European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 25

Eventually we adjourned at 4.40, with the Parliament representatives saying that they would put the proposals to the Budget Committee at 8 o'clock in the morning, but with no great feeling that they were likely to be accepted. Mme Veil clearly wanted acceptance and a compromise, no doubt because of the delicacy of her position. The fact that the French had been somewhat more forthcoming than the Germans and the British undoubtedly in my view owed a great deal to an Elysee desire not to embarra.s.s her. Bed only at 6 a.m. Up again just after 8 o'clock.

THURSDAY, 13 DECEMBER. Strasbourg and Brussels.

To the Parliament at 10.15. It was then clear that there was going to be a very heavy rejection of the budget. Hurried discussion with Davignon and one or two other Commissioners. Then in the early stages of the debate I hurriedly wrote out a very brief statement which I would make when the vote had been taken saying that the Commission naturally regretted that there was not a budget but carefully refraining from saying that we regretted what the Parliament had done. The train was temporarily off the tracks and we would take full responsibility in the interests of the Community as a whole for trying to get it back on at the earliest favourable moment, and for this we would need the cooperation of both halves of the budgetary authority. This did not commit us specifically to producing a preliminary draft budget, although in my own mind I already thought that it would be necessary, and it did not commit us either to a date, which was wise because the Parliament was not in a great hurry.

Impressive statements were made by several people on behalf of the groups, Dankert and Lange (Socialist), Bangemann (Liberal), Klepsch (Christian Democrat). Only Ansquer for the Gaullists and somebody for the French Communists, making the most extraordinary cliche-ridden speech (pretty close to the Gaullist line), spoke against. The worst speech was the opening one from Lenihan, in which he made an ill-judged appeal to the Parliament to behave responsibly and was greeted with some derision.

I had an extraordinary scene with Vredeling towards the end of the morning. Obviously in a great state (he hadn't gone to bed at all and had gone round looking for a group to harangue and found his way into early morning meetings of the Budget Committee and the Socialist Group and made badly received statements to both of them), he started to complain that we hadn't had a Commission meeting and that there was no collegiality. I said that there weren't enough Commissioners in Strasbourg to have a Commission, and all the few there had been consulted and all were in favour of what I proposed to do, except apparently for him. He said there would be a disaster and I would be howled down if I did not immediately promise a preliminary draft budget by a specific date, and if I did not do it he would get up afterwards and do it. I said, 'Very well, you do that and one of us resigns tomorrow and the Commission will decide which it is.' So he then declined into muttering and head-shaking, looking very hysterical, though in no way due to alcohol which he does seem to have kept off.

At the end, when the overwhelming vote had been announced, I got up and made my brief statement, which lasted only a minute and a half and which was very well received. After that I rather insufferably said to Vredeling, 'If only your judgement was as good as your heart, Henk, life would be much easier, wouldn't it?' He said, 'Oh dear, I was only being so anxious because I was afraid it would go wrong and I didn't want you to do it wrong.' So I patted his arm in a fairly friendly way and went off. A most extraordinary man, foolish but good-hearted.

Lunch with Fred Warner52 and Jennifer at La Wantzenau. Afternoon non-TEE back to Brussels: we could get seats neither on the aeroplane nor the evening TEE. Strasbourg transport is intolerable.

FRIDAY, 14 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Home at 6.30 feeling very exhausted and extremely loath to go to Chateau de la Hulpe and have our long evening with Suarez, Spanish Prime Minister, and Calvo Sotelo, whom we had invited, to have eighteen hours or so of talks. Laura and Hayden had arrived to stay at about lunchtime and it would have been a great deal pleasanter to dine with them and Jennifer.

At La Hulpe I had a longish talk with Suarez both before and during dinner, all through an interpreter which in some ways makes it more of an effort, but at least makes it more precise than if we were both talking bad French. Suarez made as favourable an impression upon me, in spite of the somewhat unfavourable circ.u.mstances, as he had done when I had last seen him in Madrid.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 15 DECEMBER. Brussels.

To Chateau de la Hulpe for 9.30 and then a long talk with Suarez more or less alone. I put firmly our att.i.tude to the negotiations, our desire to conclude them according to the timetable he had in mind, by the end of 1980 (the bulk of them at any rate) with a view to Spanish admission at the beginning of 1983.53 This would require considerable effort and accommodating spirit on both sides. We wanted to strengthen not weaken the Spanish economy, but this must be done in a way which was compatible with membership of the Community. Equally there had to be certain changes in the agricultural policy or it would be impossible just to graft Spain on to it without having bankrupting sums of money involved in olive oil alone. Also they must take seriously our trans-Mediterranean preoccupations, just as we attach great importance and value to their special Latin American contacts and the strength which they could give the Community.

Then back to the general discussion which had been proceeding under the joint chairmanship of Natali and Calvo Sotelo and a round-up there until about 11.30.1 then saw the Spaniards off in a howling gale although it was a rather beautiful morning with a clear sky and a good winter woodland view. As I drove back through the Bois a great tree came down on the other side, crushing a car and leading to the Bois being closed for forty-eight hours.

TUESDAY, 18 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Reluctantly received Dohnanyi for breakfast.54 I had a moderately useful talk with him mainly about the British budgetary position, but also about the Parliament. He like all sensible men is rather enthused by the Parliament's rejection of the budget, but worried by difficulties to which it may give rise with the French. He quite rightly says that the French are now extremely defensive and nervous as they fear a future in which a majority of the Parliament can unite with a blocking minority of the Council to take charge of agricultural expenditure (a very good thing, but I suppose it puts the Germans under some strain given their determination to remain close to the French).

WEDNESDAY, 19 DECEMBER. Brussels and London.

At last the last day of this almost endless autumn session, which has been going on for 107 days since 3 September. Quite a good Commission and very satisfying getting through it in the morning. A good discussion on the budget which, although certain issues of future difficulty were not opened up, revealed a more than reasonable coincidence of approach at this stage. After this, the Commission Christmas lunch, which pa.s.sed off agreeably. I banned turkey, which was so badly done last year, and we had pheasant which was much better and the Christmas pudding was, as before, a success. Early evening plane to London.

THURSDAY, 20 DECEMBER. London.

d.i.c.k Taverne, Anthony Lester, Bob Maclennan, David Marquand and Michael Barnes, all of them expectedly, and John Horam, unexpectedly but extremely agreeably, came to Brooks's for a plotting meeting about radical centre, etc., and for dinner afterwards. They were all pretty good, with the exception of Anthony, whom I thought was rather downbeat (but that can be in his character). Taverne and Horam were particularly good, and Mickey Barnes very enthusiastic. They were all in a way enthusiastic, they all thought a split was inevitable and desirable. There was a slight difference in emphasis, but not more than that, as to the extent to which we were thinking in Labour Party or in broader terms.55 MONDAY, 24 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Charles and Ivana arrived at about 10.30, bringing clearing weather, and we then motored to Bath where we had an immensely enjoyable day, the city looking spectacularly good, better even than I remembered it, in bright, cold sunlight.

TUESDAY, 25 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

A memorable morning, hard white h.o.a.r frost with the mercury way down below the bottom of the thermometer (20F). Drove to the Monument, and saw a splendid sunrise illuminating wide views, although there were little troughs of mist in the valleys. After church, I drove up again, with others. The light was different, but still very good, with a curious impression now that there was fog in the valley-though I don't think that it was fog-and with the tops of the cooling towers at Didcot Power Station and little elevations like the Faringdon Clump rising out of it like islands in the sea. I think it was a light refraction effect.

THURSDAY, 27 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Lunch with the Eric Rolls at Ipsden. They had the Kingman Brewsters (US Amba.s.sador), the Michael Stewarts, and Robert Marjolin, always their Christmas guest. An enjoyable long luncheon with a certain amount of good general conversation (but rather less productive than when I sold the EMS to Kingman Brewster there eighteen months ago) about America, Britain, France, the world, etc.

SUNDAY, 30 DECEMBER. East Hendred and Cambridge.

A particularly enjoyable lunch with the Bradleys at Kettering. Not much politics, though Tom indicated, for what it was worth, that on one occasion Hattersley had asked him if he could contemplate breaking with the Labour Party, and he had said, 'Certainly.' Then on to the Rothschilds' at Cambridge. Victor morally in better form than I had expected to find him, though with some kind of residual bronchitis and frequently taking his temperature, as a result of which he had to go to bed at about 9.30. Victor never goes out, sits in his shirtsleeves the whole time, and just shouts at Sweeney for dry martinis or Bucks fizz-a most incredibly unhealthy life. How he survives so well I don't know.

MONDAY, 31 DECEMBER. Cambridge and Norfolk.

Left after an early lunch and proceeded to the Zuckermans' at Burnham Thorpe. Upstairs before the New Year, after a dinner with Solly's spectacularly good wine. I sat reading alone over midnight. A change of decade, not merely of year. 1979 was not as good as 1978, but not intolerable either. The wretched, petty Cour des Comptes affair overhung some of it. The advent of the new Parliament began to look menacing in the early summer. But I was quite wrong. As the year turned out, the Parliament was a great advantage, showed its strength and muscle and improved the quality of Europe. The problem of the British budgetary contribution was in an important sense mishandled because it involved the creation at home by the Government of such a groundswell of anti-French but also general anti-European opinion. It was not skilfully played by Mrs Thatcher. However, I am able to take it reasonably calmly, partly because I think the Commission did its best at Dublin and came out quite creditably, but also because Dimbleby and thoughts of the future occupy my mind greatly. Goodness knows what 1980 itself, let alone the decade as a whole, may hold. Slightly intimidated by the thought of having let a genie out of its bottle.

1980.

1980 was a year sharply divided into two halves. In the first half (accurately five months) there was little time for anything except the BBQ. (These initials were first used in the diary on 18 February; I think they were originally intended to stand for British Budgetary Question, but the alternative of b.l.o.o.d.y British Question increasingly became the connotation in my mind.) Not only I but the whole Community was rarely allowed to think about anything else during this period. This was a pity for it was a time when Europe's economic performance was faltering badly, when East/West relations were tense following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and when American leadership was unsteady.

It was also a time when the continued strengthening of Political Cooperation (printed with capital letters because it is the term of art for the attempt at foreign policy coordination which in 1970 was initiated within the Community but outside the Treaties) would have been particularly desirable. But there was little energy left for it. The impa.s.se at the Dublin European Council had left the Community in a state of suspended crisis, and until it was resolved everything else seemed to the British at least, but to some extent to everybody, to be peripheral.

I believed that on the merits Mrs Thatcher had right broadly on her side, although she showed little sense of proportion, some of her favourite arguments were invalid, and her tactical sense was as weak as her courage was strong. All this, however, counted for little compared with the danger, of which I had become convinced in early 1979, that the issue, unless satisfactorily resolved, would alienate any British Government from the Community and do a good deal of harm to the whole European enterprise. I therefore gave as total a priority in the first half of 1980 to a.s.sisting a solution as I had done throughout 1978 to promoting the EMS-to which Britain's continued non-adhesion was a considerable factor in reducing goodwill amongst the other eight.

'a.s.sisting a solution' meant trying to get these other eight to contribute, beyond as it were the terms of the contract, to a special subvention of 1000 to 1100 million ecus (approximately 700 million) a year to Britain, and trying to get Mrs Thatcher to accept the two-thirds of a loaf to which, from her point of view, this amounted. The trouble with her constantly reiterated 'it's my money I want back' argument was that this argument gave no recognition (surprisingly for the head of such a commercially minded government) to the fact that to forgive a bad contract involved some generosity on the part of those who were the beneficiaries.

The trouble with my position in 1980 as opposed to the other three years of my presidency was that for the first time I could be accused of playing a British hand and of putting my whole weight and attention behind it. I believed it was in the general European interest, but I doubt if this view of my motives was taken in Paris, and perhaps not in some other capitals too. In these circ.u.mstances attempts by the French Government to neutralize in advance such firepower as I possessed were only to be expected, and they were duly forthcoming, although more from the Quai d'Orsay, it appeared, than from Giscard or Barre. Perhaps more significant was the withdrawal of the Belgian Government from their advocacy of a renewal of my presidency (see the entry for 14 May).

What I am above all struck by, however, on a rereading of the diary, is the extent to which the dispute put under strain my relations with the other Commissioners, nearly all of them by that stage close and friendly a.s.sociates. On one occasion I found myself in a minority of two in the Commission, with only Christopher Tugendhat supporting me. This was a position I had never previously been remotely near, indeed only rarely in even a strong minority.

It was the long-drawn-out nature of the dispute, I think, which built up the personal strains. At Dublin, Francesco Cossiga, as the head of government of the country about to a.s.sume the presidency (of the Council), had launched the idea of bringing the next European Council forward to February. However on the 18th of that month he and I decided that insufficient progress had been made and that we should revert to the normal date at the end of March. Then on 24 March he decided unilaterally on a further postponement. The European Council eventually met in Luxembourg on 27/28 April, when Mrs Thatcher to almost universal amazement rejected a very favourable offer.

There was then no alternative, unless the Community was to break up, but to begin a cosmetic operation to save Mrs Thatcher's face without overstraining the generosity of Chancellor Schmidt and the others who would have to pay. This meant dressing up approximately the same deal in a somewhat different form. It was this which was achieved in the Council of Ministers (not the European Council) on 29/30 May. Lord Carrington then showed himself a more skilful and sensible negotiator than his head of government. He knew when to settle. She did not.

It was the run-up to this final encounter which produced the real morosite. Everyone was tired, bored, and knew that the repeat performance was an unnecessary charade. However there were brighter aspects to the sorry saga. We were lucky that it took place during the Italian presidency, and we were doubly lucky with the composition of the Italian Government. Both Cossiga as Prime Minister and Emilio Colombo, who had taken over as Foreign Minister in early April, were consistently helpful. So was Klaus von Dohnanyi, the German Minister for European Affairs, who from this relatively junior position took great risks, negotiating well beyond his authority, in order to settle the damaging and divisive issue. The French were by no means bad at the end of the day, and other smaller governments were also surprisingly amenable, most notably the Irish, who forwent an opportunity to remember the wrongs of centuries.

When the settlement came (at the end of an eighteen-hour session) it did so with a sudden completeness. The issue went away like a summer storm. It was bound to resurface in the future, but not until well after my time as President. And there was little that my Commission could do about preparing for that resurfacing except to set in train studies on longer term Community financing (the so-called 'mandate') for our successors to p.r.o.nounce upon. The governments would never have accepted unpalatable policy recommendations, on an issue not immediately pressing, from a dying Commission.

The beginning of June therefore saw a complete change of gear. The leaders of Europe had become both irritated and wearied by the issue. When it was over they went into a condition of stasis. The two June Venice meetings, first the European Council and then the Western Economic Summit, were flat. My own mood matched that of the Community. In early June I began to feel unwell, which happily I had hardly done during the previous three and a half Brussels years, and did not fully recover until well into September. The symptoms were vague, perhaps stemming more from general exhaustion than from anything else, but the net effect was a period when I approached issues with more dismay than zest. Luckily there was no major European issue with which to deal. After 30 May no dominating Brussels theme seized my attention.

Nor did I do much external travelling in the second half of 1980. In the first half I had been to New York and Washington for a week in January, to Yugoslavia in February, to Portugal in March, and to India for nine days at the beginning of May. I had intended to do a major South American trip in the early autumn, but cancelled it when my June/July exhaustion set in. I went only to Norway in July, Spain in October and Sweden in November. The Yugoslav, Norwegian and Swedish visits were because of the attention which the Commission devoted to relations with the small adjacent countries which had to live in water greatly affected by any movements of the vast hull of the Community. The Indian visit was to discharge a postponed commitment to the largest Third World country. The American visit was routine although I got much involved in discussions of their reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the end of the year I felt that I owed the Americans a farewell visit, but was only able to fit this in during January, after I had ceased to be President.

With the BBQ out of the way, my thoughts inevitably turned increasingly to my impending return to England which had become far more a.s.sociated with the political prospect than I would have believed possible twelve months before. On 8 June I delivered a follow-up to the Dimbleby Lecture in the form of a speech to a luncheon of the parliamentary press gallery. It raised more explicitly than did Dimbleby the forming of a new party. It received more press publicity than Dimbleby and by just over a year later had come back into my favour because of the inclusion of the phrases about the experimental aeroplane which might 'well finish up a few fields from the end of the runway' but which might equally well 'soar in the sky' and 'go further and more quickly than many now imagine'; and after the Warrington bye-election this seemed a happy juxtaposition with soaring much more likely than crashing.

Immediately after the event, however, this speech and reactions to it added to my gloom. I felt that I had somewhat misjudged the moment, which had not been the case with the November lecture, and had condemned myself to being stranded on a ledge halfway up a cliff, committed to some dramatic political action, but lacking the strength and resources single-handedly to launch a new political movement.

It would obviously be both a more attractive and a more feasible project if it could be done with some major collaborators. At that stage this meant primarily Shirley Williams and William Rodgers. David Owen I did not then regard as a likely ally. I knew that he had disapproved of the Dimbleby Lecture. I subsequently discovered that he was more favourably disposed towards the press gallery speech, having shifted his position when shouted at in the special Labour Party Conference on 31 May. The other two were in friendly touch with me and were already semi-detached from the Labour Party, although reserving their position until they saw the political developments of the autumn, both the decisions of the regular party conference in late September and the result of the leadership election (following James Callaghan's withdrawal) in early November. I was more than prepared to wait that length of time for them, although I would not have done so indefinitely.

The Labour Party political developments of the autumn, when they came, were as unfavourable for its own electibility and as favourable for the prospect of a new party as could easily be imagined.

Following this I had seen Bill Rodgers on 5 October and David Owen on 19 October. They had both moved substantially since the separate August meetings which I had had with each of them. However, I still inclined to the view that the odds were slightly against Bill making the break.

On 10 November the result of the second and final ballot for the Labour Party leadership was announced. The first ballot, a week before, had given Denis Healey a surprisingly insubstantial lead over Michael Foot. It was a position in which Foot could easily overtake him, and that was precisely what happenedby a margin of ten votesin the second ballot. Apart from the strength of the left-wing challenge, Healey suffered from some right-wing defection.

From that date onwards I do not think that I doubted there would be a significant break-away from the Labour Party. On 29 November David Owen informed me that he was definitely prepared to be part of a new party, although he indicated very clearly that he did not think I should be its leader. This struck me as menu detail compared with the great news that he was willing to move. He said that he was fairly sure that Shirley Williams would do so too, although he had some doubt about Bill Rodgers. I, however, had a very satisfactory talk with Bill on 11 December.

So my last Brussels weeks pa.s.sed to the accompaniment of sporadic pieces of news which made the British political prospect seem markedly more promising. It was a vast improvement on June and July. I no longer felt stuck on the cliff ledge.

From early November onwards everything began to be for the last time: my last visit outside the Community, my last Strasbourg session, my last European Council, my last Council of Ministers, my last COREPER lunch (rather a joy), and eventually my last night in the rue de Praetere house, which was dismantled from 15 December. In addition to these naturally occurring 'lasts' there was a whole series of more or less formal specially arranged farewells: to eight member governments (it seemed ludicrous to include the British on this occasion), to the Parliament, to the Council, to the Commission huissiers and drivers.

I went to England for Christmas on 19 December. I was still President until 6 January 1981, but effective power ceased with the beginning of the Christmas holidays. I returned to Brussels only for a brief two days on 4 January.

THURSDAY, 3 JANUARY. London.

Ian Gilmour to lunch at Brooks's. An enjoyable and, up to a point, useful talk. He is off on a great tour of all the Nine countries, presumably to try and arrange a compromise agreement, though his instructions are remarkably unclear, and the position is made more confused by the fact that Geoffrey Howe1 is going to do four or five of them, not with Ian but more or less overlapping. Certainly the Foreign Office view is that they would settle for some reasonable compromise, but to what extent this represents a thought-out Cabinet view I don't know.

We talked a bit at the end about post-Dimbleby centre party issues. He seemed to have one main point that he wished to make to me, that it was a great mistake for me to give any impression-as apparently had appeared (though un.o.bserved by me) in one or two newspapers-that I might come back from Brussels before the end of the year. It was crucial (to what?) to make clear that I would serve out the year. Equally he takes at once a slightly cautious view (as I would expect) about what we might achieve, believing, as he always has done, that one needs to have great interests behind one to succeed in politics. But at the same time also believing it just possible that we might achieve success more quickly than is within the bounds of my imagination. In other words, that we might find it very difficult to advance slowly but that it was just conceivable that the collapse of Conservative support would be so great that one might, in some sort of loose alliance with the Liberals, even win the first general election.

Another meeting later in the day with three 'conspirators' on new party matters, Jim Daly, GLC transport chairman, John Morgan, old New Statesman writer, Harlech Television figure etc., whom I didn't expect-it is curious how more people than you expect turn up on these occasions-and a man called Clive Lindley, who is one of those curious Welsh marches businessmen, rather like Colin Phipps.2 They were all quite sensible and I hope they are all right. It is going to be very difficult to manoeuvre everyone into position.

FRIDAY, 4 JANUARY. London and East Hendred.

George Scott's great press lunch (for editors to question me on European issues), at which nearly every editor in London turned up with the exception of William Rees-Mogg. We had Fredy Fisher of the FT, Peter Preston of the Guardian, Deedes of the Telegraph, Trelford of the Observer, Harry Evans of the Sunday Times, Charles Wintour of the Evening Standard, Molloy of the Mirror, Andrew Knight of the Economist, and the editors (whose names I cannot remember) of the Express and the Evening News, as well as one or two people from other papers. Only a moderately successful occasion. n.o.body asked questions about British politics, except for the Express editor, who started off with a silly brash question, which rather killed the subject. After that a tolerable, not more, discussion on Europe.

Then, with clearing weather but not rising spirits, I motored with Jennifer to East Hendred. The first few days of January are usually one of the most depressing periods of the year.

SUNDAY, 6 JANUARY. East Hendred.

Tried to do my David Bruce tailpiecet3 before the Ginsburgs and Thea Elliott and the Wayland Kennets came to lunch: Wayland a great centre party man, and David Ginsburg sympathetic but cautious, and kept describing a lunch he had had with Denis Healey and insisting how important it was that Jim should be replaced by Denis: so far as I am concerned it is Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

MONDAY, 7 JANUARY. East Hendred.

Drove up to the Downs for the sunrise at 8.00. David Steel to lunch. I had a good talk with him for three hours. He is very agreeable, sensible and curiously mature. He also looks remarkably like Hayden (Phillips), to an extent I hadn't realized before. He perfectly understands that there is no question of me or anybody else joining the Liberal Party. He equally is anxious to work very closely, and possibly, if things went well, to consider an amalgamation after a general election. He would like the closeness at the time of the election itself to take the form not merely of a non-aggression pact, but of working together on policy and indeed sharing broadcasts, etc. He says that for this point of view he has overwhelming support in the Liberal Party.

He agreed with my view that a lot of the calculations were based too much on deciding how much water there was in the kettle, as it were, and how it could be shared out, whereas there was a lot more to be brought in from outside, people uncommitted to and uninvolved in politics. He agreed that it would not be sensible to think purely in terms of the Liberals having Tory seats and our having Labour seats: this was too simple an approach. He fully accepted my point that if, which I was not committing myself to in any way, I wanted to fight a bye-election during 1981, it would probably be much better to do this in a Tory-held seat than in a Labour-held seat, and indicated that his people would make way for me in those circ.u.mstances. Altogether a thoroughly satisfactory talk.

After he went I walked three miles to above West Hendred in the twilight until I left for the Oxford Farming Conference at 7.00. Brief drinks in Worcester and then on to the Randolph Hotel for a rather excessive five-course dinner, sitting between the agreeable chairman and Henry Plumb.

They accepted my speech, with its rather hard message, quite well, but obviously not enthusiastically. However, it was at least as well received as Peter Walker's speech, which was intended to be more to their taste and was based on the fallacy that surpluses can be dealt with in a way that is thoroughly acceptable to British farmers, which I believe is nonsense. Somebody has got to be hurt, including the British, if that problem is to be dealt with.

TUESDAY, 8 JANUARY. East Hendred and Brussels.

3.45 plane to Brussels. Dinner at home for Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, together on this occasion again, with Emile Noel and Crispin (Tickell). Gundelach more subdued than usual. I think the intractable problem of agricultural prices, plus probably his feeling that the next presidency (of the Commission) is slipping away from him, plus his normal state of semi-exhaustion, is having a slightly rattling effect upon him.

WEDNESDAY, 9 JANUARY. Brussels and Paris.

5.17 TEE from the Gare du Midi to Paris to see Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais, and dined with her near the old Saint-Eustache church of revolutionary fame.

THURSDAY, 10 JANUARY. Paris and Brussels.

At 7.00 I was driven swiftly through the dark, cold, fairly empty streets of Paris to the Gare du Nord, where I was able to equip myself, surprisingly early, with the English newspapers as well as some French ones. I read them over breakfast and watched a grey dawn across the plains of Picardy.

A curious man was opposite me in the restaurant car. He spent no less than one and a half hours reading every word of L'Humanite, a remarkable feat of slow concentration which pointed irresistibly to his being either a plodding functionary of the French Communist Party or, more probably, a member of the Deuxieme Bureau, or whatever that organization is now called. He then read the Canard Enchaine but got through that at a more normal pace, and then became very impatient to leave although there was no steward to pay. So he eventually got up and departed, I a.s.sumed to find the steward.

A few minutes later a young, non-French-speaking Dutchman arrived and sat in his place, whereupon the steward came and presented him with a bill. He said he hadn't had breakfast, the steward pointed unbelievingly to the dirty plates around him, I rashly intervened, 'Non, non, ce monsieur vient d'arriver. Ce n'etait pas son pet.i.t dejeuner. Il y avait quelqu'un d'autre. Il avait la note a la main quand il est parti.' 'Dans quelle direction?' asked the steward. So I said I thought towards the rear of the train. The steward then accusingly said, 'He was a friend of yours?' I said, 'Certainly not.' He then said would I go with him and find the man. I said, 'Even more certainly not,' and the whole thing was on the verge of escalating out of control into a most ridiculous scene.

However, the train at least got to Brussels on time, and the incident provided me with a peg for my speech at the change of presidency dinner that evening at Val d.u.c.h.esse. I was finding it desperately difficult to think of anything remotely fresh to say at my seventh dinner in this series.

FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY. Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

Took off for Rome just as dawn was breaking on a most beautiful, hard-freezing, clear-skied, Brussels morning. At 11.30 to the Quirinale to call on Pertini, the relatively new octogenarian Socialist President of the Republic, whom I had not met before. Slight worry as to what on earth I was going to talk to him about, for I a.s.sumed a statutory half-hour or so, but no problem emerged, for despite it all having to be done through interpretation and our sitting around in an awkward-sized group of about fourteen people, the conversation galloped along, with a great deal of history and a flood of personal judgements (he is tremendously impressed with Mrs Thatcher), accompanied by long expositions of his att.i.tude to world politics stemming from his wartime experiences. A verbose, dynamic, interesting, unconventional little man; the interview, quite unexpectedly, lasted one and a quarter hours.

From the Quirinale to the Palazzo Chigi for a 1 o'clock meeting with Cossiga. Malfatti was also supposed to be there but had had another heart attack. As a result, Cossiga and I spent a long time alone, discussing what he should do about the Malfatti problem, I saying firmly that he must have a proper Foreign Minister to preside over the Council, that it couldn't be left to Zamberletti, the quite nice Under-Secretary. He agreed, said that he had to make a change and that he was sorry but Malfatti's health just wasn't up to it. Who, therefore, did I think he should appoint? There were two possibilities, Ruffini, the Defence Minister, and Pandolfi, the Finance Minister. Would it be a bad thing to move across the Defence Minister? he curiously asked. Would it look too much as though it were a military appointment? I said, no, schematically there was absolutely no objection to this, though it was of course the case that Pandolfi was linguistically very good and well known and well respected in Community circles. I did not know Ruffini. So he said he would reflect on all this. I hope that he will go for Pandolfi.4 Partly as a result of this friendly conversation, we were able, when joined by a few others, to clear our thoughts for the next stage of the Commission paper with considerable ease and in a very good atmosphere and to move into lunch at 2.30. On the British budgetary question Cossiga was moderately but not excessively optimistic. He said that the conversations with Ian Gilmour had not gone particularly well the week before because the Lord Privy Seal had had nothing he was able to say to them. I pointed out firmly that this was not his fault, as he had been given a very narrow negotiating brief, but the Italians definitely left me with the impression that they thought it had been a great mistake to undertake this mission without giving it any authority to negotiate on a figure below the 1500 million units of account which the British were still demanding.

The best Cossiga and I could do was to agree that we would work hard on method, that it was very difficult to say that an early Summit would be worthwhile, though it was too early definitely to rule it out, and that we should be in close touch again at the end of the month after his visit to Mrs Thatcher in London and my visit to Schmidt in Bonn. A useful, agreeable meeting. Plane from Fiumicino and home to rue de Praetere exactly twelve hours after I had left.

SUNDAY, 13 JANUARY. Brussels.

Took George and Hilda Canning5 to Tervuren and, for the first time, to the Musee d'Afrique Noire. On the Sat.u.r.day we had taken them to Waterloo, where Jennifer and I had climbed up the Mound in bitter, sparkling weather. In the late afternoon we went to Malines and found the cathedral more splendid than I had remembered. It was helped by a brilliant winter sunset. Dinner at home alone with the Cannings. George and I had quite a serious political conversation at the end, in which he a.s.sured me, without pressing which was good and nice of him, that he would support me in anything I did in the way of a radical centre party, etc. Quite a commitment for him to enter into, particularly as one knows how solid he is when he has said something.

MONDAY, 14 JANUARY. Brussels.

I saw Ian Gilmour for half an hour. I hinted to him that the Italian visit hadn't gone very well and discussed how one should handle things in the future. Afterwards I saw Tom Enders, the new United States Amba.s.sador, an impressive, self-confident, over-tall Yale man, who I think is probably very good. In the afternoon I saw d.i.c.k Cooper, one of Carter's two envoys, Warren Christopher being the other, with the general US briefing about what they wanted us to do on Iran, Afghanistan, etc. I just listened.

A short late working dinner at home for the Italians, Ruffini, Zamberletti, Plaja, etc. It was rather a remarkable feat on Ruffini's part to have arrived at all, considering (i) that he had only been appointed, unexpectedly he told me, that morning, (ii) that he had to stay in Rome in order to meet Warren Christopher (who had only arrived at about 5.30) and see him at the airport. However, although I was impressed by his coming, he didn't quite seem to know whether he was on his head or his feet and while no doubt his knowledge of NATO matters, and, I daresay, Italian internal politics is good, his knowledge of Community affairs is distinctly sketchy. He also seems to me to show signs of being a rather stubborn man, but perhaps that is not a bad thing in an Italian. More serious is the fact that, alas, he speaks no word of English or French. He does not understand even the simplest French phrases.

TUESDAY, 15 JANUARY. Brussels and Strasbourg.

Foreign Affairs Council all day until 7.30. Ruffini not surprisingly a somewhat uncertain President. At the Council lunch I had more or less to preside. There was a long wrangle about a communique on Afghanistan. The French were very stubbornly for the status quo on agricultural exports to Russia, or even worse than the status quo, and the British tried much too hard to get a long-term change of commercial policy through, i.e. end of sales of subsidized b.u.t.ter to Russia (which they have always wanted) under the shadow of a particular political situation. However, eventually, after an adjournment and the solvent of boredom, a text emerged. Although at one stage there had been eight to one against the French and in favour of a harder line, they managed, by their usual combination of stubbornness and a certain degree of skill-plus the weakness of the others-to get the British into an equally isolated position by the end. Ruffini was a better chairman during the afternoon. Then to Strasbourg by an incompetent avion taxi which wasted two hours.

WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY. Strasbourg.

A meeting with Mme Veil at 12.15 and then lunch with her for Ruffini and Zamberletti. She had procured an interpreter for Ruffini but one who could only do French into Italian and, as he added rather pointlessly when we arrived, into German-but not English. However, it didn't matter because Mme Veil talked nearly all the time and at such a rate that there was no time for the interpreter, poor Ruffini hardly understood a word that was going on and the conversation pa.s.sed between her (rattling along) and Zamberletti and me (both limping behind). Not a very pointful occasion.

Just before sunset I went for a forty-minute walk in the Orangerie with Nick Stuart. It was, I think, the coldest walk that I have ever had on this side of the Atlantic. We walked very fast and heavily clad round the frozen park, on a beautiful day (as all this period of weather has been), with the setting sun a great red ball glowing through the frost, but I was still agonizingly cold at the end, and had the impression that my clothes were disintegrating almost in the way that I experienced in Chicago ten years ago. The temperature was about 20F, which is extremely low for the middle of the afternoon in Western Europe.

Dinner after a Commission meeting with the Fred Warners and the Frank Giles'.6 Frank rather shocked by some of my remarks about Giscard.

THURSDAY, 17 JANUARY. Strasbourg and Brussels.

Took Pieter Dankert,7 the rapporteur of the Budget Committee, to lunch. I found him as I expected an able and impressive man, and certainly a remarkably good linguist. Yet, at the same time, I had the impression that there is some fault which may account for the fact that he has not achieved more in Dutch politics, and that not that this is a bar to achievement in politics-he may not be as nice as he is able. We talked a little about the future Commission, and he told me the most extraordinary story: that Bernard-Reymond had been in Strasbourg canva.s.sing the claims of Cheysson to be President. As the French spend most of their time putting in complaints to me about Cheysson's statements, this seems very odd indeed, even on the unlikely a.s.sumption that the French have any remote claim to the presidency. It must be some sort of ploy, I think. Then back to Brussels in the little avion de ligne.

FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY. Brussels and New York.

1 p.m. Sabena plane to New York.

At 8.30 I went with Marietta Tree to a most extraordinary dinner at a restaurant called Le Cirque given by a rich Texan wife, for about fifty people, most of whom she did not know, and in honour of the Kissingers, whom she had asked to choose the guest list. This turned out a remarkable, and in some ways uneasy, mixture of New York grand society and cafe society and one or two who belonged to neither. Her husband had unfortunately disappeared into hospital three or four days before, but she, an extremely bouncy lady of about forty, carried on with tremendous aplomb, even making a slightly contrived but by no means bad speech.

The mise-en-scene was that of a 1940s film, with three violinists playing throughout and a feeling that Adolphe Menjou should be the head waiter. Then suddenly the three turned into two who advanced up the room, doing a serenade to Kissinger, and I realized-though it took a moment or two to do so-that they weren't two of the three hired performers but were Isaac Stern and Zubin Mehta. Afterwards Stern made Mehta do an extraordinary double-talk act with him, in which he said, 'Now I will make a little speech in which I shall start each sentence and my friend will have to finish it. Then he will start the next one and I'll finish that.' Mehta looked slightly apprehensive about this, but in fact did it extremely well: Stern did it brilliantly, and the whole thing was an extraordinary tour de force for about five to seven minutes.

I sat between Mrs Mehta and Happy (or Unhappy as she is now known, I fear) Rockefeller, with Kissinger on the other side of Mrs Mehta. A lot of people of some note presentJavits8 inevitably. Jack McCloy 9 - I cannot really think who altogether. Baddish speeches, including a rather indifferent one from Henry, but not as bad as those a (to me) unknown Senator and an unknown Congressman had made earlier. The hostess's was well above the average, even including her extraordinary act of saying, 'Now we have got Henry's book, which is the greatest book for a very long time, but not perhaps as great as the Bible, therefore, I am opening the Bible on this higher stand and opening Henry's book on the other stand a few inches below it.'

SUNDAY, 20 JANUARY. New York.