European Diary, 1977-1981 (84 page)

THURSDAY, 6 MARCH.
Brussels and Lisbon.

Half an hour on the telephone with Dohnanyi, agreeably but not tremendously pointfully, about the BBQ at his instigation. 11.10 plane to Lisbon. Down into Lisbon at 1.15 in rather indifferent weather. Met at the airport by Sá Carneiro, the new Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic though rather right-wing party, plus the Christian Democrat Foreign Minister Freitas do Amaral, whom I had met in Luxembourg a few weeks before, plus their wives. Mrs Sá Carneiro, as we thought she was, was rather a good-looking lady who might have come straight off the Yale campus. In fact she turned out to be a Danish publisher. Mrs Freitas do Amaral was totally different, very Latin, also rather engaging. Jennifer's plane from London was rather later than mine and during the wait ‘Mrs Sá Carneiro' enlivened proceedings by expressing distrust of TAP (Portuguese Airlines) and asking me if I knew that the initials were known (by whom?) to stand for ‘take another plane'.
²²

An afternoon meeting with Sá Carneiro in the Prime Ministerial residence, the old Salazar house, though he (Sá Carneiro) does not live in it, where I had seen Mário Soares two and a half years before. Driving through the streets, Lisbon looked slightly tidied up, a little less like Calcutta than it had begun to do on the previous occasion. It seemed in better working order. This was certainly true of the hotel, which had abandoned
autogestion
since we were last there.

Sá Carneiro raised no subjects of great importance but talked
interestingly, well, and friendlily, and was amazingly well informed about my background, writings, etc. He is a very small man, about 5 ‘3” I would think, but with great drive, and talks very good English, even better French and I think pretty good Spanish as well. I was definitely rather impressed by him, but maybe too much influenced by his going so out of the way to be particularly nice to me. Then I saw Freitas do Amaral for forty-five minutes. Quite a useful talk in which we discussed the timetable for the outstanding negotiations, but again did not get into substance.

Back at the hotel Soares came to see me for an hour. He had come back from Paris more or less specially that afternoon. Attractive, friendly, expressing himself well in imperfect French, but a little woebegone and complaining. He was in something of a ‘we was cheated' mood, but his resentment was not against Eanes, the President of the Republic, who had dismissed him, but with whom he had clearly had a
rapprochement
and about whom he was anxious to speak friendlily, but against the Government, which he held to be exacerbating political differences in Portugal.

He added that his commitment to Portuguese adhesion to the Community was complete, but that with this polarization of politics he was beginning to have trouble on the issue with his own Socialist Party. He was clearly not happy in opposition, not personally bitter about Sá Carneiro, though complaining hard about some constitutional scheme of the Government, which sounds a pretty good bit of gerrymandering. They apparently plan to increase the number of seats—from four to perhaps thirty—for Portuguese emigrants, of whom there are about a million in the Community and two million outside. This could obviously be a fine recipe for producing a quiverful of pocket boroughs.

Then to Cintra where we had a dinner, as on the previous occasion, in the magnificent hall at the Palaccio da Vila with about 150 guests and speeches afterwards. I sat between ‘Mrs Sá Carneiro' and Mrs Freitas do Amaral. ‘Mrs Sá Carneiro', I had discovered in conversation with Soares, is not married to Sá Carneiro. They have been together for about two years. She is called ‘Snou', has been in Portugal for about fifteen years as a publisher, is clearly quite a powerful and indeed agreeable lady, but Sá Carneiro is very bold in such a Catholic country to seek a divorce from the mother of his several children. ('When I marry Mrs Snou', only a slight variation
from a line in an old American musical, kept occurring to me.)

This was the first occasion on which ‘Snou' had appeared in public as his consort and this was no doubt provoked by Jennifer's coming and the banquet having to be made bisexual. I thought I detected a slight frostiness between Mrs Freitas do Amaral and her. The speeches went quite well, both Sá Carneiro's and mine.

FRIDAY, 7 MARCH.
Lisbon.

Lunch was another grand official banquet—at the Foreign Ministry—sitting this time between the Freitas do Amarals. More speeches. Then to the Presidential Palace for a long interview with General Eanes. I had heard in the meantime that the Sá Carneiros were proposing to come out and lunch with us informally at Cintra the next day, as they wished to continue the talk. Perhaps inspired by this knowledge, Eanes kept the conversation going much more animatedly than last time. He was more unbuttoned and relaxed, seemed to me to have become a more rounded personality, but nonetheless made it absolutely clear that he was on pretty bad terms with his Prime Minister. No direct criticism but solid silence about him, accompanied by at least four or five tributes in the course of the hour to Soares.

Then towards the end he said he could go on as long as I liked. But when we came out about ten minutes late we found Sá Carneiro had been left cooling his heels. When I indicated to Eanes that it would be unwise for me to keep my press conference waiting indefinitely, he responded by saying that he was at my disposal any time during the weekend and would I come and see him again. Our weekend off was being rather seriously eaten into by competitive bidding from President and Prime Minister.

Then to the Italian Embassy, a very splendid late seventeenth-century building in a rundown quarter, and there did a rather exhaustive briefing of the Nine. I thought the ambassadors were rather an impressive lot for once. The ‘Brit', as on the previous occasion, was Lord Moran, ex-John Wilson,
²³
who wrote a good book about Campbell-Bannerman.

SUNDAY, 9 MARCH.
Cintra, Lisbon and Brussels.

Drove in and saw Eanes in his private presidential apartments at noon. He was very friendly. I think he is an honest man but not nearly as quick as Sá Carneiro, and some of his explanations of the plots, etc. which are going on seem to me a little unconvincing. His basic view was that the divide between the parties should not be allowed to grow too wide: this is partly because he does not like parties and wants to strengthen his own position, but partly because he has a general and desirable commitment to holding Portugal together, and a particular one to keeping the European enterprise as a national and not a party enterprise. Then back to Brussels.

MONDAY, 10 MARCH.
Brussels and Strasbourg.

Decided I must go on to a strict régime. Avion taxi in rather depressed mood to Strasbourg at 3.45. Listened to Gundelach's statement on butter sales to Russia which he did pretty well and which was accepted by the more sensible Tories and by the House generally. There were one or two shrill comments but a solid one from Henry Plumb, though balanced by a menacing willingness to vote for anything against anybody by the disagreeable Aigner. Question time from 6.00 to 7.30 which ambled on in its usual boring way. Then back to the hotel and as a substitute for dinner watched Mrs Thatcher on French television –there was a girl interpreter, possibly specially auditioned, with a peculiarly disagreeable voice.

WEDNESDAY, 12 MARCH.
Strasbourg, London and East Hendred.

I had a lunch at La Wantzenau organized by Henry Plumb and Madron Seligman for six youngish Tory MPs, including some of the most difficult ones on the butter issue. Once or twice they were tiresome but it was well worth doing, I think. Evening plane to London.

MONDAY, 17 MARCH.
East Hendred, London and Brussels.

One-and-a-quarter-hour meeting with Mrs Thatcher at Downing Street. This was a good deal calmer than on some previous occasions.
Nothing very memorable was said, although she was clearly willing to contemplate a package deal at the European Council, provided the actual phrase was avoided, and willing also to talk at any rate in terms of two-thirds of the shortfall, or even a little less. It was perfectly friendly throughout and she showed more willingness to listen than previously. Jim Cattermole and Tom Ellis
²⁴
and George Foulkes,
²⁵
as the officers (the last two new) of the Labour Committee for Europe, to lunch at the Athenaeum.

Then to Brussels and dinner at home for the Italians, Ruffini, Zamberletti, Plaja on their side: better than on the previous occasion, but Ruffini still far from scintillating.

TUESDAY, 18 MARCH.
Brussels.

Foreign Affairs Council, at which there was some short but relatively important discussion on the preparation for the European Council. I had to be there for that, even though it meant my very reluctantly missing Michael Astor's memorial service in London. Bernard-Reymond suddenly announced at the end of the morning that the position of the French Government was that the Commission must come forward with its proposals now, and then should do nothing in the way of suggesting last-minute compromises. This was an obvious attempt to neutralize me and was fortunately badly received by the others. My rather pompous assertion that we would take our responsibilities and do what we thought right at the time in the interests of Europe as a whole was very well received by nearly all the rest. Bernard-Reymond afterwards came up and apologized to me for having to say this under instructions, adding that he did not himself agree with it.

Dinner with the Natalis in a large, mostly Italian party. A long talk with Lorenzo (Natali) after dinner, who told me that he and the Italians were much in favour of my staying on as President and that he would stay on if I did.
²⁶

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH.
Brussels.

Long Commission meetings interspersed with Shirley Williams to lunch, rue de Praetère. She was friendly and bright and agreeable as she always is, though I think that her political position has receded a little, although not dramatically, since I last saw her. She had had a talk with Denis Healey who had said that he had to be pretty equivocal in order to get elected leader (of the Labour Party) but once elected he would be an absolutely ruthless social democratic leader, wanting a social democratic Cabinet and would indeed try to promote a split in the party from within as opposed to without. She was also charged to bear some sort of message to me suggesting my return to British politics with a view to becoming Foreign Secretary in a future Labour Government. The prospect does not appeal to me, because apart from my having burnt too many Labour Party boats, I really could not stand being Foreign Secretary under Denis. He would lecture one every day on every subject under the sun. This does not mean that I would not serve under anyone – I could serve under David Steel or under Shirley herself, I think, but not with somebody quite as pedagogic and know-all as Denis invariably is—with me at any rate.

I had Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, plus Emile Noël, plus Crispin for a ‘Four Horsemen' dinner, rue de Praetère. They had asked for it rather urgently, Davignon in particular, but as we had got through most of the immediately tricky business in the Commission it was mainly a fence-repairing rather than a serious discussion occasion.

Just before they left Shirley arrived back to stay. As soon as they were gone she settled down for what was intended to be an hour or so's talk, but, unbelievably, went on until 4 o'clock in the morning. She talked extremely well and could not have been more personally agreeable. I told her why I did not think the Healey scenario was convincing, and to some extent she was re-unconvinced by me, although, fairly, retaining her position fully open for the autumn. She also appeared to understand perfectly well why I was unattracted by being Foreign Secretary under Denis. A great part of the conversation, however, was not concerned with politics as such but lapped around, with my describing how the Commission operated, with a lot of talk about Tony Crosland
as a young man, a whole range of easy friendly gossipy conversation.

I suggested to her the possibility that she might be interested in coming as a Commissioner to Brussels. She did not totally reject it, but I think was not very attracted by it, and would in my belief, if she were to be shunted from politics for a few years—in which she saw certain advantage—prefer to do something like the chairmanship of the BBC. She also has somewhat in mind the idea of a Harvard professorship, which has no doubt been dangled before her. However, on balance I think she will probably stick to politics. It was a worthwhile, though a strange evening, and made particular nonsense of a malicious little story, originating no doubt from Château Palmer, which appeared in the
Guardian
next morning, though happily unseen until later by either Shirley or me, when it irritated me and upset her, that she had come to Brussels to give me the brush-off so far as any idea of political collaboration was concerned. If so, it was a jolly long brush-off!

FRIDAY, 21 MARCH.
Brussels.

I went to see the King at Laeken from 9.45 to 10.30. He was looking much better after great back trouble all winter, with an operation and two months out of action. Today he seemed restored, although looking alone and isolated in the vast and rather dismal Palace of Laeken—redeemed only by its view. My state of health was not very good either, and a good third of the conversation was valetudinarian.

We also and inevitably talked about Europe. He was very keen to promote a budgetary solution acceptable to the British and made some very sensible remarks about how important it was to a country like Belgium that the basic European power matrix should be triangular rather than bipolar. We also discussed both British and Belgian internal politics a little and he claimed, though not in a dismissive or aggressive way, that the communal linguistic question was very much a matter of politicians rather than people. Whether he is right or not I do not know, but he is in a good position to judge.