European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 19

Then back to the guest house, where Li, the Minister for External Trade, came to say goodbye. This turned out to be a rather serious conversation, in which he obviously thought he ought to say one or two things which he had omitted at the meeting the previous Friday afternoon, such as what great importance they attach to GSP and how good their silk was. So the conversation was a curious mixture of courtesy and rather excessive detail. Before leaving we made presentations to various people from Kang downwards, the interpreters, the Chief of Protocol, the head of the Security Service, my bodyguard, the cook at the guest house, etc. We had brought a lot of clocks with us, and there were also signed photographs and books.

Sung, the old Amba.s.sador to London, came to drive with me to the airport and I had a rather good talk with him on the journey. Then at the airport we had the amba.s.sadors, or at any rate five or six of them, and also the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. The French did much better than the British, who in spite of requests produced no newspapers, whereas the French produced a complete set of Le Monde for the days we had been away.

We took off at 5.45, with one and a half hours of sunset and then dinner over South-West China. It was a slow flight as there was a great head wind of 160 knots, so that we took eight and a half hours to reach Karachi.

FRIDAY, 2 MARCH. Karachi and East Hendred.

Athens at 5 a.m. The light came up over Yugoslavia and we got into Charles de Gaulle just before 8.00 French time, an hour and a half late. A quick change round and on to the plane to London, with newspapers, boxes, etc. We were typically stacked over Heathrow. Filthy weather in Paris, slightly better in London. East Hendred by 10.00, feeling surprisingly well.

SUNDAY, 4 MARCH. East Hendred.

Bonham Carters came about noon to drive over with me to lunch with the Briggs' at Worcester (College).

It was a typical large Briggs Sunday luncheon party-twenty-two in all, I think: Berlins, John Sparrow, the American Amba.s.sador and Mrs Kingman Brewster, Janet Suzman, Catherine Freeman, all an agreeable lot of people, although rather too many of them. However, I like the Briggs' very much. We walked in the Worcester garden for a bit, and then did a drive around Oxford, going in particular into the new St Catherine's, which I don't think Mark had ever seen.

MONDAY, 5 MARCH. East Hendred, Brussels, Bonn and Brussels.

8.25 plane to Brussels, caught with difficulty as the motorway was jammed from near Maidenhead. An hour's Coordination Meeting for the Foreign Affairs Council, and then back to the airport and an avion taxi to Bonn for a talk with Schmidt.

Lunched with Oliver Wright22 at the British Emba.s.sy, the first time I had been there since the Hendersons left. It was a good lunch, sitting at a little table in the window of the dining room looking across the river to the sun-bathed (for once) Siebengebirge opposite. Wright is a curious man, a good presence, well informed and shrewd about German politics, but lacks subtlety or breadth of vision. He is perfectly friendly and yet without warmth (towards me, at any rate).

Then to the Chancellery, where we had Schmidt for a full two hours. It was not a particularly illuminating talk. He was in one of his gloomy, complaining moods, not fortunately much about us, but about the world and almost everybody in it, although Carter had a special place in his demonology list. He was not particularly friendly towards Callaghan, indeed asking whether I thought a new British Tory Government would be more 'predictable', which is now his favourite favourable word. There was not much reference to 'my friend Valery' either, though surprisingly little criticism, considering the way the French had messed up the start of the EMS.

We had a good deal of discussion about the CAP, on which he is a mixture of fundamental good sense and rather supine acceptance of being locked in to no reduction in German farm prices, which he interprets as being the same as no reduction in farmers' incomes, which it is not. However, a certain amount of progress was made on these subjects, although there was a complete unwillingness on his part to take the lead at Paris the following week and try to force through a solution to the still held up MCA/EMS problem. 'I tried in Brussels,' he said. 'It wasn't a success. I can't try again; now it's up to Giscard. He is the chairman. I mustn't interfere with him.' I tried on leaving to put a bit more enthusiastic backbone into him, but I am not sure it was successful. However, as a ground-clearing enterprise the talk was worthwhile.

Brussels by 6.30, and into the Council for one and a half hours. Francois-Poncet with Nanteuil and a young private secretary to dine, rue de Praetere. I was accompanied as usual on such occasions by Crispin and Christopher Audland. It was a surprisingly successful three-hour dinner, with really very good talk with Francois-Poncet, partly general conversation mainly about France socially, geographically, historically, and partly some business talk relating to the Council. It was a vast advance on relations in December and I thought we had got on pretty good terms for the first time. On this occasion at least, he was an agreeable, sensible, highly intelligent, well-informed, talkative man.

TUESDAY, 6 MARCH. Brussels.

A rather belated press conference on China. Then the Council for two hours. The discussion was mainly on the state of progress in the MTNs and was not as bad as I expected. The opposition, from Deniau for the French, and to some lesser extent from the Irish and Italians, seemed broadly containable. Haferkamp and Davignon, particularly the latter, did well, and I intervened at the end to make it clear that while we would try to deal with one or two of the peripheral points which had been raised, there was no real chance of getting any substantial change in the package before we came back to them in April, when they would have to take a firm decision.

In the afternoon there was a long-drawn-out Concertation Meeting, with five or six representatives of the Parliament, on the budget question. Francois-Poncet dealt with this with great tact giving nothing in substance but being extremely polite, so that they left in a tolerable temper.

WEDNESDAY, 7 MARCH. Brussels.

Commission meeting for three hours in the morning. Then to Comme Chez Soi with Simonet, where all the family and staff were on particularly good form because they had just had advance notice of their third Michelin star. Their cup of joy would have been overflowing if they had also heard that the Villa Lorraine had lost its third star, but that was not the case. Henri (Simonet) was firmly convinced that there would be a Belgian Government under Martens the following week, hopeful that he (Henri) might stay on as Foreign Minister, and more than hopeful that Martens being too busy in Brussels he might be allowed to go to the Paris European Council alone and thus have the heady pleasure of dining with heads of government. He was as friendly and agreeable as usual.

Three and a half hours of Commission in the afternoon. Dinner at home for John Sainsbury,23 with Nanteuils (Luc being on particularly talkative form and agreeable in a way that would have amazed most of his COREPER colleagues), Brunners, etc.

THURSDAY, 8 MARCH. Brussels and London.

12.30 plane to London. Lunch with Hayden at Brooks's. One and three quarter hours with Callaghan at 4 o'clock. He was, as in several recent interviews, immensely friendly, quite different from two years ago, and keen to talk on a whole range of issues, British internal ones to begin with. He was not very well informed or focused on the issues for the Paris Summit, but quite anxious to be told about them and not making any fuss about the bilateral issues which he raised with me, except for a hard continuing note of complaint about the British share of the budget being unfair. He tried to shrug off the devolution debacle24 but was not particularly optimistic about the political situation generally.

I then went to the City to give a lecture to the Overseas Development Inst.i.tute in the headquarters of Barclays Bank. A rather good audience of about two hundred: Michael Palliser, Ronald Mcintosh, George Jellicoe, Leo Pliatzky. The lecture almost got off to an appalling start because I suddenly realized during the chairman's introduction that I had got the wrong text in front of me, the original one and not the one which I had laboriously amended on the way over. I signalled wildly. Crispin, whom I had warned that I may have eaten a bad oyster at lunch, a.s.sumed I was becoming desperately ill, but Roger Beetham, not being aware of this, made a more sensible judgement and came up with the proper text. So all was saved but not without the incident being fairly obvious and causing some amus.e.m.e.nt.

Home at Kensington Park Gardens where I discovered most surprisingly a letter of tentative invitation to be Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford-they must have seen me casing the joint the previous Sunday. I am not, however, tempted by being head of a college.

SUNDAY, 11 MARCH. East Hendred and Paris.

10.30 plane to Paris with Jennifer. To the Emba.s.sy where we are staying a night for the last time in the Henderson regime (they only have three weeks to go) and possibly ever,25 as it is unlikely we will have close friends there in the future. Lunched with them alone, worked in the afternoon and walked in the twilight. Crispin came at 7.00 and we went through various points for the European Council, and then dined with him, the Hendersons and Jennifer.

MONDAY, 12 MARCH. Paris.

A rather desultory morning's work until I left the Emba.s.sy at noon and moved into the Ritz.26 Lunched with Jennifer, Crispin and Michel Vanden Abeele, before moving up, under motorcycle escort, to the Kleber, where the European Council began fairly punctually at 3.10 and sat for four hours. We ran through a range of subjects: the economic situation of the Community, world trade relations, j.a.pan, energy, and then a general clutch of social papers, all introduced by the Commission, i.e. Ortoli or me.

In the first discussion Callaghan made a prepared and subsequently heavily leaked statement of position, mainly on the CAP and the budget. It all sounded too electoral, although he did not do it badly. The note of the Council was distinctly low key, and Giscard to my surprise did not appear to be trying to get very much out of his summing up on the social volet,27 or indeed energy, where I would have expected him to go for a more positive outcome.

The room was not satisfactory. It was bigger than the ones in which we normally meet, so that Giscard and Francois-Poncet were isolated at one end of the table, Ortoli and I at the other, with four delegations down either side, Schmidt and Giscard for once not sitting next to each other.

A heads of government dinner at the Elysee at 8.15. The place a table was rather more satisfactory from my point of view than usual; au bout de la table inevitably when alone with heads of government, but on this occasion between Schmidt and Callaghan, which was a change from between Thorn and Andreotti, to which I had become rather too used. However, that mattered little as the conversation was almost entirely general and not very good at that.

Giscard opened rather typically by asking about the Queen's visit to the Middle East, and there then developed a discussion conducted mainly between him and Callaghan, Giscard taking a fairly hard, pro-Arab line, i.e. more extreme than the Egyptians, Callaghan being certainly pro-Egyptian, even pro-Israeli. There was some discussion at the end about Turkey, on which Schmidt reported depressingly.

Then after dinner, 'round the fireside' as it is quaintly called, there was first a discussion about China, on which I was asked to report. Then a discussion about the French desire to have a new look at the Euratom treaty, not to amend it they were careful to say, but to see if any adaptations of interpretation were necessary. This was pretty coolly received by the others (in many ways more favourably by me than by most, except for my saying extremely firmly that we had competences in the non-proliferation field, which the French were inclined to deny), with the outcome that it should be discussed at the French Schloss Gymnich, but without, I think, anybody expecting much to happen.

Giscard's launching of his great Euro/Arab/African dialogue plan was also coolly received, with a suggestion from Schmidt that it was perhaps best to start with the Africans before one brought in the Arabs, and that the whole thing should not be done on too grandiose and clumsy a scale. However, there was no great ill feeling on any side, and we broke up at about 11.30 in reasonably good order.

TUESDAY, 13 MARCH. Paris and Strasbourg.

To the Kleber by 9.30. Everybody arrived more or less on time, except for Callaghan and Schmidt who had breakfasted together (on defence matters) and, somewhat inconsiderately, didn't turn up until 10 o'clock, so that even Giscard was kept waiting for half an hour. I had a good deal of conversation with him during this time. Throughout the whole of this European Council he was quite friendly, and he was obviously going to make no difficulty about my presence at the press conference, as he asked me for how long I thought, on previous experience, it should last.

When the session eventually started, we opened with agriculture, on which I made a fifteen-minute statement, distancing myself from Callaghan, for obvious reasons, by putting in a certain general defence of the CAP, but then being extremely hard on the need to deal with surpluses by a price freeze. We discussed this for an hour, with I thought a rather good reception round the table. Callaghan kept fairly quiet, though he was obviously on our side on practical matters even if not on matters of theory. Thorn was silent. Lynch, Jrgensen, Andreotti and even van Agt expressed general approval for our position. Schmidt didn't say yes and didn't say no (he picked a rather pointless semi-argument with Callaghan on the a.s.sumption that Callaghan was advocating deficiency payments, which he was not), but the general thrust of what he was saying was favourable to our point of view and anti the farm lobby.

Giscard's summing up was clearly hostile but contained a good deal of legerdemain, which he developed later in the press conference, differentiating between products, differentiating between countries in which surpluses were produced, and generally trying to lose our hard proposal in sophistical refinements. The remainder of the morning was occupied with the communique.

Just before the end of the Council, Callaghan and I both went out and coincided in the loo, whereupon he made to me the most fanciful offer, saying, 'Would you like to be Governor of Hong Kong? I could possibly persuade Murray MacLehose to stay on until nearly the end of your time in Europe.' I said, 'Certainly not, Jim. I have never heard a more preposterous suggestion.' However, in a curious, rather heavy-footed way, he went on, saying, 'Oh, it's a very important job, you know. You would be good at it. What do you want to do when you come back to England? You'll go to the House of Lords, I presume.' I said, 'I am not at all sure, as I told you when you last suggested that to me. Not for the moment, certainly. I want to come back and look around and keep options open.' 'Well,' he said, 'You might find it quite difficult to get back into the House of Commons.' 'Certainly,' I said. 'And you might not like it when you got there,' he said. 'It has changed, it has deteriorated a lot.' I said, 'Yes, yes. All I intend to do is come back and look around at the political landscape, Jim, and certainly not become Governor of Hong Kong.'

The Council over, I asked Giscard what time the press conference was to take place. He said, 'In five minutes,' so I waited outside, perhaps not spending as much time as I should have on a draft which Roger primarily, but Crispin also, had produced, expecting Giscard at any moment. In fact he did not return for twenty-five minutes, no doubt working on his text, and then disappeared again for another ten minutes. However, we eventually got into the salle de presse. The conference was fairly large and Giscard made a statement of about twenty minutes, rather dull I thought, though I was probably only half listening to it, but in which he certainly gave an over-hard impression of the anti-price-freeze view of the Council. What was true of course was that the Council had not specifically endorsed it, but he came very near to giving the impression that it had rejected it. Then, at the end, he said, 'I will now answer questions, either on behalf of the Council or on behalf of France.' I indicated then that I wished to speak. He, without great resistance, but equally without any enthusiasm, said, 'Monsieur le President de la Commission veut ajouter quelques mots.' So I then spoke for five or seven minutes, slightly galloping through the text I had before me, making a few cuts, and as a result possibly coming out slightly more sharply against Giscard on agricultural prices (not in substance, but in form) than I would have done had I felt less rushed.

Then there were questions, all of them to Giscard, except for one from an Italian journalist to me, saying, 'Are you maintaining your position on the price freeze after the Council?' To which I said, 'Yes, certainly. On the whole I was rather encouraged by the discussion.' Then as we walked out, Giscard said, 'You didn't say exactly the same thing as me,' not particularly disagreeably. I said, 'There is often a difference of emphasis. I speak for the Commission; you speak for the Council.' And then, as we walked further out and I said goodbye to him, he took up an argument of substance, saying, 'Yes, yes, I see your point on products in surplus, but why do we have to have a freeze for products not in surplus?' To which I said, 'We don't necessarily, but they aren't products of any great significance. We can of course look at what you can find in that category but certainly not milk, certainly not sugar, certainly not cereals, and, indeed, not beef at the moment. Maybe one or two other meat products.' Then we parted, reasonably amicably, though I suspect he was not at all pleased, one, with the fact of my intervention, and, two, with the form of it. However, we shall see.

5.15 train from the Gare de l'Est to Strasbourg. Still very dismal weather, so that the long journey up the Marne valley was not as agreeable as it might have been.

WEDNESDAY, 14 MARCH. Strasbourg.

A very bad night's sleep. The retained heat of the beastly Sofitel is appalling. In addition, Monsieur Pflimlin, who no doubt thought he should keep the square outside the hotel particularly clean, sent the most appalling dragon of a cleaning machine round, which was with us hissing away from 5.00 to 6.15.

A Commission from 9.00 to 10.30 without great incident. Then, at noon, I had Johansen, the Danish member of the Cour des Comptes, who is in charge of the investigation into the Haferkamp affair, to see me. He seemed a sensible man, but what will come out of it I can't tell. Did a not tremendously exciting question time. Read the French press. 'Pa.s.sage d'armes courtoises', Le Monde said, 'entre President Giscard et M. Jenkins.' I dined very briefly at the little restaurant opposite the hotel, got back to the Parliament at 9.00 and took an hour's China debate in a very empty house.

THURSDAY, 15 MARCH. Strasbourg and Brussels.

Statements on the European Council from Francois-Poncet for an hour and from me for ten minutes. Then a debate until 1 o'clock; quite good but not vastly significant. Afterwards an official lunch given by Francois-Poncet for Colombo and the enlarged Bureau of the Parliament. I sat between Francois-Poncet and Geoffrey de Freitas,28 and found Poncet a little cool. Atmosphere disseminates itself quickly down the French Government hierarchy.

Avion taxi to Brussels at 6.00. It was a very long flight, mainly because the landing conditions in Brussels were absolutely appalling, and suddenly just at the end (the pilots had warned us of this beforehand) they said, 'We don't think we can go in. Where would you rather go, Charleroi or Ostend?' I said, 'Preferably Antwerp.' Almost as soon as I had said it, we were twenty feet over the ground and on the runway-in Brussels. So I asked, 'Why did you suddenly ask that?' and they replied, 'Because a British Caledonian plane ahead of us just overshot, so we a.s.sumed we might have to do so as well. But we got in. Wasn't that good?' I said, 'Yes, very good,' but thought it would have been even better had I not believed that Jennifer was on the British Caledonian plane. However, it turned out that she wasn't, and had got in with difficulty just earlier, and was at home by the time I arrived there after an hour in the office.

FRIDAY, 16 MARCH. Brussels.

I saw Hinton the American Amba.s.sador, who came in with a great statement from Carter, which was obviously being put out by all American emba.s.sies, urging us in the strongest terms to use our influence in favour of the Israeli/Egyptian peace settlement, and indicating that the United States would attach great importance to what their friends did on this occasion. Not primarily a matter for us, although obviously there are going to be difficulties within the Nine, with the French, as so often, taking a much harder position than anyone else.

At noon I went down to receive the President of Guinee-Bissau who was an agreeable if not impressive head of state. I had a brief private talk with him and then took him into the Commission for a formal three-quarters of an hour meeting, and then to lunch at Val d.u.c.h.esse, which lasted until about 3.15. Back in the office I saw first Haferkamp and then the new j.a.panese Trade Minister, Yasukawa, who seemed to me to be an improvement on Ushiba. Home early, where the Zuckermans had arrived to stay.

MONDAY, 19 MARCH. Brussels.

A meeting with Murphy,29 the Irish President of the Cour des Comptes,. mainly about some fairly abstract questions of Court and Commission competence, but also about the Haferkamp affair with the news, mildly but not totally unwelcome, that Colombo had written with the Aigner request that they should widen their inquiries into travel expenses as well as representation expenses. I said that was acceptable to us, but that it was extremely desirable to complete the whole report by the date they had said, which was the end of April, and to have it dealt with in this Parliament.

I saw the Chairmen of the EEC Select Committees of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Tony Greenwood and John Eden,30 with two officials; both of them were perfectly agreeable and neither of them was penetrating.

In the afternoon I saw Peter Parker31 of British Rail and found him as bright as I have always thought him; then the Israeli Amba.s.sador, who mainly wanted to invite me to Jerusalem as he had heard I was going to Egypt; Tad Szulc of the New York Times, whom I had last seen in Washington in 1963 when I was doing a first anniversary piece for the Observer on Cuba II, who turned out to be very good value; and finally Tugendhat.

That evening, without great enthusiasm, I had a dinner for the Confederation of Socialist Parties. They were mostly as tiresome as ever. Mansholt started off with his old song that the Commission should be much more political in a party sense; there was a Socialist majority (which is doubtful, but maybe) and we should decide all issues by votes on party lines. I replied as robustly as on a previous occasion and was agitated afterwards, thinking I had been too ca.s.sant, but Nick Stuart who was there said, 'Not at all, I think you behaved like a saint under great provocation.' However it produced, as rows always do upon me, the effect of making me wake full of angst at 5 a.m. and not sleeping again.

TUESDAY, 20 MARCH. Brussels, Paris and Brussels.

11.44 TEE from the Gare du Midi to attend the Monnet funeral at Montfort L'Amaury, Michael Jenkins accompanying. One could tell from the beginning that the train was no good. It left nine minutes late, and limped to the French frontier. There were continual works along the line. We stopped on three occasions at least for a full five minutes and it was amazing in the circ.u.mstances that we were not more than forty-one minutes late at Paris. That left us exactly forty-four minutes to get from the Gare du Nord to the church in the country to the west of Paris, which would be rather like trying to get from Liverpool Street to near Maidenhead in an equivalent time.

However, Peter Halsey had taken a more than spectacular initiative. Realizing from the arrival board that we were going to be late, he tried to get motards from the police station at the Gare du Nord, but failed. So he had rung up the British Emba.s.sy and they had succeeded. The two motards had arrived literally three or four minutes before we got in; if we hadn't had the last maddening stoppage outside Paris we would probably have set off, disastrously, without them. As it was, after not too hair-raising a drive, we arrived at the church at 3.26. Schmidt arrived at 3.27, Giscard arrived at 3.28. The honour of the Commission was saved.

It was a striking service; an attractive, medium-sized French country church, full, of course. The opening was the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a recording, sung in English, and Schmidt (for whom it didn't matter) arrived and then Giscard (for whom perhaps it did) came and sat on his little throne between the body of the church and the altar to this transatlantic cadence. Most of the rest of the service was to me not tremendously moving (the Ma.s.s I find slightly impersonal on these occasions), but there was a good haunting hymn towards the end, called 'Dieu, je crois en toi'.

Then back to the Gare du Nord for the 5.44, and rue de Praetere at 8.30.

FRIDAY, 23 MARCH. Brussels and Kent.

No run on security grounds because of news the previous day of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Richard Sykes,32 the British Amba.s.sador in The Hague, and the still more threatening news (for us) the evening before that a Belgian had been shot dead, probably from the circ.u.mstances in mistake for John Killick (Amba.s.sador to NATO), and thus tying up with the intelligence we had received about possible threats six weeks before, but had typically forgotten about in the meantime. On the good old principle of shutting the stable door, the Belgian police were thronging rue de Praetere, and I proceeded to the office at 9.30 with screaming police cars, motorcycle escorts, and a guard of about fourteen policemen. Fortunately I was due to go to London that morning for a weekend in Kent with the Mclntoshes.

MONDAY, 26 MARCH. London.

In the afternoon I spent nearly two hours in Brooks's preparing in some detail a speech for the ELEC gathering which I was to address at the Reform Club in the early evening. It was rather a lot of effort for a twelve-minute speech to about 120 people, but I judged it to be worthwhile because of the likely quality of the audience. I was right. After the speech I talked to John Barnes, ex-Amba.s.sador to The Hague (who always looks sprightly and rather Fred Astairish, but even more so than usual on this occasion, perhaps because he was congratulating himself on having no longer been in The Hague the previous week), Robert Armstrong, David Watt, Peter Jenkins, Dora Gaitskell (who for the first time was looking somewhat older),33 Douglas Hurd (sensible, nice, a little gloomy as usual), Ian Wrigglesworth, Bob Maclennan, and Con O'Neill (argumentative, but very high quality and whom I had hardly seen since the European Referendum campaign).34 TUESDAY, 27 MARCH. London and Brussels.

9.25 plane to Brussels. In the afternoon I did a rather tricky interview for the Figaro. It was tricky because it was to some extent a reply to the same paper's previous week's great attack on me for my incredible effrontery and impertinence in contradicting the President of the Republic in public, etc., signed by an old Gaullist minister, Georges Gorse. Then, after an hour's tour d'horizon with Davignon at his request I went to dine with the Chinese Amba.s.sador, a sort of reunion dinner for our February visit.

WEDNESDAY, 28 MARCH. Brussels.

Between the normal two Commission sessions I gave a lunch at rue de Praetere for the largely unoccupied Times journalists35 whom Charlie Douglas-Home had brought over, the various European correspondents-Peter Nichols from Rome, who is rather a good man, Charles Hargrove from Paris, about whom I have mixed views, our local correspondents, Patricia Clough from Bonn-and one or two other people from London. It was all perfectly agreeable, as indeed I always find anything with Charlie Home.

In the evening a dinner primarily for Hugh Thomas, with Laura, the Tickells and Helena Tine. We came out after dinner and listened with bated breath, as they say, to the BBC sound commentary, given by Nick Stuart's father,36 on the result of the division in the House of Commons. At first it sounded as though the Government, as usual, had won, which would have been an anti-climax, but then there was the news of the Opposition victory by a single vote, and therefore Callaghan's announcement that he would recommend dissolution the next day. I had no feeling of exhilaration in the sense of wanting to take part in the campaign, but a satisfaction that the anti-climax of another narrow Government victory had been avoided, and that the Government's life, long past its useful term, wasn't just going to drag on indefinitely.

Hugh Thomas-despite his occasions canva.s.sing for me in Stechford-is now a dedicated Thatcherite Tory, but didn't seem too certain about the result. Laura and the Tickells-and me probably-were all in a way rather torn, Laura slightly Tory but firmly anti-Mrs Thatcher, Crispin keeping his counsel, Helena naturally not having many views. However, an election in five or six weeks and a new Government whether Labour or Tory after that, rather than one just hanging on, will certainly be a good thing.

FRIDAY, 30 MARCH. Brussels.

Leslie Bonham Carter arrived for the weekend just before lunch (Mark coming from Germany tomorrow). A 3.30 coordination meeting for the Foreign Affairs Council next week. In the course of it Crispin gave me the news that Airey Neave37 had been blown up in his car coming out of the House of Commons, which was fairly shattering. He was our East Hendred Member of Parliament. I neither liked nor disliked him, but thought he had a slightly bad influence politically. I had always found him agreeable, but not constructive. However, an a.s.sa.s.sination at the House of Commons was a most terrible thing, and a dreadful beginning to an election campaign.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 31 MARCH. Brussels.

The last day of the wettest March (so Le Soir informed me) in Brussels there had ever been since records started at the beginning of the Kingdom. March 1914, which had previously held the twentieth-century record, had been overtaken fairly comfortably about 25 March, and it was touch and go up to the night of the 30th whether the previous all-time record of 1836 would or would not be surpa.s.sed. However, it narrowly was and an absolutely filthy month it has been, raw, but not the exhilarating cold of January and February, and almost continuous cloud and pouring rain. This last day showed no improvement.

We left for Aachen at about 10.30, and met Mark at the railway station there. Then on a very raw day we walked round the cathedral and the Rathaus, the Rathaus looking curiously different, particularly the great hall upstairs, than on the occasion of the Karlspreis ceremony.

We recrossed the frontier and lunched at St Hubert near Eupen where we were the only customers, apart from our accompanying policemen. The restaurant was in one of those slightly ugly, bogus chateaux in a little park looking on to suburban villas which are a particularly nasty feature of some parts of Belgium.

TUESDAY, 3 APRIL. Luxembourg and Brussels.

Foreign Affairs Council at 10.15 on MTNs. A moderate round-table discussion. I then asked for a restricted session (because we were engaged in negotiations) before the replies, which Stevy Davignon and Gundelach gave very well indeed. The Council resumed at 3.30 and went on until 8.30. I thought we were then very near to completing the MTN package. But Francois-Poncet suddenly announced that we must adjourn and deal with the Greeks. I said, 'No, no, it is impossible to stop at this stage,' and, being supported by the Germans, we got an agreement that we should split the Council (no dinner except for those who were dealing with the Greeks) and that Poncet would take the negotiating council with the Greeks, and Deniau would preside over the MTN council.

I had intended to go back to Brussels, first on the 5.30 train, then on the 9.15, and therefore just went down to see the beginning of the MTN council. But I was persuaded by Davignon to stay-rightly, I think, not because there was much of great value for me to do, except that I was able to take the lead on any procedural point and hold the ring for Davignon and Gundelach to deal with the detail. At 2 a.m. we eventually got the package through. The Italians were the most difficult, but not impossibly so. We got them away from outright opposition after they had spoken to Andreotti in Rome on the telephone, and into no more than a holding reserve, partly by my threatening to speak to Andreotti myself (he, poor man, probably thought that the prospect of having to talk to me in French over the telephone would be even worse than his Italian political difficulties, and softened his line considerably).

At 2.15 a.m. we set off to drive back to Brussels. There was light snow falling as there had been during the day, but I did not take April snow seriously. Twenty-five miles out, just beyond Arlon, it became difficult to maintain this view. Going up the first slope to the Ardennes, there were stranded lorries all over the place, almost blocking the road, and we were very near the point of turning back (which was a discouraging prospect). It did not look as though we would get to Brussels before 8 o'clock; whenever we tried to go faster than 25 mph we took a nasty lurch across the road, and the only two cars which pa.s.sed us ended up in the ditch. However as we came down the slope, somewhere near Marche, the snow died away. It is curious how subject to snow are those relatively low Ardennes hills.

WEDNESDAY, 4 APRIL. Brussels.

A postponed Commission at 11.00. I had the Westminster Bank chairman-Leigh-Pemberton,38 an agreeable man-and two other directors to lunch, rue de Praetere, and then did a press conference on the MTNs with Haferkamp, Gundelach and Davignon before another two hours of Commission. Then I went to a Monnet Ma.s.s which we had, rightly, decided to arrange in Brussels at the instigation of Ortoli and Davignon-neither of whom however turned up, despite the fact that they were at the Commission until the end and, indeed, dined with me that evening. In fact, practically n.o.body turned up. It was in a very bleak modern church, which was, I would guess, about 11 per cent full, approximately the same proportion as voted 'Yes' in the Welsh Referendum. However, the Papal Nuncio did it well, but no one could say it was an inspiring occasion in view of the attendance. There were very few diplomats, a curious mixture-Eugenio Plaja, the wife of Riberholdt, a few black men and the Swiss Amba.s.sador. From the Commission, Vouel, Tugendhat, Brunner and me.

Then to rue de Praetere for the third of my 'Four Hors.e.m.e.n'39 dinners. Gossip, but agreeable gossip, over dinner, with Ortoli as usual being very animated. He had every reason to be more animated than the rest of us as he had not spent the night trying to get back from Luxembourg. Some interesting conversation at the end, when Ortoli, strongly supported by Davignon, and up to a point by Gundelach (though he was getting sleepy by that time) said that immediately after the British election, whatever the result, it was crucial to solve the problem of Britain's relations with the Community, getting Britain to accept an enthusiastic commitment in return for dealing with her legitimate grievances, budget and otherwise. In that way the sore could be prevented from festering, but if it was just allowed to go on festering for even six months or so, they thought there would be a real danger to the future of our membership-perhaps to Britain's desire to remain a member, but even more to the desire of others that we should.

THURSDAY, 5 APRIL. Brussels, Birmingham and Glasgow.

11.25 plane to Birmingham for a Chamber of Commerce lunch speech which most curiously took place at the St John's Hotel, Solihull. An audience of about 250,1 think, and the speech went rather well. Then on to Glasgow to deliver the Hoover Lecture (financed by vacuum cleaners rather than by the ex-President, I think) at the University of Strathclyde.

A text for my lecture had been sent down to Luxembourg, where Crispin and I both thought it fairly awful on first reading. It had then been redone by Nick Stuart, who was with me, but I still didn't think much of it. However, with a little improvisation it turned out to be a quite good lecture, so I must have been rather jaundiced about it. I got apprehensive when reading the correspondence in Birmingham and discovering, which I had not previously noticed, that so far from being a little faculty talk, it attracted a fee of 2000, enormous by British standards, which, although I felt I had to give it away, partly back to Strathclyde, inevitablyalthough perhaps wronglymade me take it a little more seriously.

After the lecture I dined agreeably with the academic weight of Strathclyde, and then returned to the Central Hotel. It really is a rather magnificent hotel, old railway style at its best, expressing all the self-confidence and splendour of 1890s Glasgow: tremendously good polished woodwork, downstairs and upstairs, and a comfortable sitting room, bathroom and bedroom, not at all rundown.40 SAt.u.r.dAY, 7 APRIL. London, The Hague and Brussels.

9 o'clock plane to Amsterdam, cursing myself for having agreed to do a direct elections speaking engagement in The Hague, without which I could have gone quietly to East Hendred. However my morale improved when we arrived at Amsterdam in the first good weather I had seen for five weeks, and drove fairly dangerously, under motorcycle escort, to The Hague. And it improved further when I spoke to a rather good audience of about two hundred, including a lot of notabilities (den Uyl, van der Klaauw, Brinkhorst, Berkhouwer, etc.). But it declined again with an absolutely filthy lunch, a sort of sitting-down snack, all of it quite inedible, and nothing to drink until I asked for a gla.s.s of beer, which they brought. Whereupon, van der Klaauw, the Foreign Minister, sitting next to me said, 'Where did you get that from? I wish I could have one.' I a.s.sured him that he could, if he asked. The Dutch, although stubborn, are often undemanding.

Laura and I then drove to Scheveningen, had a walk on the sea front, and went on past Delft, round Rotterdam to the sea at Veere, and back across the ferryit was still a beautiful dayfrom Vlissingen to Breskens. Brussels at about 8 o'clock.

MONDAY, 9 APRIL. Brussels.

At last the last half-week of this seemingly endless (partly owing to calendar, partly owing to weather) Christmas/Easter term. Plaja at 10.45, with Italian complaints about MTNs. I was reasonably sympathetic but think they may be pushing their luck a bit. I then saw rather a good delegation from the Italian Republican Party at 12.30, and afterwards took Spierenburg to lunch and was rather encouraged by the way he seems to be getting on. I found him agreeable and think his ideas are probably sensible, although he is a little too interested in the wider questions of how the Commission should be appointed, and what its relations with the Parliament should be, and not quite interested enough in the duller ones of internal bureaucratic organization.

Dined with Deane Hinton at a farewell party for General Haig, and had some serious conversation with both of them afterwards. Haig appeared as usual as a nice man, plenty to say, right-wing views, but not offensively so. He has been a good SHAPE commander, and believes, though I have my doubts, that he may have a great political future, but he is not to my mind remotely a great man.

TUESDAY, 10 APRIL. Brussels.

On a most beautiful day-it had suddenly become 70 - Crispin and I lunched at a little restaurant on the corner of the Pet.i.t Sablon. Then an afternoon and early evening of clearing up in the office before going off to the Wakefield41 dinner (new British Amba.s.sador to the Kingdom). That was rather enjoyable; it is a splendid house, almost as good as the Paris Emba.s.sy, which I hadn't been in since coming to Brussels. I liked both the Wakefields very much; they are a great improvement. It was a slightly predictable group, mainly of Belgians apart from the Killicks: the Burgomeister, the Grand Marshal of the Court, etc. After dinner I talked for a long time to old Sir James Plimsoll, the Australian Amba.s.sador (he is not in fact as old as he looks), whom I always like.

FRIDAY, 13 APRIL. East Hendred.

To the Berlins for lunch with Annans, Quintons, Michael Astor, John Sparrow and Arnold Goodman. After lunch, walked round Addison's Walk with Jennifer and also through Christ Church.

MONDAY, 16 APRIL. East Hendred.

Lunch with the Gordon Richardsons just west of Cirencester, who had Kit McMahon, former Magdalen economics don, former economic adviser to the Bank, now executive director, plus wife, staying. McMahon nicer and less thrusting than I had thought him to be, and the Richardsons on excellent form. A grand but rather unused house. Drove back through appalling traffic, with Bibury a scene of congested chaos, to see the Tickells at Ablington. The third day of perfect Easter weather.

FRIDAY, 20 APRIL. East Hendred.

Davenports, Michael Astors and Hendersons to lunch. Nicholas (Davenport)42 beginning to age at last. Michael Astor seemed in surprisingly rude health in spite of his winter of illness. Nicko violently right-wing, much more than anybody else, on the election. In the evening I watched without enlightenment or inspiration various political broadcasts.