European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  From early November onwards everything began to be for the last time: my last visit outside the Community, my last Strasbourg session, my last European Council, my last Council of Ministers, my last COREPER lunch (rather a joy), and eventually my last night in the rue de Praetère house, which was dismantled from 15 December. In addition to these naturally occurring ‘lasts’ there was a whole series of more or less formal specially arranged farewells: to eight member governments (it seemed ludicrous to include the British on this occasion), to the Parliament, to the Council, to the Commission huissiers and drivers.

  I went to England for Christmas on 19 December. I was still President until 6 January 1981, but effective power ceased with the beginning of the Christmas holidays. I returned to Brussels only for a brief two days on 4 January.

  THURSDAY, 3 JANUARY. London.

  Ian Gilmour to lunch at Brooks’s. An enjoyable and, up to a point, useful talk. He is off on a great tour of all the Nine countries, presumably to try and arrange a compromise agreement, though his instructions are remarkably unclear, and the position is made more confused by the fact that Geoffrey Howe1 is going to do four or five of them, not with Ian but more or less overlapping. Certainly the Foreign Office view is that they would settle for some reasonable compromise, but to what extent this represents a thought-out Cabinet view I don’t know.

  We talked a bit at the end about post-Dimbleby centre party issues. He seemed to have one main point that he wished to make to me, that it was a great mistake for me to give any impression—as apparently had appeared (though unobserved by me) in one or two newspapers—that I might come back from Brussels before the end of the year. It was crucial (to what?) to make clear that I would serve out the year. Equally he takes at once a slightly cautious view (as I would expect) about what we might achieve, believing, as he always has done, that one needs to have great interests behind one to succeed in politics. But at the same time also believing it just possible that we might achieve success more quickly than is within the bounds of my imagination. In other words, that we might find it very difficult to advance slowly but that it was just conceivable that the collapse of Conservative support would be so great that one might, in some sort of loose alliance with the Liberals, even win the first general election.

  Another meeting later in the day with three ‘conspirators’ on new party matters, Jim Daly, GLC transport chairman, John Morgan, old New Statesman writer, Harlech Television figure etc., whom I didn’t expect—it is curious how more people than you expect turn up on these occasions—and a man called Clive Lindley, who is one of those curious Welsh marches businessmen, rather like Colin Phipps.2 They were all quite sensible and I hope they are all right. It is going to be very difficult to manoeuvre everyone into position.

  FRIDAY, 4 JANUARY. London and East Hendred.

  George Scott’s great press lunch (for editors to question me on European issues), at which nearly every editor in London turned up with the exception of William Rees-Mogg. We had Fredy Fisher of the FT, Peter Preston of the Guardian, Deedes of the Telegraph, Trelford of the Observer, Harry Evans of the Sunday Times, Charles Wintour of the Evening Standard, Molloy of the Mirror, Andrew Knight of the Economist, and the editors (whose names I cannot remember) of the Express and the Evening News, as well as one or two people from other papers. Only a moderately successful occasion. Nobody asked questions about British politics, except for the Express editor, who started off with a silly brash question, which rather killed the subject. After that a tolerable, not more, discussion on Europe.

  Then, with clearing weather but not rising spirits, I motored with Jennifer to East Hendred. The first few days of January are usually one of the most depressing periods of the year.

  SUNDAY, 6 JANUARY. East Hendred.

  Tried to do my David Bruce tailpiecet3 before the Ginsburgs and Thea Elliott and the Wayland Kennets came to lunch: Wayland a great centre party man, and David Ginsburg sympathetic but cautious, and kept describing a lunch he had had with Denis Healey and insisting how important it was that Jim should be replaced by Denis: so far as I am concerned it is Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  MONDAY, 7 JANUARY. East Hendred.

  Drove up to the Downs for the sunrise at 8.00. David Steel to lunch. I had a good talk with him for three hours. He is very agreeable, sensible and curiously mature. He also looks remarkably like Hayden (Phillips), to an extent I hadn’t realized before. He perfectly understands that there is no question of me or anybody else joining the Liberal Party. He equally is anxious to work very closely, and possibly, if things went well, to consider an amalgamation after a general election. He would like the closeness at the time of the election itself to take the form not merely of a non-aggression pact, but of working together on policy and indeed sharing broadcasts, etc. He says that for this point of view he has overwhelming support in the Liberal Party.

  He agreed with my view that a lot of the calculations were based too much on deciding how much water there was in the kettle, as it were, and how it could be shared out, whereas there was a lot more to be brought in from outside, people uncommitted to and uninvolved in politics. He agreed that it would not be sensible to think purely in terms of the Liberals having Tory seats and our having Labour seats: this was too simple an approach. He fully accepted my point that if, which I was not committing myself to in any way, I wanted to fight a bye-election during 1981, it would probably be much better to do this in a Tory-held seat than in a Labour-held seat, and indicated that his people would make way for me in those circumstances. Altogether a thoroughly satisfactory talk.

  After he went I walked three miles to above West Hendred in the twilight until I left for the Oxford Farming Conference at 7.00. Brief drinks in Worcester and then on to the Randolph Hotel for a rather excessive five-course dinner, sitting between the agreeable chairman and Henry Plumb.

  They accepted my speech, with its rather hard message, quite well, but obviously not enthusiastically. However, it was at least as well received as Peter Walker’s speech, which was intended to be more to their taste and was based on the fallacy that surpluses can be dealt with in a way that is thoroughly acceptable to British farmers, which I believe is nonsense. Somebody has got to be hurt, including the British, if that problem is to be dealt with.

  TUESDAY, 8 JANUARY. East Hendred and Brussels.

  3.45 plane to Brussels. Dinner at home for Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, together on this occasion again, with Emile Noël and Crispin (Tickell). Gundelach more subdued than usual. I think the intractable problem of agricultural prices, plus probably his feeling that the next presidency (of the Commission) is slipping away from him, plus his normal state of semi-exhaustion, is having a slightly rattling effect upon him.

  WEDNESDAY, 9 JANUARY. Brussels and Paris.

  5.17 TEE from the Gare du Midi to Paris to see Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais, and dined with her near the old Saint-Eustache church of revolutionary fame.

  THURSDAY, 10 JANUARY. Paris and Brussels.

  At 7.00 I was driven swiftly through the dark, cold, fairly empty streets of Paris to the Gare du Nord, where I was able to equip myself, surprisingly early, with the English newspapers as well as some French ones. I read them over breakfast and watched a grey dawn across the plains of Picardy.

  A curious man was opposite me in the restaurant car. He spent no less than one and a half hours reading every word of L’Humanité, a remarkable feat of slow concentration which pointed irresistibly to his being either a plodding functionary of the French Communist Party or, more probably, a member of the Deuxième Bureau, or whatever that organization is now called. He then read the Canard Enchainé but got through that at a more normal pace, and then became very impatient to leave although there was no steward to pay. So he eventually got up and departed, I assumed to find the steward.

  A few minutes later a young, non-French-speaking Dutchman arrived and sat in his place, whereupon the steward came and presented him with a bill. He said he hadn’t had breakfa
st, the steward pointed unbelievingly to the dirty plates around him, I rashly intervened, ‘Non, non, ce monsieur vient d’arriver. Ce n’était pas son petit déjeuner. Il y avait quelqu’un d’autre. Il avait la note à la main quand il est parti.’ ‘Dans quelle direction?’ asked the steward. So I said I thought towards the rear of the train. The steward then accusingly said, ‘He was a friend of yours?’ I said, ‘Certainly not.’ He then said would I go with him and find the man. I said, ‘Even more certainly not,’ and the whole thing was on the verge of escalating out of control into a most ridiculous scene.

  However, the train at least got to Brussels on time, and the incident provided me with a peg for my speech at the change of presidency dinner that evening at Val Duchesse. I was finding it desperately difficult to think of anything remotely fresh to say at my seventh dinner in this series.

  FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY. Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

  Took off for Rome just as dawn was breaking on a most beautiful, hard-freezing, clear-skied, Brussels morning. At 11.30 to the Quirinale to call on Pertini, the relatively new octogenarian Socialist President of the Republic, whom I had not met before. Slight worry as to what on earth I was going to talk to him about, for I assumed a statutory half-hour or so, but no problem emerged, for despite it all having to be done through interpretation and our sitting around in an awkward-sized group of about fourteen people, the conversation galloped along, with a great deal of history and a flood of personal judgements (he is tremendously impressed with Mrs Thatcher), accompanied by long expositions of his attitude to world politics stemming from his wartime experiences. A verbose, dynamic, interesting, unconventional little man; the interview, quite unexpectedly, lasted one and a quarter hours.

  From the Quirinale to the Palazzo Chigi for a 1 o’clock meeting with Cossiga. Malfatti was also supposed to be there but had had another heart attack. As a result, Cossiga and I spent a long time alone, discussing what he should do about the Malfatti problem, I saying firmly that he must have a proper Foreign Minister to preside over the Council, that it couldn’t be left to Zamberletti, the quite nice Under-Secretary. He agreed, said that he had to make a change and that he was sorry but Malfatti’s health just wasn’t up to it. Who, therefore, did I think he should appoint? There were two possibilities, Ruffini, the Defence Minister, and Pandolfi, the Finance Minister. Would it be a bad thing to move across the Defence Minister? he curiously asked. Would it look too much as though it were a military appointment? I said, no, schematically there was absolutely no objection to this, though it was of course the case that Pandolfi was linguistically very good and well known and well respected in Community circles. I did not know Ruffini. So he said he would reflect on all this. I hope that he will go for Pandolfi.4

  Partly as a result of this friendly conversation, we were able, when joined by a few others, to clear our thoughts for the next stage of the Commission paper with considerable ease and in a very good atmosphere and to move into lunch at 2.30. On the British budgetary question Cossiga was moderately but not excessively optimistic. He said that the conversations with Ian Gilmour had not gone particularly well the week before because the Lord Privy Seal had had nothing he was able to say to them. I pointed out firmly that this was not his fault, as he had been given a very narrow negotiating brief, but the Italians definitely left me with the impression that they thought it had been a great mistake to undertake this mission without giving it any authority to negotiate on a figure below the 1500 million units of account which the British were still demanding.

  The best Cossiga and I could do was to agree that we would work hard on method, that it was very difficult to say that an early Summit would be worthwhile, though it was too early definitely to rule it out, and that we should be in close touch again at the end of the month after his visit to Mrs Thatcher in London and my visit to Schmidt in Bonn. A useful, agreeable meeting. Plane from Fiumicino and home to rue de Praetère exactly twelve hours after I had left.

  SUNDAY, 13 JANUARY. Brussels.

  Took George and Hilda Canning5 to Tervuren and, for the first time, to the Musée d’Afrique Noire. On the Saturday we had taken them to Waterloo, where Jennifer and I had climbed up the Mound in bitter, sparkling weather. In the late afternoon we went to Malines and found the cathedral more splendid than I had remembered. It was helped by a brilliant winter sunset. Dinner at home alone with the Cannings. George and I had quite a serious political conversation at the end, in which he assured me, without pressing which was good and nice of him, that he would support me in anything I did in the way of a radical centre party, etc. Quite a commitment for him to enter into, particularly as one knows how solid he is when he has said something.

  MONDAY, 14 JANUARY. Brussels.

  I saw Ian Gilmour for half an hour. I hinted to him that the Italian visit hadn’t gone very well and discussed how one should handle things in the future. Afterwards I saw Tom Enders, the new United States Ambassador, an impressive, self-confident, over-tall Yale man, who I think is probably very good. In the afternoon I saw Dick Cooper, one of Carter’s two envoys, Warren Christopher being the other, with the general US briefing about what they wanted us to do on Iran, Afghanistan, etc. I just listened.

  A short late working dinner at home for the Italians, Ruffini, Zamberletti, Plaja, etc. It was rather a remarkable feat on Ruffini’s part to have arrived at all, considering (i) that he had only been appointed, unexpectedly he told me, that morning, (ii) that he had to stay in Rome in order to meet Warren Christopher (who had only arrived at about 5.30) and see him at the airport. However, although I was impressed by his coming, he didn’t quite seem to know whether he was on his head or his feet and while no doubt his knowledge of NATO matters, and, I daresay, Italian internal politics is good, his knowledge of Community affairs is distinctly sketchy. He also seems to me to show signs of being a rather stubborn man, but perhaps that is not a bad thing in an Italian. More serious is the fact that, alas, he speaks no word of English or French. He does not understand even the simplest French phrases.

  TUESDAY, 15 JANUARY. Brussels and Strasbourg.

  Foreign Affairs Council all day until 7.30. Ruffini not surprisingly a somewhat uncertain President. At the Council lunch I had more or less to preside. There was a long wrangle about a communiqué on Afghanistan. The French were very stubbornly for the status quo on agricultural exports to Russia, or even worse than the status quo, and the British tried much too hard to get a long-term change of commercial policy through, i.e. end of sales of subsidized butter to Russia (which they have always wanted) under the shadow of a particular political situation. However, eventually, after an adjournment and the solvent of boredom, a text emerged. Although at one stage there had been eight to one against the French and in favour of a harder line, they managed, by their usual combination of stubbornness and a certain degree of skill—plus the weakness of the others—to get the British into an equally isolated position by the end. Ruffini was a better chairman during the afternoon. Then to Strasbourg by an incompetent avion taxi which wasted two hours.

  WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY. Strasbourg.

  A meeting with Mme Veil at 12.15 and then lunch with her for Ruffini and Zamberletti. She had procured an interpreter for Ruffini but one who could only do French into Italian and, as he added rather pointlessly when we arrived, into German—but not English. However, it didn’t matter because Mme Veil talked nearly all the time and at such a rate that there was no time for the interpreter, poor Ruffini hardly understood a word that was going on and the conversation passed between her (rattling along) and Zamberletti and me (both limping behind). Not a very pointful occasion.

  Just before sunset I went for a forty-minute walk in the Orangerie with Nick Stuart. It was, I think, the coldest walk that I have ever had on this side of the Atlantic. We walked very fast and heavily clad round the frozen park, on a beautiful day (as all this period of weather has been), with the setting sun a great red ball glowing through the frost, but I was still agonizingly
cold at the end, and had the impression that my clothes were disintegrating almost in the way that I experienced in Chicago ten years ago. The temperature was about 20°F, which is extremely low for the middle of the afternoon in Western Europe.

  Dinner after a Commission meeting with the Fred Warners and the Frank Giles’.6 Frank rather shocked by some of my remarks about Giscard.

  THURSDAY, 17 JANUARY. Strasbourg and Brussels.

  Took Pieter Dankert,7 the rapporteur of the Budget Committee, to lunch. I found him as I expected an able and impressive man, and certainly a remarkably good linguist. Yet, at the same time, I had the impression that there is some fault which may account for the fact that he has not achieved more in Dutch politics, and that – not that this is a bar to achievement in politics—he may not be as nice as he is able. We talked a little about the future Commission, and he told me the most extraordinary story: that Bernard-Reymond had been in Strasbourg canvassing the claims of Cheysson to be President. As the French spend most of their time putting in complaints to me about Cheysson’s statements, this seems very odd indeed, even on the unlikely assumption that the French have any remote claim to the presidency. It must be some sort of ploy, I think. Then back to Brussels in the little avion de ligne.

  FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY. Brussels and New York.

  1 p.m. Sabena plane to New York.

  At 8.30 I went with Marietta Tree to a most extraordinary dinner at a restaurant called Le Cirque given by a rich Texan wife, for about fifty people, most of whom she did not know, and in honour of the Kissingers, whom she had asked to choose the guest list. This turned out a remarkable, and in some ways uneasy, mixture of New York grand society and café society and one or two who belonged to neither. Her husband had unfortunately disappeared into hospital three or four days before, but she, an extremely bouncy lady of about forty, carried on with tremendous aplomb, even making a slightly contrived but by no means bad speech.