European Diary, 1977-1981 (74 page)

To the Staatsoper for
Il Trovatore
, well sung by Ricciarelli and a Slav lady previously unknown to me, but with doubtful Karajan sets. The performance was enjoyable but not memorable.

TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER.
Vienna and Brussels
.

At 11.30 I had a meeting with Kreisky and the ministers of the evening before, for which he had asked although it was not on the programme. I decided that it should be turned into a slightly wider ranging discussion than on the previous evening, and he had decided the same, so there was a rather happy coincidence of view.

He opened with quite a long statement saying how he wanted to get Austria much closer to the Community without actual membership, which was not possible, but in effect asking for the substance of membership without the form. I replied only moderately sympathetically, because this is difficult for us, but it was a good, general
tour d'horizon
. After that there was a press conference and a Ballhausplatz luncheon.

Then a meeting in the Parliament with the President and about a dozen others, including the chairmen of the main committees. Afterwards, with a little time to spare, we walked to the Karls-kirche, a remarkably secular church, certainly more dedicated to the Hapsburg dynasty than to God. When we returned to the hotel, Kreisky was waiting for me in a palm court and we had tea there for twenty minutes before setting off for the airport. Austria is a very odd mixture of grandeur and informality. It would be impossible to imagine Giscard or Mrs Thatcher eating cream cakes in the public lounge of the Crillon or the Savoy Hotel, or even Schmidt in the Kōnigshof. However, it seemed perfectly normal in Vienna and nobody took much notice of Kreisky.

During this final conversation he was very keen to revert to our Labour Party discussion. He said he had thought about what I had
told him, and maybe I was right, maybe I was not, but he hoped that I would reflect very carefully on all these things. At any rate, he and Brandt were anxious to promote my position, and whatever I was going to do they greatly hoped that I would come and address a major meeting of the Socialist International which they would organize in the last months of my period of office. At the airport he took me out to the plane.

THURSDAY, 4 OCTOBER.
Brussels
.

A most formidable session with the Control Committee from 3.00 until 6.00. Entering the room was like going into a Senatorial hearing of the worst sort. The large
hémicycle
of the Economic and Social Committee building was packed with about three hundred people and masses of television cameras. The disagreeable Aigner was in the chair, but opened not too intolerably. Then a flat report from Johansen, the Dane on the
Cour des Comptes
. Then a brief statement from me, followed by an endless list of questions from Brian Key (the
rapporteur
),
³⁴
to which I replied perhaps at too great a length—I should think I was about forty minutes. But there was something to be said for saturation treatment. At any rate there followed a series of not altogether unhelpful interventions from the floor, and I had a strong feeling by this time that things were going better. Several more answers from me and a wind-up at the end. There was a general feeling that I had handled it robustly and a hope that the worst was over.

SATURDAY, 6 OCTOBER.
Villers-le-Temple
.

Commission weekend at Villers-le-Temple. We started just before 10.00, with Spierenburg there to present his report. It was intended that he should only stay for about an hour, but it quickly became inevitable that he should stay the whole morning.

Spierenburg opened hard and responded to any criticisms extremely forthrightly, I thought very sensibly, but perhaps not as persuasively as he might have done. As a result there was a good deal of criticism during the morning, partly from the fringes.
Brunner, Cheysson, perhaps Natali, Tugendhat were all slightly hostile, even Ortoli on one or two points, and I began to feel doubtful as to whether the report would not be eaten up when we came to discuss it substantially on the following day.

In the afternoon (switching from Spierenburg) we had quite a good discussion, mainly on agriculture, balance of the budget points, etc. The British issue we got through without too much discussion, which I was anxious to do, merely turning the corner that we would put forward a paper with a whole variety of options, including issues on the payments as well as on the receipts side.

SUNDAY, 7 OCTOBER.
Villers-le-Temple and Brussels
.

We came back to Spierenburg. Things went much better than I feared they would. One or two people were still being tiresome, Brunner notably, but increasingly isolated, but Ortoli, Gundelach, Davignon and, notably, Giolitti, who made one of his best interventions, all came out firmly in favour, and therefore the feeling, quite satisfactorily, was that broadly Spierenburg was right. Jennifer and I lunched fairly quickly, and drove ourselves back to Brussels via Huy.

MONDAY, 15 OCTOBER.
Brussels
.

Peter Parker came with one or two other people from British Rail, plus some SNCF (French Railways) representatives, about the Channel Tunnel. Quite a good, sensible project put forward jointly by them and it was rather a good meeting. Then a lunch rue de Praetère for Parker and the SNCF Managing Director, Monsieur Gentil.

Mirzoeff, the BBC man in charge of my Dimbleby Lecture, came for a drink, supposed to be for half an hour, but in fact he stayed from 6.30 until 8.00. He obviously doesn't think a great deal of the incomplete draft, and is probably quite right too, though it mildly depresses me.

FRIDAY, 19 OCTOBER.
Dublin
.

To Dublin for a long early evening meeting with Jack Lynch, the Taoiseach. I am not sure that he is very sharply focused on how he is
going to conduct the Dublin European Council, but he still has nearly six weeks to go and is very open to suggestions. I had an agreeable talk with him as usual.

Then to the Shelbourne Hotel where I had Garret Fitzgerald to dine. An immensely slow dinner, served by a very incompetent waiter, who was incapable of opening a wine bottle, an unusual Irish deficiency. Crispin was also there, and Garret as usual was on very good and worthwhile form. The conversation was wide-ranging and not particularly on political matters. He is obviously pretty confident of being able to win the next election, and his thoughts therefore (European orientated though he is) are naturally rather on Irish than on wider politics, but there was a lot of interesting talk about Irish life, modern Catholicism, the Pope, a whole range of issues.

SATURDAY, 20 OCTOBER.
Dublin and Ashford Castle
.

To the appropriately named Casement military airfield, from where we took off at about 10.30, accompanied by van der Klaauw, in an extremely small plane which chugged along on a rather beautiful clear morning over the midlands of Ireland, which I had never seen before. We landed near Ashford Castle, rather a magnificent hotel on the second biggest lough in Ireland, partly old, partly eighteenth-century, with a lot of nineteenth-century additions. It had belonged to various people at various stages, but most recently, like so many houses in Ireland to the branch of the Guinness family with the Browne and Oranmore title. Foreign Ministers trickled in by various routes, but there was I think a complete attendance, plus, for the first time at one of these gatherings, wives. This is so unusual in Europe that I had omitted to note that they were invited and therefore had not passed the suggestion on to Jennifer, who might have come.

A rather heavy lunch and then a session from 3.45 until 7.15, which was too long because we missed being able to go out on the most magical evening. Fortunately I was sitting facing the sunset, which was of outstanding quality, and was therefore able to take it in from the conference room. No real discussion about British budgetary questions and a fairly rambling discussion on a range of issues, Peter Carrington doing quite well, François-Poncet playing a
curious hand about the report of the
trois sages
, which the French have been pressing for so urgently but the publication of which they now wished to postpone, and various other matters of this sort.

At dinner I had Mrs O'Kennedy and Mrs Genscher—a nice, jolly woman—on either side of me. Then a rather good, brief Irish folk performance, almost entirely by one family.

SUNDAY, 21 OCTOBER.
Ashford Castle and East Hendred
.

No morning session. Indeed, the whole Ashford Castle event, although thoroughly agreeable (perhaps the best place we have been to, with great lavish Irish presents and even wives) was more of a jaunt than any of the previous occasions, with remarkably little serious business transacted. We left by helicopter for Shannon, from where Peter Carrington gave me a lift to Northolt. It was a morning of wonderful clarity, and flying between Bristol and Chippenham one could see the whole of southern England, with the Isle of Wight standing out, outlined as on a map, as well as previously having had a magnificent view of the South Wales coastline and the valleys and mountains. East Hendred by just after 1 o'clock, where it was warm enough to have drinks in the garden.

MONDAY, 22 OCTOBER.
East Hendred and London
.

To 10 Downing Street at 11.30, for a rather wild and whirling interview with Mrs Thatcher, lasting no less than an hour and fifty minutes. She wasn't, to be honest, making a great deal of sense, jumping all over the place, so that I came to the conclusion that her reputation for a well-ordered mind is ill-founded. On the other hand, she remains quite a nice person, without pomposity. For example, when, after a series of particularly extreme denunciatory remarks about Giscard, but a great deal about other people too (‘They are all a rotten lot,' she kept saying, ‘Schmidt and the Americans and we are the only people who would do any standing up and fighting if necessary') she suddenly announced, after making some very extreme remark about Giscard, ‘I don't think this had better be recorded. Indeed, I think the whole interview shouldn't be recorded.' I said, ‘Oh, didn't you know, it is an absolute rule in
the Community that when the President has meetings of this sort a
verbatim
account has to be on the desks of all other heads of government the next morning.' It's not really so, is it?' she said, at least half-believing. ‘No,' I assured her, which she thought not exactly funny, but took perfectly well, whereas Callaghan would have got very huffy about a tease of that sort.

I came out, having maybe put a little sense into her head on one or two other points, but slightly reeling after this long tirade, not particularly against me but at various things she didn't like. I was left with no feeling that she had any clear strategy for Dublin, except for determination, which is a certain quality I suppose.

TUESDAY, 23 OCTOBER.
London and Strasbourg
.

Plane from London Airport to Strasbourg, where I arrived on a most beautiful day. Scott-Hopkins,
³⁵
the Tory leader, to lunch. He is a curious man, quite an able leader, perfectly agreeable to talk to, although giving little sense of
rapport
or response. In the evening I gave Stevy Davignon dinner. He announced to my surprise how much he would like me to stay on as President of the Commission, saying that if I did he would stay on, but he thought if not, not. How much this means I don't know, and still less do I know whether I want to stay on, but it is nice that he should say so.

WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER.
Strasbourg and Brussels
.

A longish Commission from 9.00 until 12.45, then an urgent telephone call from Nanteuil to deliver some not very urgent protests about something Cheysson had said. Afterwards a lunch for six or seven chairmen of parliamentary committees. Back in the afternoon to do a little lobbying. A great part of the Commission in the morning had been taken by the Commission discovering that the Control Committee was intending to freeze half the allowances (both
frais de représentation
and
frais de mission)
in the coming year until they had a report, about May, as to how the year was going. This obviously was extremely tiresome, not so much from a practical
as from a dignity point of view, and it galvanized and united the Commission, which was perhaps not very elevating, in a way that I had hardly seen anything do before.

We all agreed that we would try to get a substantial amendment put in, which would be moved by the Liberal Group, and that we would all corner various people. Several had been done in the morning but I in the afternoon did three or four, which was almost overkill because it was quite obvious that they were perfectly willing to be persuaded and that there was no difficulty in getting the offending passage removed. Indeed by the end I began to think that we might have added an addendum to our amendment saying that Herr Aigner should be expelled from the European Parliament.

THURSDAY, 25 OCTOBER.
Brussels and Cairo
.

Motored to Amsterdam and took a KLM plane to Cairo. Drove in on a beautiful evening to the Meridian Hotel on the island in the river. A briefing meeting with our delegate (recently arrived), a serious German called Billerbeck, who on the whole impressed me. He certainly took the briefing meeting very seriously, so much so that he wouldn't do it in the room, but insisted on going out on to the terrace (which was nice except for a slight mosquito threat) on a moonlit, reasonably cool, clear evening. Dinner with him and our party in the Palme d'Or restaurant in the hotel, done up in
Death on the Nile
style.

FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER.
Cairo
.

A visit to the main museum, which I had not been to before, an extraordinary jumble, all laid out like Maples furniture basement, but with some remarkable things in it. We saw mainly the Tutan-khamun tomb contents. Then to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for one and a half hours with Boutros-Ghali, interspersed with the ceremonial signing of the accord setting up our delegation. Boutros-Ghali is nominally the deputy Foreign Minister, but he would be the Minister if he were not a Copt. He is a very bright man and I had a good talk with him, during which he more or less told us that the school of thought represented by him in the Egyptian Government would not greatly mind if we recognized the Tunis/Arab League,
though they would prefer that we did not do it too quickly; and he also floated an idea for some Community help (mainly for symbolic rather than practical reasons I think) on the West Bank and in the other occupied territories.