European Diary, 1977-1981

by Roy Jenkins

  Then an hour with Punset alone. Back at the hotel, I had a visit from Simonet, who had rung up saying he was there learning Spanish. I said, ‘Even for you, Henri, the Ritz Hotel, Madrid, strikes me as a rather grand educational pension.’

  I had a one-and-a-quarter-hour meeting at the Moncloa Palace with Suárez, the Prime Minister. Curiously, most of the conversation was about what we would call devolution, what the Spaniards call decentralization, the Basque and Catalan problems and their impact on the structure of the Government. He had been meeting the Basques all day and was obviously greatly preoccupied by that, Suárez still seems to me an impressive personality, and an agreeable one too. He remains very determined on European membership, even though his mind is much on internal Spanish questions.

  At 9.30 in the same building he gave me a dinner, and also the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III. Spanish political conversation with Suarez–through an interpreter even at dinner because he is absolutely monolingual. Very good food.

  FRIDAY, 3 OCTOBER. Madrid and East Hendred.

  Crispin and I went to the Prado for half an hour, concentrating on the Goyas which are an extraordinary mixture (I had seen them once before) of styles and approach, but seen in sum are quite remarkable. Then the Community ambassadors for half an hour, they perfectly agreeable, particularly Bobbie de Margerie, the Frenchman who clearly hopes to come to London.

  Then a slow drive to Zarazuela, interrupted by a brief walk in a hot, sun-baked countryside looking as though we were still at the height of summer, for an audience with the King at noon. I saw him alone. He expressed strong continuing commitment to Europe, some dismay at the fact that decentralization was dismantling the state to the extent even that it might not be possible to hold it together, but at the same time fair confidence about what had been achieved politically. He has come to look older in the past two years; I still much like him.

  We parted very friendlily, I presenting all my party to him and he asking me to propose myself for lunch or dinner with him whenever I was in Spain in the future. I thanked him warmly and also for the Grand Cross of Charles III, which is visually a splendid decoration with an enormous blue and white sash (much worn by those in Velazquez and Goya portraits in the Prado). It is, alas, difficult to think of many occasions when I might wear it.

  Then back to Madrid for a glimpse of the Plaza Major, which is always worth revisiting, and a fairly grand Ministry of Foreign Affairs lunch given by Pérez-Llorca (who is thirty-nine but looks fifty-five, like my last Home Office Minister of State, Brynmor John) but without significant speeches–the significant speech had been at dinner the night before, which had been very well received by the Spaniards–Bassols (their Ambassador in Brussels) was said to have tears in his eyes. From there direct to the press conference at 4.30, which was perfectly easy, mainly on the timetable for Spanish entry, but I had worked out quite carefully what I could say on this. Also one or two routine questions about my position in British politics and some other matters about the Community. 6.15 plane to London. East Hendred at 9.30.

  SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER. East Hendred.

  I spent almost the whole morning on the telephone, picking up impressions of the Labour Party Conference. I had spoken to Shirley the previous day, but I then spoke to Tom Bradley, to Clive Lindley, to Bill Rodgers, who said he was coming to lunch, to David Marquand for a long time, and to various other people. The Rodgers’ arrived at 1.20, which was relatively punctual for them, and stayed till 4.30 with a good political talk. It was a much better meeting with them than the August one, which somehow had not gone right. Bill’s broad view was that while they (the Gang of Three, etc.) were going to see what happened over the leadership, they were very dissatisfied with Healey.

  I just cannot decide whether or not Bill is willing to break with the Labour Party. I suppose the odds probably remain that he is not. But he is certainly much nearer to it than nine months ago, and I think opening up the issue of a split, as I did in Dimbleby and subsequently in June, has been right. Certainly my analysis of the state of the Labour Party has been right. So I think have been my tactics of waiting for the autumn rather than rushing in further in the summer. I now feel much easier about the political situation and whatever it may hold. I do not feel myself boxed in, in the way that I did in June, July and August.

  MONDAY, 6 OCTOBER. East Hendred, Brussels and Luxembourg.

  To Brussels and saw Heseltine,64 the Queen’s deputy Private Secretary, for half an hour to tie up the plans for the Queen’s visit in November. He was rather hesitant about the idea of the Queen participating in a Commission meeting, obviously being rather doubtful whether the Queen would like it, or would want to ask questions, and was distinctly unreassured when I said that in the case of the Dutch visit Prince Bernhard had in fact asked quite a lot of questions and no doubt Prince Philip could do the same. Then to Luxembourg by train.

  TUESDAY, 7 OCTOBER. Luxembourg and Brussels.

  A meeting with Thorn at 9 o’clock, nominally about the agenda for the Council. The main point which emerged was that he had been to see Giscard the day before and had found him ‘impitoyable’ towards the Commission. Giscard had clearly frightened Thorn out of his life by telling him that the independence which had been shown previously was not acceptable and must stop. The Commission must represent the interests of the member states rather than having an independent role, Giscard apparently said, presumably equating member states with one member state. Thorn was visibly shaken.

  Council immediately after that. The early part of the morning was taken up with a foolish argument over the preparation for a Community/Israeli Council. Then came the Association Council itself attended by their Foreign Minister (Shamir)65 which went particularly badly, he being ungracious, boorish, hectoring, everything one can think of. As a result, the second leg of the BBQ—the supplementary measures and the timing of payments—did not start until about 12.45 which put Peter Carrington, who had arrived specially for a 10.45 start, in a very bad temper which persisted throughout lunch.

  But mysteriously it all came out easily in the wash in the afternoon, the French being much less difficult than had been expected, and the Germans not difficult at all. 7.30 train to Brussels.

  MONDAY, 13 OCTOBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

  Lunch in the Berlaymont for a group of British lobby correspondents. Fred Emery was the most notable. I tried to keep them off British politics, but inevitably only half-succeeded. As a result Emery wrote a prominent front-page Times piece developing what Palmer had said previously. Quite satisfactorily put from my point of view.

  Avion taxi to Strasbourg. Question time at 6.30. Only one question for me, about bloodstock of all things, which I had to take over from Burke, who, although responsible, runs away from it because the Irish are behaving so badly on the issue. I managed to have mild fun with the supplementaries. Then back to the hotel to finish Mrs Castle’s 1974–6 Diaries. They are too sprawling and self-obsessed, but nonetheless I have found them compulsive reading. She is neither particularly friendly nor particularly disagreeable about me. However, I agree with quite a number of her judgements on others but rarely with her judgements on herself, though occasionally even with those. On Wilson, curiously, I agree with her to a very substantial extent.

  TUESDAY, 14 OCTOBER. Strasbourg.

  Extremely nice weather. To the Parliament at 10 o’clock, and hung about as is habitual there waiting to deliver a quite important steel statement which eventually came on at about 12 o’clock. It was a rather good, firm statement and Stevy was very pleased with it.

  In the evening, rather amazingly, I took Barbara Castle to dinner for three hours. She was very talkative, as self-obsessed as ever, and I think probably rather pleased to have been asked and to gossip about old times. She is half sensible and half incorrigible. I enjoyed the evening.

  WEDNESDAY, 15 OCTOBER. Strasbourg.

  I decided I could not go to Brussels that afternoon, as I wanted. There was a grève sauvage at
Zaventem and in addition it was thought I ought to stay for (and perhaps intervene in) the institutional debate which was really the Parliament beagling Thorn for not resigning as Foreign Minister of Luxembourg (and hence President of the Council) in time to prepare for his presidency of the Commission. As it turned out there was no need to intervene in the debate. But it was worth being there. It was quite a full house. And it was interesting to see how Thorn handled it. At one stage he said surely the Parliament did not wish him to add himself to the number of unemployed in Europe, and who was going to pay him if he resigned, which was not the most persuasive way of putting things. I think he will have to go pretty soon, or he will be in quite serious trouble.

  FRIDAY, 17 OCTOBER. London and Belfast.

  12.30 plane to Belfast. I opened the new Commission office in a semi-skyscraper, looking down on the splendidly flamboyant City Hall. I then did three television interviews, one for each Northern Ireland channel and one for RTE, the Dublin channel. These fortunately were not as dull as might have been expected, because I had to sort out the question of a possible £100 million Community grant for ‘concerted action’ in Belfast, about which Burke had gone too far in a speech in Ulster the week before, and which had led to a controversy between him, the City Council and the British Government. However, we had a tenable line on it, and in fact the whole incident, by dominating the press, focused attention on the Community and added considerably to the interest in my visit.

  Called on the Lord Mayor, an ex-Unionist member of the Westminster Parliament who has now moved to a fairly centre position. Then out to Hillsborough. I was particularly struck, not so much by the house as by the small town at the gates, which is a beautiful early nineteenth-century ensemble with a town hall and another public building, good shop-fronts and houses, remarkably attractive, all in good stone. Then to Queen’s University for a dinner which Geoffrey Martin, our new Commission representative in Belfast, had organized very well indeed. A great representative turn-up with about 120 people, including the Lord Mayor, all the other Ulster mayors, Humphrey Atkins66 (Secretary of State) who spoke, Paisley and Taylor (two of the three MEPs—Hume was ill), the Vice-Chancellor, and various other notabilities.

  SATURDAY, 18 OCTOBER. Belfast and East Hendred.

  Drove through a rather attractive Northern Ireland dawn for the 7.30 plane to London Airport. We had Gordon Richardsons, Harlechs, Ann Fleming and John Harris to lunch. In addition, the Ginsburgs arrived unexpectedly. High confusion between them and Jennifer and me, but eventually we fitted them in. The lunch then went very well. Afterwards I played good croquet with both Richardsons and David Harlech.

  SUNDAY, 19 OCTOBER. East Hendred.

  Lunch with the Owens at Buttermere, the first time we had been there for four or five years. They were on agreeable form, David tough, and in some ways extreme. He definitely is not very enthusiastic about Healey winning; it would not amaze me if he abstained. He foresees a danger of Healey being in substance if not in manner a rather weak right-wing leader, particularly while he has his eye over his shoulder on the electoral college. Owen would now I think in many ways like a split, though he still firmly wants a Socialist International-affiliated new party. But how much he will do about it—he is certainly inhibited from saying some of these things in public—I do not know. He would also quite like to see a position in which the left brought forward and carried a motion that the leadership election should be postponed until the new electoral mechanism is in place in January, in order to avoid what he regards as a dangerous hiatus of weakness for a new, allegedly right-wing leader. In the course of a half-hour walk after lunch I had some serious talk about what the future policy of a new grouping might be.

  MONDAY, 20 OCTOBER. East Hendred and London.

  Crispin and I went to visit the National Radiation Protection Board at Harwell, where we were received by the Director and by Sir Fred Dainton,67 the Chairman. Quite an interesting talk with them for about an hour and a half, Fred Dainton on the way out expressing strong and sympathetic political interest. We then had Tom and Joy Bradley to lunch at East Hendred. Tom again very tough and firm, but, perhaps because he likes to be in a fight, slightly more inclined to support Healey than is Owen, but at the same time saying absolutely firmly that what he really wanted to do was to go with me.

  At 6.30 I had a meeting with Clive Lindley, Dick Taverne and David Marquand at Kensington Park Gardens to discuss the setting up, as a sort of half-way house to a new party, of an enlarged Radical Centre Institute, possibly under a new name, and with trustees. We thought we would try to get some politicians as well as some academic figures; Bullock,68 Dainton were agreed as obvious names here, Shirley if she would do it, and indeed Bill (Rodgers) or David (Owen), David Marquand himself, Dick Taverne, with me I suppose as President, funded to the extent of about £50-£ 100,000 a year, and producing policy statements.

  Then to the Jim Cattermole retirement69 dinner at St Ermin’s Hotel. Very good attendance of about 130, a lot of MPs, all very friendly.

  WEDNESDAY, 22 OCTOBER. Brussels.

  Lunch with the Nanteuils for Olivier Wormser, Directeur Economique at the Quai d’Orsay when I had first known him in the late fifties, then Ambassador to Moscow, Ambassadorto Bonn, Governor of the Bank of France. I was pleased to see him as always. He is a man of such exquisite refinement, though not at all bogus, that he always makes me feel slightly gross and vulgar. I feel I must not eat or drink much in his presence! However, I had a good talk with him for twenty minutes or so after lunch—he had come to Brussels to find out what was happening to the Common Agricultural Policy, he said, but on whose behalf or for what reason was not clear.

  After the Commission meeting I had Enders, the US Ambassador, for forty minutes. He had nominally come to deliver a démarche, which the Americans were also sending to all the Community countries, in effect telling us to keep off the grass in the Middle East. In fact he did not deliver it, and merely asked what I thought about it, to which I said not much. It would have the effect, undesirable from the American point of view, of pushing the item on to the agenda for next weekend, whereas it had not been intended to discuss it until the Political Cooperation meeting on (American) election day, 4 November, and therefore effectively after the American elections. He then raised the more general issue of how best the US could deal with the strengthening reality of Political Cooperation. It was not easy to tell him exactly what to do. The strengthening is to some considerable extent a reaction to the weakness of American leadership, and is bound to create some additional problems for them.

  FRIDAY, 24 OCTOBER. Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

  Rome by avion taxi. Twenty-five-minute speech of substance on the present state of the EMS, which was well-reported, to the Association of European Journalists at 11.30. After lunch we drove round the Campidoglio, looking at the statue of Marcus Aurelius for the last time, as it is crumbling gravely and is to be put in a museum and replaced by a copy. Back in the Berlaymont by 6.15.

  SATURDAY, 25 OCTOBER. Brussels and Luxembourg.

  Motored with Crispin through pouring rain to Luxembourg from 7.00 to 9.00. Council on steel from 9.30 to 2.15, which cleared a lot of points, but Lambsdorff stuck, after telephone calls to Bonn, on special steels. We did not wish to push him too much into a corner and run the risk of the Germans, for the first time, invoking the Luxembourg Compromise, and we were not sure whether they would or not. I was inclined to the view that they would. We agreed to have another Council next week.

  Drove to the Hotel Bel-Air at Echternach for the Foreign Ministers’ informal ‘Schloss Gymnich’ weekend. All the others had nearly finished lunch, but at least I was there before Thorn, who was the host. Lunch from 3.00 to 4.00 and session from 4.00 to 7.15. This was quite good, but not riveting, mainly Political Cooperation, and I did not say much.

  At dinner I decided, perhaps because of the afternoon silence, that I would give them all several farewell pieces of my mind, which I did about a variety of iss
ues from the seat of the European Parliament, to general relations with the Parliament, to the fact that the presidents of the European Council (i.e. heads of government and, more relevantly, of state, for it is particularly Giscard who resists going) certainly ought to go and address the Parliament, which François-Poncet tried to wriggle around rather ineffectively: altogether a rather enjoyable bashing about for a few hours.

  I had half an hour with Peter Carrington afterwards, which was also quite enjoyable. The only thing on which he was disappointing was Crispin’s knighthood, which he says the lady is against, as she for some reason or another is not very pro-Crispin.70

  TUESDAY, 30 OCTOBER. Brussels and East Hendred.

  12.45 plane to London. Motored to East Hendred with Jennifer. An evening of television: first an enjoyable programme by Ludo Kennedy about American transcontinental trains, and then had the pleasure of seeing both Foot and Healey on different channels. Foot in a way not bad on ITN, Denis on a programme on which I cannot help feeling it was a deep mistake for him to appear, which was the Robin Day television version of Any Questions and is certainly not a ‘prime ministerial’ forum.71 He was good on defence, not very good on anything else.

  SATURDAY, 1 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

  To Sevenhampton on my own, where Ann had the Levers, and two Marks (Boxer and Amory), Joe Alsop, my old Washington friend, and Aline Berlin without Isaiah. Curious lunch -1 actually enjoyed it very much, though Lever and Alsop do take a long time to tell their stories. However, I found it rather encouraging on the threshold of sixty to seem much faster than some other people!

  A little serious talk with Lever after lunch about future political developments, particularly the projected (Radical Centre) Institute to which he was favourable. Basically his view is not too unsensible: yes, he would like to have a great political initiative in the direction I want, but he thinks we have not got enough obsessive people. I think what he really means is what Woodrow (Wyatt) and one or two other people have said, that I have not got the obsessive political interest to be able to stump round the country, fight bye-elections, and create something out of nothing. Alas, he may be right.