European Diary, 1977-1981 (96 page)

Davignon's
forte
was ingenuity. As a result he fell into the small and splendid category of those who prefer finding solutions to complaining about the difficulties. He ought to have become President when I left. Instead he stayed on as a Vice-President and
dominated the Thorn Commission. He is now a leading Belgian banker, but I suspect would respond to a twitch upon the thread which led him back to international public service.

Claude Cheysson,
b. 1920, was a French career diplomat (Ambassador in Indonesia 1966–9) who took to Socialist politics a little too late in life. As a result they went slightly to his head. But he was a man of high intelligence, warm, with an exceptional knowledge of and authority in Africa, lacking sometimes in judgement. He held the Development Aid portfolio in the Ortoli Commission as in mine, and liked visiting his African Empire. ‘What is the difference between God and Cheysson?' had become an old Brussels joke/riddle before I arrived. The answer was, ‘Le Bon Dieu est partout, et Claude Cheysson également, sauf à Bruxelles.'

He was a Commissioner until 1989, sixteen years after his arrival, although he had a period away including three years (1981–4) as French Foreign Minister. In my
cabinet
we occasionally referred to him as the electric mouse, which was a tribute to his energy, although as he expended so much of it away from Brussels he was a little peripheral to the central work of the Commission. He was an engaging companion who spoke almost perfect English.

Antonio Giolitti,
b. 1915, was the oldest and the most
racé
member of the Commission. He was a Piedmontese, who made me constantly aware that Turin is as far from Naples as London is from Marseille. He was the grandson of Giovanni Giolitti, who was five times Prime Minister of Italy between 1892 and 1921. He was himself a Socialist (his grandfather had been a non-party, left-of-centre figure) who had been an (Italian) Communist 1943–57 and joined their list again in 1987 to be re-elected to the Italian Parliament. He had been Minister of the Budget and Economic Planning on several occasions between 1964 and 1974. He held the Regional portfolio in my Commission. In 1978 he was nearly snatched away from us to become President of the Italian Republic.

He was as elegant and nervous as a finely bred racehorse. To begin with he thought he ought to speak French at Commission meetings, which made him take his fences rather slowly. One summer, when Commissioners were asked to give their holiday addresses, he submitted a quiet
pensione
in Venice for ten days plus
Villa Giolitti, via Giolitti, Cuneo, for the rest of the time. That perfectly summed up his mixture of modesty and hereditary slightly other-worldly authority. His wife had translated Proust into Italian.

Guido Brunner,
b. 1930, was a German professional diplomat (Ambassador in Madrid since 1982) who had become a Free Democrat nominee to the Commission on the resignation of Ralf Dahrendorf in 1974. By 1977 he thought that he was entitled to the External Affairs portfolio, but I did not consider that he had enough weight. He had a Spanish mother and was an excellent conversationalist, able to adjust to his interlocutor's interests with equal ease in German, Spanish, English and French. He sometimes engaged less robustly with his Commission responsibilities, which were Energy and Science. He resigned in November 1980 when he was elected a member of the Bundestag, but he did not long remain a legislator.

Raymond Vouël,
1923–88, was a Luxembourger Socialist who had served in the Ortoli Commission for its last six months. Despite this short head-start over a half of us and the centrality of his country to the Community, he was never much at home in the Commission. Taciturn and suspicious, although honest and determined, he was I fear always ill at ease with me, and frequently locked in conflicts with Davignon (their portfolios were adjacent), who danced around him like a hare with a tortoise, except that the tortoise did not win in the end. He was in charge of Competition policy. He was not reappointed in 1981, and although only fifty-seven went home to retirement.

Richard Burke,
b. 1932, was a devout and provincial Irish-Catholic who came from the same party. Fine Gael, as Garret Fitzgerald but did not share many of his liberal views. He had been a minister and was a man of dignity and of a certain shy charm. I rather liked him, but did not often succeed in handling him well. His portfolio in my Commission, arrived at with considerable difficulty (see pages 666–8), comprised Transport, Taxation, Consumer Affairs, and Relations with Parliament. This last item (the most interesting one) he voluntarily surrendered in June 1979. He was not reappointed
in 1981, but came back to Brussels in 1983 for the last two years of the Thorn Commission.

Christopher Tugendhat,
b. 1938, was the only Commissioner under forty. He had been Conservative Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster since 1970. He was very much my personal choice as second British Commissioner. Mrs Thatcher looked in another direction, but James Callaghan was pleased to be able to throw a bone to me and irritate her at one go. I never regretted the choice. Tugendhat was a very good Commissioner. What particularly impressed me was that, starting as he did beholden to me, he never allowed this to affect our relations. He was neither subservient, nor (a more likely reaction) tiresomely contrary or overassertive. He was a pillar of support on the EMS and staunchly committed on all European issues. His father was a distinguished Austrian refugee who rejected his homeland to the extent of not bringing up his son to speak German, which was a pity as it meant that Christopher Tugendhat arrived in Brussels almost monolingual. His portfolio comprised the Budget, Personnel, and Financial Services. It was a mixed bag in which the first item assumed an importance in the affairs of the Community greater than was thought likely when he was appointed. Tugendhat continued in Brussels until 1985, and is now Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority.

SECRETARY-GENERAL

Emile Noël,
b. 1922, was Secretary-General from the creation (1958) to 1987. He was French in nationality and style, but the epitome of a European who transcended nationalism in motive and performance. He conducted most of his business in a series of elegantly phrased memoranda, heavily dependent upon a very precise use of the subjunctive. Yet he rarely allowed this precision to lead him into negativism. He was capable of major constructive swoops. His personality was at once warm and elusive. He had been the
Chef de Cabinet
to Guy Mollet when the latter was Prime Minister of France at the time of Suez. He may well know more about the hidden mysteries of that affair than anyone else now alive. Since 1987 he has been Rector of the European University Institute in Florence.

My Brussels
cabinet
or, in the by no means exact English equivalent, Private Office:

Chef de Cabinet

(Sir)
Crispin Tickell,
b. 1930, later Ambassador to Mexico, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Overseas Development, and now Permanent Representative to the United Nations, New York.

Senior Adviser

Michael Jenkins,
b. 1936, having been
Chef de Cabinet
to George Thomson in the Ortoli Commission, stayed on for my first seven months as a supernumerary but valuable member of my
cabinet.
In the autumn of 1978 he returned to Brussels as a member of the Secretariat-General (later Deputy Secretary-General) and in this capacity worked closely with me, particularly on the British budgetary question. Now British Ambassador in The Hague.

Chef Adjoint

Hayden Phillips,
b. 1943. (Until January 1979.) Formerly my Home Office Private Secretary 1974–6, now a Deputy Secretary, HM Treasury.

Nick Stuart,
b. 1942. (From January 1979.) Now a Deputy Secretary, Department of Education and Science.

Senior Counsellors
(Grade A3)

Michael Emerson,
b. 1940. Dealt primarily with economic and monetary affairs until the end of 1977 when he became a Director (A2) in the Directorate-General dealing with these matters (DG2)
where he still is. He continued to work closely with me on monetary matters, but was replaced in the
cabinet
by:

Michel Vanden Abeele,
b. 1942, Belgian, for the remaining three years. He is now Head of Division in DG8 (Development) in charge of relations with UNCTAD and primary products.

Graham Avery,
b. 1943, who dealt primarily with agriculture and enlargement. He had come from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Soames
cabinet
but in 1981 entered the
services
of the Commission and is now a Director (A2) in the agricultural Directorate-General.

Spokesman

Roger Beetham,
b. 1937. He was attached to the Spokesman's Group in DG10 rather than in the
cabinet
itself, but he worked closely with it. A member of the Diplomatic Service, he was Counsellor in Delhi, 1981–5, and is now in the FCO.

More junior members

Klaus Ebermann,
b. 1945. German. Dealt with industrial affairs and overseas development. Now in the external affairs Directorate of the Commission.

Etienne Reuter,
b. 1944. Luxembourgeois. Dealt, under Crispin Tickell, with relations with countries outside the Community. Now in the Spokesman's Group of the Commission.

Laura Grenfell,
b. 1950. (Until June 1979.) She dealt, under the
Chef Adjoint,
primarily with parliamentary affairs. Now Mrs Hayden Phillips.

Penelope Duckham,
b. 1952. (From June 1979.) Later parliamentary adviser to the Consumers' Association. Now Mrs Matthew Hill.

Secretaries

Celia Beale.
Inherited from the Thomson
cabinet.
Stayed with me throughout and for three subsequent years in London. Now Mrs Graham Cotton.

Susan Besford.
Inherited from the Soames
cabinet.
Went to Tokyo in early 1979 and was replaced by:

Patricia Smallbone
(now Mrs James Marshall) who stayed until December 1979 (but see under London Secretary) and was then replaced by:

Sara Keays
who stayed until the end.

Secretary
(London)

Bess Church
who had worked for me since 1957 and who stayed until the spring of 1980, when she was replaced by Patricia Smallbone.

Drivers

Peter Halsey,
who had worked for me during both my periods as Home Secretary and who continued to drive me in London until 1982. He died in 1988.

Ron Argent,
expatriate English, inherited from the Soames
cabinet,
now retired to Spain, until mid-1977, when he was replaced by:

Michael O'Connor
(Irish) who stayed with me to the end of my Brussels time.

On Sunday evening, 4 January 1981,1 returned to Brussels for forty-eight hours. I stayed with Michael and Maxine Jenkins in their house in the drève des Gendarmes. I held a final press conference in the Berlaymont, reviewing with modified rapture the previous four years. I received my old friend the French Permanent Representative who had been sent in by the Quai d'Orsay, true to the last to its habit of never missing a trick, to tell me that some speech of Christopher Tugendhat's was
inacceptable.
I gave a lunch for the Commission and a dinner for my
cabinet.
I signed a few last-minute documents. I formally handed over to my successor, Gaston Thorn, who was late and flustered. Within three hours, pausing only for my last farewell visit—to Comme Chez Soi—I was in the air for London. It was to be two years and nine months before I again saw Brussels.

Back in England, I was at once remarkably free and remarkably encumbered by political ‘promises to keep'. I had no office, no job (for I did not think I should take up my part-time City commitment until a few months had gone by), and for the first time in London for thirty-three years, no Parliament on which to base myself. On the other hand, the new party, soon to be christened the SDP, was achieving a much quicker but by no means entirely painless birth than I had thought possible. As a ‘Gang of Four' (a name which, as an import from China, was then barely out of the customs sheds) we had a slightly disputacious weekend on 17–18 January. I then went to America for five days, thinking that a brief detachment would do no harm, and returned on the morning of Saturday, 24 January, to watch on television an immensely helpful special Labour Party Conference. It is amazing, looking back, how dedicated a large section of that party was to forcing a predictably
damaging partition. Although perhaps, in view of the 1987—8 behaviour of the SDP, political self-immolation should not occasion surprise.

On the Sunday morning we went to Limehouse and before the early January dusk had produced and launched the Declaration of that name. It did not set up a new party, merely a Council for Social Democracy. But what was crucial was that it put us wholly into the public domain. Thereafter popular response took over. After Lime-house the Gang of Four or any individual member of it could no more have stopped launching a new party than logs could prevent themselves being swept down a mountain torrent. The Council became the Social Democratic Party on 25 March, a month or so ahead of our original timetable, but not, we judged, early enough for us to be ready to fight the May local elections.

We could not however for long pretend that we were a popular movement but refrain from putting ourselves to the test of popular suffrage. The first bye-election vacancy was created at Warrington, an old industrial borough on the borders of Cheshire and Lancashire, in the last week of May. It was traditionally a safe Labour seat, and we rated it, on the basis of some calculus I have now forgotten, about 550th (out of 630) in order of favourability for us. However, I thought I had better fight it.