European Diary, 1977-1981 (89 page)

THURSDAY, 12 JUNE.
Brussels and Venice.

Venice by avion taxi just before 11 o'clock. In by motor launch through vast security precautions with frogmen all over the place and soldiers standing with their rifles at the ready on the banks of the canal along from the airport, and then lots of security boats and security helicopters around and above us as we crossed the back part of the lagoon and then past the Arsenale and into the Danieli. The Danieli was like an armed camp with the bit of the Riva outside it for 100 yards or more cordoned off. Installed there, in what was no doubt a grand but rather a disagreeable suite. It had two large sitting rooms and a moderate-sized bedroom. It was nominally on the first floor, but when I opened the window of the bedroom I looked straight out at soldiers with machine guns standing about ten feet from me on the top of the little bridge.

Lunched on the Danieli roof garden with a splendid view and splendid weather. Half enjoyed lunch. Then the opening session of the European Council in the old monastery on the Isolo San Giorgio, which ran for four hours from 3.50 and was, as one might have expected, not particularly notable. The mood was one of post-BBQ exhaustion. There were a number of routine items which I introduced, but there was no issue we particularly came to grips with. We signally failed to do so with energy.

Then back to the hotel and on for the heads of government dinner at the Ca' Orsini on the Grand Canal between the Accademia and the Rialto, where I stayed from 9.15 till about 11.15, and then tactfully left as they had to get down to the question of appointing my successor, which is purely inter-government business.

FRIDAY, 13 JUNE.
Venice and Brussels.

Over to the Isolo San Giorgio for the session which was due to start at 10.30. However, owing to the fact that they had completely failed to reach agreement on a new President the night before, it did not begin until 12.30. There were hurried consultations and comings and goings about this. Thorn was pressing himself very hard, and had the support of Genscher but not of Schmidt, who kept on confusing issues by throwing in the names of one or two Dutchmen - ‘that Dutch ex-Finance Minister whose name I cannot remember', he had suggested at one stage. In fact it was Duisenberg. Zijlstra I think he also had in mind. The French were at this stage adamantly opposed to Thorn. The British were willing to go for Thorn, but Carrington much preferred Davignon, who had in fact been offered the job by Barre about two weeks before, and believed he had it sewn up, and would have made a very good President. Mrs Thatcher felt committed to Thorn. Benelux was split all over the place and as a result the scene was generally disorderly. Little Thorn was pacing up and down and looking gloomy and agitated. When I asked him how he was feeling, he said awful. Very disagreeable for him. I think he ought to have removed himself from the scene, which would have been more sensible, but maybe he found it difficult. I returned to Brussels between 5.00 and 7.00.

TUESDAY, 17 JUNE.
Strasbourg.

At 11.30 saw Glinne and Caborn of the Socialist Group about the case of Adams, whom it was alleged had been victimized in connection with the Hoffmann-La Roche exposure many years before, and to whom we had made an
ex gratia
payment, which alas did not entirely satisfy him or them. But we had gone as far as we could without trouble with the
Cour des Comptes.
Jennifer and I took Harry Walston and his new wife (ex Mrs Nicholas Scott) to lunch at La Wantzenau. Some discussion about my speech without a great deal of support from Harry. ‘I agree with your objectives but not with your tactics' was the best I could get from him.

At 3.30 I had a meeting with Madame Chou En-lai and her delegation, very friendly and courteous, but without a great deal of interest to say.

SATURDAY, 21 JUNE.
Brussels and Venice.

I left after lunch to proceed once more by avion taxi to Venice, this time for the Western Economic Summit. Arrived in horrible weather: cloudy, windy, with a tendency to rain. Moreover, it got steadily worse. Installed again in the Danieli, this time on the third floor as I had complained about the noise in the previous room. A great storm then came on.

I had a drink with Trudeau and found him much as when I had last seen him nearly two years before. Agreeable, not much idea as to what was going on, pleased to have won, sharp but not very constructive comments. Then in pouring rain went by motor launch to the Gritti, picked up the Carringtons and took them out to an enjoyable dinner, and my spirits temporarily rose.

SUNDAY, 22 JUNE.
Venice.

Across to the San Giorgio, with the lagoon pretty rough, for photographs and a session from 10.30 till 1.00.
Tour de table,
nobody making any particularly bad or particularly impressive statements. I spoke for ten minutes at the end. Schmidt was probably the best, but too long as usual. Carter looked on better form than at Tokyo and spoke as he generally does on these occasions in a controlled but hardly inspired way. Mrs Thatcher was slightly peripheral, as indeed were Trudeau and the Japanese (owing to Ohira's death, the Japanese were represented at Foreign Minister not Prime Minister level). Cossiga was a fairly good but somewhat long-winded chairman.

Lunched with the Foreign Ministers from 1.30 to 3.00, during which we were trying to draft an Afghanistan and Middle East communiqué. Then, there being a purely political meeting of heads of government in the afternoon, I met with the Finance and Energy Ministers from 3.30 to 6.10. Then a general reception in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, followed by a dinner upstairs with the Finance Ministers. I think we were the first people to dine in that room, or indeed in the building, for three hundred years and everything was visually spectacular, but not conversationally memorable.

MONDAY, 23 JUNE.
Venice.

Three-hour session in the morning, which was almost entirely on the communiqué. Then I had a quite good bilateral meeting with Carter, who was accompanied by the Secretary of the Treasury, Miller, and three or four others, on the anti-dumping suit brought by US Steel which was liable to wreck about 2 billion dollars' worth of our trade unless something could be done. Carter sounded reasonably forthcoming.
⁴³

Everything was over by 5.00. It was a filthy evening. Warmish, low mist, driving wind, the lagoon the colour of milky coffee. I went for an hour's walk with Crispin: into the Piazza, indeed into St Mark's, through the doors of which the lagoon also was lapping strongly, on to the Rialto, then got rather lost on the other side of the bridge and eventually returned by vaporetto. The walk was not all that agreeable, partly because of the weather and partly because the intensive security–the Venetians by this stage must have been demented–meant that our own security men walked behind us, but the Italian security men, of whom we had about six, insisted on clearing a path in advance and jostling people out of the way. The Italian police, mostly from Naples, were fairly shocked by our idea of returning by vaporetto, but as they were even more lost than we were, there was nothing they could do about it.

FRIDAY, 27 JUNE.
East Hendred.

Ted Heath to lunch on his way to a sailing expedition in the Solent. He talked without ceasing: sailing for the first course; music for the second; and the Brandt Report
⁴⁴
for the third. But, particularly on the last, he talked very well. He showed a certain but not a vast interest in what I might or might not be doing in British politics. We agreed to keep in touch.

SATURDAY, 28 JUNE.
East Hendred.

A filthy day which became worse. The weather recently has been indescribably awful, a real monsoon season having set in. The Arthur Schlesingers and the Rodgers' came to lunch. Then had a long talk with Bill from 6.00 to 8.30. Friendly, inconclusive. But he seemed to take no objection to my Press Gallery speech.

MONDAY, 30 JUNE.
East Hendred.

Weather a bit better, but I felt more exhausted than ever. Dick Taverne to lunch and found him satisfactorily self-confident and inspiriting and also more or less willing to go along with what I wanted, which was not to rush things too much. I slept most of the afternoon and early evening, a dismal end to a dismal month, most other things as bad as the weather. Let us hope July will be better.

THURSDAY, 3 JULY.
Brussels and Oslo.

Drove to Amsterdam with Jennifer for a plane to Oslo. A dismal drive through a dank countryside. Arrived in Oslo in the wake of a great thunderstorm but with the temperature quite a bit over 70°F, far higher than anything we had known in Brussels or London during the preceding month. Drove to the rather attractive guest house where the Norwegians were putting us up and were given lunch there by Frydenlund,
⁴⁵
the Foreign Minister. I liked both him and his wife very much.

No one had drawn my attention to the fact that the State Dinner that evening involved a black tie. I made vague suggestions to the Norwegians that perhaps they would not mind if I were unchanged, but it was quite clear that as they were proposing to give a very grand dinner they did rather mind. Oslo is a surprising place for a black tie to be obligatory. So I was forced to hire a dinner jacket, shirt, tie, even cufflinks, all of which were absolutely ghastly.

Then off to the Asheroos Castle, a splendid medieval building with a magnificent site and commanding through its windows great views over the fjord in a variety of directions under the long Norwegian twilight which was far from over when we left at 11.30. Substantial speeches of about twenty minutes by the Prime
Minister (Nordli)
⁴⁶
and by me, each announced by a fanfare of trumpets. Afterwards a slightly exhausting session with nearly all the Norwegian notabilities introduced to me.

FRIDAY, 4 JULY.
Oslo and Sundvolden.

Early meeting with the Prime Minister in a modern building, chiefly notable for the fact that its roof, to which we ascended for a brief look-out, commands one of the best views of Oslo, a city whose site is so good that even the fact that it has hardly a single distinguished building, and that those few which have some pretence in this direction are mostly being destroyed, does not greatly matter. Nordli talked to me about the economy. He is preoccupied by unemployment, despite the fact that it appears to be only 1 per cent, though a little unevenly spread throughout the country, but preoccupied by it as an international rather than a Norwegian phenomenon.

Then I had an hour's fairly intimate talk with Frydenlund, about the world strategic position, the Schmidt mission to Brezhnev, how the changing balance of the North Atlantic Alliance affected the Norwegians–they are particularly worried about this, feeling that it was easier for them outside the European Community so long as America was the unchallenged captain of the boat and more difficult for them as the leadership becomes less clear.

At noon I had an audience with King Olaf in the large palace which, like so many royal palaces, seems to have been built about 1840. We had Balliol (both honorary fellows) and his attendance at the Armistice Day ceremonies when I was Home Secretary to talk about, but we also had a certain amount of conversation about Norwegian history. I found him agreeable and in remarkably good shape for his seventy-seven years. He was dressed rather like Harold Nicolson used to be, in worn brown shoes and an old blue pin-striped London suit. He had just been presiding over a King's Council, and was about to set off back to his house on the sea for some more sailing, being almost as keen an ocean racer as Heath.

Left Oslo at 5.30 and drove out about twenty-five miles to the Sundvolden Hotel on a land fjord, which had a curious but definite charm.

SATURDAY, 5 JULY.
Sundvolden.

I was struck by how much the village, with its two general stores, its clapboard houses and its general feeling of looking for a simple life on a high income, reminded me of parts of New England. An enjoyable picnic lunch on an island and a swim in the fjord which was remarkably warm on the surface but cold underneath.

THURSDAY, 10 JULY.
Brussels, Bristol and East Hendred.

8.45 plane to London on my way to Bristol for my twenty-first honorary degree.
⁴⁷
Not one of the more exciting ceremonies, despite the distinction of the university. I was one of two honorands in the morning, the other being an internal university one. Fortunately no speech required from me at the ceremony but a brief one at the subsequent luncheon, where I enjoyed sitting next to the Chancellor, Dorothy Hodgkin.
⁴⁸
Motored back to East Hendred. Another thoroughly nasty day of weather.

FRIDAY, 11 JULY.
East Hendred, London and East Hendred.

With Jennifer to a meeting at Colin Phipps's flat in Draycott Avenue with him, the Social Democratic Association people (Haseler and Eden
⁴⁹
), Dick Taverne, Mickey Barnes, Clive Lindley, John Harris, Jim Daly–I think that was all. David Marquand unfortunately was not there. Had a moderately satisfactory discussion with them for about an hour and a half. Lindley quiet but sensible. Daly also sensible; John Harris spoke very well; Phipps in the chair; and the SDA people, though Haseler better than Eden, looking like hard-faced men who had done badly out of the Labour Party. The difficulty is that they are interested in spoiling tactics, which I am not. Mickey is interested in a charge of the light brigade and so in a more serious sense is Dick. However, eventually, with some sensible talking, not only on John Harris's part (despite his preoccupation
with Westward Television which was about to blow up) and also on Jennifer's part, we managed to get them to agree that there was nothing that I should do, at any rate until after the Labour Party Conference. We should have a meeting in late October and see where we went from then. In the meantime, the SDA could do what they liked provided they did not implicate me, and those who are longing for action, like Mickey Barnes and Colin Phipps and maybe Dick, could associate themselves with them to the extent that they liked.