European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 31

SUNDAY, 7 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Lunch at Ohain at 2.00, and then a long walk in sun and snow around the park of Chateau de la Hulpe.

MONDAY, 8 DECEMBER. Brussels, Copenhagen and The Hague.

Early plane to Copenhagen for my farewell visit to Denmark. To the Prime Minister just before noon, who took me to see the Queen. She had arrived back that morning from a week's private visit to England. Whether she had bicycled from the station was not clear, but she had certainly come by train the whole way from Ostend in an ordinary sleeping car, saying that this was a method of travel which she liked very much. Then a lunch given by Jorgensen in the Naval Officers' club, most agreeably done, with a surprisingly warm speech from him. Plane to Amsterdam and to the Hotel des Indes at The Hague.

TUESDAY, 9 DECEMBER. The Hague and Brussels.

An hour's noon meeting with the new Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. It was the first time that I had talked to her. She had a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket, which we consumed, and chatted away agreeably about Holland, and England, and Europe, and the world, and her life. She was, if anything, easier than the Queen of Denmark in spite of the latter's Cambridge degree. She has a mildly left-wing reputation but was at pains to deny this. She was very interested in what might happen in English politics. She looked a bit like Kitty Giles fifteen or twenty years ago. After that to lunch with van Agt and half the Government at the Catshuis, and again a very agreeable atmosphere, with warm speeches of farewell.

WEDNESDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Brussels.

My last COREPER lunch. Rather less warm farewells from amba.s.sadors than from governments, I thought. At 7.45 we had the Commission's farewell reception at the Palais du Congres, with a concert by the European Youth Orchestra, conducted partly by Heath. Princess Paola came as the representative of the Belgian Royal Family, and the reception lasted not too long afterwards.

THURSDAY, 11 DECEMBER. Brussels, London and Brussels.

10.45 plane to London and to Chatham House where, after a buffet lunch, I delivered a carefully prepared speech to a rather good a.s.sembled company. It was my case for Britain staying in the Community. Then to Brooks's, where Sir A. Tuke asked me to become a director of Barclay's Bank. I said I thought not owing (i) to Lloyds's prior suggestion, and (ii) to the South African connection, which he very fairly raised himself. Then to the Thames TV studio where I recorded a half-hour's interview with Lew Gardner, mainly about Europe and the case for staying in, but about seven minutes at the end on my political intentions. Inevitably this part of the interview attracted all the press attention.

Then to Sister Agnes's to see Ann Fleming, who had been critically ill in Swindon for some time, and found her better than I expected.

Next back to Brooks's where I had David Marquand and Clive Lindley on 'new party' matters from 6.00. Bill Rodgers arrived just before 7.30. A very friendly talk with him until I left in a great hurry at 8.05 for the 8.45 plane, which I just caught. Quite a day.

FRIDAY, 12 DECEMBER. Brussels.

To lunch with Leon Lambert, who provided a good occasion, but inevitably also one of his farewell speeches which meant a reply from me. Dined at home with Jennifer and the Bradleys, who had arrived to stay for the very last weekend.

SUNDAY, 14 DECEMBER. Brussels.

Began with the last of my many Brussels runs in the Bois de la Cambre. The Bradleys left mid-morning because the house was already somewhat dismantled. Jennifer and I lunched with the Michael Jenkins'. It poured with rain all day, only half right for weather symbolism-two of the autumns had been spectacular. At 7 o'clock Christopher Audland came for his last pre-Council briefing. Dined with Jennifer and bed at 11.45. So, effectively, ends our rue de Praetere existence.

MONDAY, 15 DECEMBER. Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

Early plane to Rome, and called on Pertini, the President of the Republic, in the Quirinale at 10.45. He was less talkative than on previous occasions, mainly because he received some bad piece of news just as I was arriving, but he quickly regained his animation. Then to the Palazzo Chigi to see Forlani (who has become Prime Minister in the endless Italian excuse-me waltz). Then to the Villa Madama for a ninety-minute meeting with Emilio Colombo, and then a large luncheon party of between sixty and seventy including all the Community amba.s.sadors. A warm, substantial farewell speech from Colombo.

I was slightly irritated that I had had to decline the grandest Italian decoration, as indeed those of Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, owing to the ridiculous British Government rules-a mixture of Court and Foreign Office protocol-about not accepting foreign decorations. I think it might have been more sensible to cut through it as in Spain, but Crispin for the best of motives was firm against.

We then drove-in a great hurry and with my last motorcycle escort-to Ciampino, where I took my last avion taxi back to Brussels. That evening the Foreign Ministers gave me a dinner at Val d.u.c.h.esse. Not a bad but somehow not a terribly good occasion either. Home for a last night in the dismantled rue de Praetere.

TUESDAY, 16 DECEMBER. Brussels and Luxembourg.

I attended the Foreign Ministers' working lunch and unburdened myself to them on a number of subjects. Motored straight from there to Luxembourg for my final visit to the Parliament.

WEDNESDAY, 17 DECEMBER. Luxembourg.

To the Parliament at 9.00, ready for my farewell speech. However, typically, it was delayed until 10.20. It was quite well received. Lunch given by Mme Veil at the Golf Club. She kept saying that she had to rush off, and therefore we made our speeches before lunch began. Afterwards she seemed to eat a fairly hearty meal before leaving. Although I like her increasingly, she is hardly a calm hostess. Resumed Commission from 3.00 to 4.30. Then a twenty-minute farewell call upon the Grand Duke, agreeable as usual.

THURSDAY, 18 DECEMBER. Luxembourg and Brussels.

Woke up to more snow and the realization which had come on me during the night that I ought to have been doing something more about the yearly budget crisis which was proceeding in the Parliament. Therefore summoned a breakfast 'crisis meeting', people getting through the snow with some difficulty. Vredeling, Cheysson, Natali and Tugendhat came. As a result of this, it was agreed that I would go with Tugendhat to see Mme Veil at 9.30 a.m., put our position clearly, and try to get things back on the rails.

This I think worked tolerably well. It was my last visit to Luxembourg, my last day with the Parliament, and this encounter with Mme Veil my last meeting that could directly influence what went on in the Community. It was 9.50 a.m. when I drove off half-sentimentally in the snow, which was quite difficult as so frequently on that stretch of road to Brussels. Berlaymont at 12.30, and a substantial though slightly late appearance at the party in the 'cathedrale' which the Commission was giving for the huissiers, interpreters, drivers, and all those who had worked fairly closely to us.

Office after lunch until nearly 8.00, interrupted by a dismal drinks party for the press. To the Amigo Hotel, where I was staying, and then went to dine with the Michael Jenkins' and a large party.

FRIDAY, 19 DECEMBER. Brussels and East Hendred.

Office at 9.15. A little signing before inner office Christmas drinks at 11.45, and then to London by the 12.45 plane, and on to East Hendred. The effective end of Brussels and the beginning of Christmas and, more significantly, of the return to British politics.

The Commission.

The membership of the Commission of the European Community which held office from 6 January 1977 to 4 January 1981 was as follows.

PRESIDENT.

Roy Jenkins.

VICE-PRESIDENTS.

Francois-Xavier (Francis) Ortoli, b. 1925, was first encountered by me when he was French Minister of Finance in November 1968. He had been sent by General de Gaulle to Bonn to arrange an agreed devaluation of the French franc in a meeting of the (IMF) Group of Ten. He began by asking me if I could provide a fig leaf by taking the pound down a little way with the franc. I had to refuse. He nonetheless doggedly and successfully negotiated all per cent depreciation over twenty hours of wearing talks. When he got back to Paris the General called the devaluation off, which made Ortoli look rather exposed and the rest of us feel unnecessarily exhausted.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, and the fact that he as an ex-President of the Commission was serving under me, I like to think that we got on well. He was probably the nicest of all my colleagues. He could occasionally be p.r.i.c.kly about his public position, but p.r.i.c.kliness usually dissolved quickly in the warmth of his friendliness. He had a very high sense of public duty which made him feel that he was only properly occupied when holding high office in the service of the French state. But I am not sure how much he enjoyed his public service, for he was of a nervous disposition. What he enjoyed was intellectual conversation on aesthetic subjects, about which he was very well informed.

His Commission experience began in 195861 as its youngest Director-General. He returned as President in 1973 and stayed, for the last eight years as a Vice-President, until 1985. He is now head of the Compagnie Francaise des Petroles. His portfolio in my Commission was Economic and Monetary Affairs.

Wilhelm Haferkamp, b. 1923, was a German trades unionist of generous instincts and indulgent tastes who possessed most of the attributes of a good Commissioner except for that of application. He was experienced (a member of the Commission since 1971), of broad internationalist outlook, and an engaging personality. If he did not take his job too seriously, he at least had the advantage of not taking himself so either. He was never pompous. He was sometimes a little difficult to find. He reminded me in this respect only of a now dead friend of mine who was briefly a not very diligent Member of Parliament and replied to a message of rebuke and recall from his Chief Whip by telegraphing from the Ritz Hotel, Madrid: 'You must take me as you find meif you can find me.'

Haferkamp's penchant for caravanserai of this sort led to a great deal of difficulty in 1979, but I nonetheless recall 'the old Willi', as his Director-General (Sir Roy Denman) constantly referred to him, with considerable affection.

Finn-Olav Gundelach, 192581, shared with Davignon in the Commission the quality of being papabile, that is they were seen by both themselves and others as possible future Presidents. He was a Danish public servant who had previously been their Permanent Representative to the Community as well as deputy Director-General of the GATT and a member of the Ortoli Commission with the portfolio of the Internal Market. In my Commission he held the vital Agricultural portfolio.

On balance I do not think he was quite as effective as Davignon, although his set-piece exposes before both the Commission and the Council of Ministers were more brilliant. The reason why the balance was just against him may have been that his life was bleaker (his wife was a Danish preacher who never appeared in Brussels) and that he was always working at or beyond the edge of his capacity, while Davignon always kept his reserves. Partly as a result Gundelach was more brooding and more tricky. But he was of very high quality. Unfortunately his overwork killed him. He was reappointed to the 1981 Commission but died suddenly in Strasbourg in its first month.

He was pretty detached from Denmark, visited it little more frequently than I did, and rarely used its language. Yet his English while wholly efficacious was less authentic than that of Davignon or Cheysson or Brunner. He really spoke 'Gundelachese', a powerful agricultural vernacular which owed something to Old Norse but more to Monetary Compensatory Amounts in which he dealt with equal facility with Green Pounds and breeding 'soes' (as he always p.r.o.nounced those porcine animals).

Lorenzo Natali, b. 1922, was an excellent nominee of Italian Christian Democracy, encapsulating most of its virtues and just enough of its vices to make him a true representative, although not a delegate. He was an Abruzzan from the left of that broad-based party, who had a good Resistance record at the end of the war, who had been Minister, at different times between 1966 and 1973, of the Merchant Marine, Public Works, and Agriculture. He took a little time to settle into the life of Brussels and the Commission, mainly because his very agreeable wife did not at first come and because he spoke no English and very little French. Later, with the arrival both of his wife and of adequate French, he became the homme moyen sensuel of the Commission, respected for his amiability and shrewdness. He remained a Commissioner until 1989.

In my Commission his portfolio comprised the rather mixed bag of the Enlargement negotiations, the Environment, and, from 1979, relations with the Parliament. He was the only Commissioner in whose home (at Rocca di Mezzo, near L'Aquila) we ever stayed.

Henk Vredeling, b. 1924, had been Dutch Socialist Minister of Defence for the four years before he came to the Commission. He had arrived at the pre-Christmas Ditchley weekend full of enthusiastic but slightly truculent left-wing European ideas and accompanied by a uniformed aide-de-camp with whom he proceeded to carouse for most of the night. He remained fairly true to these contradictions throughout his four years in the Commission, although his self-confidence took a sad plunge in 1979. He was not considered a Commission success and there was no question of his being reappointed for 1981. But he was a man of warmth and courage, and as a result of the Vredeling Directive he imprinted his name on the history of the European Community in the late 1970s much more than did the rest of us. The portfolio he held was that of Social Affairs and relations with 'the Social Partners', i.e. employers and trade unions. He has since played little part in public affairs.

COMMISSIONERS.

Vicomte Etienne (Stevy) Davignon, b. 1932, taken in the round was the best member of my Commission. He was a Belgian career diplomat, whose grandfather had done well out of the Congo and been enn.o.bled by King Leopold II. Stevy Davignon, although a Christian Democrat, had first come into prominence as a collaborator of Paul-Henri Spaak (Socialist). Before coming to the Commission he had been Directeur Politique in the Belgian Foreign Ministry and was the author of the Davignon Report on Political Cooperation. He knew the workings of Europe and of the whole Atlantic world inside out.

He spoke French with a determined Belgian accent, and English with a fluency which owed its little words to the nursery and its big ones to the ante-rooms of many a NATO, GATT, OECD or UN conference. He was very self-confident and moved easily in all Belgian (and wider) circles without being bounded by any of them. I would not however describe him as a grand seigneur. He was too active a fixer for that. He worked very long hours, rarely I think got nearer to exercise than Sunday lunch at the Ravenstein Royal Golf Club, liked social life but never entertained. He had a very pretty wife who a.s.serted her independence by declining to speak English.

Davignon's forte was ingenuity. As a result he fell into the small and splendid category of those who prefer finding solutions to complaining about the difficulties. He ought to have become President when I left. Instead he stayed on as a Vice-President and dominated the Thorn Commission. He is now a leading Belgian banker, but I suspect would respond to a twitch upon the thread which led him back to international public service.

Claude Cheysson, b. 1920, was a French career diplomat (Amba.s.sador in Indonesia 19669) who took to Socialist politics a little too late in life. As a result they went slightly to his head. But he was a man of high intelligence, warm, with an exceptional knowledge of and authority in Africa, lacking sometimes in judgement. He held the Development Aid portfolio in the Ortoli Commission as in mine, and liked visiting his African Empire. 'What is the difference between G.o.d and Cheysson?' had become an old Brussels joke/riddle before I arrived. The answer was, 'Le Bon Dieu est partout, et Claude Cheysson egalement, sauf a Bruxelles.'

He was a Commissioner until 1989, sixteen years after his arrival, although he had a period away including three years (19814) as French Foreign Minister. In my cabinet we occasionally referred to him as the electric mouse, which was a tribute to his energy, although as he expended so much of it away from Brussels he was a little peripheral to the central work of the Commission. He was an engaging companion who spoke almost perfect English.

Antonio Giolitti, b. 1915, was the oldest and the most race member of the Commission. He was a Piedmontese, who made me constantly aware that Turin is as far from Naples as London is from Ma.r.s.eille. He was the grandson of Giovanni Giolitti, who was five times Prime Minister of Italy between 1892 and 1921. He was himself a Socialist (his grandfather had been a non-party, left-of-centre figure) who had been an (Italian) Communist 194357 and joined their list again in 1987 to be re-elected to the Italian Parliament. He had been Minister of the Budget and Economic Planning on several occasions between 1964 and 1974. He held the Regional portfolio in my Commission. In 1978 he was nearly s.n.a.t.c.hed away from us to become President of the Italian Republic.

He was as elegant and nervous as a finely bred racehorse. To begin with he thought he ought to speak French at Commission meetings, which made him take his fences rather slowly. One summer, when Commissioners were asked to give their holiday addresses, he submitted a quiet pensione in Venice for ten days plus Villa Giolitti, via Giolitti, Cuneo, for the rest of the time. That perfectly summed up his mixture of modesty and hereditary slightly other-worldly authority. His wife had translated Proust into Italian.

Guido Brunner, b. 1930, was a German professional diplomat (Amba.s.sador in Madrid since 1982) who had become a Free Democrat nominee to the Commission on the resignation of Ralf Dahrendorf in 1974. By 1977 he thought that he was ent.i.tled to the External Affairs portfolio, but I did not consider that he had enough weight. He had a Spanish mother and was an excellent conversationalist, able to adjust to his interlocutor's interests with equal ease in German, Spanish, English and French. He sometimes engaged less robustly with his Commission responsibilities, which were Energy and Science. He resigned in November 1980 when he was elected a member of the Bundestag, but he did not long remain a legislator.

Raymond Vouel, 192388, was a Luxembourger Socialist who had served in the Ortoli Commission for its last six months. Despite this short head-start over a half of us and the centrality of his country to the Community, he was never much at home in the Commission. Taciturn and suspicious, although honest and determined, he was I fear always ill at ease with me, and frequently locked in conflicts with Davignon (their portfolios were adjacent), who danced around him like a hare with a tortoise, except that the tortoise did not win in the end. He was in charge of Compet.i.tion policy. He was not reappointed in 1981, and although only fifty-seven went home to retirement.

Richard Burke, b. 1932, was a devout and provincial Irish-Catholic who came from the same party. Fine Gael, as Garret Fitzgerald but did not share many of his liberal views. He had been a minister and was a man of dignity and of a certain shy charm. I rather liked him, but did not often succeed in handling him well. His portfolio in my Commission, arrived at with considerable difficulty (see pages 6668), comprised Transport, Taxation, Consumer Affairs, and Relations with Parliament. This last item (the most interesting one) he voluntarily surrendered in June 1979. He was not reappointed in 1981, but came back to Brussels in 1983 for the last two years of the Thorn Commission.

Christopher Tugendhat, b. 1938, was the only Commissioner under forty. He had been Conservative Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster since 1970. He was very much my personal choice as second British Commissioner. Mrs Thatcher looked in another direction, but James Callaghan was pleased to be able to throw a bone to me and irritate her at one go. I never regretted the choice. Tugendhat was a very good Commissioner. What particularly impressed me was that, starting as he did beholden to me, he never allowed this to affect our relations. He was neither subservient, nor (a more likely reaction) tiresomely contrary or overa.s.sertive. He was a pillar of support on the EMS and staunchly committed on all European issues. His father was a distinguished Austrian refugee who rejected his homeland to the extent of not bringing up his son to speak German, which was a pity as it meant that Christopher Tugendhat arrived in Brussels almost monolingual. His portfolio comprised the Budget, Personnel, and Financial Services. It was a mixed bag in which the first item a.s.sumed an importance in the affairs of the Community greater than was thought likely when he was appointed. Tugendhat continued in Brussels until 1985, and is now Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority.

SECRETARY-GENERAL.

Emile Noel, b. 1922, was Secretary-General from the creation (1958) to 1987. He was French in nationality and style, but the epitome of a European who transcended nationalism in motive and performance. He conducted most of his business in a series of elegantly phrased memoranda, heavily dependent upon a very precise use of the subjunctive. Yet he rarely allowed this precision to lead him into negativism. He was capable of major constructive swoops. His personality was at once warm and elusive. He had been the Chef de Cabinet to Guy Mollet when the latter was Prime Minister of France at the time of Suez. He may well know more about the hidden mysteries of that affair than anyone else now alive. Since 1987 he has been Rector of the European University Inst.i.tute in Florence.

The Cabinet.

My Brussels cabinet or, in the by no means exact English equivalent, Private Office: Chef de Cabinet (Sir) Crispin Tickell, b. 1930, later Amba.s.sador to Mexico, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Overseas Development, and now Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York.

Senior Adviser Michael Jenkins, b. 1936, having been Chef de Cabinet to George Thomson in the Ortoli Commission, stayed on for my first seven months as a supernumerary but valuable member of my cabinet. In the autumn of 1978 he returned to Brussels as a member of the Secretariat-General (later Deputy Secretary-General) and in this capacity worked closely with me, particularly on the British budgetary question. Now British Amba.s.sador in The Hague.

Chef Adjoint Hayden Phillips, b. 1943. (Until January 1979.) Formerly my Home Office Private Secretary 19746, now a Deputy Secretary, HM Treasury.

Nick Stuart, b. 1942. (From January 1979.) Now a Deputy Secretary, Department of Education and Science.

Senior Counsellors (Grade A3) Michael Emerson, b. 1940. Dealt primarily with economic and monetary affairs until the end of 1977 when he became a Director (A2) in the Directorate-General dealing with these matters (DG2) where he still is. He continued to work closely with me on monetary matters, but was replaced in the cabinet by: Michel Vanden Abeele, b. 1942, Belgian, for the remaining three years. He is now Head of Division in DG8 (Development) in charge of relations with UNCTAD and primary products.

Graham Avery, b. 1943, who dealt primarily with agriculture and enlargement. He had come from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Soames cabinet but in 1981 entered the services of the Commission and is now a Director (A2) in the agricultural Directorate-General.

Spokesman Roger Beetham, b. 1937. He was attached to the Spokesman's Group in DG10 rather than in the cabinet itself, but he worked closely with it. A member of the Diplomatic Service, he was Counsellor in Delhi, 19815, and is now in the FCO.

More junior members Klaus Ebermann, b. 1945. German. Dealt with industrial affairs and overseas development. Now in the external affairs Directorate of the Commission.

Etienne Reuter, b. 1944. Luxembourgeois. Dealt, under Crispin Tickell, with relations with countries outside the Community. Now in the Spokesman's Group of the Commission.

Laura Grenfell, b. 1950. (Until June 1979.) She dealt, under the Chef Adjoint, primarily with parliamentary affairs. Now Mrs Hayden Phillips.

Penelope Duckham, b. 1952. (From June 1979.) Later parliamentary adviser to the Consumers' a.s.sociation. Now Mrs Matthew Hill.

Secretaries Celia Beale. Inherited from the Thomson cabinet. Stayed with me throughout and for three subsequent years in London. Now Mrs Graham Cotton.

Susan Besford. Inherited from the Soames cabinet. Went to Tokyo in early 1979 and was replaced by: Patricia Smallbone (now Mrs James Marshall) who stayed until December 1979 (but see under London Secretary) and was then replaced by: Sara Keays who stayed until the end.

Secretary (London) Bess Church who had worked for me since 1957 and who stayed until the spring of 1980, when she was replaced by Patricia Smallbone.

Drivers Peter Halsey, who had worked for me during both my periods as Home Secretary and who continued to drive me in London until 1982. He died in 1988.

Ron Argent, expatriate English, inherited from the Soames cabinet, now retired to Spain, until mid-1977, when he was replaced by: Michael O'Connor (Irish) who stayed with me to the end of my Brussels time.

Epilogue.

On Sunday evening, 4 January 1981,1 returned to Brussels for forty-eight hours. I stayed with Michael and Maxine Jenkins in their house in the dreve des Gendarmes. I held a final press conference in the Berlaymont, reviewing with modified rapture the previous four years. I received my old friend the French Permanent Representative who had been sent in by the Quai d'Orsay, true to the last to its habit of never missing a trick, to tell me that some speech of Christopher Tugendhat's was inacceptable. I gave a lunch for the Commission and a dinner for my cabinet. I signed a few last-minute doc.u.ments. I formally handed over to my successor, Gaston Thorn, who was late and fl.u.s.tered. Within three hours, pausing only for my last farewell visit-to Comme Chez Soi-I was in the air for London. It was to be two years and nine months before I again saw Brussels.

Back in England, I was at once remarkably free and remarkably enc.u.mbered by political 'promises to keep'. I had no office, no job (for I did not think I should take up my part-time City commitment until a few months had gone by), and for the first time in London for thirty-three years, no Parliament on which to base myself. On the other hand, the new party, soon to be christened the SDP, was achieving a much quicker but by no means entirely painless birth than I had thought possible. As a 'Gang of Four' (a name which, as an import from China, was then barely out of the customs sheds) we had a slightly disputacious weekend on 1718 January. I then went to America for five days, thinking that a brief detachment would do no harm, and returned on the morning of Sat.u.r.day, 24 January, to watch on television an immensely helpful special Labour Party Conference. It is amazing, looking back, how dedicated a large section of that party was to forcing a predictably damaging part.i.tion. Although perhaps, in view of the 1987-8 behaviour of the SDP, political self-immolation should not occasion surprise.

On the Sunday morning we went to Limehouse and before the early January dusk had produced and launched the Declaration of that name. It did not set up a new party, merely a Council for Social Democracy. But what was crucial was that it put us wholly into the public domain. Thereafter popular response took over. After Lime-house the Gang of Four or any individual member of it could no more have stopped launching a new party than logs could prevent themselves being swept down a mountain torrent. The Council became the Social Democratic Party on 25 March, a month or so ahead of our original timetable, but not, we judged, early enough for us to be ready to fight the May local elections.

We could not however for long pretend that we were a popular movement but refrain from putting ourselves to the test of popular suffrage. The first bye-election vacancy was created at Warrington, an old industrial borough on the borders of Cheshire and Lancashire, in the last week of May. It was traditionally a safe Labour seat, and we rated it, on the basis of some calculus I have now forgotten, about 550th (out of 630) in order of favourability for us. However, I thought I had better fight it.

I had never much enjoyed electioneering, regarding it as a disagreeable cure which one had to endure every four years or so in order to have the indulgence of sitting in the House of Commons for the rest of the time. Such an approach was possible in traditional politics, but it was no way in which to found a new party, particularly as Brussels had inevitably given me a somewhat remote image. I therefore decided that I had better reconcile myself to a life of campaigning, and to my amazement found that I quickly came to enjoy it. During the five Warrington weeks my heart was rather in my mouth, because I had no idea whether the result was going to be an humiliation or a respectable defeat, but in retrospect at least the streets and landmarks of that somewhat sombre town have come to glow in my memory. This was as well, for the next two years were taken up with almost continuous electioneering. Apart from my own second bye-election at Hillhead and the General Election of 1983, there was Croydon and Crosby and Gower and Bermondsey and Darlington, as well as a number of less needle encounters. By a curious irony it was the House of Commons, when I re-entered it in March 1982, which I came to regard as providing the disagreeable interludes between the stimulating election campaigns.

All this preoccupation accounted for my failure to find any time to go back to Brussels before October 1983. But it did not mean that my mind had turned away from European issues. I followed them closely, maintained a good number of personal contacts, and spoke frequently on the subject. Britain to my dismay continued to find an infinite series of unconvincing excuses for remaining outside the European Monetary System. If the mark was too high, the dollar was too low, or vice versa, or the moon was in the wrong quarter. Every conceivable set of circ.u.mstances was surveyed and rejected, not overtly on principle, but on the ground that a more favourable combination must be awaited. Even deprived of British adherence, the System achieved a distinct practical success and reduced the fluctuations between the seven partic.i.p.ating currencies by a substantial and measurable margin. Governments did not however push on with the further phases of development of the EMS which had been envisaged at Copenhagen and Bremen. The main monetary advance of the mid-1980s came through the spontaneous increasing use of the ecu in private transactions and not through Government action.

With the disappearance of the Giscard-Schmidt partnership in 19812 the political leadership of the Community became temporarily weaker and its energies were diverted for too long and too obsessively into the British budgetary dispute. Most of the years of the Thorn Commission were therefore disappointing, although they brought the negotiations with Spain and Portugal to fruition (these countries entered on 1 January 1986) and prepared the way for the Single European Act of December 1985. Partly as a result of this inst.i.tutional reform, Iberian enlargement, unlike the admission of Britain, Denmark and Ireland in 1973, has led to no weakening of Community purpose. On the contrary, the plans for 1992 and a.s.sociated developments amount to the greatest resurgence of dynamism since the great days of the early 1960s.

Throughout these fluctuating fortunes for the Community the old SDP and its Alliance partner maintained a wholly committed European position. I therefore experienced no ideological break on my return from Brussels. It was merely a very sharp change of gear.

Appendix 1.

Allocation of Portfolios, 47 January 1977.