TUESDAY, 13 MAY. Brussels.
Briefly to dine with the Tickells to meet for the first time Michel Rocard.40 He is not a dominating personality. Indeed it is a little difficult to imagine him as President of the French Republic, but then it is always difficult to imagine such things before they occur, if they do. But he was both highly intelligent and highly agreeable. He made a particularly good impression because, when I asked him if he remembered Jean Loudon (formerly Jean Norman, Wantage doctor"s wife with whose family she had told me he had stayed as a very young man immediately after the war), his face lit up and he said, "Jean Norman, not possible, how is she? Vous la connaissez? I remember that summer vividly. J"avais dix-huit ans, et elle en avait deux de plus. J"etais tellement amoureux d"elle. She was the first love of my life. Comment va-t-elle maintenant?" It would be difficult to imagine Giscard reacting with similar naive nostalgic enthusiasm.
WEDNESDAY, 14 MAY. Brussels.
Commission meeting with a fortunately light agenda. Then I had to greet the Grand Duke of Luxembourg who, accompanied by the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, had come for a head of state visit which took the normal form of a short talk with me alone first, then an hour"s session with the Commission, then a lunch. He was agreeable and interested, and all went well.
An early evening visit from Muskie, the new US Secretary of State. I have known him for ten years, I suppose, and fortunately we had him to dinner at rue de Praetere about a year ago. So we started, certainly on his side, on terms of almost exaggerated friendly intimacy. He is a man with an agreeable, impressive manner. How much he knows about foreign affairs, I don"t know, but he seems self-confident, perhaps a little over-so, making clear that he was going to be a more political Secretary of State than Vance.
I asked him whether he had not hesitated over taking the job. After all he had been in the Senate for twenty years, and a Senate seat was a big thing to give up for what, while I did not wish to predict the result of the election, might turn out to be no more than an eight-month spell of office. He said no, he had not hesitated for a moment, he was thoroughly fed up with the Senate. He had had to fix one or two personal affairs before he had given an affirmative answer to the President, but on the substance of the issue he had not had a moment"s doubt.
Then rather late to a dinner given for Muskie by Tapley Bennett, US Amba.s.sador to NATO. The dinner was far too large and therefore pointless. There were about forty people present, four tables, and I had some rather dull diplomatic neighbours. After dinner, Muskie made a longish, homespun, moralistic speech which was not too bad, not too good either. Then after he had sat down at the end of it, he proceeded to try and hold the whole room for about a quarter of an hour by telling some less than riveting self-centred anecdotes. I thought they were not greatly to the point and began to feel rather impatient with the amiable ex-Senator.
The main interest for me of the evening was that Simonet had come up to me before dinner and said that the Belgians, who had previously been strongly pushing my continuation in office, now thought the gap between Britain and the rest of the Community was so great that the time had not arrived when any Englishman could be President of the Commission almost indefinitely, which eight years would amount to. I was insistent that it did not affect me, because, as he knew, I did not want another term. I had decided four years was the right time, but it was nonetheless interesting and significant that he should have said it, and the reason that he gave. It made a pattern with my Strasbourg dinner with Davignon a month ago.
THURSDAY, 15 MAY. Brussels, London and Sheffield.
To Sheffield for a university-sponsored lecture on the Community and International Trade. Formidable audience of nearly a thousand, I cannot think where they got them from, who nonetheless seemed interested in a not very exciting but quite sensible lecture.
FRIDAY, 16 MAY. Sheffield, London and East Hendred.
7.55 train to London through spectacular May sunshine, which gave even the flat and dull East Midlands countryside an unusual iridescence. George Thomson to lunch at Brooks"s. He expressed great enthusiasm about the prospect of a party realignment, and said that if he had known I was going to do anything like this, he might not have taken on the chairmanship of IBA, as it would inhibit him in what he could do; a pity. Motored to East Hendred, where so brilliant was the evening that we went up to the Downs twice, once before dinner and once in the twilight.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 17 MAY. East Hendred and Naples.
Avion taxi to Naples for a Foreign Ministers" meeting, and to the Villa Rosebery on the sea to the north of Naples. It is curious that it should have so firmly maintained its Rosebery name, as he only owned it for twelve years. Lunch at 2 o"clock and then a fairly informal session from 3.30 to 6.45. The session was frustrating in that attempts by Peter Carrington, and to some extent by me, to get some serious discussion on the overhanging issue of the day, the BBQ, got nowhere. Colombo did not force it, and Genscher, who was inevitably the main potential interlocuteur as the representative of the country which would have to pay the most, was obviously not anxious to get involved.
SUNDAY, 18 MAY. Naples and Brussels.
Discussion over a general breakfast from 8.30 to 10.45, when we stopped. Then a calming walk (I hope) on the terrace with a very frustrated Peter Carrington. Then a brief visit to the Capodimonte Museum, which I had been to only once before. Ran into a whole posse of French diplomats, Nanteuil and his Hedwige (COREPER, thinking that the BBQ was being discussed, had insisted on being at hand in Naples, which meant they had an entirely free-in both senses-cultural weekend), Jacques Tine, who was pa.s.sing through, the French Amba.s.sador to Rome (Puaux) and, I think, maybe yet another. Then to Brussels.
FRIDAY, 23 MAY. Brussels and Lucca.
A special Commission meeting, again on BBQ, which went doubtfully well. 1.10 plane to Milan. Spent about three hours working in the VIP room at the airport there and then plane to Pisa, and to La Pianella (Gilmours) by taxi only at 8.30. Arrived, typically, in rain. Coming from Northern Europe and India, it was the first rain we had seen for three weeks past.
TUESDAY, 27 MAY. Lucca and Brussels.
Ian and I, called by the rigours of the BBQ, had to leave at 4.00, so the visit was very truncated and the weather, as so often at this season in Italy, very shaky. We flew off in a British Government plane from Pisa to Bonn, Ian going to see Dohnanyi. I motored from Wahn to Brussels, then took a special late Commission meeting from 9.30 to 11.45 trying to get our budget paper into shape. Only moderate success. Late-night meetings are always difficult to move to a decision.
WEDNESDAY, 28 MAY. Brussels.
Saw Cheysson at 10.15, Davignon at 11.15 and then had a Commission meeting, perhaps if anything more difficult than the night before, all on the BBQ. Then gave Henri Simonet a late and brief lunch, my mind very much on budgetary problems as we were returning for a meeting in the afternoon.
Commission again from 4.00. A bit of progress but not all that much, and then a bilateral meeting with Ortoli, very hard-pounding, and then home to pick up Charles (my elder son), who had arrived unexpectedly to stay, and drove him to La Hulpe and Waterloo for about an hour. Enjoyable talk with him. Home and a dinner party for Ian (Gilmour), Michael Jenkins", Tickells, Hannay (Soames"s old Chef de Cabinet now back in the Foreign Office), and Ian"s nice Private Secretary, Michael Richardson. Hannay ground on tiresomely about the new draft of the Commission paper, which he was aware of, and which we had hammered out with difficulty during the day, saying that on one vital point it gave away far too much. Therefore rather a disputatious start to dinner. But everybody else thought Hannay had gone on boorishly for too long and eventually we managed (Ian being very helpful and nice) to get on to some general conversation and cheer up a bit.
THURSDAY, 29 MAY. Brussels.
Meeting with Colombo in my office from 10.30 to 11.45. Then the Commission again at noon. I tried to catch back a bit of what Hannay had complained about the previous evening: very partial success. In a minority of two with Tugendhat, which I had never been near in the Commission before.
The fateful Foreign Affairs Council started at 3.30 and went on, with a break in the middle during which we got our paper ready and presented it, to 8.30 p.m. The gap appeared wide in early exchanges (the Council was entirely devoted to the BBQ, apart from purely routine items). Then we adjourned and dined from 9.15 to 11.15. Neither Francois-Poncet nor Genscher was there. In the latter case, this did not matter at all as Dohnanyi was active, less inhibited, keen on a solution, and knew the dossier much better than Genscher. In the former case it may or may not have been an advantage. Francois-Poncet, I a.s.sumed, would be harder and sharper than Bernard-Reymond, who had not been particularly difficult in the early session. But at dinner Bernard-Reymond became very awkward and p.r.i.c.kly, saying that he could not possibly stay the next day, giving a series of unconvincing excuses about what he had to do in Paris-something to do with the Pope"s visit-but nothing seemed to hold together very well, and Peter Carrington became extremely irritated with him. The atmosphere for an hour or so at dinner deteriorated to such an extent that Carrington was on the point of breaking off the negotiations before they had even started. Fortunately, Ian Gilmour, with great nerve and firmness, got him off that. Even so, it still appeared that, the gap being still wide, though possibly not unbridgeable, the only thing to do was to adjourn and meet again, possibly on the Sat.u.r.day, which Bernard-Reymond again said he could not do, possibly the Sunday, which was not attractive, or the Monday. However, Colombo, with very good judgement, gently rejected this and said no, no, what he thought we should do was to proceed by a series of individual discussions with the heads of delegations, which he and I would conduct, and see how far we could get.
Therefore we settled down at 11.30 at night, Colombo and I, Crispin, Renato Ruggiero and Plaja also in the room most of the time, and proceeded to see everybody. The exact order I cannot remember. I think we began with Bernard-Reymond and Carrington, or vice versa, but without getting particularly far, though Peter by this time had recovered his equanimity and was agreeable and quite skilful.
Then we saw Dohnanyi, who came in with a great scheme. He thought he could see a way through and he presented his solution with confidence and lucidity, and indeed it seemed to me a perfectly possible basis for settlement. Then we saw Carrington again and I presented it to him. He was not as enthusiastic as I expected, but thought there might be something in it, so we went on with further discussions. We saw the Benelux ministers together, and they did not make too much difficulty, though this was quite late in the night and they were a bit discontented at not having been brought in earlier: the Luxembourgeois in particular, for some reason or other, but the Dutch too, the new Belgian Minister (Nothomb) being rather easier. The Irish were remarkably amenable, the Danes a bit sticky as usual, but not impossible.
Then we saw the three main ones again several times; this process went on until about 6.30 in the morning, when we seemed to be getting near to a settlement. We then broke up for some time: there had been other intervals during the night during which I had to sustain myself with Irish whiskey, which I do not much like, for the bar for some curious reason had run out of all other supplies. By the morning the only real difficulty remaining, provided the French would accept-it was by no means clear either that they would or that they would not-was the question of a linkage between the 1981 agricultural payments and the supplementary payments to the British for that year. In other words, the French-or anyone else if they so wished-would have an opportunity to block if they did not like the view the British took about the agricultural price settlement. This, rather against my will, was in our paper, and it had been made semi-explicit at the insistence of nearly all the other members of the Commission who took part during the night, Davignon, Ortoli, Gundelach-a powerful trio.
The British said they could not possibly accept this. If it was explicit they could not defend it in the House of Commons. I tried hard to get them to do so, and indeed Ian Gilmour was in favour of taking the risk. Peter Carrington was not. We then had a series of agitated comings and goings, in the course of which Ortoli and I had our second row of the Council. The first had been after my statement in the pre-dinner session when he said I had presented the issue in an unbalanced way-he was in a very agitated state all the time-no doubt under great Paris pressure. But as is mostly the case with Francis, as soon as we had had that row he apologized and more or less made it up. But on this early morning occasion he was huffing and puffing and walking around looking even more like Brezhnev than usual, and was clearly very tense. So was I, for that matter. This row remained unresolved.
FRIDAY, 30 MAY. Brussels and East Hendred.
There was great pressure from the Benelux ministers in particular to get back to a plenary session, so we resumed at 7.15 a.m. and went on until 10.10, though we were suspended from 8.00 to 9.45. First, we had the problem of getting round the linkage problem. We set up a drafting committee of officials under Stevy (Davignon) in the chair (the British complaining he would be a very partial chairman). This committee curiously and surprisingly produced a satisfactory formula: it was extremely, almost excessively, simple, but ingenious. Emile Noel, typically and with a sudden shaft of subtle brilliance, was the author. It seemed to say nothing and might, I suppose, mean different things to different people. However, it had been accepted by Michael Butler and Hannay who had been in the committee for the British.
The French were a little reluctant to accept it, but there was then a considerable effort to persuade them on Davignon"s part, who seemed to have swung round, and on Emile"s, who naturally had the pride of authorship. They both argued with the French in a huddle behind their places at the table for some time, after which the French asked for a suspension for a quarter of an hour. This lasted not fifteen but ninety-five minutes.
When the French eventually trooped back into the room, my heart was almost literally in my mouth because I thought that after all this interminable work, and being so near to a result, it was going to be a repet.i.tion of Luxembourg, with the whole thing coming apart at the end. But miraculously and mysteriously the French announced quite simply that they would accept, but that they wanted a bit of the original British draft put in as well! Then I thought for a moment that the British were going to be sticky, but no, they accepted too, and the whole thing was over by just after 10 o"clock, eighteen and a half hours after we had begun. It was a prodigious achievement, leaving me exhausted but with a sense that something I did not believe could have come off had really been achieved and achieved very effectively. For the moment I even forgot the bitter thought that all the effort on the part of Colombo, Carrington, Gilmour and others, and all the strain on my relations with my Commission colleagues, was made necessary only by a foolish woman"s stubborn whim a month before. The new settlement was only cosmetically different from that which Mrs Thatcher had turned down at Luxembourg.
We got back into my Berlaymont room at 10.20, had a gla.s.s or two of champagne to celebrate and then after an hour or so I went home to rue de Praetere, had a large breakfast there at noon, caught the 12.45 and got to East Hendred by 2 o"clock. I slept fairly contentedly all the afternoon. Still good weather.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 31 MAY. East Hendred.
Up at 9.15, did a certain amount of telephoning in the morning to try to find out what was happening within the British Government, and then went to meet Marie-Alice (de Beaumarchais) at Didcot. Brought her back for lunch, to which the Gilmours also came. I had discovered on the telephone beforehand that the picture was that Ian and Peter Carrington had an extremely frosty reception from Mrs Thatcher at Chequers where they had gone straight from the airport and had had altogether three and a half hours with her, not apparently being offered even a drink, let alone lunch, until 2.30 Brussels time. Then a drink, produced rather reluctantly on a direct request from Peter Carrington, followed by a late and apparently not very adequate lunch. But it was not so much the refreshment as the atmosphere which depressed them, for there was no sense of welcoming them back as heroes from the battlefront, but of being extremely reluctant to accept what they had so unexpectedly and successfully negotiated. They left her feeling that she was going to see how things developed over the weekend and by no means necessarily going to recommend the settlement to the Cabinet. However, the press on Sat.u.r.day morning had been quite satisfactory.41 SUNDAY, 1 JUNE. East Hendred.
Lunch at home for Marie-Alice, Ann Fleming, Wyatts and Charles. Croquet in the afternoon. Gordon Richardsons to a drink at 6.30. Drove to the Monument after dinner for the view in the twilight. An agreeable weekend, a sense of achievement, and a major weight lifted.
TUESDAY, 3 JUNE. East Hendred and Brussels.
9.45 plane to Brussels. Relatively calm morning except for the Daily Mail having a front-page story announcing that I was resigning from Brussels immediately to launch a new party. I did not take it too seriously, but it obviously caused a certain amount of agitation and excitement. We issued a firm denial during the morning saying that I was definitely staying until the end of the year. Nevertheless, with the BBQ temporarily out of the way, British politics were beginning to loom. My speech at the Press Gallery on the following Monday and the form it should take was already weighing on my mind.
FRIDAY, 6 JUNE. Brussels and East Hendred.
East Hendred by 8.00, where Bonham Carters and Hayden and Laura had all arrived to stay just before me (Jennifer in Edinburgh). After dinner gave them an outline for my speech for Monday. Mark rather sensibly was inclined to take the view that if he were me he would say as little as possible, but this was not the view of the others nor at that stage mine.
SUNDAY, 8 JUNE. East Hendred.
Half-way through lunch Shirley Williams rang up to ask if I had heard her on The World at One and I said alas, not. She said she hoped I would agree with what she had said and was very friendly. As in fact what she had said, which was much quoted subsequently, was that a centre party was out because it would have no roots, no conscience, no principles, no G.o.d knows what else, this was rather a curious telephone call, particularly as I, not knowing what she had said, nonetheless thought it a good idea to run through my speech with her, which I did, and she said it was more or less all right. (It did not of course actually mention a centre party as such.) She merely asked for a change at the end where I referred to a possible revival of Liberal and Social Democratic Britain. She said, "Couldn"t you use small letters and leave out the "and" - "liberal social democratic Britain"?" Thinking that if Paris was worth a Ma.s.s, Shirley was certainly worth an "and" (and a lower case) I decided to do so, after which we rang off on terms of great amity. She said she was sure we would all be together in six months or so.
MONDAY, 9 JUNE. East Hendred and London.
Motored to London. Poisoned finger (which had developed on Sat.u.r.day) worse. To Kensington Park Gardens for a short time, where there were a lot of photographers. Then to the House of Commons for the Parliamentary Press Gallery speech. Large, packed audience. The speech took just under half an hour, and I answered, not particularly well or particularly badly, three or four questions afterwards. Reception more or less all right, but not wildly enthusiastic. You could hardly expect that with an audience of hard-boiled journalists seasoned by a few parliamentary guests like Neil Kinnock.42 However, Tom Bradley and one or two other friends who were there seemed quite tolerably pleased. I went off feeling rather like Guy Fawkes having set fire to a fuse and wondering what on earth was going to happen.
A meeting with Lindley, Phipps etc., from 7.00 to 8.30, by which time the speech was all over the evening papers and dominating the news bulletins. They were obviously pleased with the impact and so was I, at the time at any rate.
John Harris came to dine and we watched the various news bulletins, including hearing Denis Healey describe it as "all bunk.u.m". This was done aggressively rather than skilfully by Denis, though he was able to use Shirley"s words of Sunday with considerable effect.
TUESDAY, 10 JUNE. London and Brussels.
The speech was dominant in the newspapers, with a good deal of fairly adverse comment. The Guardian had a definitely unfriendly leader. So did one or two other papers, but the Financial Times was much more friendly than it had been after the Dimbleby Lecture. The Times was not bad, the populars mixed, but all giving it a great deal of s.p.a.ce. Had barely time to take them in before leaving for the 9.45 plane to Brussels.
The President of Costa Rica for a brief meeting at 7.30, followed by a Berlaymont dinner for him. An agreeable and interesting Central American, but my mind somewhat on other things.
WEDNESDAY, 11 JUNE. Brussels.
Home at 4.15 p.m. and tried to sleep off exhaustion for a bit but in fact by this time I had got into a thorough gloom about the speech, which I was beginning increasingly to think had been a major tactical error. It took me to a ledge on the cliff-face from which it was going to be very difficult to get up or down. Had a mildly rea.s.suring telephone conversation with David Steel.
THURSDAY, 12 JUNE. Brussels and Venice.
Venice by avion taxi just before 11 o"clock. In by motor launch through vast security precautions with frogmen all over the place and soldiers standing with their rifles at the ready on the banks of the ca.n.a.l along from the airport, and then lots of security boats and security helicopters around and above us as we crossed the back part of the lagoon and then past the a.r.s.enale and into the Danieli. The Danieli was like an armed camp with the bit of the Riva outside it for 100 yards or more cordoned off. Installed there, in what was no doubt a grand but rather a disagreeable suite. It had two large sitting rooms and a moderate-sized bedroom. It was nominally on the first floor, but when I opened the window of the bedroom I looked straight out at soldiers with machine guns standing about ten feet from me on the top of the little bridge.
Lunched on the Danieli roof garden with a splendid view and splendid weather. Half enjoyed lunch. Then the opening session of the European Council in the old monastery on the Isolo San Giorgio, which ran for four hours from 3.50 and was, as one might have expected, not particularly notable. The mood was one of post-BBQ exhaustion. There were a number of routine items which I introduced, but there was no issue we particularly came to grips with. We signally failed to do so with energy.
Then back to the hotel and on for the heads of government dinner at the Ca" Orsini on the Grand Ca.n.a.l between the Accademia and the Rialto, where I stayed from 9.15 till about 11.15, and then tactfully left as they had to get down to the question of appointing my successor, which is purely inter-government business.
FRIDAY, 13 JUNE. Venice and Brussels.
Over to the Isolo San Giorgio for the session which was due to start at 10.30. However, owing to the fact that they had completely failed to reach agreement on a new President the night before, it did not begin until 12.30. There were hurried consultations and comings and goings about this. Thorn was pressing himself very hard, and had the support of Genscher but not of Schmidt, who kept on confusing issues by throwing in the names of one or two Dutchmen - "that Dutch ex-Finance Minister whose name I cannot remember", he had suggested at one stage. In fact it was Duisenberg. Zijlstra I think he also had in mind. The French were at this stage adamantly opposed to Thorn. The British were willing to go for Thorn, but Carrington much preferred Davignon, who had in fact been offered the job by Barre about two weeks before, and believed he had it sewn up, and would have made a very good President. Mrs Thatcher felt committed to Thorn. Benelux was split all over the place and as a result the scene was generally disorderly. Little Thorn was pacing up and down and looking gloomy and agitated. When I asked him how he was feeling, he said awful. Very disagreeable for him. I think he ought to have removed himself from the scene, which would have been more sensible, but maybe he found it difficult. I returned to Brussels between 5.00 and 7.00.
TUESDAY, 17 JUNE. Strasbourg.
At 11.30 saw Glinne and Caborn of the Socialist Group about the case of Adams, whom it was alleged had been victimized in connection with the Hoffmann-La Roche exposure many years before, and to whom we had made an ex gratia payment, which alas did not entirely satisfy him or them. But we had gone as far as we could without trouble with the Cour des Comptes. Jennifer and I took Harry Walston and his new wife (ex Mrs Nicholas Scott) to lunch at La Wantzenau. Some discussion about my speech without a great deal of support from Harry. "I agree with your objectives but not with your tactics" was the best I could get from him.
At 3.30 I had a meeting with Madame Chou En-lai and her delegation, very friendly and courteous, but without a great deal of interest to say.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 21 JUNE. Brussels and Venice.
I left after lunch to proceed once more by avion taxi to Venice, this time for the Western Economic Summit. Arrived in horrible weather: cloudy, windy, with a tendency to rain. Moreover, it got steadily worse. Installed again in the Danieli, this time on the third floor as I had complained about the noise in the previous room. A great storm then came on.
I had a drink with Trudeau and found him much as when I had last seen him nearly two years before. Agreeable, not much idea as to what was going on, pleased to have won, sharp but not very constructive comments. Then in pouring rain went by motor launch to the Gritti, picked up the Carringtons and took them out to an enjoyable dinner, and my spirits temporarily rose.
SUNDAY, 22 JUNE. Venice.
Across to the San Giorgio, with the lagoon pretty rough, for photographs and a session from 10.30 till 1.00. Tour de table, n.o.body making any particularly bad or particularly impressive statements. I spoke for ten minutes at the end. Schmidt was probably the best, but too long as usual. Carter looked on better form than at Tokyo and spoke as he generally does on these occasions in a controlled but hardly inspired way. Mrs Thatcher was slightly peripheral, as indeed were Trudeau and the j.a.panese (owing to Ohira"s death, the j.a.panese were represented at Foreign Minister not Prime Minister level). Cossiga was a fairly good but somewhat long-winded chairman.
Lunched with the Foreign Ministers from 1.30 to 3.00, during which we were trying to draft an Afghanistan and Middle East communique. Then, there being a purely political meeting of heads of government in the afternoon, I met with the Finance and Energy Ministers from 3.30 to 6.10. Then a general reception in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, followed by a dinner upstairs with the Finance Ministers. I think we were the first people to dine in that room, or indeed in the building, for three hundred years and everything was visually spectacular, but not conversationally memorable.
MONDAY, 23 JUNE. Venice.
Three-hour session in the morning, which was almost entirely on the communique. Then I had a quite good bilateral meeting with Carter, who was accompanied by the Secretary of the Treasury, Miller, and three or four others, on the anti-dumping suit brought by US Steel which was liable to wreck about 2 billion dollars" worth of our trade unless something could be done. Carter sounded reasonably forthcoming.43 Everything was over by 5.00. It was a filthy evening. Warmish, low mist, driving wind, the lagoon the colour of milky coffee. I went for an hour"s walk with Crispin: into the Piazza, indeed into St Mark"s, through the doors of which the lagoon also was lapping strongly, on to the Rialto, then got rather lost on the other side of the bridge and eventually returned by vaporetto. The walk was not all that agreeable, partly because of the weather and partly because the intensive securitythe Venetians by this stage must have been dementedmeant that our own security men walked behind us, but the Italian security men, of whom we had about six, insisted on clearing a path in advance and jostling people out of the way. The Italian police, mostly from Naples, were fairly shocked by our idea of returning by vaporetto, but as they were even more lost than we were, there was nothing they could do about it.
FRIDAY, 27 JUNE. East Hendred.
Ted Heath to lunch on his way to a sailing expedition in the Solent. He talked without ceasing: sailing for the first course; music for the second; and the Brandt Report44 for the third. But, particularly on the last, he talked very well. He showed a certain but not a vast interest in what I might or might not be doing in British politics. We agreed to keep in touch.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 28 JUNE. East Hendred.
A filthy day which became worse. The weather recently has been indescribably awful, a real monsoon season having set in. The Arthur Schlesingers and the Rodgers" came to lunch. Then had a long talk with Bill from 6.00 to 8.30. Friendly, inconclusive. But he seemed to take no objection to my Press Gallery speech.
MONDAY, 30 JUNE. East Hendred.
Weather a bit better, but I felt more exhausted than ever. d.i.c.k Taverne to lunch and found him satisfactorily self-confident and inspiriting and also more or less willing to go along with what I wanted, which was not to rush things too much. I slept most of the afternoon and early evening, a dismal end to a dismal month, most other things as bad as the weather. Let us hope July will be better.
THURSDAY, 3 JULY. Brussels and Oslo.
Drove to Amsterdam with Jennifer for a plane to Oslo. A dismal drive through a dank countryside. Arrived in Oslo in the wake of a great thunderstorm but with the temperature quite a bit over 70F, far higher than anything we had known in Brussels or London during the preceding month. Drove to the rather attractive guest house where the Norwegians were putting us up and were given lunch there by Frydenlund,45 the Foreign Minister. I liked both him and his wife very much.
No one had drawn my attention to the fact that the State Dinner that evening involved a black tie. I made vague suggestions to the Norwegians that perhaps they would not mind if I were unchanged, but it was quite clear that as they were proposing to give a very grand dinner they did rather mind. Oslo is a surprising place for a black tie to be obligatory. So I was forced to hire a dinner jacket, shirt, tie, even cufflinks, all of which were absolutely ghastly.
Then off to the Asheroos Castle, a splendid medieval building with a magnificent site and commanding through its windows great views over the fjord in a variety of directions under the long Norwegian twilight which was far from over when we left at 11.30. Substantial speeches of about twenty minutes by the Prime Minister (Nordli)46 and by me, each announced by a fanfare of trumpets. Afterwards a slightly exhausting session with nearly all the Norwegian notabilities introduced to me.
FRIDAY, 4 JULY. Oslo and Sundvolden.
Early meeting with the Prime Minister in a modern building, chiefly notable for the fact that its roof, to which we ascended for a brief look-out, commands one of the best views of Oslo, a city whose site is so good that even the fact that it has hardly a single distinguished building, and that those few which have some pretence in this direction are mostly being destroyed, does not greatly matter. Nordli talked to me about the economy. He is preoccupied by unemployment, despite the fact that it appears to be only 1 per cent, though a little unevenly spread throughout the country, but preoccupied by it as an international rather than a Norwegian phenomenon.
Then I had an hour"s fairly intimate talk with Frydenlund, about the world strategic position, the Schmidt mission to Brezhnev, how the changing balance of the North Atlantic Alliance affected the Norwegiansthey are particularly worried about this, feeling that it was easier for them outside the European Community so long as America was the unchallenged captain of the boat and more difficult for them as the leadership becomes less clear.
At noon I had an audience with King Olaf in the large palace which, like so many royal palaces, seems to have been built about 1840. We had Balliol (both honorary fellows) and his attendance at the Armistice Day ceremonies when I was Home Secretary to talk about, but we also had a certain amount of conversation about Norwegian history. I found him agreeable and in remarkably good shape for his seventy-seven years. He was dressed rather like Harold Nicolson used to be, in worn brown shoes and an old blue pin-striped London suit. He had just been presiding over a King"s Council, and was about to set off back to his house on the sea for some more sailing, being almost as keen an ocean racer as Heath.
Left Oslo at 5.30 and drove out about twenty-five miles to the Sundvolden Hotel on a land fjord, which had a curious but definite charm.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 5 JULY. Sundvolden.
I was struck by how much the village, with its two general stores, its clapboard houses and its general feeling of looking for a simple life on a high income, reminded me of parts of New England. An enjoyable picnic lunch on an island and a swim in the fjord which was remarkably warm on the surface but cold underneath.
THURSDAY, 10 JULY. Brussels, Bristol and East Hendred.
8.45 plane to London on my way to Bristol for my twenty-first honorary degree.47 Not one of the more exciting ceremonies, despite the distinction of the university. I was one of two honorands in the morning, the other being an internal university one. Fortunately no speech required from me at the ceremony but a brief one at the subsequent luncheon, where I enjoyed sitting next to the Chancellor, Dorothy Hodgkin.48 Motored back to East Hendred. Another thoroughly nasty day of weather.
FRIDAY, 11 JULY. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.
With Jennifer to a meeting at Colin Phipps"s flat in Draycott Avenue with him, the Social Democratic a.s.sociation people (Haseler and Eden49), d.i.c.k Taverne, Mickey Barnes, Clive Lindley, John Harris, Jim DalyI think that was all. David Marquand unfortunately was not there. Had a moderately satisfactory discussion with them for about an hour and a half. Lindley quiet but sensible. Daly also sensible; John Harris spoke very well; Phipps in the chair; and the SDA people, though Haseler better than Eden, looking like hard-faced men who had done badly out of the Labour Party. The difficulty is that they are interested in spoiling tactics, which I am not. Mickey is interested in a charge of the light brigade and so in a more serious sense is d.i.c.k. However, eventually, with some sensible talking, not only on John Harris"s part (despite his preoccupation with Westward Television which was about to blow up) and also on Jennifer"s part, we managed to get them to agree that there was nothing that I should do, at any rate until after the Labour Party Conference. We should have a meeting in late October and see where we went from then. In the meantime, the SDA could do what they liked provided they did not implicate me, and those who are longing for action, like Mickey Barnes and Colin Phipps and maybe d.i.c.k, could a.s.sociate themselves with them to the extent that they liked.
After lunch to Battersea Old Church for Hayden and Laura"s wedding. Very pretty church and attractive service with good music. Vast Grenfell and Bonham Carter clans. A day of strong wind and scudding cloud, but bursts of sunshine, and the talk and riverside semi-party outside the church highly enjoyable.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 12 JULY. East Hendred.
Ian Wrigglesworths to lunch. He was engaging, buoyant, friendly, attracted by some new development, but inevitably and naturally non-committal about what he would do. Another dismal day"s weather.
THURSDAY, 17 JULY. Brussels.
Lunched with COREPER and had a not very satisfactory discussion with them as to whether the brake should be off the financial mechanism for three years or two (BBQ again). The French firmly in favour of only two, Germans inclining that way. I think this will prove quite a difficult issue at the Council next week.
FRIDAY, 18 JULY. Brussels.
Saw Dondelinger as chairman of COREPER, and in three-quarters of an hour"s talk got him rather back on to the lines of the three-year option, saying that this was my view of what had been intended on 30 May and, I believed, equally firmly that of Colombo.
MONDAY, 21 JULY. Brussels.
Dohnanyi to lunch with Jennifer and me, rue de Praetere. Found him engaging as usual, although very sticky on the financial mechanism point, and possibly on the non-quota section of the Regional Fund too. But I think he is prepared to give on the latter issue. He told me that he was so difficult on the first issue not because his nerve was damaged by his reception by Schmidt after the British settlement, but because he knew Schmidt was not willing to move an inch further, because he (Schmidt) felt very strongly that Mrs Thatcher had got away with too much already.