European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  SATURDAY, 17 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

  I had a meeting with Davignon, Ortoli and Crispin—Gundelach away in Italy, thank God (not thank God particularly that he was away: it would have been better if they had all been away) - which went on unbelievably from 6.30 p.m. until 9.00 achieving remarkably little, with Francis being at his worst. Therefore I was rather bad-tempered at dinner with our weekend guests.

  MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER. Brussels, The Hague and Brussels.

  Train with Crispin from the Gare du Nord to The Hague, where we first had a meeting under van der Klaauw’s chairmanship and then a luncheon in the Catshuis which van Agt joined. The meeting was with a number of ministers—perhaps six or eight of them—and the lunch was equally strongly attended. It was a singularly satisfactory encounter with the Dutch. Quite a good detailed meeting beforehand and then, at lunch, although almost completely sacrificing my food as a result, I was able to give them an exposition of the British problem and why it existed and why it had to be solved as far as one could, which I think was more persuasive and more reasonable than anything I had done before on the subject and undoubtedly shifted them considerably. It focused my mind more sharply than previously, and they seemed very pleased with all aspects of the meeting and expressed themselves very strongly in this sense.

  I had a brief talk at the end alone with van Agt and van der Klaauw and we got very near to what it might be possible for them to do.43 Also, when van Agt was briefly out of the room, van der Klaauw asked me whether I was a candidate to continue as President of the Commission, and I explained to him very firmly that I was not a candidate and probably not available, but not certainly so as I did not wish to be too much of a lame duck during the last year. He seemed to understand completely and van Agt, when he came back, I think took the same point.

  Back to Brussels by train. Dinner at the Irish Embassy for Michael O’Kennedy, with the normal three on each side. There was serious talk over dinner and again an exposition of the British problem from me. Not as well done as in The Hague and they were more resistant, particularly Dillon who clearly has a very strong anti-English streak in him. I suppose the Irish all have to some extent and it is totally understandable.

  TUESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

  Finally cleared and sent to London for release the text of the Dimbleby Lecture. God knows how it will go, but at this stage one can only hope for the best. A short, early lunch with Martens, the Belgian Prime Minister. It was an attempt at a repeat of the performance with the Dutch the previous day. Simonet who was present was, if anything, more difficult than Martens. It was another useful exercise, undoubtedly making some progress with them though they are a step or two behind the Dutch. Foreign Affairs Council all afternoon and then a longish and fairly difficult (British budgetary) meeting with Gundelach and Ortoli.

  WEDNESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

  Three-and-a-half-hour Commission meeting. Lunched with COREPER at the Charlemagne. I don’t know why these luncheons are coming so close together at the present time. This was a much easier and more constructive encounter than on the previous occasion two weeks before. Four-hour Commission in the afternoon, very long, late and wearing. The last three days have not been exactly the way to prepare and be fresh for Dimbleby.

  THURSDAY, 22 NOVEMBER. Brussels and London.

  The long-awaited Dimbleby day. I spoke to the European Youth Forum for about half an hour from 10.15. Afterwards to the Parliamentary Committee on Information, which I also addressed, again for about half an hour, and in this case had to listen and reply to a discussion of some length, for which I was not perfectly briefed. The 12.45 plane to London was fortunately late, so that I was able to stay with them until 12.35. Otherwise there could have been ill-feeling. Then, of all things, there was no drink and no lunch on the plane, on the splendidly inadequate ground that there were only three stewards instead of five. As there were only eight first-class passengers, they would not have had the slightest difficulty in serving drinks, and indeed lunch had they wished (tourist-class passengers don’t get lunch in any case). Presumably there is some union rule about not being willing to do anything with fewer than five stewards. As a result all three of them did absolutely nothing for the whole flight, except make themselves coffee; extremely irritating.

  To the Savoy Hotel, where I had taken a small suite and where I had a late, light lunch and a last read-through of the lecture, before going the few hundred yards to the Royal Society of Arts where John Harris met me at 4 o’clock. There we had a rehearsal of the walk-on and walk-off, and a run-through of a few pages to make sure that the timing was right. Our best calculations indicated that I should be about two minutes within the allocated forty-eight/forty-nine minutes.

  Back to the Savoy with John and Jennifer for a rest, change and a drink, and then back to the Royal Society at about 7 o’clock, and proceeded to deliver the over-matured lecture to a full and fairly distinguished audience. Amazingly, I suppose the response to having an audience, all our careful calculations went awry and it took fifty-two minutes, but as the whole of the top echelons of the BBC were sitting in the front row, they could hardly cut me off.

  Afterwards, feeling reasonably pleased, I went downstairs for a party for perhaps half to three-quarters of an hour. Everybody was really pretty enthusiastic and interested, the only person manifestly hostile being a somewhat bleary Ian Waller (of the Sunday Telegraph) who apparently went round saying it was absolute nonsense. The journalists in general, however, were more sceptical than the others, this applying, for example, to Fred Emery of The Times.

  Of the politicians present, none was hostile and some were enthusiastic. Bill Rodgers, who had had an extremely important lunch with John Horam44 that day (who had had a great influence on him) said that suddenly in the course of the lecture he had had a vision of himself sitting in the headquarters of the new party with his sleeves rolled up, actually organizing things, which I took to mean—I hope rightly—that Bill had passed over some emotional watershed. Ian Wrigglesworth was there and was also enthusiastic, and Phillip Whitehead,45 although much more detached, was certainly not hostile.

  FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER. London, Brussels, Paris and East Hendred.

  Inevitably woke up early full of angst and apprehension about what the newspapers would look like and what other reactions would be. In fact, the newspapers were by no means bad. A good deal of coverage and none of it or hardly any of it at this stage markedly other than what I would have wanted.

  11.30 plane to Brussels—not that I wanted to go to Brussels, I wanted to go to Paris, but the wretched air traffic controllers’ strike being still on and avion taxis being too extravagant (at any rate I had no excuse for one back from a private engagement), the only way to get to Paris was to go via Brussels, and motor.

  Having achieved Paris, I went to the Elysée to see Giscard for fifty minutes. It was the usual sort of Giscard interview—polite, cool, even cold, though the coolness at least equal on my side by now to that on his. It was clear that he was willing to do a certain amount, made no complaint about our paper in the Commission’s circumstances, clear equally that he wasn’t going to do a great deal, clear that he was going to insist on a number of unrelated concessions in return for whatever he agreed to, clear too that he was leaning back and was going to be in a detached, passively awkward mood (perhaps the best way of putting it) at Dublin. This meeting was not in itself particularly worthwhile, but it was important that I had gone through the motions of seeing him beforehand.

  Then to Avenue Franklin Roosevelt for a quick, early dinner with Marie-Alice. I found her in a fairly poor condition, I suppose. Shattered certainly, but also embittered by the two years of official neglect which had preceded Jacques’s death. She was extremely hostile to the French powers that be, and showed me a sharp letter which she had sent to François-Poncet in response to the rather ludicrous typewritten letter which he had sent to her on behalf of the French Government. She fortunately completely understood why
we hadn’t been able to go to the funeral and was pleased with the piece which I had written about Jacques over the previous weekend and which had appeared in The Times on the morning of Monday 19th. She was unwilling—at first I thought only superficially—to have a memorial service in London because it would have to be organized by the French Embassy. But towards the end of dinner I became convinced that she was serious about this and therefore decided that there was nothing more to be done. Nonetheless I enjoyed seeing her, it was not as wearing as it sounds, and she is still very much the highly individual, indomitable, totally splendid Marie-Alice. 9.30 plane (late) and East Hendred at 11.45.

  SATURDAY, 24 NOVEMBER. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.

  To London to address the annual meeting of the European Movement, almost the last thing I wanted to do after the previous few days. There were three speeches, from George Thomson, Heath and me. I spoke pretty unprepared; I had a text but didn’t like it. Lunch with the Gilmours at Isleworth. East Hendred at 4.30. I was very tired, but by this time, from letters and other responses, it was beginning to be clear that public reaction to Dimbleby had been better than the press reaction, though the press reaction had not been bad, and that the resonance was very considerable indeed.

  SUNDAY, 25 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

  I did only a little desultory work in the morning. Although it was the weekend before a European Council—and a pretty crucial one –I felt I had done most of the preparation I could on this, knew the subject well, and in any event having two major events running so closely together meant that Dimbleby at least had the advantage that I could not worry too much about Dublin.

  The Sunday press was not bad: an immensely long but slightly confused leader in the Observer; a very good leader in the Sunday Times; a hostile leader in the Telegraph, predictably and not woundingly so.

  Bradleys to lunch. Tom managed to go on until 2.30 without mentioning Dimbleby. At first I thought it was not exactly because he strongly disapproved of it (if so he would have told me) but more because, in Tom’s curious switch-off way, he had been so preoccupied with Kettering Town or some such thing, that he just hadn’t noticed that it had taken place. But when, however, I at last raised it half-way through lunch, he was fully aware of everything and all the reactions to it, and pretty strongly approving. What he disapproved of desperately was that by some appalling accident he hadn’t been invited to the lecture itself and, even worse, he had been approached by David Owen on Westminster tube station on the Wednesday evening, he (Owen) having got a copy of the lecture, from the press no doubt, and he (Tom) having very little idea what was in it.

  However, Owen had almost totally retrieved the position by telling Tom how much he disapproved of it, and by saying that it was ‘very unfair of Roy to do this to those of us who have risked our careers for him’. To which Tom reacted violently, and not unreasonably, saying, ‘You’ve risked your career for him? You’ve risked nothing at all. What better career do you think you could have had? You are a walking career,’ and stumped off. Owen had denounced the lecture in not exactly violent but in slightly disagreeable terms in a speech, I think on the Friday at lunchtime, which had appeared in the press on the Saturday.

  MONDAY, 26 NOVEMBER. East Hendred, London, Dublin and Brussels.

  To London by train and a little late (but we had warned her and she showed no sign of umbrage) to my hour’s meeting with Mrs Thatcher: a shorter, more restrained, equally friendly, encounter than on the previous occasion. I could not quite make out whether she was prepared to compromise or not. I don’t think she wants a break and she reiterated her point that there is no question of her leaving the Community, no question of an empty chair, no question of illegality. It is not clear either whether she will accept any sort of postponement.

  Lunchtime plane to Dublin, and then an hour and a half’s meeting with Lynch. This was almost entirely devoted to the agenda, although there was some discussion about where he had got in a previous meeting with Schmidt. I found him in very typical Lynch-like form, anxious to be guided on the agenda, though fairly pessimistic, and sensibly so, about the outcome of his European Council. There being a gap after this, we went to the Irish National Gallery, which was well worth doing, before our plane to Brussels. After dinner I went into the Berlaymont, where the lights would not work, and had a forty-minute telephone conversation with Schmidt. Sitting in total darkness, I rounded up things with him.

  TUESDAY, 27 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

  Studied the letters on Dimbleby which were pouring in from various addresses at this stage. They were remarkably favourable and of remarkably high quality. The numbers were not enormous (a few hundred) and never achieved vast proportions, but compared with previous big correspondences this one was notable for the complete conviction and commitment with which people wrote. And also for the fact that, whereas when, say, I resigned from the deputy leadership, they broke 70/30 favourably, these broke literally 99 to 1 favourably, with the 1 per cent being dotty rather than against.

  I then gave lunch for Poensgen, the new German Permanent Representative. He had been Ambassador in Greece; he is an unimpressive-looking man and came with a reputation for being difficult. But I found him agreeable and sensible.

  THURSDAY, 29 NOVEMBER. Brussels and Dublin.

  To Abelag for an avion taxi to Dublin—we thought that even in present circumstances we could and should afford one on this occasion—with Ortoli, his Chef de Cabinet and my various staff in extremely cooped-up conditions. It was an extraordinarily long and roundabout flight, so that we had to go straight to the state luncheon in the President’s house in Phoenix Park.

  A rather good luncheon, but too large and too long. I sat between Martens and Simonet (very Belgian rather than very English this time). The Council started at 3.40 in Dublin Castle and went on until 8.10. There was a certain amount of routine stuff introduced by us first, which lasted longer than I expected (some, I think, were rather keen that it should do so). Then into the budget question about 6 o’clock, introduced briefly by me. Mrs Thatcher did quite well for once, a bit shrill as usual, but not excessively so. There was quite a good initial response. The Italians and the Irish, for instance, offered to pay their share and it was agreed without much question that we should fully apply the financial mechanism.

  Schmidt started to cross-question me on how we could do things beyond that, which was difficult but not impossible. Then towards the end Mrs Thatcher got the discussion bogged down by being far too demanding. Her mistake, which fed on itself subsequently at dinner and indeed the next morning, arose out of her having only one of the three necessary qualities of a great advocate. She has nerve and determination to win, but she certainly does not have a good understanding of the case against her (which was based on the own-resources theory, or theology if you like), which means that her constantly reiterated cry of ‘It’s my money I want back’, strikes an insistently jarring note. ‘Voilà parle la vraie fille de l’épicier,’ someone (I think Simonet) said. She lacks also the third quality, which is that of not boring the judge or the jury, and she bored everybody endlessly by only understanding about four out of the fourteen or so points on the British side and repeating each of them twenty-seven times. But that developed over the evening. Up to the 8.10 adjournment there was no real progress but no disaster either.

  Dinner was at Iveagh House. Mrs Thatcher sailed in last, but behaving rather well, particularly as I gathered that she had had (i) an explosive row with her senior officials on the way over in the plane, so that it nearly blew up over St George’s Channel, and (ii) another explosive row in the interval between the adjournment and dinner. But she came in looking in full command of herself.

  She kept us all round the dinner table for four interminable hours. During the first part, the bilateral conversations over dinner, she mainly talked to me (I was next to her) in order to avoid talking to Giscard, who was on her other side. Then there was a general conversation about nuclear defence, in which she
upbraided, in a rather uncomprehending way, the little countries for their pusillanimous attitude. She was somewhat supported by Giscard (who was not very comprehending or sensitive either), but not by Schmidt, who felt passionately, on her side, about the substance but felt forced to intervene with a statement saying that neither she nor Giscard could understand non-nuclear sensitivities, because they had been nuclear powers for a long time, but he understood them even though he did not agree with them. (During this conversation she vouchsafed her only awareness of Dimbleby. The Belgian Prime Minister was justifying his hesitancy about cruise missiles by citing his coalition difficulties. Mrs Thatcher turned to me with a mixture of belligerence, good humour and total self-satisfaction and announced to a slightly bewildered table—none of them elected by the British system - ‘And that is all your great schemes would amount to.’)

  Back then to the budget question with her reiterated demand becoming more and more counterproductive. At times she was not bad and always maintained her temper though not her judgement, even under considerable provocation, particularly from Jorgensen who, partly because he can’t speak English well, was at times behaving like a little street urchin calling out insults. Schmidt got frightfully bored and pretended (but only pretended) to go to sleep.

  It was obvious to everyone except her that she wasn’t making progress and was alienating people. Giscard was able to lean back, as he had in the afternoon, and shelter behind Schmidt, which is a bad position from the British point of view. There were no great rows, only the Jorgensen insults and Schmidt simulating sleep. Cossiga, attending his first European Council, was immensely active, perhaps talking a little too much, canvassing heavily the idea of a special February European Council (the Italian presidency begins on 1 January) as things couldn’t be settled in Dublin, to which I was moderately favourable and one or two other people maybe were too. Back to the Shelbourne Hotel very late.