by Roy Jenkins
Brief lunch in Naples on the roof terrace of the Vesuvio Hotel, with a very good view of the bay. East Hendred in pouring rain at 8.30.
THURSDAY, 14 AUGUST. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.
George Brown to lunch at Brooks’s. He was on remarkably good form, drinking a moderate quantity of wine, which seemed to me rather better than the absolute abstention of our last previous encounter. He was extremely keen to play a role (in a new party) and I believe on the whole he could be effective as I think he still has a hold on people’s affections, though quite how much influence I find difficult to judge. I arranged to have some discussions which he would set up with trade union leaders and possibly to appear on a joint platform in the New Year.
Then my dreaded visit to the Hadey Street gastroenterologist. I had discovered at the end of lunch that he was George Brown’s doctor; not sure whether I find this reassuring. Saw him for three-quarters of an hour. Really rather an anti-climax. One of these visits which are very satisfactory at the time, but a little less so subsequently. At first you are suffused with the relief of a negative diagnosis, but after a bit realize that you have not been cured.
FRIDAY, 15 AUGUST. East Hendred.
Hendersons to lunch. Nicko not vastly informed about American politics, and in a sense I think not terribly interested in them, though interested in America as a place.
SUNDAY, 17 AUGUST. East Hendred.
Rodgers’ to lunch from 1.15 to 4.30. Not a great deal of political conversation with Bill, and not very easy to get a grip on his position even when we did. He described the operations of the Gang of Three55 and expressed himself very pleased with the result. He was perfectly amiable but I did not feel as close to him as I have on most occasions in the past.
TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST. East Hendred.
Bradleys to lunch (the garden was just possible) from 1.10 to 6.30(!). I like them both immensely. Tom very resolute and I really feel closer to him than to any other of my old political friends. Despite Tom’s professional pessimism, they cheered me up.
FRIDAY, 22 AUGUST. East Hendred.
Worked on the Baldwin manuscript getting it into a shape in which it could be retyped, the top copy having been lost. Had a satisfactory talk with David Steel on the telephone about 7.00. He is a remarkably buoyant young man.
MONDAY, 25 AUGUST. Talsarnau.
On a most beautiful morning I drove the three miles into Harlech at 8.00 to get the newspapers and then drove down to the beach near Glyn and sat looking across the estuary towards Portmeirion and reading them for an hour. Two sets of tennis with David and Pamela (Harlech). Walked along the beach on the south side of the estuary for an hour in the early evening. Perfect day.
TUESDAY, 26 AUGUST. Talsarnau.
An equally good day. Tennis for an hour at noon but only one, very long, satisfactory set. At about 5.30 we drove down to the sea and half walked and half waded across to the island of Ynys where there is a small deserted cottage. Then down once again, the evening being so perfect, with Jennifer to see the sun set over the Lleyn peninsula.
SUNDAY, 31 AUGUST. East Hendred.
The last day of the holidays. The David Owens to lunch in weather just good enough to be able to eat in the garden. A remarkable change in him since the last time I had talked to him, almost exactly a year ago, at East Hendred. Then it had been a slightly stiff occasion, he very much the ex-Foreign Secretary, a little defensive about his position and certainly not very open to me. In the intervening twelve months he had disapproved strongly of the Dimbleby Lecture although much less, curiously, of the Press Gallery speech in June. I suppose this was partly because he had begun to move. However, the events of this summer, particularly perhaps the Labour Party Special Conference, at which he had been booed for a multilateralist speech, had clearly left a deep impression on him and he had stiffened and toughened a lot, and also become in my view a great deal more agreeable than he had been since before he became Foreign Secretary. Very anxious to keep in touch for the future, and by no means certain what he was going to do if the Labour Party Conference went wrong, about which he was definitely pessimistic.
A good holiday on the whole, with my health considerably improving towards the end, although not yet perfect. The weather for us remarkably good in what was generally a bad summer in Northern Europe. I read a lot, mainly about Roosevelt, whom I was endeavouring to see whether I could write something about to match with my long Baldwin essay. Apart from the books I read in Italy, I read Grace Tully’s Roosevelt, My Boss, Jim Farley’s The Roosevelt Years and, slightly more peripherally, reread Arthur Schlesinger’s The Imperial Presidency. Reluctantly, however, I decided that there was nothing very new to say about this tremendously written-about man, and therefore turned to considering Eisenhower as an alternative and started to read his Mandate for Change, 1953–6. I also reread Irwin Ross’s The Loneliest Campaign, again with a thought of writing something about Truman. Rather deliberately I did much less Brussels work than in previous summers.
MONDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred and London.
Motored to London and lunched in the City with the senior partner of Deloittes (John Rae Smith) and one or two others. They wished me to consider joining them (after Brussels) in roughly the capacity of a non-executive director of a joint stock bank.
Later to Whitehall Court, where I had a meeting with Tom Taylor (Lord Taylor of Gryfe) and Christopher Reeves, the chief executive, of Morgan Grenf ell. They were anxious for me to come to them on a much more substantial basis than Deloittes. I said I would consider this and arranged to have another meeting in a few months’ time.
Then to St John’s Wood where we dined with the Annans for the first time in their new (to us) house, together with the Gross’ and the Bonham Carters. Very good evening, Noël giving us his best wine.
TUESDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER. London and Brussels.
I walked on a beautiful morning to buy the newspapers at the lower end of Ladbroke Grove. Met T. Benn in the shop. I thought I had seen him going in but was not quite sure because he looked surprisingly older and slightly puffy. However, when I came in, it clearly was him, so I seized the initiative and said, ‘Tony, how are you?’ Then about three minutes of rather agreeable conversation. Tony always has good manners, and we expressed dismay at our not having seen each other for so long and almost, though not quite firmly, arranged to dine à quatre as soon as I got back.
3.45 plane to Brussels and into the office: the old Berlaymont looking much as usual, although with an air of late summer calm still over it.
THURSDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
Gundelach to lunch rue de Praetère. He is not at all well, poor man, his bronchitis of the summer having developed into some more or less serious heart trouble which is not altogether surprising in view of the way in which he totally exhausts himself.
Saw Ortoli briefly at 5.30, found him on good and friendly form, equivocal about whether he is going to stay on into the next Commission, perhaps for a year or so he is inclined to say, which in my guess means that he will certainly but mistakenly agree to be reappointed. Cheysson at 5.45, he in very bouncy form as usual. Had a substantial talk at a dinner of Léon Lambert’s with Simonet, who is clearly drifting more and more away from Belgian politics.
SUNDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred.
George and Hilda Canning to lunch. George on extremely friendly and agreeable form. He thinks I should not get myself into too isolated a position and is above all extremely anxious that I should not be too close with Colin Phipps, who he said had done a lot of harm in the West Midlands. He spoke in tems curiously reminiscent of Woodrow (Wyatt), from a different point of view, more or less saying, ‘Don’t mess up a great career at its end.’
MONDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred and London.
To a luncheon meeting of the Jewish Board of Deputies in Tavistock Square. A most curious occasion. Out of a total audience of perhaps 120, there were about six MPs, mostly but not exclusively Jewish, and five ambassadors,
the French, the German, the Irish, the Luxembourgeois, the Canadian—but not the Israeli. Presided over by Greville Janner,56 self-confidently rather than professionally. A fair speech by me, certainly not better than that. However, I managed to avoid any of the deep pitfalls of Middle Eastern politics.
Read and worked in the early evening in Kensington Park Gardens until we had the Gilmours to dinner at a Notting Hill restaurant. Ian very depressed about the balance of power in the Government and its economic policy.
THURSDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
William Rees-Mogg to dine alone rue de Praetère. William on very smoggish form, in a sense I suppose deeply worried about The Times, but at the same time bland, almost complacent. He certainly seemed to have no awareness of the fact that, as Louis Heren57 had told me at the Jewish lunch on Monday, he had done very badly at the staff meeting which he had addressed following the strike. He said that he would like to stay as editor for, maybe, another two or three years, but thought that that would be long enough: certainly no thought of immediate retirement.
On politics he did not have a great deal to say. He was reasonably friendly to my position, though still slightly sceptical, mainly I think on the ground that he did not believe that the Liberals offered anything to build upon or even alongside, because he is convinced there are only two hard resolute reservoirs of opinion in British politics—one the left centre of the Conservative Party, and the other the right wing, the working-class right wing to a substantial extent, of the Labour Party. The Liberals had none of the bottom of either of these groups and would therefore, whatever Steel’s personal qualities, be a particularly ineffective support for decision-making in a Government. Maybe there is something in this.
SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
Rue de Praetère dinner party of the Tom Enders’ (American Ambassador to the Community), Tugendhats and the Michael Jenkins’, etc. Enders, as usual, interesting in his intelligent, detached, and perhaps slightly self-seeking way. Said that he thought he would not stay very much longer in Brussels, nor indeed in the US foreign service. What he really wanted to do was to become a Cabinet officer, which he thought he could manage in some future administration. The question he had to consider was what was the best route to that. He was rather tempted by business, but I said I thought that would not have great attraction for him except that of making money and giving complete financial independence. ‘Oh, I can assure you I have that already,’ he said, so I said that in that case I did not see a great deal of point in business. Perhaps he would go into politics in Connecticut, he then suggested. Maybe it would be a little difficult to become a Senator, but perhaps he could at least become a Congressman. Perhaps he wished he had gone into politics earlier, etc.
SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
I had spent a good deal of the weekend rereading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead in a remarkable first edition. Crispin had brought it on the Friday evening, it being a privately printed pre-publication edition which Waugh had sent ‘with the compliments of Captain Evelyn Waugh’ to his (Crispin’s) uncle, E. S. P. Haynes, a literary gent of the period. I found it rather better than I remembered.
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.
A rather bad session of the Foreign Affairs Council from 12.00 to 2.30, which got bogged down on what we thought was une chose acquise about the financial mechanism running on for the third year in relation to the BBQ. This however was opposed by the French and Germans, and the British gave way with almost too good a grace. I hope these tactics are right, but I have a little doubt. Then lunch with the Council late and back for a resumed session from 4.30 to 6.30, mainly on the BBQ once again. Then an avion taxi to Strasbourg.
WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER. Strasbourg.
Took David Wood of The Times to lunch at La Wantzenau. Nice day and agreeable lunch with him, mainly about British politics and arguing round his various bits of friendly opposition to my views on realignment. He was a passionate supporter of Hugh Gaitskell, almost dazzled by him, to an extent which I had not previously realized.
SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER. Garderen (Holland).
A curious buffet Dutch breakfast in the large dining room of the Hotel Spielenboss in the middle of Holland, to which we had driven the evening before with Michael and Maxine Jenkins for a touristic weekend, full of elderly, nonetheless boisterous Dutch (two of them were singing, but quietly). Took enough ham and cheese for our luncheon picnic and drove north to Geithorn, very much a sort of Bourton-on-the-Water of Holland. I think it actually describes itself as the Venice of the Netherlands, built along a series of canals all very neatly and elegantly kept up and with a certain dolls’-house charm. Picnic in very warm weather on the pebbles of the Zuider Zee near Urk.
SUNDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER. Garderen and Brussels.
Morning visit to the Krøller-Mueller Museum which is in a small national park, looks slightly like part of a crematorium, but has a most remarkable collection, particularly of Van Goghs but of other French impressionists and other schools too. Successful and enjoyable weekend.
MONDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
A meeting with Calvo Sotelo at noon, mostly devoted to discussing my visit in ten days’ time to Madrid. He has become deputy Prime Minister and brought with him his replacement as Minister for European Affairs, Punset.58 Punset very anglophone having spent a lot of time working for the BBC and the Economist, and is a bright little LSE-type Catalan in contrast with Calvo Sotelo’s Madrileno dignity.
WEDNESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
Lunch with Davignon, Ortoli and Haferkamp at the Fondation Universitaire, which is an agreeable old Belgian club in the Quartier Léopold. The reason it was Haferkamp and not Gundelach on this occasion was that the discussion was supposed to be about steel, and the lunch had been urgently requested by Stevy Davignon for this reason. The reason why it was at the Fondation Universitaire was that I had told Crispin rather to insist that Davignon gave us lunch for once and he had floored him by asking his Chef de Cabinet, ’And where does Monsieur Davignon propose to invite his guests?’ First Stevy said he would take us out to the Royal Golf Club, but then the weather having deteriorated he switched to this perhaps more economical but thoroughly agreeable club!
THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.
The group of Brussels British journalists to lunch rue de Praetère. About half the conversation was on British political affairs. I tried to play for time by saying they should not think in terms of the launch of a political party on 6 January,59 but rather in terms of some intellectual groundwork leading, I hoped, to my making a number of significant speeches. This line was subsequently reported -remarkably fairly–by John Palmer in the Guardian. Nobody else took it in, or perhaps did not believe it.
FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER. Brussels, London and East Hendred.
Plane to London and Frank Chapple60 to lunch at Brooks’s. He had recently been excluded from key committees of the TUC, but was nonetheless in a cocky, aggressive, agreeable mood. He agrees with me on absolutely every aspect of policy, but still does not want to contemplate a break, not out of weakness, but rather out of ill-informed confidence in the strength of his case. He believes that everything can be won by a tough battle from within, including committing the Labour Party almost to a nuclear missile in everybody’s back garden. Curious that he should have this element of political unrealism. It was nonetheless well worth seeing him, probably a pity I did not do so earlier.
MONDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred and London.
An hour’s meeting with Michael Palliser at Brooks’s from 5.30 to 6.30, partly about the new British Commissioner, mainly about the future of Crispin. Mexico looks increasingly settled for him which is, I think, satisfactory. His knighthood rather less settled. Also discussed the future of Michael Jenkins. In addition, I put to Palliser my dilemma about the grand honour the Spanish Government were proposing to bestow upon me at the end of the week. He sensibly more or less invited me to accept it on the run, as it were.6
1
Dined at home and watched a lot of television, first Panorama, a programme on the state of the Labour Party, and then reports from Blackpool which showed Benn madder than ever, the conference in an ugly mood, Shirley in great fighting spirit, orating very successfully even if occasionally a little incoherently at I think a Campaign for Labour Victory meeting. Altogether well worth seeing—a full evening’s conference television. No great tugs upon the heart strings, but great interest. The conference looks as though it is going worse even than I thought it would.
TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER. London and Brussels.
In the afternoon a series of meetings, first with Ian MacGregor,62 the new Chairman of British Steel, who has been hired at such vast cost, not so much in salary as in compensation to Lazard Frères. Thought him quite a tough Scotsman, no doubt very shrewd, but he did not seem to me the most dominant personality in the world, or the most dominant brain. He must be better than he looks.
Later saw Vredeling on his paper for increased worker consultation etc., which is causing a lot of trouble with UNICE and the employers generally. But I think that he has now concerted it well with Davignon. It has gone through the various processes of consultation and should be supported. I told him that I would do so in the Commission the next day.63
THURSDAY, 2 OCTOBER. Brussels and Madrid.
Early plane to Madrid. Met by Punset, the new Minister described earlier, and drove in with him to the Ritz Hotel, finding him very bright indeed. He raised two serious points of discussion, of exactly the right level, on the way in. It was a beautiful day in Madrid, quite different from when we were last there, clear sunshine and very hot for October, I think 85° during the afternoon, though cool at night. A 2 o’clock lunch (specially early in our honour) with Calvo Sotelo and Punset at the Palacia de la Trinidad.