European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  I then went to the City to give a lecture to the Overseas Development Institute in the headquarters of Barclays Bank. A rather good audience of about two hundred: Michael Palliser, Ronald Mcintosh, George Jellicoe, Leo Pliatzky. The lecture almost got off to an appalling start because I suddenly realized during the chairman’s introduction that I had got the wrong text in front of me, the original one and not the one which I had laboriously amended on the way over. I signalled wildly. Crispin, whom I had warned that I may have eaten a bad oyster at lunch, assumed I was becoming desperately ill, but Roger Beetham, not being aware of this, made a more sensible judgement and came up with the proper text. So all was saved but not without the incident being fairly obvious and causing some amusement.

  Home at Kensington Park Gardens where I discovered most surprisingly a letter of tentative invitation to be Master of St Catherine’s College, Oxford—they must have seen me casing the joint the previous Sunday. I am not, however, tempted by being head of a college.

  SUNDAY, 11 MARCH. East Hendred and Paris.

  10.30 plane to Paris with Jennifer. To the Embassy where we are staying a night for the last time in the Henderson régime (they only have three weeks to go) and possibly ever,25 as it is unlikely we will have close friends there in the future. Lunched with them alone, worked in the afternoon and walked in the twilight. Crispin came at 7.00 and we went through various points for the European Council, and then dined with him, the Hendersons and Jennifer.

  MONDAY, 12 MARCH. Paris.

  A rather desultory morning’s work until I left the Embassy at noon and moved into the Ritz.26 Lunched with Jennifer, Crispin and Michel Vanden Abeele, before moving up, under motorcycle escort, to the Kléber, where the European Council began fairly punctually at 3.10 and sat for four hours. We ran through a range of subjects: the economic situation of the Community, world trade relations, Japan, energy, and then a general clutch of social papers, all introduced by the Commission, i.e. Ortoli or me.

  In the first discussion Callaghan made a prepared and subsequently heavily leaked statement of position, mainly on the CAP and the budget. It all sounded too electoral, although he did not do it badly. The note of the Council was distinctly low key, and Giscard to my surprise did not appear to be trying to get very much out of his summing up on the social volet,27 or indeed energy, where I would have expected him to go for a more positive outcome.

  The room was not satisfactory. It was bigger than the ones in which we normally meet, so that Giscard and François-Poncet were isolated at one end of the table, Ortoli and I at the other, with four delegations down either side, Schmidt and Giscard for once not sitting next to each other.

  A heads of government dinner at the Elysée at 8.15. The place à table was rather more satisfactory from my point of view than usual; au bout de la table inevitably when alone with heads of government, but on this occasion between Schmidt and Callaghan, which was a change from between Thorn and Andreotti, to which I had become rather too used. However, that mattered little as the conversation was almost entirely general and not very good at that.

  Giscard opened rather typically by asking about the Queen’s visit to the Middle East, and there then developed a discussion conducted mainly between him and Callaghan, Giscard taking a fairly hard, pro-Arab line, i.e. more extreme than the Egyptians, Callaghan being certainly pro-Egyptian, even pro-Israeli. There was some discussion at the end about Turkey, on which Schmidt reported depressingly.

  Then after dinner, ‘round the fireside’ as it is quaintly called, there was first a discussion about China, on which I was asked to report. Then a discussion about the French desire to have a new look at the Euratom treaty, not to amend it they were careful to say, but to see if any adaptations of interpretation were necessary. This was pretty coolly received by the others (in many ways more favourably by me than by most, except for my saying extremely firmly that we had competences in the non-proliferation field, which the French were inclined to deny), with the outcome that it should be discussed at the French Schloss Gymnich, but without, I think, anybody expecting much to happen.

  Giscard’s launching of his great Euro/Arab/African dialogue plan was also coolly received, with a suggestion from Schmidt that it was perhaps best to start with the Africans before one brought in the Arabs, and that the whole thing should not be done on too grandiose and clumsy a scale. However, there was no great ill feeling on any side, and we broke up at about 11.30 in reasonably good order.

  TUESDAY, 13 MARCH. Paris and Strasbourg.

  To the Kléber by 9.30. Everybody arrived more or less on time, except for Callaghan and Schmidt who had breakfasted together (on defence matters) and, somewhat inconsiderately, didn’t turn up until 10 o’clock, so that even Giscard was kept waiting for half an hour. I had a good deal of conversation with him during this time. Throughout the whole of this European Council he was quite friendly, and he was obviously going to make no difficulty about my presence at the press conference, as he asked me for how long I thought, on previous experience, it should last.

  When the session eventually started, we opened with agriculture, on which I made a fifteen-minute statement, distancing myself from Callaghan, for obvious reasons, by putting in a certain general defence of the CAP, but then being extremely hard on the need to deal with surpluses by a price freeze. We discussed this for an hour, with I thought a rather good reception round the table. Callaghan kept fairly quiet, though he was obviously on our side on practical matters even if not on matters of theory. Thorn was silent. Lynch, Jørgensen, Andreotti and even van Agt expressed general approval for our position. Schmidt didn’t say yes and didn’t say no (he picked a rather pointless semi-argument with Callaghan on the assumption that Callaghan was advocating deficiency payments, which he was not), but the general thrust of what he was saying was favourable to our point of view and anti the farm lobby.

  Giscard’s summing up was clearly hostile but contained a good deal of legerdemain, which he developed later in the press conference, differentiating between products, differentiating between countries in which surpluses were produced, and generally trying to lose our hard proposal in sophistical refinements. The remainder of the morning was occupied with the communiqué.

  Just before the end of the Council, Callaghan and I both went out and coincided in the loo, whereupon he made to me the most fanciful offer, saying, ‘Would you like to be Governor of Hong Kong? I could possibly persuade Murray MacLehose to stay on until nearly the end of your time in Europe.’ I said, ‘Certainly not, Jim. I have never heard a more preposterous suggestion.’ However, in a curious, rather heavy-footed way, he went on, saying, ‘Oh, it’s a very important job, you know. You would be good at it. What do you want to do when you come back to England? You’ll go to the House of Lords, I presume.’ I said, ‘I am not at all sure, as I told you when you last suggested that to me. Not for the moment, certainly. I want to come back and look around and keep options open.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You might find it quite difficult to get back into the House of Commons.’ ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘And you might not like it when you got there,’ he said. ‘It has changed, it has deteriorated a lot.’ I said, ‘Yes, yes. All I intend to do is come back and look around at the political landscape, Jim, and certainly not become Governor of Hong Kong.’

  The Council over, I asked Giscard what time the press conference was to take place. He said, ‘In five minutes,’ so I waited outside, perhaps not spending as much time as I should have on a draft which Roger primarily, but Crispin also, had produced, expecting Giscard at any moment. In fact he did not return for twenty-five minutes, no doubt working on his text, and then disappeared again for another ten minutes. However, we eventually got into the salle de presse. The conference was fairly large and Giscard made a statement of about twenty minutes, rather dull I thought, though I was probably only half listening to it, but in which he certainly gave an over-hard impression of the anti-price-freeze view of the Council. What was true of course was that
the Council had not specifically endorsed it, but he came very near to giving the impression that it had rejected it. Then, at the end, he said, ‘I will now answer questions, either on behalf of the Council or on behalf of France.’ I indicated then that I wished to speak. He, without great resistance, but equally without any enthusiasm, said, ‘Monsieur le Président de la Commission veut ajouter quelques mots.’ So I then spoke for five or seven minutes, slightly galloping through the text I had before me, making a few cuts, and as a result possibly coming out slightly more sharply against Giscard on agricultural prices (not in substance, but in form) than I would have done had I felt less rushed.

  Then there were questions, all of them to Giscard, except for one from an Italian journalist to me, saying, ‘Are you maintaining your position on the price freeze after the Council?’ To which I said, ‘Yes, certainly. On the whole I was rather encouraged by the discussion.’ Then as we walked out, Giscard said, ‘You didn’t say exactly the same thing as me,’ not particularly disagreeably. I said, ‘There is often a difference of emphasis. I speak for the Commission; you speak for the Council.’ And then, as we walked further out and I said goodbye to him, he took up an argument of substance, saying, ‘Yes, yes, I see your point on products in surplus, but why do we have to have a freeze for products not in surplus?’ To which I said, ‘We don’t necessarily, but they aren’t products of any great significance. We can of course look at what you can find in that category but certainly not milk, certainly not sugar, certainly not cereals, and, indeed, not beef at the moment. Maybe one or two other meat products.’ Then we parted, reasonably amicably, though I suspect he was not at all pleased, one, with the fact of my intervention, and, two, with the form of it. However, we shall see.

  5.15 train from the Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg. Still very dismal weather, so that the long journey up the Marne valley was not as agreeable as it might have been.

  WEDNESDAY, 14 MARCH. Strasbourg.

  A very bad night’s sleep. The retained heat of the beastly Sofitel is appalling. In addition, Monsieur Pflimlin, who no doubt thought he should keep the square outside the hotel particularly clean, sent the most appalling dragon of a cleaning machine round, which was with us hissing away from 5.00 to 6.15.

  A Commission from 9.00 to 10.30 without great incident. Then, at noon, I had Johansen, the Danish member of the Cour des Comptes, who is in charge of the investigation into the Haferkamp affair, to see me. He seemed a sensible man, but what will come out of it I can’t tell. Did a not tremendously exciting question time. Read the French press. ‘Passage d’armes courtoises’, Le Monde said, ‘entre Président Giscard et M. Jenkins.’ I dined very briefly at the little restaurant opposite the hotel, got back to the Parliament at 9.00 and took an hour’s China debate in a very empty house.

  THURSDAY, 15 MARCH. Strasbourg and Brussels.

  Statements on the European Council from François-Poncet for an hour and from me for ten minutes. Then a debate until 1 o’clock; quite good but not vastly significant. Afterwards an official lunch given by François-Poncet for Colombo and the enlarged Bureau of the Parliament. I sat between François-Poncet and Geoffrey de Freitas,28 and found Poncet a little cool. Atmosphere disseminates itself quickly down the French Government hierarchy.

  Avion taxi to Brussels at 6.00. It was a very long flight, mainly because the landing conditions in Brussels were absolutely appalling, and suddenly just at the end (the pilots had warned us of this beforehand) they said, ‘We don’t think we can go in. Where would you rather go, Charleroi or Ostend?’ I said, ‘Preferably Antwerp.’ Almost as soon as I had said it, we were twenty feet over the ground and on the runway—in Brussels. So I asked, ‘Why did you suddenly ask that?’ and they replied, ‘Because a British Caledonian plane ahead of us just overshot, so we assumed we might have to do so as well. But we got in. Wasn’t that good?’ I said, ‘Yes, very good,’ but thought it would have been even better had I not believed that Jennifer was on the British Caledonian plane. However, it turned out that she wasn’t, and had got in with difficulty just earlier, and was at home by the time I arrived there after an hour in the office.

  FRIDAY, 16 MARCH. Brussels.

  I saw Hinton the American Ambassador, who came in with a great statement from Carter, which was obviously being put out by all American embassies, urging us in the strongest terms to use our influence in favour of the Israeli/Egyptian peace settlement, and indicating that the United States would attach great importance to what their friends did on this occasion. Not primarily a matter for us, although obviously there are going to be difficulties within the Nine, with the French, as so often, taking a much harder position than anyone else.

  At noon I went down to receive the President of Guinée-Bissau who was an agreeable if not impressive head of state. I had a brief private talk with him and then took him into the Commission for a formal three-quarters of an hour meeting, and then to lunch at Val Duchesse, which lasted until about 3.15. Back in the office I saw first Haferkamp and then the new Japanese Trade Minister, Yasukawa, who seemed to me to be an improvement on Ushiba. Home early, where the Zuckermans had arrived to stay.

  MONDAY, 19 MARCH. Brussels.

  A meeting with Murphy,29 the Irish President of the Cour des Comptes,. mainly about some fairly abstract questions of Court and Commission competence, but also about the Haferkamp affair with the news, mildly but not totally unwelcome, that Colombo had written with the Aigner request that they should widen their inquiries into travel expenses as well as representation expenses. I said that was acceptable to us, but that it was extremely desirable to complete the whole report by the date they had said, which was the end of April, and to have it dealt with in this Parliament.

  I saw the Chairmen of the EEC Select Committees of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Tony Greenwood and John Eden,30 with two officials; both of them were perfectly agreeable and neither of them was penetrating.

  In the afternoon I saw Peter Parker31 of British Rail and found him as bright as I have always thought him; then the Israeli Ambassador, who mainly wanted to invite me to Jerusalem as he had heard I was going to Egypt; Tad Szulc of the New York Times, whom I had last seen in Washington in 1963 when I was doing a first anniversary piece for the Observer on Cuba II, who turned out to be very good value; and finally Tugendhat.

  That evening, without great enthusiasm, I had a dinner for the Confederation of Socialist Parties. They were mostly as tiresome as ever. Mansholt started off with his old song that the Commission should be much more political in a party sense; there was a Socialist majority (which is doubtful, but maybe) and we should decide all issues by votes on party lines. I replied as robustly as on a previous occasion and was agitated afterwards, thinking I had been too cassant, but Nick Stuart who was there said, ‘Not at all, I think you behaved like a saint under great provocation.’ However it produced, as rows always do upon me, the effect of making me wake full of angst at 5 a.m. and not sleeping again.

  TUESDAY, 20 MARCH. Brussels, Paris and Brussels.

  11.44 TEE from the Gare du Midi to attend the Monnet funeral at Montfort L’Amaury, Michael Jenkins accompanying. One could tell from the beginning that the train was no good. It left nine minutes late, and limped to the French frontier. There were continual works along the line. We stopped on three occasions at least for a full five minutes and it was amazing in the circumstances that we were not more than forty-one minutes late at Paris. That left us exactly forty-four minutes to get from the Gare du Nord to the church in the country to the west of Paris, which would be rather like trying to get from Liverpool Street to near Maidenhead in an equivalent time.

  However, Peter Halsey had taken a more than spectacular initiative. Realizing from the arrival board that we were going to be late, he tried to get motards from the police station at the Gare du Nord, but failed. So he had rung up the British Embassy and they had succeeded. The two motards had arrived literally three or four minutes before we got in; if we hadn’t had the
last maddening stoppage outside Paris we would probably have set off, disastrously, without them. As it was, after not too hair-raising a drive, we arrived at the church at 3.26. Schmidt arrived at 3.27, Giscard arrived at 3.28. The honour of the Commission was saved.

  It was a striking service; an attractive, medium-sized French country church, full, of course. The opening was the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a recording, sung in English, and Schmidt (for whom it didn’t matter) arrived and then Giscard (for whom perhaps it did) came and sat on his little throne between the body of the church and the altar to this transatlantic cadence. Most of the rest of the service was to me not tremendously moving (the Mass I find slightly impersonal on these occasions), but there was a good haunting hymn towards the end, called ‘Dieu, je crois en toi’.

  Then back to the Gare du Nord for the 5.44, and rue de Praetère at 8.30.

  FRIDAY, 23 MARCH. Brussels and Kent.

  No run on security grounds because of news the previous day of the assassination of Richard Sykes,32 the British Ambassador in The Hague, and the still more threatening news (for us) the evening before that a Belgian had been shot dead, probably from the circumstances in mistake for John Killick (Ambassador to NATO), and thus tying up with the intelligence we had received about possible threats six weeks before, but had typically forgotten about in the meantime. On the good old principle of shutting the stable door, the Belgian police were thronging rue de Praetère, and I proceeded to the office at 9.30 with screaming police cars, motorcycle escorts, and a guard of about fourteen policemen. Fortunately I was due to go to London that morning for a weekend in Kent with the Mclntoshes.