European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  FRIDAY, 30 NOVEMBER. Dublin and East Hendred.

  During the night or while dressing I came to the firm conclusion that the only thing to go for was a postponement. Postponement is sometimes a mistake, if it is done just for the sake of postponement, but it appeared to me (a) that if one were in a room and didn’t like the furniture, and another room was offered, at least try it, and (b) that people were rather frightened of a great quarrel in the Community, and with all the pressures upon us from the Iranian situation and the American reaction to that situation, the general impending economic threat, etc., that postponement might produce a better atmosphere in February or March, and (c), which in a sense is part of (b), that all sorts of things might happen in the next two months—the Americans might conceivably think it necessary to make some sort of pre-emptive strike in the south of Iran, or something of this sort, and that therefore there could be circumstances in which we could reach a settlement later, which we could not do now.

  I tried to telephone Schmidt to this end, but missed him. At 10.00 I went (at her request) to see Mrs Thatcher in Dublin Castle where she was installed (perhaps incarcerated is the better word), because the Irish felt that nowhere else would be satisfactory from the security point of view (all the rest of us were in embassies or hotels). It was an unforgettable scene. Those two important knights, Sir Michael Palliser and Sir Robert Armstrong, were sitting in inspissated gloom. The atmosphere was enlivened, if that is the right word, by a plaque upon the wall saying: ‘In this room James Connolly, signatory to the proclamation of the Irish Republic, lay a wounded prisoner prior to his execution by the British military force at Kilmainham Jail and his interment at Arbour Hill, 12th May, 1916.’ She wasted half the time on a harangue, which embarrassed her two knights and bored me (the worst aspect was the time it wasted) but her purpose was to say that she would accept a postponement.

  Then the so-called ‘family photograph’, during which I was urgently and obviously talking to Schmidt, trying to urge the postponement upon him as he and Giscard were leaning back and saying there was no point in it. Then the Council met from 10.40 to 2.40. We had a Commission text which we eventually got adopted. The Belgians had a less good text, but they helpfully accepted ours. But Giscard and Schmidt were unwilling to accept a postponement until Mrs Thatcher had said that she would approach the next meeting in a spirit of compromise. This for some time she declined to do, just going on banging away at the old points. Eventually Peter Carrington (who was out of the room too much, with various other things on his mind) had a word with her, and in her next intervention she said—the words coming out of her with almost physical difficulty, but given her character having meaning nonetheless -’Yes, I would approach such an early European Council in a spirit of genuine compromise.’

  Giscard then said, ‘I do not want there to be confusion between a compromise and a misunderstanding. You may think we have got a compromise, but what we may have is a misunderstanding which can lead to nothing but trouble for the future ‘But he eventually agreed, though he was rather irritated by the draft which I put forward and indeed took Ortoli out to complain about it, having rather offensively asked: ‘Is this the draft of the Commission, or the President of the Commission speaking personally?’ I said I spoke with the authority of the Commission. It could manifestly hardly have been considered by the whole Commission, as they weren’t there, but it was well within the terms of our paper. So it was eventually agreed that the Italians should make soundings as to whether the circumstances existed for having an earlier Council. We galloped through the remaining items not very satisfactorily, as some of them were important, notably Europe’s weakening position in information technology. But the Council was wholly dominated by the British budgetary question.

  Then a three-quarters-of-an-hour press conference with Lynch -a huge gathering of journalists as usual. He did it well, better than I would have expected. Questions came about equally to both of us. There was a certain amount of difference between us, enough to have excited Giscard had he been in the Taoiseach’s position, but not to cause any drama with a modest, reasonable man like Lynch.

  I flew to London in a howling gale, and, with a considerable feeling of relief, got to East Hendred by 7.00. It was nice to have both Dimbleby and the European Council over.

  SATURDAY, 1 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

  To Didcot to pick up Bill Rodgers, who was returning from South Wales where he had been making a striking and helpful speech at Abertillery, brought him back to East Hendred, where we arrived at exactly the same time as Shirley Williams from London. I talked with them for an hour or more before lunch and went over the position. There was a fairly good identity of view, though both of them—Shirley perhaps a little more than Bill—were anxious to say that it was always possible, although not likely, that things would go sufficiently well in the Labour Party that they would want to stay with it; but they were quite willing to contemplate all other possibilities. Bill in particular struck me as being emotionally committed (surprisingly for Bill) to a break. Shirley has always been in a sense more intellectually open to it than Bill, but has not yet passed over the sort of watershed that he did some time at the end of November—the day of my lecture, I think, though maybe a lunch with John Horam on that day was even more decisive than the lecture.

  They both thought that if Healey were elected leader of the party, Callaghan going in perhaps a year’s time, that would be a period of setback for us. There would be a tendency for people to rally to a new, tougher leader and give him a chance, but equally neither of them had any real faith in Denis doing anything new, giving any new direction, or had any loyalty to him. It was a very worthwhile talk. Bill even seemed keen to get down to almost small details of organization, which is a very good sign with him. But who can say what will happen?

  SUNDAY, 2 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

  Bonham Carters, Asa Briggs’ and Wyatts to lunch. After lunch I talked seriously to Woodrow for perhaps twenty minutes or so, giving him a rundown on the Dublin Council. He had been on the telephone to Mrs Thatcher that morning and he spoke to her again after he had gone back and then telephoned me. I gave him a fairly accurate account of her performance, both the good and the bad parts.

  THURSDAY, 6 DECEMBER. Brussels and London.

  To London after yet another COREPER lunch. I travelled across with John Sainsbury, whom I was pleased to see. He seemed pro-Dimbleby. Other people I had seen in the morning, notably Chandler,46 the Director-General of NEDO, had also been pro-Dimbleby. I had Colin Phipps,47 ex-MP, who gave up his seat to seek a Euro seat but failed to get one and is now extremely anxious to be an organizing figure in some new party, to see me. I had always been a little suspicious of him, mainly because in the 1976 leadership contest he had done us a good deal of harm by first of all announcing that he was a keen supporter of mine because I would clean out all the dead wood from the Government, which meant that the many people who feared that they might be dead wood immediately became extremely suspicious of voting for me, and then, having done this damage, switched to Healey a week later. However, on this occasion he was impressive: agreeable, easy, had done a good deal of work, very optimistic about the possibilities, and seemed to have contacted a lot of people.

  FRIDAY, 7 DECEMBER. London and Dublin.

  12.10 plane to Dublin. Lunched at the Hibernian Hotel with Denis Corboy, the head of our Dublin office. Then to Trinity College to be robed and to take part, fortunately without a speech, in the degree ceremony. We were greeted in Dublin by the news that Haughey48 had beaten Colley, by a fairly narrow but nonetheless decisive margin, for the leadership of Fianna Fáil and hence the Prime Ministership following Lynch’s surprising (not in substance but in exact timing) two days’ old announcement that he was resigning. Lynch very kindly came to the ceremony, as did Michael O’Kennedy, which like all TCD things was rather splendidly conducted, all in Latin, in a very good hall.

  Then an hour with Jack Lynch in his familiar old office in
which I have often seen him, and Cosgrave before then. He was sad to be going, obviously feeling slightly that he had been pushed out. He did not conceal his dismay at Haughey’s election, but reminisced agreeably about the past few years. A nice man, but not I suppose an immensely dynamic or effective one. However, he has held the leadership for thirteen years, has been Prime Minister twice and has prevented a lot worse things happening in Irish politics. Not that I am convinced that Haughey, who is odd, colourful and possibly but not certainly dangerous, will be all that bad.

  Afterwards I tried to cobble together a speech for the Trinity College dinner that evening. I had enjoyable conversations with on one side F. S. L. Lyons, the Provost and biographer of Parnell (which incidentally he, like me, pronounces Parn’ll), and the Professor of Greek on the other. The whole occasion was very typically TCD, which is quite good at trying to make Oxford and Cambridge seem rather redbrick.

  MONDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

  I had Peter Walker for lunch, rue de Praetère. He was anxious to be friendly and made a most unfavourable impression. He opened fairly soon after we sat down at the table by saying, ‘I know you think that I don’t get on well enough with Gundelach, but what you ought to know, indeed you may have heard already because I asked Ian Gilmour to tell you [he wisely hadn’t told me], is that although you are always very pro-Gundelach, Gundelach when he came over and saw me made the most disobliging, disloyal remarks about you.’ I know this is not entirely out of character, alas, with Gundelach, as I had heard it once or twice before. I think it stems partly from the fact that he is constantly on the verge of exhaustion and from the fact that he can’t bear not being the star of everything. He has a rather misty, Nordic vanity. I, however, was determined not to rise to this, showed no great interest and didn’t ask Peter Walker to say what Gundelach had said, which he was obviously very keen to do.

  However, Peter obviously thought that he was on to a very skilful ploy and followed it up with a number of other almost equally disobliging or unfortunate remarks. He disavowed Ted Heath, saying he had never been a close friend of his, though perhaps he ought to go and see him because he thought he was in a very poor condition and had taken to eating chocolate biscuits from morning until night, which was a very bad sign. He said my Dimbleby Lecture was no doubt interesting, but in the House of Commons people had said it was my taking the temperature and that at one time in the past—which is without foundation -1 had launched the idea of forming a new party with Harold Lever, and then recoiled (quite untrue: much though I love him I would never start an organizational venture with Harold).

  Conversationally, Walker was forthcoming, anxious to be friendly, and altogether left rather a nasty taste in my mouth: curious because he is quite an able man.

  Then a very bouncy and full avion taxi ride to Strasbourg. It’s very odd that the air between Brussels and London should always be so relatively calm—it is very unusual to bounce on that journey -and so frequently very rough between Brussels and Luxembourg or Brussels and Strasbourg. I think the meeting point between the Central European and the Atlantic weather systems must produce a concentration of unstable air.

  The new Monday evening question time for an hour and a half, appallingly long. As I had rather thought, the new arrangement is likely to be the beginning of the end of question time: (i) a continuous hour and a half is not nearly as good as two three-quarters of an hour, and (ii) Monday evening means that not all that many people are there, and those that are there are mostly British because they are the only people who like question time.

  Then I introduced the supplementary budget, in a rather dull speech of about fifteen minutes, but they seemed pleased that I had done it.

  WEDNESDAY, 12 DECEMBER. Strasbourg.

  Another filthy morning, and I worked rather gloomily on another speech, and then rushed up to the Parliament to be ready to open at 9 o’clock. Typically, this had been changed the night before without anybody telling us and in fact I didn’t have to speak until just after 11 o’clock, when I delivered a fairly brisk, fifteen-minute report on the Dublin European Council and then listened to Lenihan,49 the new Irish Foreign Minister. Gave lunch with Crispin to Henry Grunwald,50 the managing editor of Time, and his interesting wife. We had quite a substantial meal, which was as well for we then returned for the Budget Council, which began at 3.20 and went on until just after 4.30 in the morning with nothing to eat at all and nothing to drink except for a few whiskies which I got from the British delegation at about 1 o’clock. It was a singular misapplication and waste of thirteen hours of continuous and exhausting session.

  It was not a high-level Council. Lenihan was in the chair and in some ways was not bad, Lahnstein was representing the Germans, Bernard-Reymond the French, Nigel Lawson51 the British, an Italian and a Belgian I did not know, van der Mei (as slow and stubborn as ever) for the Dutch, Ersboll for the Danes. At first it seemed as though a compromise between Council and Parliament was likely, but gradually the hope of this faded away mainly because of the foolishness and chaos of the Council. The Parliament was less concerned with sums of money than with getting some effective control over agricultural expenditure for the future.

  Eventually we adjourned at 4.40, with the Parliament representatives saying that they would put the proposals to the Budget Committee at 8 o’clock in the morning, but with no great feeling that they were likely to be accepted. Mme Veil clearly wanted acceptance and a compromise, no doubt because of the delicacy of her position. The fact that the French had been somewhat more forthcoming than the Germans and the British undoubtedly in my view owed a great deal to an Elysée desire not to embarrass her. Bed only at 6 a.m. Up again just after 8 o’clock.

  THURSDAY, 13 DECEMBER. Strasbourg and Brussels.

  To the Parliament at 10.15. It was then clear that there was going to be a very heavy rejection of the budget. Hurried discussion with Davignon and one or two other Commissioners. Then in the early stages of the debate I hurriedly wrote out a very brief statement which I would make when the vote had been taken saying that the Commission naturally regretted that there was not a budget but carefully refraining from saying that we regretted what the Parliament had done. The train was temporarily off the tracks and we would take full responsibility in the interests of the Community as a whole for trying to get it back on at the earliest favourable moment, and for this we would need the cooperation of both halves of the budgetary authority. This did not commit us specifically to producing a preliminary draft budget, although in my own mind I already thought that it would be necessary, and it did not commit us either to a date, which was wise because the Parliament was not in a great hurry.

  Impressive statements were made by several people on behalf of the groups, Dankert and Lange (Socialist), Bangemann (Liberal), Klepsch (Christian Democrat). Only Ansquer for the Gaullists and somebody for the French Communists, making the most extraordinary cliché-ridden speech (pretty close to the Gaullist line), spoke against. The worst speech was the opening one from Lenihan, in which he made an ill-judged appeal to the Parliament to behave responsibly and was greeted with some derision.

  I had an extraordinary scene with Vredeling towards the end of the morning. Obviously in a great state (he hadn’t gone to bed at all and had gone round looking for a group to harangue and found his way into early morning meetings of the Budget Committee and the Socialist Group and made badly received statements to both of them), he started to complain that we hadn’t had a Commission meeting and that there was no collegiality. I said that there weren’t enough Commissioners in Strasbourg to have a Commission, and all the few there had been consulted and all were in favour of what I proposed to do, except apparently for him. He said there would be a disaster and I would be howled down if I did not immediately promise a preliminary draft budget by a specific date, and if I did not do it he would get up afterwards and do it. I said, ‘Very well, you do that and one of us resigns tomorrow and the Commission will decide which it is.’ So
he then declined into muttering and head-shaking, looking very hysterical, though in no way due to alcohol which he does seem to have kept off.

  At the end, when the overwhelming vote had been announced, I got up and made my brief statement, which lasted only a minute and a half and which was very well received. After that I rather insufferably said to Vredeling, ‘If only your judgement was as good as your heart, Henk, life would be much easier, wouldn’t it?’ He said, ‘Oh dear, I was only being so anxious because I was afraid it would go wrong and I didn’t want you to do it wrong.’ So I patted his arm in a fairly friendly way and went off. A most extraordinary man, foolish but good-hearted.

  Lunch with Fred Warner52 and Jennifer at La Wantzenau. Afternoon non-TEE back to Brussels: we could get seats neither on the aeroplane nor the evening TEE. Strasbourg transport is intolerable.

  FRIDAY, 14 DECEMBER. Brussels.

  Home at 6.30 feeling very exhausted and extremely loath to go to Château de la Hulpe and have our long evening with Suárez, Spanish Prime Minister, and Calvo Sotelo, whom we had invited, to have eighteen hours or so of talks. Laura and Hayden had arrived to stay at about lunchtime and it would have been a great deal pleasanter to dine with them and Jennifer.

  At La Hulpe I had a longish talk with Suárez both before and during dinner, all through an interpreter which in some ways makes it more of an effort, but at least makes it more precise than if we were both talking bad French. Suárez made as favourable an impression upon me, in spite of the somewhat unfavourable circumstances, as he had done when I had last seen him in Madrid.

  SATURDAY, 15 DECEMBER. Brussels.

  To Château de la Hulpe for 9.30 and then a long talk with Suárez more or less alone. I put firmly our attitude to the negotiations, our desire to conclude them according to the timetable he had in mind, by the end of 1980 (the bulk of them at any rate) with a view to Spanish admission at the beginning of 1983.53 This would require considerable effort and accommodating spirit on both sides. We wanted to strengthen not weaken the Spanish economy, but this must be done in a way which was compatible with membership of the Community. Equally there had to be certain changes in the agricultural policy or it would be impossible just to graft Spain on to it without having bankrupting sums of money involved in olive oil alone. Also they must take seriously our trans-Mediterranean preoccupations, just as we attach great importance and value to their special Latin American contacts and the strength which they could give the Community.