European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 23

We then went to the Palazzo dei Normanni where there are some wonderful mosaics, both in the chapel and in the secular hall, which I do not recollect having previously seen. Next a lunch with short speeches, at which all the notabilities were present, the prefect, the president, the mayor, the cardinal (with whom I had quite an agreeable talk before lunch, he very non-Sicilian), local deputies, members of the European Parliament, a minister from Rome, etc.

Afterwards an interminable tour of the s.h.i.+pyards and harbour, enlivened only by the fact that the head of the Italian s.h.i.+pbuilding industry, Buccini, who had come down from Genoa, was extremely intelligent and worth talking to. Sicilian labour is apparently markedly unproductive compared with northern Italian labour, partly because they take an average of forty-two days' sick leave a year.

Then a still more exhausting meeting with the Chamber of Commerce. There were 350 of them and all the speeches were of reasonably good-mannered complaint about local issues. Unfortunately, the simultaneous interpretation, which was not provided by our interpreter but by two girls they had got from Rome, was almost completely incomprehensible. I really could not understand a word they were saying. I was reduced to listening in Italian, which I could understand more, and as what they all said was fairly predictable it wasn't too bad. I then wound up for half an hour. Then a press conference, which was a relative relaxation. Then a large reception and buffet dinner at the Villa Malfattini.

FRIDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER. Palermo, Catania and Taormina.

Across to the eastern part of the island, along the coast for some time and then through a very bleak inland area to Enna near where we inspected a major soya bean experimental station, run by an extraordinary self-made, very rich entrepreneur called Mario Rendo, the whole thing allegedly run as a foundation. The soya experiment was up to a point quite interesting, though Rendo seemed to me totally unrealistic about the possible results of it. How he has made so much money with such unrealism I do not understand, for he was talking about it providing employment for 250,000 people.

Natali was standing rather gloomily, with his moustaches drooping, on the edge of the field, G.o.d knows why exactly, but this no doubt explains why he does so much travelling to and in Italy. He didn't, despite being an ex-Minister of Agriculture, manage to look very rural. An agreeable official luncheon at the Jolly Hotel, Catania, from 2.45 to 4.30.

Then a brief rest before my lecture to the university at 6.15. Nice building, good hall and they seemed reasonably appreciative. Afterwards we left for Taormina and the San Dominico Hotel-a converted monastery. It was rather splendid, high above the sea, with a beautiful garden and good rooms.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 8 SEPTEMBER. Taormina.

Rest day at Taormina. I spent most of it trying to write our response to the wretched Cour des Comptes report. Alas, the weather was not perfect. Etna was briefly visible in the morning, but then disappeared into a mixture of haze and cloud. We dined in the hotel, with our highly intelligent interpreter, Gesulfo, and the far less intelligent Italian protocol man, who had never previously been south of Rome in his life and obviously thought it rather degrading to have to do so. He came from Friuli where he has a wine-growing estate, and looked like a post-Risorgimento House of Savoy cavalry officer.

SUNDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER. Taormina, Rome and Urbino.

Back to Rome by military aircraft. Lunch with Malfatti at the Villa Madama. (Malfatti, my predecessor but two as President of the Commission, has become Foreign Minister in the new Cossiga Government.) I think somewhat inspired by my old friend Renato Ruggiero, Malfatti had worked himself up into a great state of excitement and was determined to have a great go at us about the totally unsatisfactory nature, from their point of view, of the paper on convergence. The Italians were very fed up that their budget imbalance had in fact disappeared, but were extremely bad at producing any precise ideas, at this stage at any rate, as to what further they wanted done. I don't like Malfatti enormously at the best of times, and I didn't think he did this particularly effectively, or even, in spite of a lot of protestations of friends.h.i.+p, particularly agreeably.

We set off for Urbino at 4.20 and had the most dreadful drive. The protocol department of the Italian Foreign Office had decided that the thing to do was to go across the peninsula on the autostrada to Pescara then drive up past Ancona and into Urbino that way. Had I looked at the map for a moment it would have been absolutely clear to me that this was crazy, but by the time I got hold of a map it was too late and we were already launched off towards L'Aquila. As a result we had a drive of 480 kms as opposed to the 260 kms which was all that was necessary, on a rather bad autostrada, screaming along dangerously, with sirens going the whole time, in a police-led and police-tailed convoy of about five cars, no fewer than two of which eventually broke down as well as another running out of petrol. We arrived shaken, exhausted and extremely bad-tempered just before 9.00.

I had been supposed to go to a great reception given by the municipio in the hall of the old ducal palace at 7.30, but we were desperately late for that. However, as they were all a.s.sembled I had to go there briefly and make a little speech. After a quick dinner we retreated to the not very good Montefeltro Hotel. Although the rooms were small and ill-furnished, there was at least a magnificent view over the moonlit Umbrian countryside.

MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER. Urbino and Rome.

Degree-giving ceremony in the university at 11 o'clock. Substantial speech from me, but not a bad occasion. Both Colombo, who had driven up from Rome specially (by the right route, lucky man), and Forlani, who is a sort of local boss as well as an ex-Foreign Minister, came, which was kind of them.

Then back to the Grand Hotel in Rome by the correct route and with the greatest of ease in three hours despite entering Rome at the rush hour.

TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER. Rome and Brussels.

To Castel Gandolfo for our audience with the Pope. Greeted there by the old French chamberlain, Archeveque Martin, whom I know somewhat from previous occasions. Castel Gandolfo has a fine position but is not an attractive building inside. It was not available to the Popes from 1870 until the Concordat in 1929, and it was then done up in a sort of Papal Mussolini style. On the way in Martin first made it clear that the Pope wished to have the main part of the audience with me alone, and that Jennifer and the others were to come in at the end to receive a blessing and have a photograph taken, which was possibly a slight disappointment to them, but was all right from my point of view. Martin also said, 'En quelle langue, Monsieur Jenkins, aimeriez-vous parler avec Sa Saintete? En Allemand?' he surprisingly added. 'Certainement pas,' I said. So Martin then said, 'Eh bien, le Saint Pere est egalement a l'aise en Anglais ou Francais.' So I said, 'If he is equally at ease, I am rather more at ease in English, so perhaps we might talk English.' 'I am sure the Holy Father would be delighted' he replied.

I then had about thirty-five minutes with the Pope alone. He started in French, so I replied in French and we talked so for perhaps the first ten minutes. I did not have the impression that even his French, though he had a good accent, was perfect. He did a good deal of searching for words and, while he was certainly as good as or better than me, he did not give any impression of great fluency. This part of the conversation was agreeable but a little trite. Then when we got on to Northern Ireland, I asked him if he minded if we spoke English and he said certainly not, he would be delighted, and so we did most of the rest of the interview in that language, but this was possibly a slight mistake because his comprehension of English was very far from being perfect, and I suspect that he was not following a good deal of what I said.

However, I think he might have got the central point which I wanted to make, which was that his forthcoming visit to Northern Ireland was clearly an affair of the greatest possible importance particularly following so closely after the Mountbatten and other murders and that it could have very great impact. Perhaps not even he could influence the very small minority of those who were dedicated to violence for its own sake, and there was no doubt little need to influence the majority of the population who were against violence. But those whom it was extremely important to influence were the sizeable minority who gave pa.s.sive support to violence. This phrase he certainly seemed to take in and repeated several times, 'Pa.s.sive support, pa.s.sive support, yes that's very bad.' So I hope that this at least, which was the central thing I wanted to say, got through.

He was perhaps a little less impressive than I expected to find him. He has a wonderful smile and, even without the smile, looks agreeable (forceful as well) and made of very good material. He didn't have anything of great significance to say and perhaps, particularly in the part of the conversation in English, but even to some extent in French, he let me lead the conversation so that I guess I was talking a good 60 per cent of the time. And while it was a much more agreeable, intimate talk than I had ever had with either of the two previous Popes whom I have met, the sheer human and intellectual impact upon me was less than I expected.

Then the others came in and he did his blessings very agreeably, gave a medal each to Crispin, Enzo Perlot and me, and a book to Jennifer, and we had some very good photographs taken-Vatican photographers seem excellent-and parted on suitably warm terms. He is not tremendously well informed about Community affairs and Western European matters, much less so than was his predecessor, but this is perhaps natural as he thinks much more in Pan-European or Eastern European terms. It appeared to me in one part of the Irish conversation that he was far from clear about the const.i.tutional position by which both parts of Ireland were members of the Community, but Northern Ireland through the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland entirely separately.

Jennifer went to London and I went to see Cossiga, the new Italian Prime Minister, at 2 o'clock in the Palazzo Chigi. I hadn't seen him for three years, but had known him fairly well in 1975/6 when I was Home Secretary and he was Minister of the Interior. I thought him then a nice intelligent man and this impression was fully confirmed. Also, unlike most Italian politicians, he talks quite good English, but was not, however, quite naturally, anxious to do any very serious business except through an interpreter. We talked until 3.15, getting very hungry. He was much more reasonable than Malfatti had been and I think I was able to persuade him on a number of issues: first, that the Italians would make a great mistake to block any British solution, because their budget problem really had turned round, and though they had certain wider problems, they were on a somewhat longer time scale and the hope of solving these in a way satisfactory to Italy would certainly not be enhanced by taking a dog-in-the-manger att.i.tude at this stage. Second, that it was essential that they should not just complain about the Commission's inability to propound solutions to problems which they did not formulate clearly, but that they must submit some more precise proposals, either by sending some high-level officials to Brussels, or by putting in clear papers.

We then adjourned to an excellent lunch (the tartuffi season is the peak of the Italian gastronomic year) before returning to Brussels.

WEDNESDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.

Lunch at home for Madame Veil. I found her a good deal different from my expectation following our July meeting. She is nicer and less sharp. Her conversation is engagingly babbling. There are never any silences, never any difficulty about finding something to say: things just come out as they come into her head, a mixture of gossip, how nice her penthouse suite in the Amigo Hotel was (I hope the Cour des Comptes don't get on to that too quickly), what she thought about Strasbourg, what difficulties she was having with various people, what she thought about Pflimlin, how she was going to deal with the problem of Parliament wanting to move. A mixture of quite important things and quite unimportant things, all spontaneously pouring out.

I think she feels somewhat lost with the Parliament, which is not surprising considering that she has never sat in a Parliament in her life, and is forming a fairly low view of most of the groups. The British Conservative Group she put at the top of the list, and probably rightly so, so far as coherence is concerned. She is very determined not to be intimidated by Debre, who had been firing heavy Gaullist guns on her flank about the inadmissibility, in his view, of the armaments debate which is scheduled for the September session. But she seemed fairly unshaken by that, and indeed generally gave the impression that the fears she would be Giscard's woman in the Parliament were misplaced. The real danger is that she will be a slightly incompetent President, not that she will be anybody's agent.

Then back to the Commission for a rather excessively long session, from 3.40 to 7.50. However, in the course of this, we satisfactorily disposed of the reference paper, which had looked in real trouble the week before, but as a result of some re-editing and a good deal of lobbying of the more important Commissioners we managed to get through in a tolerable form. Home pretty tired at 8.15, but no respite as the Spierenburg group arrived to dine almost immediately and stayed until nearly midnight. It was mainly a thank-you dinner to them towards the end of their work, but we had some interesting conversation and I found them all in quite good morale.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 15 SEPTEMBER. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.

Edward's wedding day and a most beautiful morning. Motored from East Hendred to the Savoy Restaurant, the Grill being closed, and at 12.30 installed ourselves in the window and waited rather a long time-despite the fact that they had been anxious to be early-for the children, all of whom eventually arrived together, Edward with his very agreeable Canadian best man. Set-piece family luncheons are liable to be a slight strain, but this one was agreeable.

The wedding in the Temple Church went off very well. I suppose there were 150/200 people, an amazing proportion of them wearing morning coats. I was surprised at the number of our old friends, because I had encouraged n.o.body to do it, who turned up so attired (Mark Bonham Carter, Ronald McIntosh, Madron Seligman29), but what was far more striking was the very high proportion of the young who did so; they obviously rather like dressing up. The church was attractive and the presiding clergyman was good. So was the music, though a little unusual, and the scene was much improved by the fact that the west door, through which Sally came with her father (the guests had entered from a south door at the side), remained open throughout with crisp, clear, cool September sunlight streaming in the whole time.

Then we at first stood about in the piazza-like courtyard outside the church and I wished we had arranged the reception there-it would have been just about the right temperature. But eventually we moved into Middle Temple Hall where everything went on for a surprisingly long time, from 4.00 to 6.30 or so, but quite satisfactorily. The best man's speech was perceptive about Edward and funny in bits. The whole thing was tremendously traditionally done, to a far greater extent than I had expected, cutting the cake, champagne, confetti for the departure of the bride and groom and G.o.d knows what else.

MONDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.

Roy Mason, accompanied by Gavin Strang, his a.s.sistant agricultural spokesman, to dinner at home with Jennifer. Mason was in one sense very agreeable, very pro-European, even prepared to defend almost all aspects of the CAP, which seems to me to be pus.h.i.+ng it a bit, and I think enjoyed himself (and wrote a nice letter afterwards). But he is incredibly obscurantist (straight Paisleyite, as Jennifer put it) on Northern Ireland, where his lack of imagination and inability to understand any of the Catholic case really were absolutely shattering. He just loves the Northern Ireland Protestants. Also he is a remarkably insensitive man in other ways. After dinner he held forth in a great set piece about the terrible rigours of his security protection and how he was under constant threat, which may well be so, but all done as though he were addressing three friendly members of his General Management Committee in Barnsley, with not the slightest hint of understanding that I knew anything about these security problems or had ever been Home Secretary.

TUESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.

In the margins of the Foreign Affairs Council I had a good bilateral talk with Dohnanyi, which was interesting because he was very keen to get out of me what I thought was a sum on which it would be possible to settle with the British, and to tell him what I thought the scale of the problem was. I said I thought one could envisage a settlement at around 1000 million units of account. I couldn't be pinned to this, but if he wanted some idea of an order of magnitude, this is what I would insert into his mind.

THURSDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER. Brussels.

An interview with a lady called Miss Keays who has been recommended to us as a replacement for Patricia Smallbone when she gets married at Christmas. I thought she was rather good in spite of having a very Tory background, and pretty well decided to engage her. Celia is a bit worried about her because she thinks she is too strong a personality; she will find it very difficult to be as strong a personality as Celia!

SAt.u.r.dAY, 22 SEPTEMBER. Brussels and Fontainebleau.

Drove to Fontainebleau, or more precisely the Hotel Bas Breau at Barbizon, and on a most beautiful, cool, sunlit day, lunched in the garden of this rather flash establishment. (A 'baiserdrome', the Beaumarchais' described it as when they arrived to lunch next day, though the appearance of most of the other guests didn't make this terribly plausible.) At 4.30 on the outskirts of Fontainebleau we had the INSEAD ceremony for the opening of their academic year. There were several preliminary speeches, all quite good, one by Olivier Giscard d'Estaing, one by the President of INSEAD, one by Uwe Kitzinger,30 who gave a striking and dramatic performance, starting in German and switching to English; and then mine.

SUNDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER. Fontainebleau and Brussels.

After running early in the forest, I was driven into Fontainebleau to buy the newspapers and had a cup of coffee in a cafe opposite the chateau. I had hardly been in Fontainebleau or at a zinc comptoir since 1938, and was suddenly transported back to Third Republican France. Then we drove to near the obelisk and got a most memorable 'September morn' view of the chateau (west facade). Lunch again in the garden of the hotel, during which Ortoli telephoned to say that they were locked in discussions with the Finance Ministers as there was the first EMS readjustment of currencies (certainly the Danish kroner, maybe the Belgian franc going down, the mark going up) being negotiated.31 Back to Brussels by the early evening train from Paris.

TUESDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

8.16 train to Strasbourg (no avion taxis these days) feeling nervous of the new Parliament which we had hardly met in July and which, after two months away, would surely have sharpened its teeth. Even the two relatively easy questions which I had to answer filled me with apprehension. They pa.s.sed easily, however.

After a late sitting of the Parliament I attended a dinner which Mme Veil was rather ineffectively organizing. First I had invited her to lunch and she had riposted by saying it should be her lunch. Then she changed it to dinner. Then she asked all the other available members of the Commission without telling me. Then she changed the time on no fewer than three occasions during the day: first, it was to be 8.00, in an adjournment of the Parliament, then it was to be 10.30, then it was back to 8.00, then it was back to whenever the Parliament was adjourned. We eventually a.s.sembled in a slightly bad temper in the Sofitel at about 10.15. It was a highly francophone dinner, which is quite good for me from time to time, although the main conversation between Mme Veil and Ortoli and Cheysson I found a bit fast, but they are fully ent.i.tled occasionally to get their own back on us anglophones.

The main interest of the dinner emerged only in retrospect. Vredeling, the fourth member of the Commission present, was next to me and appeared throughout to be perfectly sober. However, at some stage after 12.15 a.m. he got involved in an affair with 'Chrystal'. I was not sure, when it was first reported to me, whether this was a form of gla.s.s or a German lady. It subsequently became clear that it was a question of gla.s.s, for in a fit of anger with some Dutch MEP at some unspecified time later in the night, he had picked up a heavy ashtray, thrown it, missed (I suppose fortunately) the MEP, lightly grazed the chandelier and shattered a plate gla.s.s window. The cost was 5000; the cost to Vredeling's morale was much higher.

THURSDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER. Strasbourg.

To the Parliament at 11.15 to attend the budget debate, begun by Christopher Tugendhat with a very good speech. Afterwards I gave lunch to the British Labour Group. They were all quite agreeable. They nearly all turned up, although, apparently and typically, they had had a great debate (I am not sure they hadn't even had a vote) as to whether or not they should come. It was almost like the legendary motion of sympathy on an MP's illness carried by nine votes to seven, with eight abstentions. However, there was no trace of this in their behaviour. Barbara Castle made a nice speech at the end of lunch, to which I responded.

MONDAY, 1 OCTOBER. East Hendred and Vienna.

To Vienna, to be met on the tarmac by Kreisky32 together with a great array of lesser dignitaries. At the Imperial Hotel I was installed in enormous grandeur (thank G.o.d there was no question of our having to pay the bill). It was rather a pleasure to be back in Vienna, where I had not been for twenty-three years and which I found surprisingly unchanged.

At 3.00 a meeting with the President of the Republic, Kirch-schlager33 a non-political former diplomat, who has been elected as an Independent (although a Socialist nominee) and who is a tall, distinguished man, who held an entirely appropriate head of state conversation with me. We discussed the evolution of Austria's foreign policy since 1945 in general but interesting terms and also the internal balance and the problems of one party holding power for a long time. It was a worthwhile talk in the splendid room where Francis II had worked and died at his desk, the ante-room being the bedroom where Maria Theresa had died. The Austrians have official buildings of extraordinary grandeur, greater I think than is so in almost any other country. The Italians are in a high cla.s.s, the Germans in a low cla.s.s for obvious reasons, even the French I think not quite as grand as the Austrians, nor the British.

Then across the courtyard for another hour's meeting in the Chancellor's office. This was the old Ballhausplatz of pre-1914 diplomatic fame. In the ante-room here is the spot where Dolfuss was shot. (There is no lack of notable death sites in Austria.) I talked with Kreisky about a variety of things, but not least the Labour Party, in which he is extremely interested from the Socialist International point of view, and the leaders.h.i.+p of which he was rather naively asking me to go back and take over. I explained to him the impossibility of this and disclosed a little of my thought about the re-orientation of British politics, which was somewhat of a shock to him. Although he thinks the Labour Party is appalling, he nonetheless has a typical Germano/Austrian reluctance to comprehend any organizational break.

After that, a meeting with ministers, over which he presided, which was detailed but not difficult. The problem of relations with Austria is that they are at once outside the Community and a crossroads of the Community. Perhaps we could give them some money to build a new autobahn on what is called the Gastenarbeiter route. It is appallingly overcrowded at the moment with traffic from the Community through to Yugoslavia and Greece, and it will become worse as a result of Greek accession.

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

TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER. Vienna and Brussels.

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

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

Then a meeting in the Parliament with the President and about a dozen others, including the chairmen of the main committees. Afterwards, with a little time to spare, we walked to the Karls-kirche, a remarkably secular church, certainly more dedicated to the Hapsburg dynasty than to G.o.d. When we returned to the hotel, Kreisky was waiting for me in a palm court and we had tea there for twenty minutes before setting off for the airport. Austria is a very odd mixture of grandeur and informality. It would be impossible to imagine Giscard or Mrs Thatcher eating cream cakes in the public lounge of the Crillon or the Savoy Hotel, or even Schmidt in the Knigshof. However, it seemed perfectly normal in Vienna and n.o.body took much notice of Kreisky.

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

THURSDAY, 4 OCTOBER. Brussels.

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

SAt.u.r.dAY, 6 OCTOBER. Villers-le-Temple.

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY, 15 OCTOBER. Brussels.

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

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

FRIDAY, 19 OCTOBER. Dublin.

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

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

SAt.u.r.dAY, 20 OCTOBER. Dublin and Ashford Castle.

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

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

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

SUNDAY, 21 OCTOBER. Ashford Castle and East Hendred.

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

MONDAY, 22 OCTOBER. East Hendred and London.

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

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

TUESDAY, 23 OCTOBER. London and Strasbourg.

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

WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER. Strasbourg and Brussels.

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

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

THURSDAY, 25 OCTOBER. Brussels and Cairo.

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

FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER. Cairo.

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

Then a very good river boat trip over lunch with the whole of our party and a few accompanying Egyptians. We went up the Nile for about twelve miles to the older pyramids, the ones without the sphinx but with the steps. An official dinner given by Hamil el Said, the Minister of the Economy, who was our constant host and companion, and a party of about forty.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 27 OCTOBER. Cairo.

At 11.00 we set off for the drive to the Barrage, where we had an hour's meeting with Sadat.36 He is an optimist beyond the bounds of reason, and I suppose slightly dotty, but quite attractively so. He wore a sparkling blue suit, with knife-edge creases, and a sparkling white s.h.i.+rt. He announced that most successful meetings had been held between his Prime Minister and the Israelis in London, which had effectively overcome all outstanding problems. This proved to be quite untrue. He also suddenly announced, to the surprise and dismay of Hamil el Said, that he had agreed to supply a limited quant.i.ty of oil at guaranteed prices to the Israelis (which the British won't do to the other Europeans). Hamil said, 'Oh, dear,' or words to that effect, 'I hope you got something worthwhile in return.' 'My dear Hamil,' he said, 'I have got things beyond the confines of your narrow imagination.' He later launched into a great denunciation of the other Arab governments, saying that when he had finally sewn things up with the Israelis-which he expected to do well before May, probably in the early spring-he would return to this theme and launch denunciatory attacks on those who lived in vast luxury by exploiting their own people and everybody else.

The impression he made was more agreeable than this sounds. He is a considerable figure with remarkable qualities. Whether one would like to be his enemy in Egypt I doubt, or how much liberty of expression there is. At one stage earlier Boutros-Ghali had said to me, 'The trouble with dealing with Israel is that it is a real democracy,' and this I suppose says something about Egypt. However, Sadat is certainly one of the better people in the world at the present time and like all Egyptians has a degree of agreeable sophistication which helps to make Cairo for me an extraordinarily attractive city, in spite of the terrible messes which are a.s.sociated with it-the squalor, and the fact that things don't work. (Nearly all the telephones are out of order: it is impossible to telephone the airport from the centre of the city, and purely a matter of chance whether one can telephone one part of the city from another.) On this visit we are extremely lucky to have almost perfect weather. The humidity and the great heat have just gone and we had clear atmosphere with a maximum temperature of 80 and a minimum of 60, which is about as nice as it can be.

Press conference at 6 o'clock, and then a debriefing of the amba.s.sadors of the Nine at the Irish Emba.s.sy. This is in the so-called Garden City, the old, fas.h.i.+onable pre-1939 (perhaps even pre-1914) part of Cairo, but now very rundown. The Irish have a large flat in a turn-of-the-century block where all the other residents are French-speaking Egyptians (which means they speak French the whole time), the block slightly dilapidated and the Irish apparently unable to afford to mend a window pane, unless it is impossible to get somebody to do it, which I find difficult to believe.

From there to the British Emba.s.sy, where Crispin and I dined alone with Michael Weir,37 plus newish second wife, she previously in the Foreign Office herself and a slightly a.s.sertive career girl, a bit like a woman in a Charles Addams cartoon, who greatly grew on me as the evening went on. Michael Weir, whom I had not met before, I thought effective and agreeable. I had never been to the Cairo Emba.s.sy before either, and was interested to see Cromer's house, which was built for 39,000 c. 1890. It was not cheap. 39,000 was a vast amount of money in those days-but what was remarkable was that it came out within 16 of the estimate.

TUESDAY, 30 OCTOBER. Luxembourg and Brussels.

Dohnanyi to lunch in Luxembourg. He was, for once, very shocked by the behaviour of the French-Bernard-Reymond38 not FrancoisPoncet, whom I think he likes more, at some restricted session yesterday. Also he had I thought a rather foolish idea about trying to upgrade not the presidency of the Council as such, but the Secretary-General, and floated the idea of putting Thorn into that job when the useless Hommel retires in the summer. Certainly a change for the better would be desirable, but I doubt whether a political figure would be sensible. It certainly would not suit me from the point of view of the future of the Commission, but Thorn would not of course be there until nearly the end of my time.

Dohnanyi then left rather gloomily to take the charter plane to Lome to which a number of them were setting off for the signature of the Convention there. I had firmly decided that enough was enough so far as travel was concerned and that it was unnecessary for me to go. Motored to Brussels and worked hard all evening with Michael Jenkins on the paper for tomorrow's Commission-the so-called reference paper-keeping open the various options for dealing with the British problem. I was nervous after our September experience as to whether it might come apart at the last moment. Ortoli, in particular, might well be dangerous, and you can never tell with Gundelach, but I was rather encouraged by the fact that Ortoli pressed me to have a lunch for the 'Four Hors.e.m.e.n' at rue de Praetere after the Commission, and I judged it extremely unlikely that he, who doesn't like rows, would want to lunch with me if he was going to be awkward in the morning; and this indeed proved correct.