European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 22

A call from Lamb of the US Mission (Deane Hinton being in Was.h.i.+ngton). He, we had been warned, was coming in under instructions to ask exactly what we thought the country targets accepted at Tokyo meant, in particular in the case of Germany, and, indeed, whether it included North Sea oil, or whether it was only imports from third countries. Our view was that it was only imports from third countries, but there seemed some confusion between the French and the German positions on this, another indication of the way that Giscard had slightly c.o.c.ked things up at Tokyo and Schmidt had allowed him to get away with it. However, our line with the United States was perfectly clear. We could only speak on the Community target as a whole. This applied to imports from third countries only, in other words it did not include North Sea oil (any more than their imports included Alaskan oil), but that so far as the individual country targets were concerned, queries on these points should be addressed to the individual governments. This was a perfectly tenable line and one which Lamb both expected and accepted.

TUESDAY, 10 JULY. Brussels.

A meeting lasting about an hour with Plaja, Nanteuil and Murphy, the second man in the Irish Permanent Representation (Dillon being away). I decided to have them in as representatives of the present, past and future presidency of COREPER, because there had been several signs of growing morosity on the part of COREPER, several reports of mutterings at meetings about things the Commission had or hadn't done. Certainly while I had been away in j.a.pan the Commission had made a c.o.c.k-up of the agrement to a new Greek Amba.s.sador and future Permanent Representative, and some people in the Commission-Haferkamp, Natali, Cheysson (a curious mixture)-had been in favour of refusing agrement, which we had never done before. The man concerned (Roussos)11 had apparently been in Brussels under the Colonels, but he had been serving successfully and satisfactorily as Amba.s.sador in London for the past three or four years, and it seemed to me that if Karamanlis was satisfied with his record under the Colonels, there was no reason why we should not be.

THURSDAY, 12 JULY. Brussels, Cardiff and East Hendred.

To Cardiff for the UWIST degree day ceremony. A most beautiful morning, quite nice in Brussels and spectacular in England. The drive across the Downs and then on through Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Monmouths.h.i.+re was as beautiful as anything I had seen for a long time. It was even high tide in the Severn, which seems rare.

Two one-and-a-half-hour degree-giving sessions, interspersed with Princ.i.p.al Trotman-d.i.c.kenson's lunch party. Then to the Angel Hotel, where, after a certain amount of sweaty preparation, I did a thirty-minute interview for BBC Wales with Vincent Kane, with whom I had done things in Luxembourg and Strasbourg and think rather good.

To the City Hall for the Welsh Development Corporation dinner, a huge gathering of nearly five hundred. Thirty-five minutes from me (broadcast live by Radio Wales) and then the new Secretary of State for Wales (Nicholas Edwards) made a surprisingly partisan speech, although in quite a good voice.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 14 JULY. East Hendred.

Lunch at Buscot Parsonage with Diana Phipps, who had George Weidenfeld and the Charlie Douglas-Homes.

Drove myself to Chequers (where I hadn't been for several years) for the Thatcher dinner engagement mentioned by her on the telephone and surprisingly vigorously followed up. I was greeted by Denis Thatcher and led into the medium-sized sitting room on the ground floor, where the Prime Minister and Woodrow (Wyatt) were already deep in conversation. I had no idea who was going to be there, but apparently she had settled for this odd quartet.

Perfectly agreeable general conversation before an early dinner at a small table in the window of the big dining room. Quite a good meal, and interesting enough political conversation. Towards the end of dinner we began to get into the middle of things. Hitherto we had been talking princ.i.p.ally about what she thought of Strasbourg and Tokyo, to which the answer was not much: she had thought a lot of Schmidt on both occasions and very little of Giscard, whom she thought petulant, vain and rather ill-mannered. I told her that she had seen him at his worst, certainly at Tokyo, and when all was said and done, although she was right in a lot of her complaints, the good side was substantially greater than she allowed for, for he was highly intelligent, on the whole his policies went in the right direction and on the whole they did so effectively; and that, therefore, one ought (although my instincts were often very much like hers for he could be absolutely maddening) to try to suppress these feelings, and realize there was a good deal to put in the credit balance. It was a pity, though, that he spoilt such a large credit balance by these rather silly-but nonetheless deep-fissures of character. She seemed willing to agree with this.

At any rate, somebody-Woodrow or her-said, towards the end of dinner, arising out of something I had said, 'How do you think the British hand should be played vis-a-vis Giscard, Schmidt and the others?' I replied, 'Well, that is rather a big question which I would prefer to open up on, not just as we are leaving the table, but when we settle down afterwards.' Whether or not she took this as a suggestion that I wanted to talk to her alone, I don't know, but she then said, 'Ah, well, let Roy and me go off and have twenty minutes alone, while you, Woodrow, have coffee with Denis.' And so we separated.

The twenty minutes almost inevitably multiplied itself by four, during which I expounded to her my view that, without in any way wis.h.i.+ng to encourage bad Franco/German relations (good Franco/German relations being essential for Europe) we should nonetheless endeavour to break up the endless exhibition waltz between Schmidt and Giscard which had been going on for too long, and which left the Little Five, and indeed Italy as well, as rather bored wallflowers sitting at the edge of the room. The conversation obviously wasn't only this, but this was a central part of it.

She then collected the other two from the terrace and we all four talked for another hour. This last part of the conversation was largely politico-industrial gossip, whom she might get to run various things, etc., all fairly indiscreetly done. Some of her ideas were pretty silly (some of the silly ones encouraged by Woodrow) though not all of them. She wanted to get rid of Villiers from the British Steel Corporation, which may well be right; but she also wanted to get rid of Ezra from the Coal Board, which would be a great mistake. She was also rather keen to get a job for George Brown (she thought he was much younger than he is, for some reason) but, of all things, suggested making him chairman of the BBC, where she wanted somebody who would take a tougher line. Anything less suited to George, at this or indeed any stage of his career, I can hardly imagine. I felt in a slightly embarra.s.sed position, because I did not want to do George down but I knew this would be hopeless for him, as the qualities it requires are steadiness and calm day-to-day judgement, which are exactly the qualities he does not possess. This is not incompatible with the fact that he has very good longer-term judgement. I tried to steer away by saying that he might be better at a more executive job.

I was struck throughout this conversation by three things: first, Woodrow is on very close terms with her, talks freely, easily, without self-consciousness, says anything he wants to; secondly, Denis Thatcher, while a caricature of himself in some ways, is not in the least afraid of her and talks a good deal. But he doesn't always talk foolishly, quite shrewd comments on the lines of 'Old JD of BP told me...' The self-caricature aspect came out even more strongly when he said goodbye to me on the steps and I noticed his somewhat notorious Rolls standing at the side of the courtyard and said, 'Ah, I see you've got your Rolls-Royce here.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I've got to give the old bus a spin from time to time. I know she doesn't like it very much, but the old cylinders you know get choked up if you don't give her a spin. Lovely bus, lovely bus. Mind you, that's a beautiful little Boche job you've got over there. I'd really rather have that; that's a real modern car.' Funny man. Whether he is exactly out of his depth I don't know. He is his own man, I think. He remains a moderately prosperous suburban businessman, who is perfectly self-a.s.sured with her. Not an unfavourable impression at all.

The third thing that I retained from the conversation was that she talked extraordinarily freely, although she was only critical by implication of my particular Cabinet friends, Gilmour, Carrington, Whitelaw, because she pointedly left them out of a list of the sound men-Howe, Biffen, Joseph, Nott, and could there have been one other? - who were fighting tooth and nail on her side for public expenditure cuts. I left just before 11.00.

MONDAY, 16 JULY. East Hendred, Brussels and Strasbourg.

To Brussels in the morning and to Strasbourg in the evening with the prospect of meeting the new Parliament looming heavily.

Gave w.i.l.l.y Brandt a long enjoyable dinner alone. He was looking thin, almost young, slightly febrilely bright-eyed. I would be sceptical about his future health, but he is for the moment tremendously agreeable and easy to talk to, a good deal more so than he used to be when Chancellor. Not critical of Schmidt, except occasionally by implication, but not tremendously optimistic about the future of German politics. He didn't quite see where the leaders.h.i.+p in the SPD was going and thought there was a slight tug to the right. He thought Apel probably the most likely successor. Schmidt thought Matthofer possible, but he (Brandt) didn't think this remotely possible. Apel was not great but better than I thought he was. Dohnanyi was emerging as a faint possibility for the leaders.h.i.+p, about which I expressed enthusiasm. He was encouraging about the work of the Commission. He agreed, under a little pressure from me, that he would stay and make a speech on Thursday.

TUESDAY, 17 JULY. Strasbourg.

A most gloomy, hot, sticky, dark day for the opening of the new Parliament. The doyenne d'age, Mme Louise Weiss, aged eighty-six, Gaullist but before that a politician of the Third and Fourth Republics, delivered an extraordinary Gallic address of bidding, lasting a full hour, which was redolent of the spirit of Geneva in the thirties. The only appropriate person to have replied would have been Philip Noel-Baker, with whom no doubt she used to dance tangos on the terrace of the Beau Rivage c. 1932.12 In a slightly ludicrous way, it was not a bad performance. The Parliament then adjourned in order to begin its various manoeuvres for the election of its President.

Just before 10 p.m. we heard that Mme Veil13 had been elected on the second ballot, with only three votes to spare, and went back to the Parliament to hear her brief acceptance speech.

WEDNESDAY, 18 JULY. Strasbourg.

I made my formal speech to the new Parliament at 11.00. It lasted only fifteen minutes, had some rather good phrases, and particularly as it followed an extremely long and boring speech by Lynch, the Irish President-in-office of the European Council, went all right. Lunch at Valentin Sorg which Donald Maitland was giving for Soames, who had turned up in a silent but representational role for the British Government.

At 4.151 paid a long formal call of congratulation upon Mme Veil. She was pleased to be elected, ill-informed about parliamentary and European affairs, agreeable, totally francophone. Afterwards I saw Russell Johnston,14 who had come on a protest mission from the British Liberals about their non-representation in the Parliament owing to the absence of proportional representation. I received him sympathetically.

THURSDAY, 19 JULY. Strasbourg.

I spent the morning in the Parliament supposedly for my speech of substance, but in fact the three hours were taken up with a procedural wrangle raised by Pannella15 and his sidekick Signora Bonino about the non-recognition of the ragbag of Italian Radicals, Franco-Bruxellois, and G.o.d knows who else he had put together. This was thought to be Parliament at its worst, but I didn't wholly think so. It was minorities a.s.serting themselves (presenting Mme Veil with an initial taste of the problems of the presidency, which she did not handle particularly well), but was also Parliament behaving like a Parliament and therefore I wasn't wholly impatient that my speech and the others were held up until after lunch.

I eventually spoke from 4.25 until 4.50.1 had to make a decision as to where to speak from. There was no rostrum on the first day. It had been installed on the second day and O'Kennedy (Irish Foreign Minister) automatically used it. I used to do so in the old Parliament when I was making a speech of importance. But I suddenly decided that it was better to be more part of the Parliament than the President of the Council of Ministers, and slightly to differentiate myself from this long drone from the rostrum, and therefore spoke from my place at the end of the first bench, which I think I shall stick to unless something very exceptional happens.

Brandt spoke immediately after me, a considerable oratorical performance, and one immediately had a real feeling of the value of the new Parliament. A speech could get a response from somebody of real significance in his own country and indeed in Europe as a whole. It was not like the previous Parliament where I felt that I was throwing words into a Chamber without an echo and where the most likely response was for little Fellermaier to get up and complain that the translation of my speech in Danish had not been circulated seventy-two hours beforehand.

FRIDAY, 20 JULY. Strasbourg and Cardiff.

I listened to Tugendhat's good opening of the budget debate, gave a radio interview for IRN, had a brief word with Barbara Castle,16 and a talk with Ann Clwyd, a new Labour member. (The few Labour members seem much more agreeable than I expected.) I took an avion taxi back to Brussels and on by commercial flight to London for Cardiff, where I was due to speak at a University of Wales dinner before my honorary degree the following morning.

We drove the same route as eight days before, but in less good weather. I struggled into my dinner jacket in the back of the car and tried frantically to put a speech together. I was intimidated by the thought of speaking, unprepared and noteless, with my mind on other things, immediately before the Prince of Wales, who I had been surprised to be told was a spectacularly good after-dinner speaker. He had apparently done very well at a Royal Opera House dinner at the Guildhall.

A dinner of about sixty, after which Goronwy Daniel, the Princ.i.p.al of Aberystwyth and the current Vice-Chancellor of the university, made the first speech, and spoke extremely well, with a sense of timing worthy of a considerable actor. I then rose and said I was aware that I would have to speak before the Prince of Wales, who was one of the most accomplished after-dinner speakers, I was told, in England, but I did not realize that I would be sandwiched between him and a Vice-Chancellor who was undoubtedly the most accomplished after-dinner speaker in Wales. Then, for some reason or other, my speech rather took off, I got on to a vein of impromptu semi-jokes which couldn't go wrong, and b.u.mbled on for about fifteen minutes with curious success.

This left the poor Prince with two difficult speeches to follow as well as my excessive and embarra.s.sing tribute to him. He had a pedestrian little speech prepared for him, on which he improvised rather well. He is a nice young man and almost certainly the most intelligent male member of his family since Prince Albert.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 21 JULY. Cardiff and East Hendred.

Three-mile walk before breakfast to visit Llandaff Cathedral. Then to the National Museum of Wales, where we saw the Rubens cartoons which they have just bought, and also the spectacular collection of Impressionists which the two Misses Davies of Gregynog left to them at varying stages in the forties and fifties. I suppose it was the first museum I ever visited, and I doubt if I had been in it since the thirties, so it was a nostalgic expedition.

Then a good ceremony with twelve honorands, Graham Sutherland the other princ.i.p.al non-local one. I talked to him a lot, and developed an ambitious if rash hope that he might be prepared to paint a portrait of me.17 This Welsh expedition, though it fell too quickly after the previous one, was exceptionally enjoyable both for Jennifer and for me. I don't know quite why, but it was.

Back to East Hendred, where the Rodgers' arrived unexpectedly for a drink and stayed for a scratch dinner. We had a more agreeable and relaxed talk with them than we had had for a long time, and were extremely glad that they had come.

SUNDAY, 22 JULY. East Hendred and Brussels.

To Brussels in the late afternoon, where Crispin and I had Giscard's trois sages, Dell, Marjolin and Biesheuvel, to dinner, rue de Praetere. There has been a curious s.h.i.+ft in the balance of power within the group since I saw them in January. Biesheuvel, the Dutchman, seems to me now the dominant figure, whereas Marjolin was so earlier. Dell has always been somewhat in the middle, a little detached, but quite sensible.

MONDAY, 23 JULY. Brussels.

Lunch at home for Michael O'Kennedy, the Irish Foreign Minister, plus two other Irish. I was rather sleepy for some reason or other, and O'Kennedy seemed to me less good, less on the ball than I had expected him to be. No doubt he was rather nervous about his first chairmans.h.i.+p.

Then no fewer than six amba.s.sadors' credentials-all done in sixty-five minutes. Then an hour with Soutou, ex-permanent head of the Quai d'Orsay, who, most surprisingly for such a senior diplomat, didn't speak English.

Home early for my British dinner for Carrington, Ian (Gilmour), Peter Walker18 and Maitland. Just after 8.001 was sitting at my desk thinking happily that I had got another twenty-five minutes, when Peter Walker arrived, having been told rather typically by some foolish man at the Emba.s.sy that it took half an hour to get to the house, whereas it only took five minutes. After momentary irritation I was quite glad to see him, as I had originally thought of offering him dinner alone. He has not got the hang of how to deal with the Agricultural Council yet, and he certainly hasn't appreciated Gundelach or got alongside him.

The dinner was a great success. Everybody seemed to enjoy it a lot, much of it was very funny, but also useful at the same time. I gave Peter C. a lecture after dinner, slightly along the lines I had given to Mrs Thatcher, but done in a more post-prandial tone, telling him that he really had an opportunity if he played his cards right to be the greatest Foreign Secretary since Canning, I first said, but then quickly corrected it to Bevin. I then went to the loo. Whereupon Carrington, forgetting that Crispin was there, jumped up in a great state of exhilarated excitement at my comparisons.

TUESDAY, 24 JULY. Brussels.

Nothing of interest in the Foreign Affairs Council, apart from tributes in his absence to Francois-Poncet's presidency. So I thought I had better strike a slightly different note, particularly as O'Kennedy had been far too apologetic about it not having been done in June, which I said was largely my responsibility, but it was three weeks before the end of the French presidency and I always took the view that it was a mistake to tip the waiter too generously before one had finished the meal. The British thought this very funny, and so I think did most others. The French didn't seem offended; perhaps Francois-Poncet would have been. I said quite a lot of nice things about him, including that he had shown great skill at untying knots. Some of his skill was of course both necessary and understandable, because he had tied up most of them himself. But apart from these few glancing remarks, there were a lot of thoroughly friendly ones, because I like Francois-Poncet, but believe increasingly in teasing the French which is not done enough in Europe.

WEDNESDAY, 25 JULY. Brussels and London.

After a long morning's Commission, I gave COREPER an end-of-term lunch. They didn't have much to say, but weren't in any way disagreeable. Afterwards I saw Ortoli, partly to tell him that I wasn't circulating the Cour des Comptes report as it looked as though there was a good chance it might hold without leaking until September, though one couldn't be sure, and it seemed better not to give the press a free run in the empty newspapers of August.

Then to London for the long-awaited holidays. Sense of relief slightly diminished by having invited thirty people to dinner at Brooks's. It's very nice having a party the evening of return, but a great deal nicer if other people give it.

However, it turned out well. We had a great rollcall of the establishment: Carringtons, Soames', Gilmours and Norman Stevas from the Government. s.h.i.+rley, Rodgers', Levers, Thomsons from the Labour Party. David Steel, Hartwells, Zuckermans, Bonham Carters, Peter Jenkins', Rees-Moggs. I think that was about it. It all went agreeably well until about 12.15, when Brooks's slammed the door on us with great relief (I do not think Fox would have approved of this puritanical att.i.tude to late hours).

THURSDAY, 26 JULY. London.

Dinner at the Other Club. Callaghan was there rather surprisingly, looking at bit insp.i.s.sated, but I didn't have a chance to talk to him. I sat between Robert Armstrong, who was very nice about Hayden, and Prof. Trevor-Roper,19 who has become a peer for some not very clear reason and for some still more obscure reason wishes to call himself Lord Dacre of something or other, which is running him into trouble, not surprisingly, with Rachel Home.20 There were one or two others whom I would like to have talked to, notably Jeremy Hutchinson21 and Garrett Drogheda.

MONDAY, 30 JULY. East Hendred.

Annual cabinet day at East Hendred. It began with Manuel Santarelli (Perlot's deputy) ringing from Brussels in a great state because of some story in Le Monde. I didn't take it terribly seriously, but nonetheless it was mildly disturbing as he was so agitated. There was apparently a headline saying 'Drole de Jeu de M. Jenkins'. It was all totally without foundation, a bit of French fantasy about the Euratom affair. Crispin dealt with it rather well when he arrived.

The six hours' discussion including lunch was in three parts: first, a whole range of immediate questions facing us; second, inst.i.tutional questions, relations with Parliament, Spierenburg, Three Wise Men, problems of this sort; third, slightly longer range policy issues. We covered the first two almost inevitably better than the third which we slightly galloped through at the end, but it was long enough, as this part of the discussion was unfocused by me.

WEDNESDAY, 1 AUGUST. East Hendred and Palafragal.

Left for Barcelona before lunch accompanied by Jennifer, Caroline Gilmour and her son Andrew. Did not get to the Griggs'22 house near Palafragal until 7.30, rather hot and sweaty as the car (hired from Barcelona airport) was very small and very full of luggage and us. However, the house was splendid. A great 1928 villa, built by John's maternal grandfather, Lord Islington, with all the scale and lavishness of a villa of fifty years ago, perched high above the sea, commanding an unspoilt peninsula. We dined in with the Griggs,* and John Bayleys23 who were also staying.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 4 AUGUST. Palafragal.

Gerona at about 7 o'clock. A very spectacular cathedral, semi-fortified, at the top of an enormous flight of steps as approached from the west front. The broadest nave in Europe apparently.

TUESDAY, 7 AUGUST. Palafragal.

Left for Barcelona just after 11 o'clock, partly to look at it and partly to a.s.sist in the changeover of guests at the airport. Lunch was slow so that we only just got the two Gilmours on the plane to Milan and thence to Pisa. I then proceeded to try to re-find Patsy (our two cars had been left ill-parked together) but she was so agitated by the impending arrival of her mother-in-law and others that she seemed completely to have disappeared. After various brushes with the police, and having to put my car in the car park, I eventually found that her car was being hoisted on to a lorry and managed with some difficulty to get it de-hoisted for a relatively small payment of about 5. Eventually old Lady Altrincham, the daughter of the said Lord Islington, arrived in a pretty bad temper saying she had had the most filthy journey (she is a formidable old gorgon) plus Christian Smith, wife of John Smith, ex-MP for Westminster, with various children. Patsy, with great self-sacrifice, took her mother-in-law and left me to take the Smiths. We had a short look round Barcelona, visited the cathedral, which was quite good, and had a short drive round one or two good squares near it and a drink at the Colon Hotel.

FRIDAY, 10 AUGUST. Palafragal and East Hendred.

East Hendred for lunch. The weather coolish, but not bad, although it had clearly been very unsatisfactory while we were away. Our Spanish visit, however, had gone very well, with almost unbroken good weather, a little too hot if anything, the first time I had known it so in the Mediterranean for years: a splendid house and generally very satisfactory.

TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST. East Hendred.

Spent the morning trying unsuccessfully to start my Dimbleby Lecture.

WEDNESDAY, 15 AUGUST. East Hendred.

Lunched at home in the garden with Jennifer and apart from being stung, twice as it turned out, by a wasp, I was feeling rather relaxed and cheerful. Slept afterwards in the sun and awoke to discover that the Cour des Comptes report had leaked into Der Stern, a semi-scandalous German magazine: therefore the end of the period of relaxation. I had a fairly hectic evening on the telephone, trying to contact various members of my staff in their scattered holiday locations.

THURSDAY, 16 AUGUST. East Hendred.

A morning on the telephone, leading to the issuing of a statement both in Brussels and London. There had been some stories in the British papers that morning but on the whole they didn't show great signs of escalating. There was nothing on the World at One, for example. George Scott24 in London was a great pillar of sense and stability.

Sat up late talking with Bill Rodgers (who was staying) about the future. He wanted me to come back into the House for a Labour seat, which curiously I possibly could get-several feelers have been put out from Northfield, although I don't think a different Birmingham seat would attract me, even if a Labour seat did at all.

FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST. East Hendred and Anglesey.

By Hereford, Newtown, Dolgellau and Caernarvon to Anglesey, where we arrived at 7.30. It was a good evening after an indifferent day, Plas Newydd looking splendid and the Angleseys' flat, which I had seen only briefly last year, turned out to be substantial with fine rooms and views. Amongst the three or four others staying was Laurence Whistler, younger brother of Rex, who is writing a biography of his brother and is particularly interested in Plas Newydd because of the great dining-room mural.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 18 AUGUST. Anglesey.

The Cledwyns, as they should now be called, came to lunch. Cledwyn on tremendous anecdotal form.

SUNDAY, 19 AUGUST. Anglesey and Harlech.

Amabel Williams-Ellis, Clough's widow, John Strachey's sister, came to lunch, rather splendid at eighty-seven. The Harlechs came to dine at 8 o'clock and then we left with them at 11.30 for the hour's drive to Glyn and a two-day stay.

MONDAY, 27 AUGUST. East Hendred.

Bess (Church) gave me the shattering news of Mountbatten's a.s.sa.s.sination in Ireland. I had last seen him at the Euro Gala at Drury Lane in May, after fifteen years of quite close official a.s.sociation with him, not only over the prison inquiry in 1966, but also over various aviation matters before that; and indeed there had been a certain continuing relations.h.i.+p with him in Brussels. Dreadful though it is, I suppose that from his point of view it is not too bad as he had begun to give the impression of not knowing what to do with the rest of his life and might even have welcomed a dramatic death, although not one with these side-effects. He was a pretty remarkable man on the whole, not a great intellect but with exceptional drive and power to pull or push people along with him. He was also good at grandeur without pompousness. We watched this evening television tribute to him which was very well done by Ludo Kennedy.

TUESDAY, 28 AUGUST. East Hendred.

Christopher Tugendhat to lunch. Brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, basic temperature still low, but a remarkable swing-the thermometer having been 41 when I got up in the morning had become 91 in the sun by 4 p.m.

I had quite a useful talk with Christopher about the budget paper and other matters. He is agreeable, sensible, very well read and well-informed, occasionally slow-firing. On the whole he has been a very good Commissioner.

WEDNESDAY, 29 AUGUST. East Hendred.

The Owens to lunch. They had not been to East Hendred for eighteen months and we hadn't seen them since the election. David was out to be pleasant and talked quite good sense about personalities and balance of power in the Shadow Cabinet, yet there is undoubtedly a reserve over our relations.h.i.+p, even though this occasion went quite well. I think I would find it very difficult ever to be really close to him again, and indeed although pleasant and reasonably sensible he does not appear to have in any way the stature of an ex-Foreign Secretary. The only remark he made at all critical about his own tenure of office was that perhaps he had got there too young; on the other hand he referred to it complacently as a period of very good relations when he and Britain were on such good terms with everybody.

THURSDAY, 30 AUGUST. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.

To London by train for lunch with Geoffrey Howe in 11 Downing Street. We lunched downstairs, and I had an agreeable general talk with him in the course of which we had perhaps thirty or forty minutes about the handling of the budget paper, on which he seemed to me sensible but not enormously well-informed on detail. I tried to make some points on how I thought the Government should play it and the need not to put all the eggs in the basket of the Dublin Summit.

Afterwards I went upstairs at 11 Downing Street for the first time since we had left that house on the early evening of Friday, 19 June 1970 - quite extraordinary that I had never previously been back. The cartoons we put on the stairs are still there and the Howes, unlike the intervening tenants, seem to like them and would be glad to fill in the few gaps which remain.25 MONDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred and Brussels.

Left rather gloomily for the 9.45 plane to Brussels. The length of the holiday does not increase the enthusiasm for return. I telephoned Jack Lynch in Dublin to sympathize with him over his stinkingly unfair English press following the Mountbatten murder, and to say that I and a lot of people in England had considerable respect for him, etc. I thought that (i) he deserved some support because he is a nice man, and (ii) it was highly desirable not to get him into a bitter anti-British frame of mind. He sounded very friendly and I think was genuinely pleased to have been telephoned.

Went to a men's dinner at Luns's house for Henry Kissinger, with General Haig as well. I was between Luns and Haig, but was struck in the general conversation towards the end by the extent to which Haig cannot hold a candle to Kissinger when he (K) is in the room. He is still in a curious sense very much his old a.s.sistant of the White House days and has none of Henry's rather glottal sparkle. Henry on good form, I thought, though looking rather fat again. I had a good hour's talk with him alone after dinner. He is sniffing the political air, but it is not easy to see what he can do. He is playing with the idea of being Senator from New York, but he says he won't run against Jack Javits, although he thinks that Jack is quite old enough to give up. No doubt he thinks that he could be President at the drop of a hat had he been born a citizen. Haig is also sniffing his presidency prospects and clearly thinks they have improved a bit since last June, though in my view they were pretty non-existent then and are not much better now.

Kissinger, despite his supreme self-confidence, is enjoyable to talk to, although he has a lot of views with which I don't agree (not all of them very seriously worked out). He listens quite well-his vanity is not insensitive or indestructible-and we had a good conversation about writing memoirs.

TUESDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred.

During the morning I saw Gundelach and Ortoli to try and warm them up for the Commission's consideration of the reference paper on budgetary convergence26 in the afternoon and thought that both of them seemed more or less all right.

A long and rather wearisome special Commission meeting for four and a half hours after lunch. Not only was it wearisome, but also extremely difficult, with grave doubts at the end of the day as to whether we were going to get a sensible paper at all. Natali made the tactical mistake, because he wasn't wholly satisfied with its strength, of coming out against the paper as a whole, and therefore played into the hands of Gundelach and Ortoli who wanted greatly to weaken it. Davignon talked in rather the same terms, and all round the table, apart perhaps from Giolitti, who for once was more sensible than Natali, and Tugendhat, there was remarkably little support for what we had worked on so carefully. However, I thought it could probably be put together again and that indeed proved to some extent to be the case. That evening I had a rue de Praetere dinner with Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, into which I staggered rather exhausted. After another three and a half hours it was fairly clear that they, having blown off, would the next time round be prepared to accept something at least tolerable, provided greater obeisances were made to Community mythology.

WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER. Brussels, London and Rome.

To London early to attend the Mountbatten funeral. I was seated between Luns, who talked in a loud voice the whole time (two goes a week of Luns is more than enough), and Ducci,27 who was representing the Italian Government and who talked in a soft voice some of the time.

The service, curiously, I did not find particularly moving, or even enormously impressive, though I suppose it was. The Prince of Wales read the lesson well and there were great, familiar, and moving hymns, but as n.o.body around me (being mostly foreigners) could sing them, the sound somehow did not swell up and rather got lost in the high roof of the Abbey. But it was an occasion. It was perhaps the last great funeral of its sort. Of those that I have attended, only Churchill's has been comparable, and I suppose d.i.c.kie would have been pleased with it. There was no great sense of loss about him, for his life had manifestly run its course, and therefore there was no special quality of poignancy, as, say, with Tony's service in the same place two and a half years before.

5 o'clock plane with Jennifer to Rome. It was a rather beautiful evening. We stayed at the Grand Hotel-as opposed to the Ha.s.sler -for the Italian Government were putting us up.

THURSDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER. Rome and Palermo.

By Italian military aircraft to Palermo. Drove round the edge of the city to the Hotel Villa Igiea, which has a fairly splendid position on one side of the Bay of Palermo (though with slightly too good a view of the s.h.i.+pyards, which are very near on the right). Typically, in spite of all the talk about the unrelenting summer sun of Sicily which beats down from June to October, it was raining when we arrived.

Then I had an extremely hard day's work. A one-and-a-half-hour meeting with the President of the Regional Government and about twelve members of his junta, if that is the word. This I thought would be an informal exchange of views, but in fact he opened with a longish prepared statement, lasting nearly half an hour, quite tough though perceptive and well-informed. He was indeed in general quite a bright man, called Matarella, apparently the son of the old mafia leader in the western part of the island, including Palermo, where mafia rule prevails, but was thought not to be mafioso himself.28 This meant that I had to make a substantial reply fairly impromptu, but this was not in fact too difficult to do, particularly as I had to be interpreted in chunks to the room, whereas the interpretation of his speech was merely whispered into my ear. His Regional Council was very well disciplined as none of the others spoke a word.