The second meeting was on EMU, on which Douglas was questioned on Panorama this evening. He stuck closely to the Madrid Agreement; but John Kerr was very depressed this morning at the damage that the PM’s interview yesterday with Brian Walden would have done to our position in the community.
I sent Douglas a very personal minute today on the impact that our community attitudes are having on the Americans, as well as a personal note on Margaret Thatcher’s attitude to Germany. She again talked about German reunification at CHOGM, though I got it removed from the record.
[Although not recorded in my diaries, I remember also sending Douglas a note suggesting that (partly to please his Conservative political allies) he should consider referring to himself as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, rather than just Foreign Secretary – a suggestion he sharply rejected.]
I called on Peter Gregson at the DTI to remind him of the FCO’s interest in the House of Fraser affair, on which the Attorney General is about to decide whether to prosecute or not. Nicholas Ridley is apparently very grumpy about the affair, taking the view that the government should never have become involved. Peter also talked to me about Lord Trefgarne’s idea for an export agency to conduct export promotion, which Peter hopes to suppress.
After lunching at the Security Service, I joined John Boyd for a talk with Douglas Hurd about personnel questions. He assumed that Charles Powell would ‘do a de Zulueta’, and revealed that Geoffrey Howe had been to see him on Saturday for a long talk about Charles, and about the difficulties I have had over his postings. Helpful.
31 OCTOBER 1989
Marcus’s thirtieth birthday and the investiture for my GCMG. I talked to my fellow honorand, Helen Suzman, who was very nervous, but went quite pink with pleasure when I pointed out to her that she had broken two records: first, as an honorary recipient getting her award personally from the Queen (not unique, but rare); and secondly, having her award announced in a speech at the United Nations.
It looks as though Douglas Hurd’s working methods may be more economical with paper than for either of his predecessors (he claimed to me that the load of paper in the Home Office was heavier than in the Foreign Office – see p. 72, above). He likes short, sharp minutes, followed by discussion; he prefers to take his decisions at meetings.
1 NOVEMBER 1989
Stephen Wall told me today that the choices to succeed John Major as Foreign Secretary had first been Cecil Parkinson, but that John Major had himself dissuaded the Prime Minister from that. She had then wanted to appoint Tom King, and Charles Powell had talked her out of that. So, Douglas Hurd was her third choice (and in my view, undoubtedly the best).
The row over the reshuffle still simmers on, with a fairly provocative statement by Nigel Lawson in the House yesterday. Lawson himself came up to me at the Palace this morning and said: ‘You have got a first class Foreign Secretary.’
Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd and others were also waiting for a meeting of the Privy Council. Geoffrey seemed keen for a gossip, but I had to dash for the Finnish lunch at No. 10.
My first bilateral with Douglas Hurd this afternoon. He confirmed that he wants to delegate more to his ministers of state (having no doubt suffered from non-delegation himself). He asked me about Ivon Brabazon, whose performance on Cambodia appeared on television last night. But it looks as though there is a real chance of reducing paperwork, as Douglas much prefers meeting to reading.
Christopher Mallaby looked in, having seen the PM today. He commented on the extraordinary mix of dottiness and good sense. At one point, she blurted out: ‘I hate Europe and wish we had never left EFTA. [the European Free Trade Association.]’ The trouble is that this attitude is all too obvious to the Europeans and the Americans.
2 NOVEMBER 1989
Stephen Wall told Geoffrey Adams privately today that Douglas is planning to put himself forward to accompany the Prime Minister to Camp David later this month. It will be interesting to see if she (or Charles) accepts this. Geoffrey Howe never tackled the question directly, but twice asked me to raise it with Charles – with predictable results.
3 NOVEMBER 1989
I called on Lord Brabazon today, who complained about the pile-up of submissions on Fridays, evidently hoping to avoid boxes at the weekend. I pointed out the impossibility of this, particularly if Douglas Hurd, like John Major, is determined to delegate more to his junior ministers.
Percy Cradock called, confirming Christopher Mallaby’s account of the PM’s obsessions about the European Community and Germany. Percy commented that there are signs of her obsessions becoming policy. I later discussed with John Fretwell and David Ratford how to handle the briefing for the PM’s visit to Camp David in three weeks’ time, in order to divert her from launching her obsessions on Bush. Both obsessions could have a very damaging effect.
Stephen Egerton called in advance of his posting to Rome, incidentally confirming that the confusion over decorations exchanged during King Fahd’s state visit (in which I appeared to have received a higher Saudi decoration than other recipients) had certainly arisen from Fahd’s deliberate decision to downgrade the Saudi honours list (except for mine, for which he had signed the warrant, three years before) because of our refusal to give his young son a GCMG.
5 NOVEMBER 1989
Nigel Lawson appeared on the Brian Walden show today, stating quite clearly that he had given the Prime Minister until Christmas to get rid of Alan Walters – thus contradicting the PM’s similar appearance last week, when she claimed that she did not know why Nigel Lawson had resigned. At least one of the draft minutes that Geoffrey Howe never sent Margaret Thatcher about Charles came near to a threat by Geoffrey also to leave. I now think that Geoffrey’s unsuccessful attempts to move Charles (and some press articles which the PM attributed personally to Geoffrey) played a major role in his removal from the FCO.
6 NOVEMBER 1989
Charles Powell called at 9 a.m., having spent much of the weekend dealing with the Lawson affair and its ramifications. No. 10 put out a statement today saying that there was no contradiction between what the PM and Lawson had said respectively on television. Charles told me that, just after Lawson had resigned, he received a telephone call from Julian Amery, reminding the PM that, in the 1920s, Lord Reading had been called in, as a very senior member of the party, and that he, Julian Amery, was available – presumably to be Foreign Secretary? [A story which, many years later, I passed on to Amery’s biographer, Richard Bassett, even though Amery himself presumably tells the story in his diaries.]
I talked to Charles about the PM’s visit to Camp David, trying to alert him to the dangers of the PM Euro-bashing in front of President Bush.
My lunch today with Norman St John-Stevas, and my drink this evening with Ray Whitney at the House of Commons, revealed that both of them are deeply disturbed by the PM’s current attitude towards Europe, and that both feared that we were allowing Britain to become marginalised. Her interview in the Sunday Correspondent yesterday is an extraordinary document, revealing a lot of her obsessions about the Community, and again hinting, à la Bruges, that she would like to see a much expanded Europe, including EFTA and others. Also some hilarious use of the first person plural (immortalised in her famous announcement outside No. 10: ‘We have become a grandmother’). ‘One realised that we were becoming very tired.’
7 NOVEMBER 1989
The FCO has received quite a battering this week, both on Vietnamese boat people (with a particularly offensive article in The Spectator by Auberon Waugh), and on hostages (with a programme on ITN last night claiming, rather implausibly, that Britain is the only country to have mishandled their hostage problem).
Tim Lankester called for our regular FCO/ODA round-up. He seems quite shaken by the experience of Kuala Lumpur, and the extent to which the Prime Minister has withdrawn into her private circle, compared with when Tim was at No. 10 as the Treasury private secretary.
Douglas Hurd seems to have handled his first Foreign Affairs C
ouncil very skilfully, and had a good dinner with Delors, announcing at his subsequent press conference that, in his view, there was a ‘natural alliance’ between Britain and the Commission – not the sort of thing one hears much from No. 10!
8 NOVEMBER 1989
I attended Douglas Hurd’s meeting on China and Hong Kong, with Alan Donald present. Douglas’s style of holding meetings is a joy compared to Geoffrey Howe’s. At the end of Geoffrey’s meetings, I was never clear what had been decided, if anything; I used to read the private secretary’s records with interest, as if I had not been there. Douglas’s own summing up of some of his meetings was so clear that the record could almost have been turned, word for word, into telegrams of instructions.
Douglas told me today that he wants to experiment with a weekly meeting of all his ministers, PPSs and whips, including myself and the private secretary, to discuss parliamentary and public handling of foreign affairs issues, in the lines of meetings he apparently held as Home Secretary.
I also discussed with Douglas today the handling of the PM’s visit to Camp David later this month – both on European issues and on Germany. Helmut Kohl rather ostentatiously today singled out Bush and Mitterrand for their line on the problem of East Germany – with no mention of Margaret Thatcher. The situation in East Germany changes at an astounding pace, with both the government and the politburo having resigned this week.
9 NOVEMBER 1989
I had to leave a meeting early to see Francis Maude, to whom some MPs have complained about ‘sloppy briefing’ on the United Nations from the department. I got Duncan Slater to sort it out and to brief Maude himself; but Francis pointed out that antagonising a few MPs could set back all the hard work we have done to overcome basic antagonism towards the FCO in parts of the Tory Party.
10 NOVEMBER 1989
I spent much of today discussing the extraordinary developments in Berlin, and the Prime Minister’s response to it. She was apparently appalled to see pictures of the Bundestag singing ‘Deutschland Über Alles’, which she described as ‘a dagger in my heart’. She was persuaded to put out a welcoming statement in her name at 11 a.m., which was passed to the Germans. The government also agreed today to offer the use of our military camps and installations for the use of refugees from East Germany. But the PM was apparently strongly opposed to the idea at Cabinet yesterday.
I have tried to ensure that Margaret Thatcher’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on Monday contains warm references to Helmut Kohl; Charles Powell’s present draft contains warm references only to the Prime Minister herself, Reagan and Bush. I have put up a note to Douglas Hurd, with a line for him to take with the PM next week, before her visit to Camp David. But it seems very doubtful whether anyone can persuade her to conceal her strong distaste for Germans.
13 NOVEMBER 1989
After an extraordinary weekend, with the breaking down of parts of the Berlin Wall and the sacking of Zhivkov in Bulgaria, I had three and a half hours of talks with Bob Kimmitt, who is also visiting Brussels, Paris and Bonn this week.
In a private, opening half hour, he mentioned some concern in Washington at what they thought was anxiety here over a lessening of the special relationship. He assured me that although the Thatcher/Reagan relationship had been one of ‘the heart’, Bush saw his relationship with her as more ‘intellectual’, and thought he had already established it as Vice-President. He also indirectly raised the PM’s remarks in Kuala Lumpur about American hypocrisy over the Vietnamese boat people (when she had referred to American deportations to Haiti, Mexico and so on), and passed on a plea from Larry Eagleburger that we should not air our differences in public. I countered by expressing our hope that the Americans would also keep quiet about their disagreements with us on Vietnamese boat people, and not lobby against us with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Otherwise, we had a good session of talks, covering East–West relations; arms control; Hong Kong; Iraq; Lebanon; and South Africa. Kimmitt is impressive, and spoke without a single note (unlike myself, who had been given vast briefing folders).
Virginia and I went to the Lord Mayor’s banquet this evening, at which Margaret Thatcher delivered her speech (see above). At drinks afterwards at the Mansion House, she was anxious to discover whether I had got ‘the message’ of her speech, by which she presumably meant her veiled warnings against German reunification. But it was a good and witty speech, well delivered (with much joking about the fact that both she and the new Lord Mayor, Hugh Bidwell, are grocers). [Many years later, I met the headmistress of Norwich High School for Girls, Valerie Bidwell, on a Swan Hellenic Cruise, and asked her husband, Jim, whether he was related to Hugh Bidwell. His answer was: ‘No. Hugh is from the Grocer side of the family.’]
15 NOVEMBER 1989
I attended the first of Douglas Hurd’s new meetings with ministers, whips and PPSs, with Robert Cooper, Andrew Burns and Stephen Wall. A useful discussion on the follow-up to Douglas’s meeting yesterday with the PM on Eastern Europe and Germany. I later held a meeting myself, to dish out the work, involving messages to Gorbachev and Bush. Douglas thinks he is more or less in line with the PM on her approach to Saturday’s dinner in Paris, though No. 10 have unwisely been putting it about that the PM wants discussion of Eastern Europe to swamp any discussion of EMU and the Social Charter at Strasbourg.
Charles Powell told Stephen Wall that the PM was less happy with the meeting, and suspects Douglas of peddling an independent line; she had also muttered to him darkly about FCO ‘treachery’ at Madrid, telling Douglas that she would tell him about it one day. I fear that this is a reference to David Hannay, to whom she said at Madrid: ‘Are you working for me, or against me?’
Credentials this morning were followed by a farewell audience for six retiring heads of mission and their wives, whose conversation in the anteroom during the credentials ceremony reminded me that when heads of mission and their wives get together, it becomes a cross between a cocktail party and a Diplomatic Service Wives’ Association coffee party.
16 NOVEMBER 1989
I joined Tim Sainsbury for an early meeting to brief David Orr and John Hanson on the extra £5 million which the British Council has got this year. David Orr was (for him) very generous about it, saying that even the chaps on the desks had been excited by the news.
17 NOVEMBER 1989
In a secret and personal letter to the service, dated today, I wrote the following about Douglas Hurd and John Major:
The press have predictably tried to probe the extent to which Douglas Hurd is his own man, or whether foreign policy is ultimately decided by the Prime Minister. In reply to just that question, he told the BBC World Service last week that the Prime Minister had an important part in foreign policy, particularly nowadays when there are a great many summits, and when heads of government are pitchforked into foreign affairs in a way which was not so when he himself joined the Foreign Service in 1952. What was crucial was that both sides of Downing Street should work closely and confidently together. He went on to say that he had worked with the Prime Minister in his last two ministerial offices, and had never found any difficulty in getting a relationship which was not subservient, ‘where we swap ideas and occasionally arguments, and in the end of that an agreement is reached which we both respect’. In response to a later question about the updating of our policy on Cambodia, and whether this was the Prime Minister’s or his own initiative, Douglas Hurd replied: ‘Of course it is my initiative. I am the Foreign Secretary, and here was an area of policy which seemed to me to need updating.’
Few of you will probably need any introduction to Douglas Hurd. He came into the job with great enthusiasm, revealing the extent to which he has kept himself very well informed on foreign affairs since he was last in the office as a Minister of State in 1983… In any case, Douglas Hurd comes to his new responsibilities with the experience shared with his Permanent Under-Secretary of having served as private secretary to the PUS!
&nb
sp; On John Major, I wrote:
I was personally sad to see him leave the office, and I think that he was genuinely coming round to realise that this was a job which he could enjoy. Indeed he told me so, in the rather unpropitious circumstances of Kuala Lumpur. There is no doubt that the first, and as it turned out the only, three months of his time as Foreign Secretary had been difficult for him in terms of the steepness of the learning curve required, though I can report that his sense of humour was well up to enjoying Private Eye’s lampooning of his inexperience in their diary about his visit to the United States.
When I went to say goodbye to him on that Friday morning in the Secretary of State’s office before his final return to the Treasury, John Major said some kind things about the way in which he had been received by the office and by the service. He particularly emphasised, as he had before, the friendliness which he and Norma Major had found from all of those (sadly too few) members of the service they had met. So I should hope! But it has made me wonder quite what they were both expecting?
20–25 NOVEMBER 1989: VISITS TO PRAGUE, SOFIA AND BUDAPEST
[This is not the place for a detailed account of the visits that Virginia and I paid to these three European capitals. But they came at such an extraordinary moment of political change in all three governments that the following snippets may be worth recording here.]
Behind Diplomatic Lines Page 18