European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  At 3 o’clock I went to the External Affairs Committee of the Parliament, opened for half an hour, listened to their comments, and wound up for twenty minutes at the end. I like this format of opening fairly informally, listening to what they say and then weaving what points one chooses into a reply.

  I saw Christopher Tugendhat for an hour on a number of his points, but also because I wished to tell him I had now decided, fully in accordance with his wishes, to relieve him of the Personnel portfolio with the intention of giving it to Vredeling. He made no difficulty about this.

  WEDNESDAY, 26 APRIL. Brussels.

  Six rather tiresome hours in the Commission, particularly at the end of the morning on a Vouël paper on State Aids (to industry), which had been badly prepared by the Chefs de Cabinet. I was much worse briefed than I usually am on what is likely to come up. However, no disasters, although mildly irritating.

  An Economic and Social Committee dinner at Basil de Ferranti’s60 flat, mainly for Leslie Murphy, Ryder’s successor as Chairman of the National Enterprise Board. There were various other people like le Portz of the European Investment Bank, Provost, President of UNICE, and Debunne, the chief Belgian trade unionist. A general discussion after dinner, which I had to lead and which was not too bad. Murphy a bit sceptical on monetary questions. But Provost and one or two others obviously excited at what they thought had been the real progress at Copenhagen and how it had followed on from my Florence speech, which was encouraging.

  THURSDAY, 27 APRIL. Brussels and Madrid.

  1.40 plane to Madrid. First a meeting of one and a half hours with Calvo Sotelo, the minister in charge of the negotiation, and various members of his équipe. To the Ritz Hotel to change and see Jennifer who had arrived from London, and then to an hour’s meeting at the Palacio Moncloa with Suárez, the Prime Minister. Found him as impressive as at our previous meeting. He afterwards gave a dinner of about forty people, remarkable for the fact that he had the leader of the Socialist Party, Felipe Gonzales, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Carrillo, and the deputy leader of the Catalan Nationalist Party, as well as most of the major ministers, round the table. As I said in my brief speech after dinner, there were not many countries in the Community, or indeed in the world, where such a cross-section could have been assembled, although I suppose Britain is one of them, and Italy another, but it would certainly not have happened in France, and probably not in Germany. Home very late, dinner not starting until nearly 11 o’clock.

  FRIDAY, 28 APRIL. Madrid.

  Left at 9.15 for the drive out to Zarazuela, the King’s semi-country palace. It is in fact more a large modern villa than a palace, though set in a big park about fifteen miles from the centre of Madrid. An hour’s talk alone with him, in which he struck me, much as in Brussels six months before, as being agreeable, quick, with a non-regal manner, shrewd rather than intellectual. He expressed some concern about the coolness of Spanish public opinion in the street towards Europe, which was more than any of his ministers said to me.

  Back to the centre of Madrid, indeed into the old town for the first time, for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry with Oreja, young, bright, quick, if not heavyweight, on a wide range of foreign policy questions. Then back to the Ritz, where Calvo Sotelo came to see me to follow up how we were to deal with one particularly difficult point relating to the renegotiation of the 1970 agreement which had arisen the evening before.

  Then, at 1.15, to the Danish Ambassador’s residence to brief the ambassadors of the Nine, including Antony Acland, Bobbie de Margerie61 and others not known to me. I liked them rather better than the Community ambassadors in Portugal. Then, at 2.15, to a lunch of industrialists (or empresarios as they are rather surprisingly called in Spanish), which took place in the Financial Club, a newish institution at the top of a fourteen-storey building with a very good view over Madrid and out into the barren countryside beyond the edge of the city, which remains fairly concentrated, even though the population has now gone up to four million.

  A dullish but not testing press conference at 4.45, and then to the Cortes for a meeting with the President and his various Deputies. A rather stilted discussion with them with inadequate interpretation and therefore a good deal of bad French.

  Back to the Ritz and then, at 9 o’clock, a Calvo Sotelo dinner for about thirty people in the Palacio Fernan Nunez, an old Madrid hôtel particulier, built about 1750 and then done up rather sumptuously in the height of the style of the 1840s and taken over some time in the last thirty or forty years by Spanish railways, of which Calvo Sotelo had in the 1960s been President.

  SATURDAY, 29 APRIL. Madrid and Toledo.

  To the Prado for an hour. The Velasquez and Goya rooms immensely impressive, but I found El Grecos en masse rather disappointing. He curiously fails to gain from being displayed in great quantity. Then a short walk through the Plaza Mayor. Left for Toledo just after noon. After a tedious drive on a bad road, through dismal suburbs with heavy traffic, low cloud and a nasty light we installed ourselves in the extremely comfortable Parador Nacional de Conde de Orgaz. That evening there was still a disagreeable hard light, though the view across the Tagus Valley to Toledo from the parador, with the cathedral, the Alcazar, and the other buildings rising on a hill above a bend of the river, is quite remarkable.

  We had the Aclands to dinner, and much enjoyed seeing them again, although I thought them only moderately happy in Madrid, partly because a fourteen-storey bank is being built with great noise and dust alongside their embassy.

  SUNDAY, 30 APRIL. Toledo.

  Sight-seeing expeditions across the valley in the morning (the cathedral and the Alcazar), and again in the early evening (the Hospital de Tovero outside the walls of the town, and Santo Tome with the magnificent El Greco, the burial of the Conde de Orgaz). From 7.30 to 9.00 I sat working and reading, partly on the balcony and partly in my room with the window open, in one of the most magnificent lights I have ever seen, a complete contrast with the evening before, still cold, still windy, but the clouds had broken up, giving a brilliant late-April sharpness, with snow-covered mountains to the north of Segovia (nearly a hundred miles away) clearly visible in the last hour of sunlight.

  MONDAY, I MAY. Madrid and Brussels.

  Made to leave Toledo for Madrid airport much too early, which I hate doing. We were there over an hour before the plane was even due to take off. We hung about in the VIP lounge, with various members of the send-off party trickling in, and it was therefore not possible even to get down to any useful work or reading. Calvo Sotelo wisely left his arrival (to say goodbye) until the last possible moment, saying he had been held up by the traffic—a very sensible man in my view. Brussels at 1.15.. To lunch a little late with the Danes: Foreign Minister, Permanent Secretary, Permanent Representative.

  TUESDAY, 2 MAY. Brussels.

  Foreign Affairs Council at 9.30 and all day including lunch until 5.30, when I left. There was a slightly obscure debate about protectionism, mainly between Lambsdorff and Owen, in which Owen uttered some of the most protectionist sentiments -unprepared, I think—that I have ever heard.

  Then, towards the latter part of the morning, I introduced the ‘fresco’ on enlargement, which was surprisingly politely received by all the ministers. I rather feared that they would think we had been a mountain in labour and had produced a mouse, but although there were some points of disagreement about the transitional periods and some desire for more detail on economic matters, they all accepted the document as a good beginning and welcomed the fact that we kept it to twenty pages. Genscher was particularly forthcoming.

  Dined with the Nanteuils in their new large suburban villa at Tervuren, with which they seemed very pleased compared with their previous less convenient but more distinguished town house in Ixelles. After dinner I was given an interesting little lecture by Huré, the French Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, about the difference between the state and the nation in French political thought. Giscard, he thought, was too con
cerned with the nation, whereas the French desperately needed the state to hold them together as they were inherently febrile and undisciplined. Hence the need for Napoleon, de Gaulle, etc. Debré,62 from the death of whose father the conversation started, exaggerated appallingly but nonetheless such exaggeration was necessary for the balance of French politics. It ended up by Huré saying that Pompidou—partly because he had more humble origins—understood the state as opposed to the nation much more than did Giscard, i.e. was much more of a Napoleon, whereas poor Giscard was left to be a Louis Philippe!

  WEDNESDAY, 3 MAY. Brussels.

  Five and a half hours of Commission. The long item in the morning was on the agricultural price position, with a report from Gundelach as to the result he saw being arrived at the following week. Everything seemed reasonably satisfactory except for wine, on which he had gone substantially further than authorized in the Commission a few weeks before. A slightly acrimonious exchange with him, but the Italians and the French being of course solid with him, and not much fight in anybody else, there was no chance of doing more than pulling him back very marginally. In the afternoon a moderately good discussion on the draft of the first part of the ‘opinion’ on Portugal’s application for membership.

  A monetary affairs lunch with four cabinet members, rue de Praetère. A drive and walk in the Forêt de Soignes for an hour before dinner; a beautiful evening, the weather having changed at lunchtime, and for the first time this year we saw the sun slanting through the light green beech leaves which are the best feature of Brussels in May.

  THURSDAY, 4 MAY. Brussels and London.

  Having decided not to go to Aachen for the Karlspreis Ceremony, and it being a Commission holiday, I went to London in mid-morning with Jennifer, and there worked on my speech for the Reform Club banquet that evening, which was to mark their having made me one of their few honorary members. It was a gathering of about a hundred and fifty, including I think six of the Nine ambassadors, Michael Palliser, etc. I had prepared a speech for the occasion with a lot of Reform Club references, with only a little serious stuff at the end. However they indicated during the day and on arrival that they hoped I would give them a full-scale serious European talk. I therefore had to do a combination of the two and, as a result, took forty-five minutes.

  FRIDAY, 5 MAY. London and Oxford.

  Another filthy day, pouring with rain from morning till night. In the afternoon I motored to Oxford to deliver the Cyril Foster Memorial Lecture. Tea in Michael Howard’s63 room in All Souls and then across to the South School of the Examination Schools, where to my amazement there were about five hundred people, including one or two surprising figures like Ann Fleming and the Michael Astors, and also the Hayters64 and a lot of undergraduates. The lecture seemed to be curiously and jointly presided over by Raymond Carr, Warden of St Antony’s, and Robert Blake, Provost of Queen’s, he in his capacity as one of the pro-Vice-Chancellors. It was a solid lecture, lasting fifty-seven minutes, about relations with the Third World. There was some quite interesting material in it and it was well listened to by the audience, but it was certainly not sparkling. An early dinner at St Antony’s for about forty.

  MONDAY, 8 MAY. London and Manchester.

  Peter Preston, editor of the Guardian, to lunch at Brooks’s. I found him remarkably agreeable: not difficult to talk to as I half-expected, very European, well-informed, and sensible on practically everything.

  5.20 train to Manchester. Installed in the same suite in the Midland Hotel in which John Harris, Irwin Ross65 and I had sat gloomily sipping whisky and sweating prodigiously on the hottest English evening I can remember after a bad meeting (Manchester meetings mostly are) in the Albert Hall in June 1970, and where I had begun to wonder whether that election really was in the bag after all.

  On this occasion there was a dinner for about thirty people, given by the Sun66 with brief speeches. I sat between Larry Lamb67 and a Tate and Lyle director called, surprisingly, Tate. Lamb and all the Sun people were in very buoyant mood, as they had just got news that they had decisively passed the Mirror and become the largest circulation newspaper—a considerable feat in such a short time -meaning, as I indicated in my speech, that the decision of the old Mirror Group to put the Sun on to the market was one of the most ill-judged acts in the history of British journalism. To have kept it there like Hemingway’s fish, fastened to their boat, gnawed at but protective, would have been much wiser.

  TUESDAY, 9 MAY. Manchester and Strasbourg.

  A brilliant morning with spectacular Manchester sunshine, but I saw little of it as we were incarcerated in the Midland Hotel for the Sun-organized seminar on the Common Agricultural Policy. A rather good and worthwhile gathering. I spoke for thirty-five or forty minutes at the beginning, then we had ‘the assessors’, Neil Marten MP,68 plus a rather good farmer from Cheshire, plus Professor John Marsh from Aberdeen plus a Co-operative Wholesale Society manager. I replied to them for twenty minutes and then left by avion taxi for Strasbourg. I arrived in the Parliament just after 4 o’clock, where I received the news of the death of Aldo Moro69 at the hands of his Italian kidnappers. Recorded a brief television statement on this shattering event for the Italian state and government, and therefore, indirectly, for the Community.

  WEDNESDAY, 10 MAY. Strasbourg.

  An easy Commission meeting from 9.00 to 10.00. Then into the Chamber, luckily, as little Fellermaier without any notice got up on a complicated point of order which turned out to be a justified complaint about the very poor attendance and performance of the Commission at question period the previous day. Only Burke and Vredeling had been there. We had discussed this at the Commission meeting that morning, deciding that we must strengthen the team for Thursday and in future. I therefore had an answer, but felt I had to change my plans, stay in Strasbourg and do Thursday questions myself. I also settled down to a Wednesday in the hémicycle, making a series of brief speeches up to 7.30 p.m.

  In one interval I took David Wood of The Times to lunch, mainly gossiping about British politics of the past. And in another interval I had a useful drink with Dohnanyi and discovered that he was keen to present some paper to the German Government about a very substantial increase in European Investment Bank funds to be used as a sort of mini-Marshall Plan for the applicant countries. Good as far as it goes, which may be quite a long way.

  My change of plan had defeated the Sofitel (though this was not entirely a bad thing in view of our opinion of it) who could not have us for another night. We therefore went to Illhaeusern.

  THURSDAY, 11 MAY. Strasbourg and Brussels.

  Left Illhaeusern at 7.45, though not quite early enough, to drive hectically to Strasbourg Cathedral for a memorial Mass for Moro. Just squeezed into the front row between Colombo and Natali. It was a longer service than I had expected, nearly a full hour, good music, splendid setting, high Mass and communion service for everybody; a fairly good attendance. And then a quick breakfast in the Place de la Cathédrale before spending the morning in the Parliament. In my afternoon question hour I answered five out of six questions, all going reasonably smoothly, and, as in December, quite enjoying the occasion.

  FRIDAY, 12 MAY. Brussels.

  Hilda and George Canning (my Stechford chairman) arrived to stay. John Harris and Jennifer were also due to arrive, but they were diverted by a strike and indeed had a ghastly journey as the driver missed them at Lille.

  SATURDAY, 13 MAY. Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

  Jennifer took the Cannings to Walcheren, Middelburg and Vlis-sengen in order to see some of the scenes of George’s exploits in the Navy during the war. I left for Rome by avion taxi just after 1.00 for the grand Moro memorial Mass. Two in a week was perhaps rather much, but the Italian Government had made it fairly clear that they would greatly appreciate my presence. John Harris and Hayden came with me for the ride. Met by Forlani, the Foreign Minister, and Natali, as well as by the rather typical news that the ceremony had been put back by half an hour on security grounds
. (It was not clear why keeping the congregation waiting for a longer time in St John Lateran was going to help security.)

  We arrived at the basilica, which is of course magnificent, at 3.45. The Mass started late even for the postponed time of 4.30. The Pope (Paul VI) made an exceptional appearance outside the Vatican70 and was borne in on his ceremonial chair carried by ten men who, although presumably practised, were a little unsteady. This did not impair the dignity of his blessing as he swayed around six feet above the ground; no doubt he is used to that. His presence and demeanour were impressive. The service was beautiful, with haunting music, though, to me, cold, but perhaps that was because I did not know Moro. It took a long time and it was 5.45 before we left the church. Not many heads of government—Thorn and Tindemans I think were the only ones—but there was a fairly substantial representation nonetheless. Elwyn-Jones (Lord Chancellor) for the British, Peyrefitte (Minister of Justice) for the French. There was also a remarkable turn-out of Italian politicians. All the Christian Democrats, apart from poor Cossiga71 who had resigned as Minister of the Interior and was not there, but also Berlinguer as well as most of the Socialists.

  Rather a jam of the planes of various governments at Ciampino so that we did not get into the air until just after 7 o’clock Italian time (8 o’clock Brussels time). Nonetheless we got to rue de Praetère in time for dinner with the Cannings and Phillips’ at 10.15.

  TUESDAY, 16 MAY. Brussels.

  Henri Simonet to lunch. As usual it was a pleasure to talk to him. He seemed at that stage on perfectly good form and not unduly apprehensive of what was happening in Zaïre, although taking the mistaken view that while the Belgians might have to do something, the French were unlikely to move.72

  WEDNESDAY, 17 MAY. Brussels.

  Seven hours of Commission, with a COREPER lunch, which is by no means a relaxation, in the middle. I gave the Commission a great lecture in the morning about inadequate attendance at the European Parliament.