European Diary, 1977-1981 (65 page)

SATURDAY, 12 MAY.
East Hendred and Cahors
.

To Northolt to get a lift in Peter Carrington's plane to the French ‘Schloss Gymnich' at Mercuès, near Cahors. I gave Peter a rundown on the various other Foreign Ministers and encouraged him at some fairly early stage to make a general statement of European
commitment. The weather improved spectacularly just south of Paris and we landed at Toulouse on the most perfect warm spring morning. There was a reception there by prefect, mayors, the new British Ambassador (surprisingly) etc., and then into a helicopter accompanied by one or two other Foreign Ministers for a rather long journey to the Château de Mercuès. When we got there we found a most spectacular place, an old castle turned into a very high grade hotel on a cliff overlooking the Lot about seven miles out of Cahors.

Three-and-a-half-hour session, mostly outside. Peter made his statement of intent or commitment, and made it very well. He then went on and more or less told us that they were very loath to keep on Rhodesian sanctions beyond the autumn. This was received in a rather reserved way by Genscher, Simonet, van der Klaauw, and to some extent by Forlani. But François-Poncet, Christophersen and Hamilius, the Luxembourgeois who was substituting for Thorn, were more forthcoming. However, Carrington got away with it better than he would otherwise have done because everyone was so pleased with his preliminary statement.

At dinner there was the usual tour of the world, no more inspiriting or profound than previously. I got to my room fairly early. It was a perfect night, full moon, and I sat by my window reading for two hours.

SUNDAY, 13 MAY.
Cahors and Brussels
.

A spectacular early morning, with the dark smooth-moving river looking incredibly beautiful. The south-western French countryside can have a peculiarly benign and smiling quality.

Another
alfresco
session for two hours. Frangois-Poncet raised his complaints about the European Court but got virtually no support, and in the course of it, rather surprisingly, paid an enormous tribute to the Commission, and to me in particular, for the help we had given in solving the (Community 1979) budget problem.

Maurice Faure, Mayor of Cahors and former patron of Frangois-Poncet whom he had introduced into the area, plus the prefect, came to lunch. I had quite an amusing conversation with Faure, Frangois-Poncet and the Simonets about the Kennedys, on which
subject they were all curiously ill-informed, and I held forth for some time.

Faure then insisted on taking me on a tour of the local sights, driving himself very fast with his chauffeur in the back. He drove rather as I do, I suppose, except that he went over all the red traffic lights, vaguely waving to the local population. Very long flight back in Simonet's turbo-prop plane. He had been told the Belgian jet couldn't get in to Cahors, as the British had also been told, but found that his Dutch colleague had a perfectly good jet on the tarmac, as indeed did Frangois-Poncet. This produced a spark of Benelux jealousy.

MONDAY, 14 MAY.
Brussels and Copenhagen
.

On my way back from my Bois jogging I read the
Guardian
lead story which stated that there were now new Commission estimates that the budgetary cost to Britain in 1980 would be up from £1000m to £1500m, but that I, after consultation with the Commission, had suppressed this estimate in the meeting that I had had with Mrs Thatcher the previous week. The story was a total fabrication because apart from anything else I hadn't seen Mrs Thatcher, it was probably malevolent coming from Palmer, and in my view was highly defamatory. I therefore decided to act extremely heavily, partly to try and stop any repetition from Château Palmer. Sol rang up Preston, the editor, and began by saying firmly, ‘You grossly libelled me this morning.' He sounded absolutely terrified, as though he had been shellshocked, and we then dictated to him a statement which had to appear on the front page the following morning.

I then left for Copenhagen, first for an hour's meeting with Anker Jorgensen, the Prime Minister and a nice man, and then my direct elections meeting and address to the Danish Foreign Policy Society. They produced a remarkably good audience, absolutely packed, I should think about 250 people in the Hotel d'Angleterre. The audience seemed to have a complete comprehension of English, and there were some good questions afterwards. Dinner in the Parliament with ?. B. Andersen (now the Speaker).

TUESDAY, 15 MAY.
Copenhagen, Munich and Brussels
.

10.45 plane to Munich to address the ETUC conference. The audience was a great contrast with Copenhagen. It was a much bigger room, probably rather more people (about five hundred) but they were all sitting at desks shuffling papers around, the acoustics were rather bad, and I got the impression that I was talking through a wind to a non-listening audience. However, rather to my surprise, they applauded quite well at the end, and they listened to me at least as well as they listened to any of their own leaders.

I then had a very good sight-seeing tour of Munich: the Frauen-kirche, the old Rathaus, the new Rathaus, the Opera House, the Hofgarten, Nymphenburg, which was closed, but which we were able to walk round: an attractive, surprisingly early building, about 1680 (I thought it was later) with great wings spread out, rather as at Versailles or Blenheim, to make it look as big as possible. The disappointing building was the Amalienburg, which I had always heard was rather good. Then back to Schwabing, which is now the smart, ‘left bank' quarter. Brussels by just after 11.00, having had three of the last four meals on aeroplanes, which is too much by any standard.

MONDAY, 16 MAY.
Brussels and London
.

6.35 plane to London and to Grosvenor House for my CBI dinner speech. It was one of the most formidable gatherings I had ever addressed, about twelve hundred people, including almost exactly half the Cabinet—Howe, Joseph, Maude, Nott, Howell, Prior
⁵⁰
and various others I can't remember—plus most of the Permanent Secretaries, plus Shirley Williams, plus Bill Rodgers, plus Denis Healey, plus Roy Mason. My speech, which was mainly European, but also had a good plug for centrist politics, telling the Government not to make major legislative changes unless there was good reason to believe the changes would survive the next tilt of the political balance, went rather well. It was moderately reported in the press and very well reported on the BBC the next morning, but slightly to my regret more the European part rather than the warning to the Government to spare us too many queasy rides on the ideological big dipper.

I drove Shirley home and discovered that her views on her own future are very sensible. She was not rushing back into the House. She wasn't sure she was going back at all, but certainly wanted to stay out for the rest of this year. She has lots of things to do, including an autumn's teaching at Harvard. She wants to look around, and I suppose let people seek her rather than vice versa.

THURSDAY, 17 MAY.
London and East Hendred
.

To the Monnet memorial service at St Margaret's. It was not very well attended in numbers, although it was quite a distinguished gathering, with Callaghan rather surprisingly there, plus Alec Home, plus Ted, who gave another of his noteless, even if not wholly impromptu, addresses. I thought it rather a good service, in spite of unfamiliar hymns.

SUNDAY, 20 MAY.
East Hendred and London
.

Jennifer and I went to Lew Grade's great Euro Gala at Drury Lane. We had Dickie Mountbatten and Ted Heath in the box with us, Mountbatten boisterously friendly as usual, Ted reasonably friendly to me though basically in a very grumpy mood, partly because he had had his snarl-up with Mrs Thatcher over her incredibly foolishly sending him a written offer of the Washington Embassy. A delicate sounding might have been one thing, a formal written offer was ludicrous. I sympathized with him but got into slight difficulty, knowing that Nicko Henderson had been decided on a week or so before, and
nearly
telling him that I knew, but withdrew into saying only that I thought they had now got a candidate. He showed every sign of wanting to pursue this with understandable vigour.

MONDAY, 21 MAY.
London
.

A noon meeting with Mrs Thatcher, the first time I had seen her since the election, and indeed, apart from perhaps three meetings with her as leader of the Opposition, almost the only time that I had talked to her seriously.

She was anxious to be pleasant, came downstairs to meet me,
arriving very faintly flustered two seconds too late to be at the door, and we then had beaming photographs taken and moved to the upstairs study, where I had spent so much time with Wilson and even a certain amount of time with Callaghan. Rather to my surprise she began by offering me a drink, which Callaghan certainly wouldn't have done at noon, and I'm rather doubtful about Wilson too. I rather primly refused, saying it was a little early. She looked rather disappointed, so I made what I thought was a tactful recovery, saying, ‘Let us have one at 12.30. It will give us something to look forward to if the conversation goes badly.'

However, it didn't go too badly at all. We started off with some general conversation about Chequers, her pattern of life, etc. Then she went into her rather
simpliste
European lecture, which I let run on for ten minutes or so when it slightly died away, and then after that she listened as well as talked and I should think I had 60 per cent of the remaining hour. She was fairly rigid on a number of things, notably fish, but was however very anxious to strike a constructive note on others: very determined to get something on the budget; willing I think to give something—I'm not quite sure what beyond general cooperative goodwill—in exchange for this; anxious to grasp points of detail and quite quick at doing so; thinking always a little too much in terms of the EEC and NATO as two bodies which ought to be amalgamated; and making one or two frankly foolish remarks about starving the Arabs to death by cutting off North American wheat supplies, or something equally silly. However, the general impression was quite good and certainly friendly.

TUESDAY, 22 MAY.
London, Birmingham and Brussels
.

To Birmingham for George Canning's inauguration ceremony as Lord Mayor. Arrived early and therefore paid a visit to the Art Gallery. Warmly greeted by the curator, a number of people on the way round, and indeed by quite a lot of people in the street, both before and after the ceremony—a rather pleasant, warm, Birmingham-returning atmosphere.

George looked very smart, every inch a Lord Mayor. The speeches were good. Minnis (a Liberal) proposed and Clive Wilkinson seconded; then a very good speech from George himself.
All were full of warm references to me. There was time for a drive around Stechford before the 4.30 plane to Brussels.

WEDNESDAY, 23 MAY.
Brussels
.

Michael O'Kennedy, the Irish Foreign Minister, arrived at noon for his acclimatization meeting and lunch. We had quite a good meeting for one and a quarter hours, nothing very dramatic, his grasp being reasonable without being exciting. Then a Commission lunch for him at which, again, he acquitted himself quite well.

THURSDAY, 24 MAY.
Brussels, Aachen, Brussels and Milan
.

Motored with Laura to Aachen for the Karlspreis ceremony. Colombo received the prize and Tindemans made the allocution. Genscher spoke on behalf of the Government, and the Mayor of Aachen, Malangré, who is in the course of being elected to the European Parliament, also spoke. As three of the speeches, including Tindemans's, were in German and Colombo's was in Italian, I did not, alas, understand a great deal, and there were no translations. However, it is a nice hall and the ceremony strikes evocative chords with me.

Then back to Brussels and to Milan with Laura by 7.30. We were met by Giro, the head of our office in Rome who was in Milan for some other occasion, and were driven in by him in an immensely expensive, huge Mercedes, which he had hired on our behalf, but privately, as it wasn't an official visit, and which we then made the dreadful error of keeping to take us on half a mile to dinner, and which altogether cost £45 - an appalling waste of money.

FRIDAY, 25 MAY.
Milan and Lucca
.

Left early and drove in a hired car via Parma to the Gilmour house near Lucca in time for lunch. Jennifer, the Gilmours, Charlie and Sara Morrison,
⁵¹
and Hayden had already arrived from London.

SUNDAY, 27 MAY.
Lucca
.

Ian (Gilmour) slept most of the weekend but was on good form when awake. He seemed to enjoy being a Foreign Office Minister and was full of splendid anecdotes about the early days of the Government. Sara Morrison very sharp, but quite amusingly so, about everybody, including old friends like Peter Carrington. She is still a dedicated Heath woman and therefore a dedicated anti-Thatcher one. Charlie Morrison slightly deaf (a good thing to be if married to Sara, who does talk almost without stopping) but nice and sensible and more intelligent than I had realized; an absolutely rock solid centrist-liberal on every issue one could think of -Europe, hanging, Rhodesia, race relations, indeed everything imaginable, which is surprising and impressive.

MONDAY, 28 MAY.
Lucca, Athens and Rome
.

Left with Laura for the 7.53 train from Pisa. Rome, after rather an uncomfortable journey without breakfast, at 11.00. First to the Hassler, then to Ciampino to join Andreotti on his plane. Athens, with a change of time, about 3.40. There was an enormous ceremonial greeting, with vast guards of honour. Mitsotakis, the Cretan deputy Prime Minister, took charge of me and drove me in to the Grande Bretagne. The ceremony
⁵²
was well organized in a modern rotunda between the Parliament and the Acropolis. We had three speeches (François-Poncet, Karamanlis and me) and then the ceremonial signing. Giscard turned up, but did not speak. He sat beaming in the seat nearest the rostrum, looking like the mother of the bride.