European Diary, 1977-1981 (30 page)

In the evening Jakie Astor and I gave our dinner for Solly Zuckerman
¹
at the Capitol Hotel. This was Jakie's idea with which I happily fell in, not because there was any special event to celebrate—many people thought it was some great birthday of Solly's, but in fact he is seventy-three and a half, which is not a particularly notable time for celebration, nor has he for once received any recent honour—he has them all—but we were both in his debt from an entertainment point of view, like him very much, and thought it would give him pleasure, which I hope it did. The others present were Victor Rothschild, Robert Armstrong, Jacques de Beaumarchais, Christopher Soames, Sebastian de Ferranti, Eddie Playfair, Gordon Richardson
²
and George Jellicoe.

Soames, booming away, managed to get the thing going very well with general conversation towards the end of dinner, mainly by insulting everybody in sight. ‘Tell me, Solly,' he said, ‘why was your advice on nuclear matters, and indeed on all defence questions, invariably wrong? Was it primarily stupidity or cowardice? I have often wanted to know.' Solly made a very good response to this and thereafter the evening hardly looked back.

FRIDAY, 6 JANUARY.
Brussels and East Hendred.

At 10 o'clock a rather difficult meeting with Ortoli, who came in in a fair state saying that he wished to complain about the arrangements
for the debate on EMU in the Parliament in twelve days' time. What he mainly wanted was that he should open it with me, both speaking one after the other, which I think is a foolish idea. The basis of his complaint was that he feels outmanoeuvred since the acceptance of the compromise paper in November by my continuing to proclaim the high road of monetary union while he went on with the details. He was not willing, he said, to play Martha to my Mary (his phrase), and this was accompanied with faint threats that he might not wish to stay in the Commission. He was not disagreeable, as has never been the case with Francis, but his complaint was obviously the result of a lot of brooding over the Christmas holidays.

Francis is a very nice and instinctively loyal man, but he pushed too hard to keep near to his version of the paper in November, and a bit of reaction of this sort is almost inevitable. The trouble is that he likes detail himself and yet doesn't like to feel that he is being left only with the detail, while the broader lines are sketched in by me. Also he is instinctively a very cautious man who likes working in the Finance Ministers' club, and doesn't like sticking his head above parapets in relation to governments and taking risks of this sort.

Then to Zaventem to meet Carter. Waited about twenty-five minutes before his slightly late arrival, talking partly to Simonet, partly to Tindemans, partly to Luns, partly to the King, who arrived very quietly, almost sidled up, and began talking in his soft, agreeable voice with his nice shy smile about his holidays, about Spain politically and various other things. Speeches from the dais, the King doing rather well in English, Carter, also in English, doing I thought less well, getting much too much boom from the microphones, and also making an extraordinary solecism by referring first to ‘Your Majesty' and then to ‘Your Royal Highness' and ‘Her Royal Highness' - who on earth writes his texts I can't think. He then came round and greeted us all with considerable warmth.

Carter drove up to the Berlaymont after a couple of hours with NATO at 2.25. He is a tremendous one for paying attention to crowd impact. As soon as he got out he climbed up—perhaps in order to give himself extra height—on the step of his car and waved enthusiastically, looking away from the welcoming party to the crowd, and all the way round he was very ready for instant
response to anyone who was willing to cheer him, which a substantial number of people were. Also, on coming out of my office before moving to the Commission room, he spotted Alexander Phillips, Hayden's eight-year-old son, and immediately went over to him, saying, ‘Do you work here?', which was, needless to say, a great success with him and, indeed, with his mother.

First we had the so-called ‘restricted session' with five people on either side. I had Haferkamp and Ortoli, Hayden and Fernand Spaak, and he, Brzezinski, Cooper, Deane Hinton (his Ambassador) and Bob Strauss. He asked me what I thought were the main issues for the Community in the next few months; and we talked about the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, relations with the Third World, and then went on to enlargement and monetary union. Also the date of my next visit to Washington, which he hoped would be within six months.

At the Commission meeting itself he and I each read out our formal statements with a little improvisation around them. We then had some fairly brief discussions on MTNs, on energy, and then I asked him to say a word about the future of the dollar on which he was fairly reticent and did little more than whistle into the wind about the underlying strength of the American economy and therefore of the currency (there is a good deal of long-term truth in this). Ortoli got in a good point at the end, saying what we very much looked for was a consistency of support for the dollar now that such support had started so that we knew where we were and could plan and proceed on this basis. Carter left punctually at 4 o'clock. I then did a forty-minute press conference.

I left the office at 7.10 and made a remarkably quick journey: 7.35 from Zaventem, London Airport at 7.25 (English time), and an hour after that, at 8.25,1 walked into the house at East Hendred.

SATURDAY, 7 JANUARY.
East Hendred.

To Sevenhampton for lunch with Ann Fleming, who had the Donaldsons, Diana Phipps and John Sparrow.
³
We returned via Buscot, as I wanted to drive round the park for the first time since
Gavin's
⁴
death and see what it looked like under the new Lord Faringdon. On the way round one of the back roads we got into the most appalling skid, which I suppose was due to my going slightly too fast on mud, so that the heavy car started slewing and I had great difficulty in preventing it plunging into one of the tree trunks which lined the road. I think we did five or six slews before I was able to get it back under control. Back at home we had my old protection officer (Ron Rathbone) for a drink—a pity he wasn't protecting us at Buscot. Beautiful day, wonderful winter light, which was partly the reason we nearly killed ourselves.

TUESDAY, 10 JANUARY.
Brussels.

At 12 o'clock I spoke to about a hundred people organized by a European Federalist propagandist body, of which George Thomson had just handed over the presidency to Gaston Thorn. Quite an excitable little gathering. My reception at a gathering like this has been much improved by the Florence initiative.

An interview with Perlot,
⁵
the spokesman for the Italian Permanent Representation and their very strongly supported candidate as a replacement to Ruggiero as head of our Spokesman's Group. As a result of the Italians making it so clear that they much wanted him to have the job, I started a little biased against him, but in fact found him an extremely engaging and intelligent man and therefore swung in his favour.

WEDNESDAY, 11 JANUARY.
Brussels.

A short and relatively easy Commission meeting from 10.10 to 1.20. Lunch with Hayden, going on a long time while he argued with compelling logic that he thought he ought definitely not to stay much beyond the end of the second year, that if he was ever going to leave me it would be time to go, that five years was about long enough to work for anyone, otherwise one became too much
their creature. It was all done in the nicest possible way. I regretfully think it a sensible decision. God knows what it will be like without him, however.

THURSDAY, 12 JANUARY.
Brussels.

An important and potentially difficult lunch with Ortoli rue de Praetère, not made easier by the fact that he was drinking nothing, which is unusual. However, after a slightly sticky start, the occasion definitely went rather well and was worthwhile. Rather typically with him, we did not get final agreement at the end as to exactly when we should speak in the EMU debate in the Parliament. He said he would reflect upon it, but we were obviously
en bonne voie.
He made it quite clear that he was anxious to build bridges and relations perked up a good deal as a result of the lunch. Lesson: it is particularly worth seeing people at times when a looming dispute makes one loath to do so. As he reasonably hinted, if I had had a talk alone with him at an earlier stage this difficulty would probably have been avoided.

Dinner party composed of Davignons, Tugendhats, Ebermanns of my
cabinet,
and Laura. The best evening I have had with the Davignons; Francie out of her summer purdah and animated, and Stevy very funny; a lot of anecdotal conversation about world political figures, particularly Americans, over the past fifteen years or so; it was mostly Stevy and I who were talking after dinner. We all sat over the table until midnight.

FRIDAY, 13 JANUARY.
Brussels.

Lunch for the five or six British journalists, which was all right from a conversation point of view, not I thought as interesting as the one they had given me a few months ago, but worth having and no great knots or difficulties, but no great theme either. However, they expressed a desire to go on with the series. Jennifer to Brussels in the early evening.

SATURDAY, 14 JANUARY.
Brussels.

Drove to Henri Simonet's house in the country at Gooik, on a dismal day, for what turned out to be a rather grand Belgian
luncheon party with the Boëls
⁶
and various other notabilities, about twelve people altogether. The house itself was rather elegantly done but it is a curious place to have a country house as it is only about ten miles from their Brussels house and rather on the same side of the city. It is a little like having one house in the Hampstead Garden Suburb and another in Barnet. However, the lunch was excellent, and the conversation rather good too.

TUESDAY, 17 JANUARY.
Brussels and Luxembourg.

Foreign Affairs Council at 10.00. Three hours there before leaving by train for Luxembourg. I spoke to the Parliament almost immediately after arrival on economic and monetary union; a speech of about half an hour, followed by what I thought was going to be a substantial debate but in fact, owing to the mysterious working of the Parliament, turned out only to last one and a half hours and to involve no very serious contributions from the floor. Therefore the response was a bit disappointing. Ortoli, however, intervening at the time we had eventually agreed, spoke well and warmly. A drink with the Socialist Group, which was intended to be for Hayward and Underhill from Transport House, but they were hopelessly fog-bound, proceeding from Brussels in a coach, apparently, and did not turn up.

WEDNESDAY, 18 JANUARY.
Luxembourg and Khartoum.

Commission from 9.00 until 10.00, with no great difficulties, sat in the Parliament until 11.30; met a deputation of Spanish MPs and then off to the airport to leave by an avion taxi which had come down from Brussels containing Jennifer for a flight to Munich to pick up the Lufthansa plane to Khartoum. Munich was sunny but covered in snow and we took off late. An easy flight via Cairo, arriving at Khartoum at 11.30, with filthy food. The temperature both in Cairo and Khartoum was almost perfect, absolutely clear sky. Drove to Government Guest House No. 1, which was slightly reminiscent of, although less luxurious than, Lee Kuan Yew's guest house in Singapore.

THURSDAY, 19 JANUARY.
Khartoum.

Flew for about thirty-five minutes soon after 9 o'clock to visit the Gezira irrigation and general development scheme in the triangle between the Blue and the White Niles. Walked around this for too long and then flew back for a luncheon with the Vice-President and Foreign Minister on a Nile boat. Nice temperature, perhaps nearly 80° but no humidity and quite pleasant provided one was not actually in the sun. Altogether rather a good river trip, surrounded partly by diplomats and partly by a variety of other Sudanese ministers, as well as the host.

At 5 o'clock to the opening of the International Fair. This was a fairly chaotic occasion. No speech from President Nimeiri,
⁷
as a result of which indeed neither I nor Jennifer was at this stage quite clear which he was, but various manifestations of bands, processions on camels, etc. Then suddenly a wild rush and movement from the dais in the square where this was all taking place, through to the European Pavilion where the next phase was about to occur. We managed with some difficulty to get our way through the crowd and to arrive more or less intact for me to make my speech there. I spoke for about twenty minutes to again a rather chaotic gathering of a few hundred people, with Nimeiri and all the Government listening quite carefully, and the speech appeared to go all right.

FRIDAY, 20 JANUARY.
Khartoum.

A long morning meeting with various ministers: a mixture of discussion about fairly hard bilateral subjects with a broader perspective on the renegotiation of Lomé
⁸
and the progress of North/South dialogue. Then visited the Commission delegation and planted a tree; then a brief tourist visit to the Presidential Palace which is an attractive Blue Nile-side building, built originally, I
suppose, in about the late 1870s, a good deal changed, but still with a certain atmosphere of Gordon, and retaining the horseshoe staircase on one side of which he was killed.

Then to Khartoum North on the other side of the Blue Nile for a lunch given by the German Ambassador as the acting President of the Community ambassadors (no Danish Ambassador in Khartoum). He proved an extremely intelligent man. Back to the Fair, where I had to give a long reception in our pavilion. Then to a late supper party at the residence of Watterson, Commission representative, British, forestry expert, ex-Sudan Civil Service.