European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  TUESDAY, 28 JUNE. Brussels, Keele and London.

  Breakfast with Tindemans in the rue Ducale, finding him rather depressed about the collapse of his efforts to solve the JET problem. He had telephoned Schmidt and found him in a very disagreeable, hard, anti-British mood, saying that it was no good at all Tindemans coming to see him. However, it was quite useful intelligence before the London European Council to know Schmidt’s state of mind.

  Short Commission meeting at 9.45, then by plane to Birmingham and through pouring rain to lunch at Keele University with Princess Margaret before the degree ceremony. She was in quite a good temper considering she had just got her feet wet planting a tree. Professor Paul Rollo delivered a very warm encomium of me in his honorary degree presentation speech.

  WEDNESDAY, 29 JUNE. London.

  The first day of the two-day London European Council meeting. Downing Street luncheon. Most people had arrived when I got there and were assembled in the garden, Schmidt looking in a heavily black and gloomy mood. The luncheon conversation was fairly desultory to begin with; I sat between Cosgrave and Andreotti. Cosgrave was particularly agreeable and I am sorry that he is going. Towards the end of lunch when we began to get on to some more general discussion, Giscard, supported by several others, said that he thought it would be useful to go on in this way for some time, and we therefore decided to put back the formal meeting in Lancaster House for two hours and adjourned to one of the drawing rooms in Downing Street. During this move I talked to Schmidt for about five minutes, trying to see if there was any ‘give’ from him so far as JET was concerned, but found him very complaining about the British attitude, particularly in relation to the budgetary contribution, and disinclined to move except as part of some broad overall settlement.

  In the general discussion Giscard opened with an account of his talks with Brezhnev, saying broadly that Brezhnev found Carter very difficult to deal with, alleging that his amateurish foreign policy was endangering détente; French sympathy, Giscard said, was much on the Russian side. Schmidt supported this strongly, making it clear that his relations with Carter had gone back to their pre-Summit nadir. Indeed, Schmidt and Giscard supported each other on every point which came up during this European Council. This axis is always very powerful when working smoothly, and can sometimes be advantageous, but on this occasion was the reverse as they were both in a negative mood.

  Schmidt and Giscard also worked themselves into a fine old anti-American mood, which Callaghan, supported by me, tried to resist. We then had some discussion about JET without getting anywhere much, though with various people, notably den Uyl, suggesting that the Commission ought to produce a solution for the next meeting and Schmidt suggesting openly the possibility of a package arrangement. Callaghan was definitely in a corner, both on this and on direct elections, but handling himself well, as he often does in such circumstances.

  At 5.00 we moved to Lancaster House and a more formal meeting. There we began with our Commission loans proposal,155 which I introduced briefly and not very well and then handed over to Ortoli. The discussion on this and some other matters went on until about 7 o’clock with a general tour de table, most people speaking and supporting us, including, surprisingly strongly, Callaghan, as did Jorgensen, Cosgrave and den Uyl. But Schmidt and Giscard were both depressingly negative. Schmidt’s view was to be expected but we were not quite prepared for Giscard’s wet blanket, particularly as he argued rather more powerfully than did Schmidt.

  Another Buckingham Palace dinner at 8.15. The Queen, to whom as usual these days I found myself speaking French, this time because of the presence of Guiringaud, was in a much better mood than Schmidt or Giscard. After dinner we went on to the balcony to watch Beating the Retreat, which seemed rather an appropriate ceremony in view of the general mood in the Council, but was very well done and worth watching. Afterwards I raised with Martin Charteris the possibility of the Queen paying a visit to the Commission in Brussels, to which he was very favourable but said it would have to depend upon advice from the British Government. We agreed that I should say to the Government that I had discussed it informally with the Palace who were sympathetically inclined.

  THURSDAY, 30 JUNE. London.

  A morning session for two and a half hours which was not much better than the day before, except that, after Andreotti and Tindemans had spoken favourably on the loans proposals, I made a reply which was more effective than my opening the previous evening and ended the discussion in a reasonably up-beat way. However this relative optimism did not allow for the impact of what would emerge from Schmidt’s press conference afterwards. There was then a long discussion about the communiqué, with Giscard making a strong attempt, surprisingly not opposed by Schmidt, to get in a protectionist note. Callaghan and I then did a press conference, which he handled much better than I did.

  FRIDAY, 1 JULY. London, Glasgow and East Hendred.

  10.10 shuttle to Glasgow for the Collins factory opening at Bishopbriggs and for my long-prepared anti-Benn156 speech. I was feeling rather gloomy on the way up to Glasgow, mainly as a result of the generally depressing atmosphere of the European Council, but rather improved on arriving there. It was a grey day but the views, as is often the case in the Clyde valley, were nonetheless quite wide under a sort of tent of cloud. The factory was impressive both in lay-out and its atmosphere of apparent efficiency. The lunch was in a marquee for about four hundred people, including staff, Collins authors, local notabilities, etc., and the speech, which had been widely put out beforehand and was as a result well-publicized, was well received by at least 90 per cent of the audience. After lunch I went into Glasgow and did a Scottish Television interview and showed the city to two members of my cabinet. East Hendred for dinner.

  MONDAY, 4 JULY. East Hendred and Brussels.

  Plane to Brussels. With Crispin to lunch with the Rumanian Ambassador who, without notice, produced his Minister of Foreign Trade, who wished to turn things into a very serious discussion about our trade negotiations with them which are due at the end of the month, and said what great importance he and President Ceausescu attached to these as a test of our relations. I decided to play it rather hard and said that we had indeed recognized for a long time that the Rumanians had a rather special pro-Community position amongst the East European countries, and were therefore the more amazed to know that they had been in the lead at Belgrade in trying to exclude Community representation (from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) and that whereas we would of course conduct commercial negotiations on a commercial basis at the end of July in any event, if they wanted any oil of goodwill they had better have another look at this policy. They seemed rather taken aback by this but I hope and believe it did no harm.

  A very late dinner in the garden of the Chalet de la Forêt. The disadvantage of these immensely light (double summer-time) Brussels evenings, with almost full sunlight at 10.00, is that it is easy to slip into Spanish hours, as indeed we did on this occasion, dining from about 10.15 until 12.45.

  TUESDAY, 5 JULY. Brussels and Luxembourg.

  Avion taxi to Luxembourg at 11.00. Meeting of four Commissioners on MTNs. This was the first meeting at which Roy Den-man,157 as the new British Director-General of DG1, had appeared, and a very good performance he put up. Lunch with Colombo, the President of the Parliament. Dinner for the Christian Democratic Group, a very agreeable lot of people, apart from Scelba, who must have been better in 1947.158

  WEDNESDAY, 6 JULY. Luxembourg and Brussels.

  The fifth day of cloudless skies, good for the wide Luxembourg views. Into the Chamber to listen to Simonet’s report on the London European Council, and then made my own; it went better than I had feared. In the early evening Simonet and I each wound up for about ten minutes. Simonet, who had been answering Council questions in the morning, and doing it extremely well, is not quite as good as a speaker. However, he is a most agreeable man to get on with and it is a pleasure, so far at any rate, to have the Belgians in t
he presidency of the Council.

  MONDAY, 11 JULY. Brussels.

  A noon meeting with Bob Strauss, the American Special Trade Representative. Since I had seen him in Washington he did not seem to have learnt a great deal more about the details of MTNs, but this did not impair his strategic determination. He wanted to push ahead and, indeed, laid down a timetable for work in the autumn which seemed to us reasonable and to which we wanted to give a positive response.

  In the afternoon I saw Peter Jay who was on a Brussels briefing visit. He was anxious to be friendly, and made rather a good impression on me, but we soon got locked into a reasonably good-tempered argument about economic and monetary union.

  TUESDAY, 12 JULY. Brussels, Luxembourg and Brussels.

  Plane to Luxembourg, accompanied by Davignon, for my address to the Coal and Steel Community Consultative Council under the chairmanship of Joe Gormley.159 A beautiful morning (although nonetheless the usual bumping over Bastogne) with Luxembourg under baking heat which rather suited it. Back to Brussels for the lunch for the Political Cooperation meeting of Foreign Ministers in the Palais d’Egmont. The protocol arrangements are notably better with the Belgian than the British presidency; no question of being anywhere but firmly on Simonet’s right. In the afternoon a long and extremely hot meeting of the Political Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Dinner early with Hayden and Ann Phillips at the Chalet de la Forêt, where we sat outside until 10.15 when the great heat came to an end in a most violent storm.

  WEDNESDAY, 13 JULY. Brussels.

  Historic Houses luncheon rue de Praetère with Edward Montagu,160 George Howard,161 the Prince de Ligne and Lord O’Hagan,162 but ironically without Jennifer. Caroline and her daughter Jane Gilmour to stay. Took them for a drive round Waterloo and part of the centre of Brussels.

  SATURDAY, 16 JULY. Brussels.

  Nicko and Mary Henderson arrived from Paris, complete with Rolls-Royce, at about 5.00.1 drove them (plus Gilmours) on a great Brussels tour and then back for a somewhat ingrowing dinner party, in other words no non-English. Nicko was seized by a great desire about 11.30 to go on some huge fairground wheel which he had seen on our expedition during the afternoon. However, he retracted from this as he became sleepier.

  SUNDAY, 17 JULY. Brussels.

  The others went off to Ghent at about 11.00 in the Rolls, leaving Nicko and me to follow. Nicko said he had some work to do, but in fact spent the morning reading H. Nicolson’s Some People, for about the seventh time I would guess. He and I left at noon and, partly because we were deep in conversation, got lost and went round and round Brussels. We had planned to have a picnic but Jennifer and I both became rather despairing about a site. The essential difficulty with Belgium is that either you go south for countryside or you go north for towns, and if you go north for towns there is no countryside except cabbage patches between bungalows, gasometers and chemical works in which to picnic. So we had a drink in a café on the Quai des Herbes with a pretty view and then decided the only thing to do was to stay and picnic there, even though it did not look at all the sort of café which would welcome one’s own food. However, by sending Nicko to negotiate with the management and getting the Rolls-Royce to bring up the picnic basket we managed to achieve our objective, and had a very satisfactory lunch there until the Hendersons left for Paris.

  THURSDAY, 21 JULY. Brussels, Birmingham and London.

  To Birmingham for an Aston University honorary degree ceremony. Then train to Euston and to Downing Street under motorcycle escort by precisely 7.30 for my talk with Callaghan at the beginning of my official visit to London.

  He greeted me at the front door and throughout the meeting, which lasted until nearly 9.00, was remarkably agreeable and forthcoming. He even sounded rather pro-Europe. David Owen was unexpectedly present but this on the whole helped. We discussed JET for a long time, in which he was encouraged, perhaps overencouraged, by what I had to say; and Article 131163 for a considerable time too, on which he was not totally rigid; and a range of other issues. It was certainly by far the most agreeable talk I had had with him, not merely since I had left the Government, but since he had become Prime Minister. At some stages he was sufficiently forthcoming that I began to think he must have had some news which I had not heard, saying that all North Sea oil was turning out to be salt water, and that they needed the Community more than I thought!

  FRIDAY, 22 JULY. London and East Hendred.

  To see Mrs Thatcher in her new and rather lavish accommodation in the House of Commons, which was the Serjeant at Arms’s old suite and which is incomparably better than anything any leader of the Opposition has had before. It was the first time I had been in the Palace of Westminster since leaving, but the return occasioned little in the way of upsetting twitches upon the thread. Mrs Thatcher I found agreeable, and more pro-European than when I last talked to her, although she reverted a bit towards the end of the conversation to a few routine and tedious complaints. But the success of her recent European speech in Rome had obviously, as I had rather expected, helped to commit her to the cause and she was definitely forthcoming. However, the conversation with her about the legislation for direct elections, as with everybody else, was like ten angels dancing on a pin, or whatever the phrase is. The more people you talk to, the more you go round and round as to how the guillotine will or will not work, will it come after Clause 1 or after Clause 3. It was all rather reminiscent of Chesterton’s ‘Chuck it, Smith’:

  Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,

  Do they, fasting, trembling, bleeding,

  Wait the news from this our city?

  Groaning, ‘That’s the Second Reading!’,

  Hissing, ‘There is still Committee!’

  John Davies164 joined us about half-way through and was surprisingly good and robust. I think I have undoubtedly underjudged him. He seems a very effective man at the present time. This does not mean that I wish he had come to Brussels as a Commissioner, because I do not think he is quite right for that, but by any standard he is a first-class man with a good, wide-ranging mind, and treats Mrs Thatcher very firmly.

  Then to the Secretary of State’s room in the Foreign Office. Again, it was the first time I had been in that room for some time, almost since I frequently called on George Brown there nearly ten years ago. The room despite the splendour of its outlook is in a curious way slightly tatty and there is a good deal of rather second-rate c. 1910 furniture. Curzon ought to have complained about more than his ink-stand.

  It was not a good meeting, not disagreeable but desultory, partly due to the fact that David Owen began by asking me to read the overnight telegrams from Bonn, which showed that JET, to which I am getting rather emotionally attached, has taken a considerable setback, but also because he conducted it in a rather desultory way, and Michael Palliser,165 in contrast with what I think would have been the position a year ago, was less firm or able to pull the meeting together. I wasn’t on particularly striking form either.

  I left the Foreign Office at about 12 o’clock and drove to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen alone for half an hour. She was friendly and forthcoming in spite of the protocol which makes it a much more formal occasion than in any other royal house in Europe. Her Europeanism did not extend to an uncritical acceptance of the major European leaders. She got Giscard right, but underestimated Schmidt, perhaps too influenced by his having stubbed out his cigarettes all over the Buckingham Palace plates. Nonetheless her European commitment seemed very strong and when I broached the question of her paying a visit to the Commission she was positively enthusiastic, and said that something in the New Year ought to be possible.

  Then a Carlton Gardens lunch for about thirty people which David Owen gave for me. I sat between him and Geoffrey Rippon166 and had rather a good talk with David, although he was extremely unconvincing on why he had removed Peter Ramsbotham167 from Washington. He had previously implied that there was something terrible which Ramsbotham had done, which he would tell me about so
me day, but all this appeared to amount to was that he had discovered that Ramsbotham was not taken tremendously seriously by Callaghan, which left me with a slight sense of bathos. Otherwise, he was very agreeable and forthcoming and made a nice attractive speech—saying with remarkable frankness that he had been much in favour of my going to Europe, which, as he was clearly the greatest beneficiary from it, he might have been slightly reticent about at this stage. I made an unprepared reply.

  After lunch to the Board of Trade for a slightly heavy conversation with Edmund Dell,168 a good, worthy but not sparkling man, who was flanked by my old friend Leo Pliatzky.169 It was mainly about Multinational Trade Negotiations, not perhaps a very sparkling subject. Then on to the Department of Energy on Millbank to find Master Benn waiting alone, unattended, upon the pavement for me, a very typical and courteous Benn gesture. We then went up to his room. Because I had Crispin with me, he introduced a pudding of a woman whom I had met before, called Ms Frances Morrell,170 who sat morosely throughout the interview, saying nothing and rather weighing upon everybody. However, Benn talked very well, did not spend much time on energy, although we discussed one or two subjects in this field, one of which, a relatively minor one, I gather he has since cleared in response to my request. But his main interest was in trying to raise some general hares and ask my views about the future of the Community (probably to take it down in evidence against me), which I gave him along economic and monetary union lines.

  From there—with Benn, again with his great energy, coming down on his own and seeing me off from the pavement into my car (perfectly agreeable yet a constant sense that everything is calculated, no effort is too much, but the eye is never taken away from the ball of the main political purpose)—to the Charing Cross Hotel for a press conference. From there to East Hendred. It is an unusual experience to be able to pay an official visit to one’s own country and to look at familiar scenes, persons and institutions from outside.