by Roy Jenkins
Then the dancing guests began to arrive and the whole thing became rather overcrowded and hot for a time, but I sat this out, and subsequently had an extremely agreeable evening-as indeed did Jennifer. We stayed, amazingly, until 3.45, and walked home in the dawn, a thing we haven’t done for many years. I even danced three times, led on to the floor the first time by Mrs William Rees-Mogg.
FRIDAY, 9 JUNE. London and East Hendred.
I had a morning of London errands, including buying some books in Hatchards, where I had a conversation as on a stage with Pam Hartwell, i.e. addressed by her to the whole shop. I then met Robert Armstrong at Brooks’s before driving to East Hendred in the afternoon. The Beaumarchais’ arrived to stay at 7 o’clock.
SATURDAY, 10 JUNE. East Hendred.
At 11.30 the Beaumarchais’ and I went to Oxford and did a quick tour, including climbing to the lantern at the top of the Sheldonian, which I discovered only six months ago and which gives a splendid view. It is curious how many people one meets in the street in Oxford; between us we saw Isaiah Berlin, Oliver Franks,79 Roger Makins (Sherfield),80 and one or two others. Eric Rolls and the Douglass Caters81 to lunch at East Hendred. Drove the Beaumarchais’ over the Downs to the Blue Boar on a most beautiful evening.
SUNDAY, 11 JUNE. East Hendred.
Took the Beaumarchais’ to Sevenhampton, where Ann also had Bonham Carters, Levers and Mark Amory82 for lunch. Then a tremendous afternoon of games. I played croquet with Mark Amory, who is a very good games-player, but who didn’t know croquet very well, and beat him rather easily; then three sets of tennis (again a satisfactory result), and then croquet again. Stayed until 7.30. A perfect day, not very hot, but strong sunshine, and altogether very satisfactory.
WEDNESDAY, 14 JUNE. Strasbourg and Paris.
Commission meeting at 9.00, then into the Parliament for a short time before reluctantly leaving for Paris by avion taxi. To a luncheon at the Quai d’Orsay given by Guiringaud for the OECD ministers. A confused, disorganized lunch. I admittedly had not said that I was going until that morning, but at first there was no place for me, nor was there a place for Blumenthal (US Secretary of the Treasury) or for the Austrian Vice-Chancellor (Androsch), but eventually things were vaguely sorted out.
In the afternoon to the Château de la Muette for a series of bilateral meetings which were the purpose of my Paris visit. First, three-quarters of an hour with Blumenthal, in which I ran through my thoughts about European monetary stability, explained what we had in mind, and got a very satisfactory acceptance by him that the Americans were in effect perfectly happy about this.
Then a meeting with Malcolm Fraser of Australia. Perhaps as a result of my meeting with Garland and pressure from his officials, he was for once out to be pleasant. He wished to have a wide-ranging conversation about the Summit, the Third World, etc. That went more or less all right, and at the end we had a quick exchange of views about bilateral relations in which I stated our position, and we broke up without too much difficulty.
After this I had a meeting with Vance, who is very good, compared with Fraser or Blumenthal, at making these courtesy bilaterals easy and interesting. There was a curious element of American grandeur, not in his manner at all–very much the reverse–but in the room: the standard of the United States, the standard of the Secretary of State, the seal of the United States were all erected behind the desk in this rather small, temporary room in the Château de la Muette which he was occupying for thirty-six hours, and there was even half a platoon of marines outside. With three or four other people present we talked mainly about MTNs and the forthcoming Summit.
Then I went into the Plenary Session for twenty-five minutes and made a perfectly sensible, pointless seven-minute speech, which the officials were very keen that I should make, about the trade pledge.83 I then left at about 6.30 escorted by two motards and had the most terrifying, ludicrous, ridiculous drive to Le Bourget. It was the peak of the rush hour around the Périphérique and the traffic was absolutely jammed up. But these two motorcyclists carved their way through so that we got there in twenty-three minutes, mostly going between 50 and 70 miles an hour, with the chance of a major accident at least one in five I would have thought. How ordinary French motorists put up with this behaviour I cannot understand. The motards, given the fact that they were trying to perform this lunacy, did absolutely spectacularly; they thumped and occasionally kicked small cars out of the way, with their feet off the pedals of their motorbikes.
I couldn’t look most of the time. I fastened my seat belt in the back, a thing I have never done before, and tried to read the newspapers. We hit one car a glancing blow and bounced off a sort of balustrade on another occasion. However, we eventually got there without any grave damage to anybody, but I do not think it is a sensible way for the French police to behave, and it is certainly a disagreeable way to go through Paris on a particularly beautiful early June evening. I suppose it cut an hour off the drive, but this was hardly worth it, particularly as I had nothing serious to do at the other end.
I never thought I would find a little avion taxi such a haven of peace, like a hammock in a summer garden. We flew off into a cloudless sky, over the valley of the Marne and the plains of Champagne, through Lorraine, over the Vosges and down into Colmar. Drove to La Clairière (hotel) at Illhaeusern, where Jennifer, Hayden and Laura already were.
THURSDAY, 15 JUNE. Strasbourg and Brussels.
Drove into Strasbourg and to the Parliament at 11.15. Then with Jennifer took Tam Dalyell84 to lunch. We much enjoyed talking to Tam, who, although slightly dotty, is in a curious way a first-rate man, with great self-confidence and interest. To the Parliament to answer questions for forty-five minutes mainly about languages in the enlarged Community, and then back to Brussels by avion taxi.
FRIDAY, 16 JUNE. Brussels.
A day of Berlaymont meetings, including two with Gundelach. These were intended to be a general run round agriculture and fisheries policy and also something of an attempt to repair one or two slightly damaged bridges between him and me. I find it very difficult to make up my mind completely about Gundelach. His qualities are great; is his trickiness equally so?85 Home at 7 o’clock, where the Jakie Astors had arrived to stay.
SATURDAY, 17 JUNE. Brussels.
A remarkable three-hour expedition to the battlefields in the Ypres salient. We had a key prepared in Donald Maitland’s office, which was extremely valuable, for otherwise I think we would have been completely lost. We went to Menin and then along the Menin Road between there and Ypres and turned off and saw a system of trenches and a museum. Then on to Hill 60, Hellfire Corner, and into Ypres itself to see the Menin Gate with its vast panels of names (56,000,1 think) of those who did not have individual graves. Then on to Passchendaele, to the huge cemetery there. The whole expedition was interesting, even fascinating, but harrowing and oppressive, and we were glad at the end to get out of the area. Why does Waterloo have no similar effect? Is it a difference of numbers or a difference of a hundred years? We drove to Bruges where we lunched without much appetite, went to see the Memling and returned to Brussels.
SUNDAY, 18 JUNE. Brussels.
We took the Astors (and Phillips’ with children) on a surprisingly beautiful day and picnicked in the field near Maillen in the near Ardennes where we had been before. The site wasn’t as successful as previously because we had forgotten that in June, as opposed to April or October, the ‘corn is as high as an elephant’s eye’, and as a result the view was almost blocked out. After lunch we played cricket on the road, organized by Hayden, interrupting–or interrupted by–a local bicycle race, so that there was a certain clash of English and Belgian cultures. However, no trouble.
MONDAY, 19 JUNE. Brussels.
A 12.30 meeting with the President of Mali. An agreeable man, accompanied by two or three others in magnificent robes. There was not a great deal to talk about.
Then with Hayden and Roger Beetham to give Larry Lamb and the Sun’s political editor
(Anthony Shrimsley) lunch. It ought to have been more successful than it was. Lamb, who had impressed me greatly in Manchester six weeks before, seemed on rather bad form. Shrimsley quite intelligent, but the whole thing not as pointful as it should have been.
TUESDAY, 20 JUNE. Brussels.
10.30 meeting with Raymond Vouël, who complained, with some justification, about Davignon running around and organizing all sorts of cartels which were offending the competition rules of the Commission. Then Andreas Whittam Smith, the City editor of the Daily Telegraph86 who was an extremely good interviewer, agreeable, and taking points very quickly. And then, at noon, an extraordinary ceremony organized by the Anciens Combattants de l’Europe, who gave me a medal. It was mainly got up by the French, but there were about eight high British Legion officials, and the actual presentation was made by Rommel’s Chief of Staff, who not surprisingly was extremely old, an echt Iron Cross German General, who did it all with considerable style.
WEDNESDAY, 21 JUNE. Brussels.
Day-long Commission over by 6.00. Dinner for the change of presidency from the Danes to the Germans, which, at Astrid von Hardenberg’s87 good suggestion, we had arranged at the Maison d’Erasme in Anderlecht. I don’t think Erasmus had actually lived there for more than six or seven months–did he ever live anywhere for much longer? - but it is an attractive sixteenth-century house, well run as a museum, and a good place for a dinner. The dinner went very well. I had Madame de Nanteuil and Frau Sigrist on either side of me. I made a rather erudite speech, partly about Erasmus, partly about the Vikings, partly about Greenland, which Hayden had prepared very well for me, and we then listened to a good, sensible, rather long speech from Riberholdt, followed by a somewhat misty one about the Nibelungen from Sigrist.
THURSDAY, 22 JUNE. Brussels, Paris and Brussels.
11.43 TEE to Paris with Crispin. Worked extremely hard all the way and then lunched very late in Paris. At 4.45 to the Elysée. Giscard rather impressively received us two minutes ahead of time, and we talked for about an hour and a half. It was one of the best conversations I have had with him. We talked a little about economic growth, in which we agreed that we had the tactical and cosmetic problem of making the Bremen European Council seem worthwhile while knowing that Schmidt was not willing to say very much until he got to the Bonn Western Summit. Then we went on to monetary arrangements in Europe, in which Giscard was extremely hard and firm and clearly determined to go ahead. The curious effect of this was that, perhaps because he was more interested, because we were discussing something more closely, interrupting each other a good deal, he became, if anything, rather smaller, less like a would-be Louis XIV, or even General de Gaulle, and more as I remember him as a Finance Minister; less making pronouncements as a head of state, more discussing a real subject.
Towards the end he suddenly raised the question of the reform of Community institutions, saying that this was a personal view of his, a lot of the French Government didn’t share it, etc., but he was particularly worried about the presidency of the Council of Ministers and of the European Council and thought these ought to be done on a semi-permanent basis by someone who had been a major figure in the national government of a big country. I wasn’t clear whether he intended this to be something—which indeed it might be—which would greatly devalue the Commission, or something which could be amalgamated with the presidency of the Commission, though I doubt this.
From the Elysée I went to see first the Hendersons and then the Beaumarchais’ before travelling back to Brussels alone on the 8.30 TEE, dining—or rather ordering dinner, because it was almost completely uneatable—along the Oise. But I still like rolling across the plains of northern France on a long summer evening, even with a lot of clouds, which at least produce constantly changing light.
FRIDAY, 23 JUNE. Brussels.
Into the office late to see Ambassador Harriman, not, however, Averell, but an agreeable Nigerian who is the United Nations Commissioner for Anti-Apartheid. I then gave a drink, with a speech and questions, to fourteen Dutch editors, lunched at home with Jennifer alone, and returned to the office to give an interview to an allegedly 7-million-circulation Japanese newspaper: a rather formal visit from the editor and three supporting journalists, but fortunately it seemed at the time to go rather well and lasted no less than one and a half hours.
Woodrow and Verushka Wyatt arrived to stay the weekend, but I had to go to the Palais d’Egmont for a dinner for the Federation of Socialist Parties which was meeting to draw up a direct elections manifesto. I had bilateral conversations with Brandt and den Uyl before dinner, at dinner with Mitterrand and Craxi,88 and after dinner with Soares of Portugal (for a long time), and Gonzales of Spain (for a short time). It was a good round-up of the great and the good of the European Left. There were brief speeches at dinner from Simonet, who was giving the dinner, Pontillon, who was the nominal President, and Brandt, who was much the most senior man there.
SATURDAY, 24 JUNE. Brussels.
Took the Wyatts for my regular giro of Brussels, from the Forêt de Soignes to the Grand’Place. K. B. Andersen, the Danish Foreign Minister, accompanied by Ersbøll and Riberholdt, arrived for an hour’s meeting at home before dinner. Then, at 8.30, we turned this into a social dinner as a mark of appreciation of K. B. Andersen’s presidency of the Council of Ministers. This went very well. The Wyatts got on excellently with the Danes, and the Danes were nice and sensible, as they nearly always are. Half seriously they attributed Danish prosperity to the fact that they had never had any basic industries worth speaking of to run down: no coal, no steel, no shipbuilding, no textiles, no heavy engineering. All done on pigs, beer and porcelain.
MONDAY, 26 JUNE. Brussels and Luxembourg.
Jennifer left for London after a fourteen-day visit to Brussels. Following the new Chinese Ambassador, I saw Talboys,89 the deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, whom I like very much indeed and whom I got without great difficulty to say quite clearly that the sheep meat regime, as at present proposed, caused them little difficulty. It was possible future changes which worried them.
Avion taxi to Luxembourg for the Foreign Affairs Council, which sat for five hours until nearly 10 p.m. There was a good deal of wrangling about the treatment of human rights in the Lomé Convention, of which most notably David Owen, but several other people too, were making very heavy weather.
TUESDAY, 27 JUNE. Luxembourg and Brussels.
I took time off from the Council to see John Davies, the British Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, and give him some briefing about our attitude towards Australia and New Zealand. He was easily reassured on these points and anxious to be helpful, being more concerned about African questions and Soviet penetration there.
Lunch for Genscher and two of his collaborators at the Golf Club, the postponed meal from before he took over the presidency. Not a great deal of business was discussed but he was interesting in an anecdotal way.
Back to the Council from 3.15 to 6.30.1 then decided I had had enough and returned to Brussels by avion taxi. I had Charlie Douglas-Home90 to dinner and enjoyed talking to him, partly about Iberian enlargement and partly about the royal prerogative in Britain, on which he is writing a book.
THURSDAY, 29 JUNE. Brussels and Bath.
12.35 plane to London, and then in the early evening of a day of pouring rain had a horrible slow drive to Bath, for the university dinner before my honorary degree the following morning. I enjoyed the dinner, liked the Vice-Chancellor and his wife and the Mayor and Mayoress of Bath, as well as the Chancellor, Lord Hinton, and delivered quite a reasonably successful twenty-minute speech of the occasion to an audience of about 150/200.
SATURDAY, 1 JULY. East Hendred.
To Buscot Parsonage at 9.15 p.m. for Diana Phipps’s great opera ball. It really was a most extraordinary occasion, dinner for five hundred people, at tables of ten or twelve, all placed. My only concession was my Abruzzan cloak over a dinner jacket, and there was a fair number of other people who were
dressed as no more than the conductor or the audience. There were some spectacular costumes, some successful, some not. George Weidenfeld,91 as some vague eighteenth-century figure, looked surprisingly convincing, Claus Moser92 arguably a little less so because he had a more elaborate costume. Noel Annan as Prince Gremin also looked surprisingly authentic, as though he was in a perfectly natural uniform for him to wear as Vice-Chancellor or Provost.
The most spectacular-looking woman was Jessica Douglas-Home as the governess in The Turn of the Screw, who arrived in a governess cart with her two children, quickly disposed of for the evening, though the horse remained and was rather a nuisance. The Harlechs were paired as the Pharaoh and Phareen from Aïda, and poor David, who was sitting next but one to me at dinner, was so encrusted in golden armour that he had to spend most of his time trying to get bits of breast-plate off in order to be able to talk, eat, or do almost anything (he had already removed his helmet). Dinner went on for the greater part of the time we were there. We left about 12.45, as we were both tired. The weather was sad. Nonetheless it didn’t ruin the occasion, which was a fantastic feat of organization (and extravagance) on Diana’s part.
MONDAY, 3 JULY. East Hendred, Warwickshire and London.
Accompanied by Nicko Henderson, I drove to Stoneleigh to open the Royal Show at 11.15. A curious, rather enjoyable, gathering. I addressed an audience of somewhere between two and four thousand, who were some distance away from me on a cold, windy morning. They listened surprisingly well to some tough warning words about milk, and some more acceptable ones about European monetary arrangements. Then a tour of part of the Show, which was impressive. Then a press conference, which I had been reluctant to do, at which rather sensible questions were asked, and then lunch in the Royal Pavilion, where the admirable Henry Plumb sat surrounded by two duchesses, the old Duchess of Gloucester and the less old Duchess of Devonshire.