European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 10

FRIDAY, 3 MARCH. Edinburgh, Newcastle and East Hendred.

A good train journey along the East Lothian coast and down through Berwick-on-Tweed to Newcastle at 11.45. Then to the Northumbrian Water Authority offices for a presentation of the Kielder Water Scheme, a huge enterprise, costing in total over 100m, with a very big Community contribution, both from the European Investment Bank and the Regional Fund. After lunch with them, which Geoffrey Rippon attended, helicopted for an hour up into the North Tyne valley over the area to be flooded and down to a point on the long pipeline which they are driving between the Tyne and Tees valleys. Back to Newcastle at 4 o'clock to open the Newcastle Polytechnic Library. Ted Short, now Lord Glenamara,39 was there-the first time that I had seen him since we ceased to be together in the Cabinet. An odd but nice man. 6.30 plane to London, and to East Hendred.

SUNDAY, 5 MARCH. East Hendred.

To London for a Weekend World programme with Brian Walden: a preliminary film and then half an hour's interview with him on economic and monetary union. Lunched late with the Gilmours at Isleworth, and returned to East Hendred through a spectacular evening light at 5.30.

MONDAY, 6 MARCH. East Hendred and Vancouver.

Met Crispin, Noel and other officials at London Airport for the noon plane to Calgary and Vancouver. Nearly two hours late taking off. However, we flew almost the whole eight hours and twenty minutes from London to Calgary (over Iceland and Greenland) in clear light, suns.h.i.+ne and snow, and Air Canada gave us the best food I have had in a plane for a year or more.

Then a disagreeable hour's flight from Calgary to Vancouver. A complete change of weather when we got to the continental divide: great thick swirling clouds going up to 40,000 feet, above our height at any rate, and down on to the Rockies and right down to the coast at Vancouver. So we arrived on a dark, oppressive, rainy afternoon, and experienced no change in the weather while we were in Vancouver. At the airport I was rather surprisingly asked for a TV interview in French.

To the Four Seasons Hotel, where we were magnificently installed on the top floor and from where the view would have been splendid had the cloud not been so obfuscating. Then a brief and perfectly agreeable dinner given by the British Columbian Government. Afterwards, however, I became gloomily aware that the trip was going to be dominated, and maybe rather ruined, by the question of a non-visit to francophone Canada. The Canadian Government were resolved that we should not go anywhere inside the Province of Quebec because they thought that Levesque40 would turn up and make some sort of inflammatory separatist speech, perhaps even asking for admission to the Community!

The Canadians had also been difficult about pa.s.sing on my messages to him in reply to his several messages to me. However, what had been agreed was that they would ask him to come and see me in Ottawa, but it seemed fairly unlikely that he would do this and there had already been some rather adverse criticism in the francophone press, which was a little over-zealously relayed to me that night by Heidenreich, ex-Messerschmidt pilot and high-quality Community representative in Ottawa.

The Quebec problem was the reason we were in Vancouver and why we were to go subsequently to Halifax. The natural pattern for a short official visit to Canada is Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. If Montreal was out, Toronto was out too, and we had to have the two balancing and much longer arms of Vancouver and Halifax.

TUESDAY, 7 MARCH. Vancouver and Ottawa.

At 9.30 I had a meeting with most of the British Columbian ministers. Then a harbour tour in a very smart launch. In good weather it would have been excellent. If it had only stopped raining, which apparently it rarely does, Vancouver would have appeared a very striking place.

At 12.30 to a lunch organized by the Vancouver Board of Trade in the Vancouver Hotel, one of those green-tiled semi-skysc.r.a.per railway hotels which cover Canada. A good audience of 200/250. Left at 4.15 to fly to Ottawa by a Canadian Government plane, which enabled them to give a free ride not only to our party, which was large enough, but to most of the West Coast politicians who wanted to go to Ottawa. As a result there was animated conversation over dinner about Canadian politics, which are by no means without interest. Ottawa, with a three-hour time change, just after midnight. It was a cold, moonlit night, temperature about 15F, and we drove five or seven miles along a hard frozen ca.n.a.l, through great piles of snow to the Canadian Government guest house at 7 Rideau Gate, a colonial-style house, well and agreeably furnished.

WEDNESDAY, 8 MARCH. Ottawa.

On a sparkling, freezing morning I went to the Parliament building-I am rather impressed by the official buildings in Ottawa-and saw Trudeau alone at 9.45 for about an hour. I had last seen him at the Summit, having before that not seen him for eight or nine years since he came to East Hendred soon after taking office. We talked mainly about his internal politics: he certainly intends to have an election in the summer and, I would judge, is quite reasonably confident of winning it;41 about Quebec separatist problems; and about prospects for the Summit.

His relations with the Carter administration are obviously good, much better than Ottawa/Was.h.i.+ngton relations have been for some time past, and this is a consideration which has to be taken into account in all Community dealings with him. He was rather shocked that I had been sent to Vancouver. He half-apologized for this and also expressed some scepticism as to whether it was necessary to keep me out of Quebec. However on balance, he said, it might be wise and there was something to be said for seeing both ends of the country and not just doing the places that everybody went to.

He was tolerably relaxed about Levesque himself, partly because he thought that his support was declining, though he surprised me by the extent to which, he said, a lot of people, particularly in the prairie states, and indeed in British Columbia, believed that he, Trudeau, was more or less hand-in-glove with Levesque and was trying to force francophone/Papist influences on to the whole country. Speaking without great pa.s.sion but with considerable resentment, Trudeau expressed himself shocked at the way Giscard and the French Government had received Levesque, mainly, he said, because it was so different from the dismissive way (about Levesque) in which Giscard had always spoken to him.

Then to the Department of External Affairs for an hour's meeting with Don Jamieson,42 the Newfoundlander who is the Minister and whom I had met on several occasions before and liked. At noon he and I presided jointly over the formal session of the Committee of Cooperation between Canada and the Community. By this stage I was beginning to be struck by how strenuously anglophone Canada now attempts bilingualism. Jamieson began his speech in the most appallingly bad French, so I had quickly to change the opening of mine.

Then an official luncheon of about two hundred in a room with a good view-wide horizon, s...o...b..und landscape, brilliant suns.h.i.+ne-at the top of the building. An unexpected speech by Jamieson at the end, and therefore an impromptu one from me. Next a visit to question time in the Parliament building, and was called on by the Speaker to stand up in the gallery.

Then a substantial discussion with the Defence and External Affairs Committee. Following this I went to see Jean Chretien, the relatively new Quebecois Minister of Finance. Quite a tough, impressive man, who apparently could speak no English until a few years ago, and is still not fluent. Then a visit to the Commission office and staff.

Dinner party of about twelve with Trudeau at his official residence. An agreeable, informal atmosphere. His three children were all there when we arrived and seemed friendly enough, though very resistant to Trudeau's efforts to speak French to them. 'Aw, shucks, Pop, I wish you'd talk English,' was the reply of one of them to 'Dis a Monsieur Jenkins quel age tu as.' Slightly high-falutin conversation, led by Trudeau, but he getting me to do most of the talking and confining himself largely to asking questions about world trends, world unemployment problems, whither the world economy, etc., all geared in a general sense to the prospects for the Summit.

THURSDAY, 9 MARCH. Ottawa and Halifax.

Another brilliant morning, though with perhaps only about 10 of frost, and the Canadians consequently beginning to talk about spring arriving. To the Parliament building yet again for a so-called round-table breakfast, presided over once more by Jamieson, with about five or six ministers and officials present. I found myself involved (i) in making a speech for about twenty minutes which I hadn't altogether expected; and (ii) in answering a lot of moderately but not excessively difficult questions for nearly one and a half hours. Then a brief meeting with the amba.s.sadors of the Nine. Then an hour's meeting with the Premier of Ontario, Joe Davis. Quite an effective little man who had come up specially from Toronto, I think mainly because the Government wanted to show that Premiers were invited and that one at least would come, even if Levesque would not.

Then rather hurriedly to call on the Governor-General, Leger, a brother of the former Cardinal Archbishop of Montreal, himself an ex-diplomat, primarily francophone clearly, who has been in office three or four years: an interesting man despite the fact that I had been warned that he was very difficult to talk to since his stroke. I did not find this, except that his stroke had the most curious effect of making it easier for him to speak English than French.

Next a rather grand lunch, about fifty, all at one table in the early nineteenth-century Residence. Leger opposite me, I flanked by Mitch.e.l.l Sharp, the former Minister both of External Affairs and of Finance, who had been my chairman at the previous day's meeting in the Parliament, and whom I much liked talking to; and, on the other side, by Joe Clark, the leader of the Opposition, whom I had met in London just over a year before and whom I thought had not gained much authority meantime.

3.15 press conference. No questions at all, so quickly do issues die, about the non-visit to francophone Canada, or about Levesque, until somebody asked me one on the way out, which I replied to without great difficulty.

Took off for Halifax at 4.30 in a Canadian Government Viscount, which seemed a little unprepossessingly antique. However, it was very comfortably fitted up, having a middle section with a few vast armchairs, in one of which I sat, opposite the Minister of Veteran Affairs, Daniel MacDonald, who came from Prince Edward Island and who had been deputed to accompany me on the Nova Scotian part of the tour. He had lost both an arm and a leg in the war, which seemed almost excessive type-casting for a Minister of Veteran Affairs, and at first I thought that he was a rather typical small-town Canadian politician. I was utterly wrong. He turned out to be an absolutely charming man with great breadth of view and interest, whom I liked enormously on the flight, at dinner that night, and subsequently.

In Halifax we were driven to Government House, built in about 1810, in good dark stone curiously reminiscent of Halifax, Yorks.h.i.+re. Dinner at the Chateau Halifax, a relatively new hotel, which was made more agreeable by the fact that at least two of the six or eight local notabilities present had been enthusiastic readers of Asquith.

FRIDAY, 10 MARCH. Halifax and New York.

At 9.15 a meeting with Regan, the Premier, which was intended briefly to precede a long serious discussion meeting about Nova Scotia's economic problems with him and his ministers. I was not quite clear what we were going to talk about. However, this again did not prove difficult. He began by saying that he wanted to ask me a very serious question, and I thought, 'Oh, G.o.d, what horror are we going to have about steel imports or something of the sort.' Instead of which he said, 'Could you tell me exactly what you really think were Asquith's relations with Venetia Stanley?' There must be nothing to do in Halifax except read Asquith. So we gossiped around literary questions for a little time, and then proceeded to the meeting with the other ministers which again was relaxed and easy.

Then a tour of the harbour before a luncheon of 150 with speeches back at the Lieutenant Governor's residence. A press conference at 3 o'clock, again not too difficult, and then back to the old Viscount for New York. After a nice evening over Boston we flew into thick cloud as we approached New York and hovered around in this for about twenty-five minutes-before coming out of it just above the runway of what I a.s.sumed was La Guardia, where we were supposed to arrive and where we were to be met. I thought as we landed that Manhattan, which one could see in a curious orange light, looked rather far away, but took no great notice of this until Sue Besford came down the plane announcing, for some curious reason as though this was a great achievement, that we were at Kennedy and not La Guardia.

I subsequently discovered that when we were on the glide path with La Guardia about ten miles away, the control tower there had rejected us on the ground that they had no immigration facilities. This apparently is a fairly well-known New York trick with Canadian planes; they had messed up an Andreotti visit a few months before. As it was, we were more or less stuck on the tarmac at Kennedy with no terminal anxious to take responsibility for us, quite apart from the considerable hazards which must have been involved in changing from one glide path to another in thick cloud at the busiest time of the busiest day of the week in the busiest bit of air s.p.a.ce in North America, or indeed any other continent. However, we were eventually rather ungraciously let through Immigration and into a taxi, in which we drove off to Marietta Tree's in Sutton Place South, where both Crispin and I were staying.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 11 MARCH. New York.

After lunch to the Frick for an hour. A beautiful day, quite warm, about 45. New York this weekend is looking better than I have known it for several years past. Later there was a large and enjoyable Schlesinger dinner party. I sat between Alexandra Schlesinger and s.h.i.+rley Maclaine. There was generally a slight s...o...b..z atmosphere, as is normal with Arthur's parties, but no Sam Spiegel for some mysterious reason. Arthur made a pretty bad speech-he is addicted to speeches-and I made an equally bad one in reply.

SUNDAY, 12 MARCH. New York.

Marietta and I walked over to pick up the Schlesingers at 1 o'clock and then went with them to lunch at the Urquharts',43 whom after quite a long interval I was delighted to see. A large party of twelve or fourteen. To the Metropolitan Museum for an hour in the afternoon, and looked mainly at the new French furniture rooms at the back, mostly recently given by the Wrightsmans. A rather grand Marietta dinner party of about thirty people, the Kissingers, Jackie (Kennedy), Evangeline (Bruce), the Spaaks, whom I had asked up from Was.h.i.+ngton, the Schlesingers, etc. etc. The party was somewhat interrupted by the French election results, which began to come through, although very badly presented on American television, just after dinner. It looked as though, against the odds, 'the majority' had won (a curiously tautological phrase), Giscard had escaped intact, and Schmidt's main condition for our monetary scheme had been met.

MONDAY, 13 MARCH. New York and Paris.

10.30 Air France Concorde from Kennedy. Paris in 3 hours 24 minutes. Fast obviously, on the whole smooth, but not very agreeable: shuddered rather nastily for ten minutes when going supersonic, landed rather fast, and definitely cramped inside despite the fact that there were only 26 pa.s.sengers in s.p.a.ce for 110, which meant we each had two seats to ourselves. Food not very good. The only advantage apart from speed, and that by chance a rather striking one, was that the first edition of that day's France Soir, the Paris evening paper, was available at 10.00 in the morning at Kennedy, having come over by the westward Concorde. It was almost the only day in four years when I wanted to read that unimpressive newspaper for more than two minutes, for it contained all the detailed results, const.i.tuency by const.i.tuency, and I spent most of the journey studying exactly what had happened in the various French Departments.

Dined at the Coupole with Edward, Laura, Hayden and Crispin, at 10 o'clock, unfortunately only about two and a half hours after Crispin and I had finished lunch. Back to the hotel about 12.30 a.m. (7.30 p.m. New York time) not wanting to go to bed, but was restrained from calling on either Nicko or the Beaumarchais' to give them my election views.

TUESDAY, 14 MARCH. Paris and Strasbourg.

Horrible morning, windy, wet, cloudy. Also Concorde a complete flop for the avoidance of jet-lag. I felt worse than after a normal transatlantic flight. It required a great effort to catch the 11 o'clock train from the Gare de l'Est to Strasbourg. I could not even get any pleasure out of the French countryside. Answered questions in the Parliament from 5.00 to 6.00. Later gave a dinner for parliamentarians particularly interested in economic and monetary union, during which I woke up briefly and even spoke with some animation.

WEDNESDAY, 15 MARCH. Strasbourg and Brussels.

9 o'clock Commission meeting which, despite Concorde-lag, I got through without too much difficulty by about 10.20, and then had a brief meeting with Ortoli and Davignon about the papers we were putting in for the European Council. Avion taxi to Brussels accompanied by Ortoli just after 12.00. Mildly disagreeable flight in bad weather, but nothing out of the way. Briefly to rue de Praetere, where I had not been for almost two weeks, and then to lunch with the group of British journalists with whom I now have this regular fixture. Although relations with them are now much better than they were, I still don't find them an immensely rewarding group, partly because I think-slightly under Palmer's44 leaders.h.i.+p-they always behave so depressingly professionally. They immediately started asking detailed questions as though they were at a press conference. They seem to have no sense at all that they would get more out of me if they allowed a little general conversation to develop.

Back to the office to receive Calvo Sotelo,45 the new coordinating minister in the Spanish Government for relations with us, and was quite impressed by him. In particular, I think that he appreciates the link between the Spanish desire for accession and their need to work fairly closely with us both on industrial and agricultural policy and the renegotiation of the 1970 Convention, whereas previously these interlocking subjects were dealt with by the Spaniards as though they were in watertight and mutually contradictory compartments.

THURSDAY, 16 MARCH. Brussels, Luxembourg, Liege and Brussels.

To Luxembourg by car at 10.00. By the time I arrived to lunch with Thorn I was feeling more or less human for the first time since leaving New York. He was rather late for lunch, having been to Brussels for a meeting that morning and flown down in a delayed and b.u.mpy aircraft. It was not quite clear why we could not have lunched in Brussels. Crispin said the answer was that the Luxembourgeois attach importance to being visited in their own country, which I suppose is understandable.

Thorn quick and quite funny as usual, but deeply depressed about everything and therefore becoming too cynical and hopeless, as at one stage I gently pointed out to him. He was even slightly sceptical about direct elections, though this is a good deal linked with his worry about Luxembourg losing the Parliament as a result of the bigger members.h.i.+p. He was depressed about the post-French election prospect, not about what he thought would be the outcome of the next round, but because he thought even the Giscard victory would leave a divided, weakened and hesitant France. He was fairly sceptical about any move forward from Schmidt. I hope I managed to cheer him up a bit towards the end.

Drove to Liege for a dinner speech, and back to Brussels at 11.30.

FRIDAY, 17 MARCH. Brussels.

An additional meeting of the Commission from 10.10 until 12.25. It produced a rather good discussion on the draft of the 'fresco'46 enlargement paper. Then to the Hotel de Ville for my official visit to Brussels, which began by my being shown the treasures of the city, which indeed are quite magnificent in the form of tapestries in particular, but furniture, panelling, paintings, as well. Then to the Maison Patricienne, a little eighteenth-century house belonging to the Ville de Bruxelles, where we had an agreeable lunch. A speech at the Hotel de Ville but not, fortunately, at the lunch.

SUNDAY, 19 MARCH. Brussels.

Spent nearly the whole day preparing a 1500-word letter to heads of government, which was intended to ring some alarm bells and create an apprehensive but adventurous mood for Copenhagen.

MONDAY, 20 MARCH. Brussels.

A meeting with Cheysson for which he had asked the previous week and which I had deliberately postponed until after the result of the second round of the French election. He was in a buoyant, agreeable, sensible mood, and said that the result was for him a political disappointment, but a personal relief as well. In a Socialist Government he would certainly have been Foreign Minister (Mitterrand had confirmed it to him only three or four weeks before), but this would have been extremely inconvenient for his family, and therefore he did not personally mind the outcome too much, particularly as, so he claimed, he was greatly enjoying his Commission work. He was also in a buoyant mood about the Commission, thought we were doing much better now and generally making a good impact in the press and elsewhere. It was Cheysson at his best. He was also sensible about French politics, thought it was a considerable personal victory for Giscard, which he hoped he would exploit by consolidating the centre.

Went to the Ecofin Council at 12.30 to listen to Ortoli presenting his paper, which he did well, and then lunched with them, an occasion at which no serious business was done, though I had a quite interesting talk with Lambsdorff47 on my one side and, on the other, Boulin,48 the French minister who had narrowly sc.r.a.ped home at Libourne. At the resumed meeting of the Council, Denis Healey talked too much, as even Ortoli remarked to me. He embroiled with Lambsdorff in a highly counterproductive way, which merely had the effect of driving the Germans into a more stubborn corner, resulting in the press the next day giving the impression that they had firmly repulsed British, or indeed any other, pressure to make them move further in an expansionary direction.

TUESDAY, 21 MARCH. Brussels, The Hague and Brussels.

8.37 from the Gare du Nord to The Hague. A slightly depressing journey in horrible weather, the Low Countries looking very low. No breakfast car, contrary to the indications. At Rotterdam the train broke down. However, a good meeting with van Agt and van der Klaauw,49 the Foreign Minister, followed by lunch with a lot of ministers and general discussion. I like the new Dutch Government even more than the old one. 2.10 train back to Brussels for a deputation of five Arab amba.s.sadors-the Moroccan, the Jordanian, the Syrian, the Egyptian and the Somalian-who came to see me to protest about the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon. I just listened.

WEDNESDAY, 22 MARCH. Brussels and London.

Commission meeting 9.30 to 1.30, and got through a long agenda without the need for an afternoon session. Then a late lunch with COREPER, which was better than most of these luncheons. More grandes lignes, less trivia. I told them of my letter to heads of government, which they took perfectly well. Then back to the office to see Ortoli and show him my draft, with which, with a few minor amendments, he expressed himself content, and then saw Davignon for the same purpose. 6.25 plane to London. Dined at the Gilmours with Carringtons, Gordon Richardsons and Peter Jenkins (but not Polly).50 FRIDAY, 24 MARCH. East Hendred.

My new library being complete and my ankle still precluding any other exercise, I started on two days of obsessive book-arranging. Quite hard work physically, but even harder mentally, as it is always difficult to decide how to categorize books and where to place them. However, as a result of about eight hours on both this day and the next I managed to get it more or less complete.

MONDAY, 27 MARCH. East Hendred.

Gordon Richardsons to lunch, both of them very friendly and forthcoming. I gave Gordon my letter to heads of government to read after lunch, and, although I am not quite sure how precisely he took it in, he seemed generally favourably disposed.

FRIDAY, 31 MARCH. East Hendred.

Another depressing day of pouring rain, as throughout this Easter holiday. Lunch at home. A thirty-five-minute telephone call from Callaghan just before 6 o'clock. We had a reasonably satisfactory, fairly friendly, pre-European Council conversation. He was mainly concerned to tell me how well he had got on with Carter in Was.h.i.+ngton and how he had put his five points to him and had them well received, etc.51 I was concerned to see what effect Schmidt had had on him a few weeks before. I decided that they had pa.s.sed like s.h.i.+ps in the night, Callaghan being concerned only to get Schmidt's blessing, or at least friendly acquiescence, for his visit to Was.h.i.+ngton, and not concerned to listen to what Schmidt had to say about European monetary stability. Equally, Schmidt had been more concerned to tell him about this and had probably not appreciated the extent to which Callaghan's mind was more on transatlantic approaches. I tried to open up his mind on the Schmidt point, but I suspect with only marginal success.

SUNDAY, 2 APRIL. East Hendred and Brussels.

The David Watts to lunch, he having recently moved from the Financial Times to his new job as Director of Chatham House. Both of them very good luncheon guests. I left just after 4.30 for Brussels. Just time to go to rue de Praetere and get to the Palais des Beaux Arts to receive the King and Queen for the European Youth Concert at 8.20.

The Youth Orchestra played remarkably well. Heath conducted the first short part, mainly the overture to The Meistersingers, and then after a rather long interval Claudio Abbado came on and conducted Mahler's Sixth Symphony. It was the first time I had heard Ted conduct and he appeared to me to be perfectly competent, although there was an element of Dr Johnson's dog about it. When Abbado took over afterwards there was not unnaturally a certain marked difference of style, quality of definition, etc.

A reception afterwards for the King and Queen, Heath, various amba.s.sadors, etc., and then most of the others adjourned to a party at the British Emba.s.sy, but I went home for a late supper, rue de Praetere, with Laura, the Tickells and the Phillips', during which we settled the final draft of the perhaps over-prepared letter to heads of government.

MONDAY, 3 APRIL. Brussels and Luxembourg.

10 o'clock meeting with the Chinese Foreign Trade Minister before the joint signature by him and Haferkamp of our 'framework'52 trade agreement with the Chinese. He delivered a pressing invitation to me to visit China, which I intend to do before the end of the year or at the beginning of next year. Avion taxi to Luxembourg, giving a lift to K. B. Andersen and the main Danish officials. Had them to lunch at the Golf Club until 2.30, when Andersen left to preside over the Foreign Affairs Council, in which I spent the afternoon. Tugendhat did well on the budget. It was a useful and friendly discussion with Andersen, as usual.

At 6.15 we had an hour or so's negotiations with the Greeks, which was a curious procedure, less formal than on some previous occasions as there was some substantive negotiation, yet all done rather jerkily, as indeed was bound to be the case with the neurotic Papaligouras negotiating from one end of the table next to me in this huge room. I then dodged the formal dinner with the Greeks and dined instead, enjoyably and successfully, with Simonet-it was his party-Dohnanyi and Lahnstein, a junior but highly able German State Secretary.

TUESDAY, 4 APRIL. Luxembourg and Brussels.

Foreign Affairs Council all day. Simonet and Dohnanyi are becoming the dominant and most effective figures in this body.

The Council rather ground on during the afternoon. Davignon did a fluent and informative but over-long exposition of the steel position. I decided to leave at 5.15 as everything seemed in reasonably good shape, even the difficult j.a.panese issue, on which Haferkamp, contrary to what I had believed at first, had done right and shown cool nerve by signing the communique with the j.a.panese ten days before. Train to Brussels.

WEDNESDAY, 5 APRIL. Brussels.

Commission from 10.15 until 12.40. Then a Commission lunch for Emile Noel's twenty years as Secretary-General. I spoke very briefly, got Haferkamp to make the main speech, as he had been there the longest and I had already done a tribute in the Commission in the morning. Emile replied with tears in his eyes.

Commission again from 3.30 until 6 o'clock, with a preliminary run-through of the enlargement 'fresco'. Then received an ETUC deputation, a somewhat formal occasion, as they were having a day of symbolic European strike against unemployment. Afterwards half an hour's pre-Copenhagen Summit talk with Ortoli, during which I had to steer a fairly difficult course as I was still not free to tell him all that had pa.s.sed between Schmidt and me, yet wanted to give him some steer so that we could approach Copenhagen together on good terms. I was equally not able to tell him that I was sending a doc.u.ment to Schmidt, prepared largely by Michael Emerson, which contained our proposals for a possible immediate advance, grouping the other currencies round the Snake, but keeping the Snake, using the European unit of account as a reference point and envisaging interventions in this way between Community currencies and, indeed, in dealings between Community currencies and the dollar. That doc.u.ment went off to Bonn by special messenger that afternoon.

Rue de Praetere dinner party composed of Simonets, Tugendhats, Haferkamps, etc.

THURSDAY, 6 APRIL. Brussels.

A day of preparation for the European Council interspersed by a series of visits de tous azimouts. At 10.301 had Sir Mark Turner of Rio Tinto Zinc to see me. He at least was very quick. At 11.15 I had the Prime Minister of Cape Verde, who was perfectly agreeable, but no more. At 12 o'clock I went to see Tindemans, whom I had not seen for a little time, to talk over with him the prospects for the European Council. As usual a good, friendly talk with his saying that he was going to present some proposals for currency advance, which I knew had been prepared in the Belgian Finance Ministry and which were agreeable to us (though in the outcome he did not do so).

Then back to the Berlaymont, where Harold Wilson had arrived. He wanted to come to Brussels in connection with his City of London inquiry,53 and I was naturally happy to receive him. I had him met at the airport by a cabinet member (Etienne Reuter), and Hayden talked to him until I got back from Tindemans. I had Haferkamp, Noel, Vouel, Crispin, Hayden and Donald Maitland to lunch with him, and most of his conversation must I think have been totally incomprehensible to the three non-British present, as it was full of muttered asides about recondite details of English politics, which hardly anybody except him and me, and not always both of us, could be expected to understand. He was anxious to be very friendly, including producing some wonderful flights of fancy, such as that he had specially timed his resignation in order to be as helpful to me as possible, so that I could have the run which he knew I had to have, but which he feared would not be successful, and still take the European job.

However, he was at pains to urge me not to cut myself off from British politics now. I might well be needed in the future, he said. Callaghan was too old, Owen was too young. The whole outlook was very bad. He was filled with dismay. He did not think there was much future for the Government, or indeed the Labour Party. A coalition government would almost certainly be necessary; he would bless it from outside, but not serve. I, however, would undoubtedly be needed. Taking all this with several pinches of salt, I kept the conversation going in a way which I trust was reasonably agreeable to him, and indeed I believe was so, except when we got on to the question of voting or non-voting in the Commission and I compared it with voting practices in the British Cabinet. He looked most pained and said, 'There was never voting in the Cabinet in my day.' I allowed fantasy to triumph over fact and did not pursue the matter.

After lunch Wilson went to see Ortoli, I saw David Marquand and did a little work, and then took Wilson down to the front door.

FRIDAY, 7 APRIL. Brussels and Copenhagen.

Avion taxi to Copenhagen, accompanied by Ortoli, Crispin, etc. To the Royal Hotel. I worked hard in the plane and a little in the hotel on an opening statement, although I was not quite clear when it would be made or what the exact order of business would be. Soon after 12.30 Ortoli and I drove to the Amalienborg Castle for the Queen's lunch. I was rather reluctant to go so early as the invitations only said 1 o'clock, but protocol, police, etc., were insistent that that was the right time to arrive for the photograph. Callaghan arrived as I did, and immediately got into a very bad temper, not particularly with me but in general on discovering that the other two 'big ones' had not turned up, and that Schmidt indeed was not due to touch down at the airport until about five minutes later. All the little ones, plus the Italians, had, however, a.s.sembled.

Schmidt eventually arrived at 1.20, followed by Giscard at least seven minutes after this. Gaston Thorn had typically and correctly pointed out that there was no question of Giscard arriving before Schmidt and that probably his car was tucked into a side road on the way in from the airport waiting to see Schmidt go past. If so he might at least have come along a minute or two behind him. However, they all seemed tolerably tempered during lunch at which I sat between van Agt and Genscher and had a better conversation with Genscher than ever previously.

We then went to the Christiansborg for the opening session of the Council, which occupied itself with rather minor items of business for an hour. Then the heads of government and I drove out to Marienborg, a nice castle about twenty miles from the centre of Copenhagen (plenty of castles in Denmark). We were supposed to start there at 6 o'clock and I arrived about five minutes early on a most beautiful evening. However, we did not start until 6.30 not, as Thorn again suggested, because Callaghan would this time be at least half an hour late in order to get his own back (in fact he was there on time, as on this occasion were Giscard and Schmidt), but because van Agt was extremely late. We eventually had to start without him, and when he was then asked at dinner if he had got lost or if he had mistaken the time, he blandly said no, he had been having a press conference and the Dutch press were the most exigeant in the world. Rather a good cool performance, I thought.

When we started there was no one in the room except for the ten of us and a chuchotage interpreter for Andreotti. Later a Danish official came in, I think because Jrgensen was not fully understanding all the rather complicated exchanges in English and was getting understandably worried about losing the drift of the matter for the record which he would subsequently have to provide.

Jrgensen opened very briefly and then I spoke for about fifteen minutes. Callaghan and then Giscard spoke for about the same. And then Schmidt went off into one of his long soliloquies, which with a certain amount of interruption took forty minutes. It was mainly about the problems of the German economy in an improvident world, but it contained one or two splendid side-swipes, such as complaining at one stage that he could not understand English English. Mine was the worst, Callaghan's almost equally bad, Lynch's an improvement, but only Giscard's impeccably pellucid. After this, Jack Lynch alone was able to get in about a seven-minute speech before we adjourned for dinner just after 8.00.

It had been a good-tempered, a.n.a.lytical, slightly gloomy discussion. Giscard was the most constructive in opening up some lines for the future. He did a rather good a.n.a.lysis of the six groups in the world, the three parts of the developing world and the three main groups in the industrialized world, ending up by saying that of the three industrialized groups we in the Community had recently done by far the worst for growth and general economic performance, and that he could not dissociate this deterioration in our performance from the new era of world currency instability, with us the only one of the three developed groups which had such instability not merely between us and the other groups, but internal to our Community itself. It was a helpful a.n.a.lysis.

However, in this part of the discussion we did not get very near (except for some trailing remarks on my part) to discussing any hard scheme for advance towards a possible exchange-rate bloc. Schmidt at this stage intended to hold his hand until the tripart.i.te breakfast he was having with Giscard and Callaghan the following morning. As recently as ten minutes before the start of the session he had told me that these were his tactics and that while he did not mind how much I opened the subject up, I should not expect him to say much in even such a restricted session as the one which we were having.

Dinner was rather pointless. Callaghan and Lynch were not there until the end as they were having a bilateral discussion about Northern Ireland outside. n.o.body seemed to have much to say to their neighbours or anybody else until Giscard tried to start some general conversation, which began on this occasion not with a reference to Sir Charles Dilkie (sic), but by his suddenly asking me if I had ever read 'un livre par une Americaine, Mademoiselle Tugwell, ou un quelconque nom, qui s'appelle, je crois, Les Canons d'Aout?' So I said, 'Yes, I have indeed read The Guns of August54 by Barbara Tuchman,' and this led on to a long semi-general discussion about World War I and II commanders, the different effects of the wars upon differing countries and a variety of related subjects, ending up with a discussion of why, in England, there were now no generals or commanders whose names were known to the public, which Giscard slightly implausibly claimed was not the case in France.

We rea.s.sembled upstairs at 9.45 and went on until 11.30. Schmidt, whether through boredom or for some other reason, had completely changed his mind, his plan, or his tactics. He opened the discussion, and after only a very few preliminary words proceeded to spill the whole beans. He deployed his plans for dissolving the Snake in the new arrangement, using the European unit of account far more extensively, both for transactions between the member governments, for joint interventions against the dollar and third currencies, and possibly indeed for providing a full parallel currency, which could deal in stocks of raw materials and in which OPEC money might be encouraged to invest.

It took me a little time to realize that he was in fact giving a full expose and therefore my own notes were not as coherent as they might have been. Broadly speaking, what he said was a firm repet.i.tion of what he had said to me in Bonn five weeks previously, except that at Copenhagen he did not offer to commit all reserves, only suggesting a significant proportion of the dollar reserves of all the partic.i.p.ating countries, although, he implied, an almost limitless quant.i.ty of their indigenous currencies. What had however moved on very significantly since the end of February was the state of the play with Giscard. It was obvious that Schmidt's visit to Rambouillet the week before had completely lined up Giscard. Giscard in some ways went further than Schmidt, and provided a more coherent, intellectual framework to the argument than Helmut himself did on this occasion.

In the two-hour session there were no partic.i.p.ants except for Schmidt, Giscard, Callaghan and me. The others all remained absolutely silent, including Tindemans, who probably rightly did not produce his plan, for what Schmidt had proposed went rather further than what he had in mind. Lynch, Thorn, van Agt did not speak either. Andreotti intervened only at the end to make an irrelevant point about Mediterranean agriculture. Jrgensen summed up in a not very convincing manner. Callaghan was taken aback, I think, because although he had been given a fair rehearsal of what Schmidt had in mind on his own visit to Bonn about two and a half weeks previously, I do not believe that he had then taken things in at all completely (for the reasons which I gave earlier).

Nevertheless Callaghan handled himself well, expressed interest, was polite, non-committal, but didn't turn things down out of hand, or make any foolish statements. He concentrated on his fear that what was proposed might appear as anti-dollar and might therefore be divisive from an Atlantic point of view. Although I believe that at the fundamental level this is the reverse of the truth, the fact that he should take this point could at least be understood, because Schmidt had spoken in strongly anti-Carter terms, saying that the whole management of the dollar by the American administration was absolutely intolerable. At one point indeed he said that no American President could lead the Alliance while presiding over such degradation of the dollar as he had witnessed during his period as Federal Chancellor.

When we were breaking up Callaghan said that he was not sure that he had taken in everything completely and could I therefore go round to his hotel that night and go through it with him, to which I naturally acceded, though admitting that I was not sure that I had got every Schmidt detail myself. Accordingly, late though it was, Crispin and I saw him in a room in which John Hunt with a very bad cold, two Private Secretaries (Stowe and Cartledge) and Ken Couzens,55 the Finance Second Permanent Secretary, as his Treasury t.i.tle now is, were present. I summarized what Schmidt had said for about ten minutes. Callaghan then went through his own notes which tallied almost exactly.

He next asked other people what they thought. I said I had probably better leave for that discussion. He said, 'No, no, do stay.' But n.o.body had much to say, certainly not Hunt. Couzens looked rather pole-axed and kept on repeating, 'But it is very bold. Prime Minister. Did the Chancellor really go as far as that? It is very bold. It leaves the dollar on one side. I don't know what the Americans will say about it. It's very bold. Prime Minister.' After about twenty-five minutes of this, we went back to the Royal Hotel where I talked to Crispin before going to bed, in a state of some excitement, for it had been a remarkable day, at 2 o'clock.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 8 APRIL. Copenhagen and Brussels.

Ortoli came to see me at 8.45, and I gave him an account of what had taken place. It had been agreed in the meeting that very little, if anything, would be said outside, and it was suggested indeed that in the follow-up arrangements each of the heads of government should consult only one collaborator, though this was a prescript which had hardly been followed by Callaghan, who had immediately debriefed five, and I do not suppose was followed by any others either.