 8 o'clock. Late-night telephone conversations with Shirley and Bill Rodgers.

SUNDAY, 6 MAY.
Brussels
.

Did some English telephoning, to Ian Gilmour, Peter Carrington, one or two other people, including David Owen, who had got a good result personally, rather surprisingly so. To bed very early. The post-election weekend definitely exhausting, draining and not very satisfactory.

TUESDAY, 8 MAY.
Brussels and Luxembourg
.

In the margins of the Foreign Affairs Council I had a substantial talk with François-Poncet, mainly about the agenda for Mercuès, the French ‘Schloss Gymnich', and also on some difficult nuclear matters, the French having decided to take the nuclear question off the Mercuès agenda thinking it was too sensitive in advance of direct elections. I agreed to this but said we couldn't leave it for too long. François-Poncet was reasonable and quick and I was definitely pro him on this occasion.

At the end we disposed of Cheysson's telegram to Nkomo, which over the weekend had shown signs of escalating into a major row with the French, although they knew perfectly well that I had not approved of it. However, Poncet agreed that we could now leave it where it was. But in the typical French way of getting in a parting shot, he said as we were walking out that there was great sensitivity about Commission political activity. Some people—not, he implausibly alleged, the French as much as the Germans—had raised eyebrows at the high degree of political content in my China talks.

At lunch Christophersen (Danish Foreign Minister) made the most ridiculous fuss about the leaked Denman working paper on relations with Japan, which had contained the famous phrases about ‘workaholics', ‘rabbit hutches', etc. I replied robustly, saying it was a pity it had leaked, but I was far from sure that it had done any harm, I had since received several friendly communications from the Japanese Prime Minister, and in any case it was much better that people should write in vivid phrases than in the usual awful Europe bureaucratese. I was strongly supported in this line by Dohnanyi and Simonet, both of whom were excellent, but nonetheless it took a very long time to persuade the stubborn Christophersen not to raise the matter in open Council during the afternoon.

The Council spent all day grinding its boring way through the negotiating brief for the final stages of the Community/ACP
⁴⁷
negotiations. This very detailed work, which ought to have been done by COREPER, was a clear example, as I told François-Poncet, of the way in which the Council downgraded itself and became no more than a glorified COREPER, with a consequent bad effect upon the attendance of Foreign Ministers who just sent their undersecretaries who could not take decisions: a classic vicious circle.

I then drove to Luxembourg on the most perfect evening, a long overdue improvement in the weather, to make a valedictory statement to the departing nominated Parliament on the following afternoon.

THURSDAY, 10 MAY.
Brussels, London and Edinburgh
.

London for my Open University degree at Guildhall. Kingman Brewster, the American Ambassador in London, and I were jointly honoured, and Asa Briggs was installed as the new Chancellor. I saw the Wilsons going into the lunch, and Mary, amazingly, more or less confirmed the story in Harold's notorious interview that she had intended to vote for Mrs Thatcher.

Then to Edinburgh in filthy weather for a dinner with the Consultative Committee of the Coal and Steel Community, presided over by Derek Ezra
⁴⁸
and attended by a fair collection of Scottish notabilities, including the new Secretary of State, George Younger.
⁴⁹
I spoke without a text for about twenty minutes. I sat between Ezra and Gormley, Gormley making a great number of centre party noises.