by Roy Jenkins
MONDAY, 13 FEBRUARY. Brussels and Strasbourg.
Entertained the Labour Party Regional Organizers—all of them -for a quick drink at 12.30. (I am certainly working hard on direct elections.) 4.17 TEE to Strasbourg. Deep snow over the Ardennes, slight snow in Strasbourg. To the dismal old Sofitel.
TUESDAY, 14 FEBRUARY. Strasbourg.
I made my Programme speech in the Parliament from 10.15 to 11.00. Dullish speech, which I delivered in a fairly low key but thought it was quite well listened to. Back to the hémicycle, where the debate continued mostly in a fairly desultory way, although there were one or two good speeches, notably from Mark Hughes, the Labour MP for Durham. The most critical speech came from a German Christian Democrat, chairman of the Budget Committee. I wound up from 5.40 to 6.05 and then went to the Château de Rohan for the Museum of the Year Award, jointly sponsored by the Council of Europe, UNESCO and IBM, and made the presentation to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum at Telford.
WEDNESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY. Strasbourg.
Easy and routine Commission meeting from 9.00 to 11.00, and then, feeling in need of some exercise, for a long walk round the Orangerie and out beyond it, getting rather lost, through a vast housing estate, and the new university area of Strasbourg, which brought me out on to the canal, or one of the rivers, the Ill perhaps, down below the cathedral. Five miles altogether.
I gave a dinner for the British Labour Group. It was memorable mainly for a tremendous row between Mark Hughes, who becomes an increasingly admirable man, and Gwyneth Dunwoody,20 which led to her flouncing out before the end.
THURSDAY, 16 FEBRUARY. Strasbourg and Brussels.
Brussels by avion taxi for a pre-lunch meeting with Vouël, Ortoli, Vredeling and one or two officials about how we should handle the deputation of van Agt21 and most of the Dutch Government which was coming that afternoon to try and reach an agreement with us about their Bill on investment aids. Then the normal, rather pointless COREPER lunch, and then the huge Dutch delegation from 3.30 to 5.30. Van Agt I thought rather impressive. From 5.30 to 6.30 an hour-long interview with Die Zeifs foreign editor (Dieter Bühl). An agreeable small dinner party for Fredy Fisher, editor of the Financial Times, with the Jonquières22 and Tickells.
FRIDAY, 17 FEBRUARY. Brussels, Copenhagen and Brussels.
Plane to Copenhagen, arriving at 8.45 in cold, sparkling weather. Greeted on the tarmac by Jorgensen (Prime Minister) and drove to the Christiansborg where we talked mainly about plans for the European Council, but also about wider economic problems for two and a half hours. Then a lunch for about thirty people in the Parliament building before going into a question session with the Danish EEC Committee. This went on from just after 2.00 until 4.15 and was exhausting but otherwise quite satisfactory. Rather good general questions and all my careful preparation of specific Danish issues proved unnecessary. Then a press conference followed by a drive round Copenhagen for about half an hour. It looked a handsome city as always; it was snowing hard, which suited it. Then to the airport where I thought we were rather lucky to get off at all, but we did so only a few minutes late. Rue de Praetère by 8.00.
SUNDAY, 19 FEBRUARY. Brussels and Paris.
Left home just before 11 o’clock to drive to Paris. Near the frontier we ran into quite a considerable snowfall, saw about twenty cars in the ditch, and had slowly to follow a snow-plough for nearly thirty miles north of Senlis. To the Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon for lunch with Edward; good décor, expensive, moderate-quality food, quite fun however. To the Embassy in the afternoon. Nicko had a drinks party with Pierre-Brossolettes,23 Courcels, t Beaumarchais24, two or three Embassy couples, one or two Paris grandes dames, Odette Pol Roger and another; quite agreeable. Then to the Brasserie Lipp for a dinner alone with Nicko, and afterwards sat talking with him in the Embassy for another hour and a half until nearly 1.00.
MONDAY, 20 FEBRUARY. Paris.
Jogged around the Embassy garden on a beautiful morning from 8.45. Hard freezing snow without any real pistes established and, as it proved, disastrous going for my ankle. In the afternoon I drove over difficult roads to see Jean Monnet at Houjarray, near Montfort L’Amoury. Monnet looked immensely frail. He came into the room very slowly on a stick, helped by his wife, and sat down surrounded by rugs like a passenger on a pre-war Atlantic liner, although these were very necessary as the heating had collapsed, and I sat in some considerable chill. But in conversation, certainly in the length of it, he was less weak than I had expected and, having been told that half an hour was about all that he could do, found that he kept me for two and a quarter hours.
There was a lot of talk about his book, by the English edition of which he was absorbed. Also, towards the end, some general European conversation. I am not sure that he said anything of particular penetration, which is not surprising at the age of eighty-nine, although he was remarkably sharp in his comments about other people in the early days. Uri25 and Hirsch26 were first-class, but apart from them there was hardly anybody of any use. Schuman27 didn’t really understand the treaty which bore his name, and the German members of the Commission—and indeed those from other nations—were pretty useless. However, it was very nice to see him and, curiously, I left on this occasion with less of a feeling that it was the last time I would see him than I had on some previous occasions.
TUESDAY, 21 FEBRUARY. Paris and Brussels.
A substantial thaw during the night. Worked all morning in the Embassy. To the Elysée for my meeting with Giscard at 5 o’clock. Found him with a cold, dressed rather peculiarly for a Tuesday afternoon in a tweed suit, and perhaps not looking as svelte as usual but otherwise quite relaxed, in spite of election pressure. Talked to him for about an hour. Crispin was present but Giscard had no one. He had however an agenda which he wished to work through, and did so quite effectively, leaving time for me to raise any points. Nothing tremendously significant, except for his suddenly saying that the French were entirely on the side of the British about agricultural prices and believed that a 2 per cent increase was too high, that 1 per cent would be better, and that he would be prepared to fight for this. We shall see. The French are, of course, now in the British position so that they can give their farmers an increase by dismantling their Monetary Compensatory Amounts28 without a general rise in the price level. A friendly conversation on the whole. No discussion—not raised by him and obviously not at this juncture by me—about the French internal position and electoral prospects. On economic and monetary union at the end he was favourable in theory, non-committal in practice, but not discouraging.
6.45 train from the Gare du Nord. Rue de Praetère by 9.30.
THURSDAY, 23 FEBRUARY. Brussels, London, Dublin and London.
After a meeting with Ortoli to tell him about the Giscard talk and generally review EMU progress, I took the 10.45 plane with Crispin to London for David Bruce’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey. The service was brought alive by one or two good hymns and by Harold Macmillan’s reading of the second lesson, which was a spectacular piece of ham acting and show-stealing, but very well done.
4.25 plane to Dublin. Met at the airport by Michael O’Kennedy, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and drove in for three-quarters of an hour with the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and found him pleasant to talk to though a bit too concerned with fairly detailed Irish points. Then an hour’s meeting with four or five ministers presided over by Colley, the Minister of Finance and deputy Prime Minister, with a lot of Irish complaints on four or five specific points, but all done perfectly agreeably. Then a dinner with Lynch and these other ministers all in Iveagh House before leaving in a hurry for the airport and the 10.15 plane. Escorted out (fortunately he was not at the wheel) and on to the plane by an extremely drunk deputy Chief of Protocol who kept on trying to tear up my airline tickets and came down the aisle of the aircraft to say goodbye to me on, I think, four separate occasions, the last two messages of farewell being mysteriously delivered in French. Kensington Park Gardens by 11.30.
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sp; FRIDAY, 24 FEBRUARY. London, Cardiff and East Hendred.
A party at the Commission office for the Monnet Memoirs, at which I wish I could have stayed longer, as there were a lot of people there I was very glad to see: Hugh Thomas,29 David Watt,30 George Brown, and indeed old Michael Stewart,31 as well as two or three other journalistic or literary figures of note. Richard Mayne32 has a good intellectual drawing power. Left for East Hendred just after 12.30. Afternoon train from Didcot to Cardiff to preside over the annual meeting of the UWIST court for just over an hour. Hurried departure for return train and East Hendred by 8.00.
SUNDAY, 26 FEBRUARY. East Hendred.
To Sevenhampton for lunch with Ann Fleming, Bonham Carters, Arnold Goodman and Susan Crosland, the first time I had seen her since Tony’s death. I was delighted to do so and found her forthcoming and friendly. She and I must have talked for an hour and a half. She didn’t ask me about Tony’s earlier life,33 as apparently she had been asking one or two others like Raymond Carr,34 but was nonetheless fascinated by any conversation about him, and particularly by the story which I eventually decided to tell her about my two dreams, the one in Rome on 19 February 1977 and the other on the same day this year. On both occasions he appeared vividly and we talked for some time, the first being almost at the exact moment of his death and the second its exact anniversary.
MONDAY, 27 FEBRUARY. East Hendred and Brussels.
9.55 plane to Brussels. A late lunch with Gundelach, rue de Praetère, for a general review of agricultural problems. I found him as usual persuasive, easy, agreeable and worthwhile to deal with, but it all being a little insaissisable, partly because everything is so much in his mind, so little on paper, so little confided to his officials or even his cabinet. Sarah Hogg of the Economist for a ‘major’ interview on EMU from 5.45 to 7.25, which was at least giving her good value in time.
TUESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY. Brussels, Bonn and Brussels.
A farewell lunch to the Chinese Ambassador, Huan Hsiang. A party of six: he and his Counsellor, Crispin, Roy Denman and Franz Froschmaier, Haferkamp’s Chef de Cabinet. The Ambassador spoke very good English, having been in London for some time, and was quick and indeed funny; therefore an agreeable and probably worthwhile occasion. Back to the office for a short time before motoring to Bonn with Etienne Reuter for my 5.30 meeting with Schmidt, which started five minutes late and went on until 7.20.
This was a dramatic meeting. After a normal session with photographers and almost as soon as we were alone, Schmidt plunged in, almost blurting things out. What he broadly said was: ‘You may be shocked, you may be surprised at what I intend to do, but as soon as the French elections are over, probably at Copenhagen35 - assuming that the French elections go all right and that there aren’t any Communists in the Government—then I shall propose, in response to the dollar problem, a major step towards monetary union; to mobilize and put all our currency reserves into a common pool, if other people will agree to do the same, and to form a European monetary bloc. There will be great risks’, he added, ‘if it all goes wrong, then maybe the Community will fall apart. Do you think it is worthwhile?’
I of course said, ‘Yes, certainly,’ and we then discussed in considerable detail how it should be managed, what the currency should be called, whether the European unit of account should be used, etc., the detail he supplied showing that he was serious about what he was saying. I asked him what degree of secrecy he wanted preserved, and he said, ‘A great deal, I have discussed it with nobody except Emminger of the Bundesbank and the new Minister of Finance [Matthöfer]. There may be a lot of opposition here; there probably will be. I am not sure whether I can get away with it, but I am prepared to try. Do you think there is a chance of the British moving?’ I said, ‘Maybe; doubtful; I am not sure.’
I also assured him that I would not inform the Commission at this stage. He particularly asked me not to tell Ortoli or Haferkamp, at least until he had had a chance to consult Giscard. I asked him what he thought would be the position if, as seemed to me quite likely, there was a confused result after the French election. He said he would be guided by the advice of Giscard. He still had great faith in Giscard, as indeed he said he had in Barre. He would not necessarily mind having Communists in the Italian Government, but he could not go ahead with this with Communists in the French Government. He spoke reasonably warmly about Callaghan, much more critically than I had ever heard him about Healey, whom he thought showed an excessive, almost nauseating, eagerness for eating his own words without the slightest sense of shame, and, more importantly, with deep hostility towards Carter, whose behaviour over the dollar was intolerable, whose behaviour over the neutron bomb was vacillating, whose behaviour in the Middle East was ineffective, whose behaviour in the Horn of Africa was weak, etc. etc.
The anti-Americanism –or anti-Carterism, because Schmidt is basically pro-American—was in a way worrying, although if the dollar crisis is such an amorce for economic and monetary union, I am prepared, up to a point, to go along with it. At the same time he was anxious to stress that if we made such a move there might be suspicion that Europe was becoming inward-looking and therefore it should be an additional reason for our taking a liberal attitude on trade questions at Geneva and, he added, for not pressing the Japanese too hard.
He was gloomy, as usual, about German politics. ‘Oh, things have gone pretty badly, with the near defeat over the anti-terrorist bill,’ and this was having a bad effect on the standing of the Government, with a real danger that it might be left as a lame-duck administration. He asked how much progress I thought we could make at Copenhagen. I said a certain amount; that Jørgensen would certainly be anxious to be helpful, but that we should probably not envisage getting a major commitment tied up there, but should rather see Copenhagen as a very important stage towards the following European Council under the German presidency at the beginning of July, which he had decided to hold in Bremen.
On the Western Economic Summit later in July, he expressed scepticism as to whether Carter would come. I told him that I disagreed with this. I thought Carter would come and I thought that the Summit could be extremely important but could take place in appallingly difficult circumstances with, if we made the worst of a series of assumptions, confrontation between Europe and Japan, virtual breakdown of the multinational trade negotiations, great weakness and uncertainty in France and a further and more intensive dollar crisis.
Rather typically he brightened up at this catalogue of gloom and agreed that this was an additional reason for having a strong Community front. We parted on very friendly terms; indeed he gave me a medal on the way out, but not by premeditation and just one of his own collection, i.e. a spontaneous present and not a decoration! After the meeting, with Etienne to the Königshof Hotel where I needed a quick drink to help me digest all this, and then back to Brussels by 10 o’clock, where Laura and Crispin came to a late supper and I rather excitedly informed them of this great turn-up for the book.
WEDNESDAY, 1 MARCH. Brussels.
I was sufficiently exhilarated by my Schmidt meeting to attempt a run in the Bois at 8.15. A great mistake for my ankle. A long Commission morning from 10.10 to 1.25, and then off to the depths of Uccle for an Australian Embassy lunch for Garland,36 their new Trade Minister, to whom I was determined to be agreeable in order to try and put relations on to a better personal footing. I did not find this too difficult as he is an agreeable man.
Resumed Commission meeting from 3.45 until 7 o’clock. A fairly wearing Commission day, particularly as my ankle was being extremely tiresome. In the morning we had quite a difficult one and a half hours on enlargement. In the afternoon we had Ortoli being fairly blatantly nationalist on the French demand that we should freeze their MCAs despite the pre-election fluctuations of the franc. He insisted that we waited until 7 o’clock for a report from Gundelach, who was seeing the French Minister of Agriculture (who had descended on him in the Berlaymont).
Back to rue de Praetère just before 8.00
to let (Dr) Ann Phillips have another go at my ankle. Marietta Tree,37 who was staying, brought three of her ‘collaborators’ for a drink, and then at 8.30, everybody overlapping with everybody else, we had a dinner party for her with Hintons (the US Ambassador to the Community), Dillons (Irish Permanent Representative) and Perlots. It became like an opera scene with too many people doing different things on the stage at the same time.
THURSDAY, 2 MARCH. Brussels and Edinburgh.
10.40 plane to London. In the VIP lounge at London Airport I met, by accident, Douglas Wass, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, and Bill Ryrie, now Economic Minister in Washington and my old private secretary at the end of my time at the Treasury, and had quite an interesting exchange of views with them. They were very concerned to know what Schmidt was thinking about monetary questions and I was forced to give them a somewhat guarded reply. 11.40 shuttle to Edinburgh. Lunch with the Scottish Development Council in the North British Hotel. Then a fairly hectic hour of TV and radio interviews. To the university to deliver my Montague Burton Professorial Lecture at 5.15. It wasn’t a great lecture, but the audience was extremely good. The lecture theatre was packed with six or seven hundred people. Then a large reception and finally a university dinner. An agreeable conversation with old Lord Cameron, the Scottish Judge, on one side, about Scottish and English legal systems, etc., and with the acting Principal, on the other (the Principal had died six weeks before), about American twentieth-century history. John Mackintosh38 was also present. The dinner was notable for the fact that it was in a room surrounded by about eight very well-lit Raeburn portraits; he paints heads much better than hands.