At Marietta"s large dinner party there was a bizarre interchange between Sam Spiegel10 and Nicko Henderson, neither knowing who the other was, but neither being able to understand that they didn"t know someone as notable as the other obviously was. It all arose over a discussion of the Christmas holidays, when Heath had somewhat surprisingly spent two weeks more or less alone with Sam Spiegel in the West Indies. Nicko couldn"t think who this man was with whom Heath had spent such a long time; and Spiegel couldn"t think who this man Henderson was who knew Heath so relatively well.
MONDAY, 21 JANUARY. New York.
To the vast, dismal Hilton for my dinner with the Economic Club of New York, which I had last addressed ten years previously. As is their habit, it was a double billing, with Reuben Askew, ex-Governor of Florida, Robert Strauss"s replacement as Special Trade Commissioner. I greeted the occasion with foreboding, having been told by some rather foolish man the previous evening that it was a useless audience (which was contrary to my previous recollection) and the only thing to do with them was-as apparently old Lord Thomson (Roy not George) and done several years ago-to tell them an endless series of rather risque stories, which was not my intention, desire, or capability.
In fact it turned out a very good occasion: an audience of nearly a thousand and I made quite a brisk speech, with even some oratorical flourishes. We then had a good question session, including one about what were my intentions in relation to a centre party in British politics. I recalled Al Smith"s 1924 riposte, which was at least appropriate in New York, when he got off the Twentieth Century Limited from Chicago, was prematurely asked whether he was a candidate (for President) and said, "I have not yet reached a decision upon that grave matter. But even had I done so I think it extremely unlikely I would wish to communicate it to the nation, through you, from this railroad platform."
TUESDAY, 22 JANUARY. New York and Washington.
Nine o"clock shuttle to Washington. At 11.00 a curious meeting with Brzezinski and Vance jointly, in Brzezinski"s White House office. It was never clear who was in charge.
Then, at 11.30, a three-quarters-of-an-hour meeting with Carter. I saw him first in the Oval Office alone and had the normal agreeable conversation and photographs, and then had a rather good exchange with perhaps a total of fourteen people round the table, fairly evenly balanced conversation and not difficult. He was looking on much better form than when I had last seen him in Tokyo at the end of June, but this is not surprising as that was a very low period for him, and this is an up period after his crushing defeat of Teddy Kennedy in the Iowa primary.
I then went to the State Department in Vance"s car and had a half-hour"s meeting with him, followed by a two-hour luncheon. The meeting was better than routine, partly because we completely floored him over sanctions against Iran. In a polite way I told him why I was sceptical about them and found to my surprise (it"s a bad thing that the US State Department should think things out so incompletely) that he had no real answers, and not much conviction either. Over lunch we ran through a range of issues -Yugoslavia, Turkey, China. It was better than previous meetings at the State Department, because we had more to talk to them about and it was in no sense a contrived agenda.
At 3.15, I saw the Secretary of Commerce (Klutznick) who Carter told me would explain the exact US position about the restriction on the export of high technology to Russia, but discovered they were still in a totally confused state about this.
The Spaaks had a huge dinner for me, forty-eight I think, with his fairly normal but rather good selection of people, a few Senators, a few Congressmen, Harrimans, Chief Justice Burger, Vangie (Bruce), I think no amba.s.sadors of the Nine (other than Nicko), a few White House people, Lloyd Cutler,11 Henry Owen, d.i.c.k Cooper-all quite well done and well organized. The only difficulty was that Madame Spaak was distinctly gloomy, as she thought that when Fernand went back to Europe she would lose not only her emba.s.sy but her husband,12 and therefore reproached me for agreeing to his return. (I had no alternative. He had done four very effective years and wanted a change.) SUNDAY, 27 JANUARY. East Hendred.
The Rodgers" to lunch; found them on good and friendly form, Bill"s political position not having changed much: i.e. much tempted by movement but had to wait until the autumn.
MONDAY, 28 JANUARY. East Hendred, London and Brussels.
A Savoy lunch at which I presented the Granada journalistic awards of the year. Then the 4.45 plane to Brussels, on which I easily beat all my records doing the door-to-door journey, central London to the Berlaymont in 1 hour and 41 minutes.
TUESDAY, 29 JANUARY. Brussels.
At noon I received the Minister President of North Rhine Westphalia, Herr Rau,13 for a talk alone, followed by a short luncheon. He seemed all right, not vastly exciting but quite interesting enough to go on with. A Social Democrat Landpresident in coalition with the FDP.
Made a brief speech at a farewell party for Alan Watson, Director of Television in the Commission-in which difficult job he has done very well.
THURSDAY, 31 JANUARY. Brussels, Bonn and Brussels.
Up at 7.40 with my speech on Afghanistan to the Political Committee of the Parliament (a great public affair with television, etc.) rather weighing on my mind. I worked rather frantically on it before going to the Palais d"Egmont for the much-publicized hearing at 10.00. The fifteen-minute speech seemed to go fairly well, and I had no great difficulty with the exchange of views afterwards, which went on for about two hours. Brandt made a rather wobbly speech, Scott-Hopkins a pompous one about b.u.t.ter, but up to a point I seemed to satisfy him. I was slightly concerned as to whether I had not, on b.u.t.ter and other agricultural export sales, gone a shade further in the direction of banning anything going to the Soviet Union than was compatible with the 16 January decision of the Council of Ministers.
Then a singularly ill-timed COREPER lunch. It was my lunch for them, but I arrived slightly late and more than slightly bad-tempered. I was immediately n.o.bbled by Luc de Nanteuil with an attemptedly menacing complaint about my speech that morning. I don"t think he had read it, but he kept on saying that it would be studied very carefully in Paris and if I had said we weren"t going to sell b.u.t.ter there would be remous in Paris, and the French Government would deeply disapprove, etc., to which I was fairly off-hand, being fed up with Luc always treating Paris as the areopagitica of Europe, and just ill-temperedly and dismissively said, "Quel dommage!"
However, the row persisted during lunch, when Dillon (the Irishman) was at least as bad as Luc, and n.o.body was very helpful except for Butler who is somewhat counterproductive. I again got rather bad-tempered at one stage during lunch, saying that it would just firmly stick in my mind that the whole reaction of COREPER to Afghanistan was an argument about b.u.t.ter and they seemed unable to raise their gaze out of the milk churn.
I left feeling dissatisfied with them and with myself. They weren"t all quite as bad as they might have been: Poensgen wasn"t there, Eugenio Plaja was trying to pour oil on troubled waters and Riberholdt wasn"t too bad. But Dillon and Nanteuil and one or two of the others were extremely tiresome.
Then I drove off with Crispin on a filthy day, all the external circ.u.mstances unpropitious at the moment, to Bonn for Schmidt at 6 o"clock. Schmidt was very late, not emerging from a meeting of the National Security Council until 6.45, having apparently been at it from 2.00. He complained a good deal about his health (he apparently has some nasty form of angina), but this didn"t prevent his looking more or less all right and proceeding to have the most extraordinary wide-ranging, "brain-storming" conversation, which lasted, first with Crispin and Horst Schulmann present, from 6.50 until 8.45, and then with Schmidt and me alone until 10 o"clock, so that the whole encounter was well over three hours with no dinner, one or two drinks I thought rather reluctantly brought in, a few kleine essen, and nothing else.
It was an amazing conversation, much of it fascinating, and it covered almost every subject under the sun: mainly the world strategic balance, his distrust of what the Americans had done in relation to Afghanistan, their lack of any overall concept, the closeness of his relationship with Honecker,14 into which they had been forced by a mutual nervousness of their superpower leaders, the fact that there were very few people in the world to whom he could speak in great confidence-Gierek15 (surprisingly) was one, Brezhnev was not, Mrs Thatcher was not, Giscard was, Carter was not, maybe Vance was, maybe Carrington was, he didn"t know him well enough.
This led on to the one positive proposal to come out of the meeting, which was that I would try and arrange for him to have a private meeting with Carrington as otherwise I could see no way forward on the British budgetary question, on which he had become distinctly hard, moving back to a position less favourable than he had been prepared to take in Dublin. I therefore said, "Let"s see if we can"t arrange a meeting, as you say you would like to talk to him about general things. It is difficult to do this in a normal way in London because you would then have to do it with Mrs Thatcher." He said, "It is difficult to do it in the normal way in Bonn, because I then ought to have Genscher with me and he is the touchiest man in the world." So I said, "Why don"t you come to my house in Brussels? I will arrange a dinner there." He replied, "What about England?" and out of this began to germinate the possibility that he might come to spend the weekend, nominally seeing his daughter, who lives in London, and that we might arrange something at East Hendred. It did not seem to me likely that anything would come of this, but at least it seemed worth trying.
Although no practical progress was made on the wretched British budgetary problem, and although the conversation was basically depressing, I got closer to the nub of matters with him than I have perhaps done before, particularly the nub of the difficulty of the British position in Europe if the Franco-German position was as locked-in an alliance as, he quite frankly explained, it has inevitably become.
A part of the hour"s private conversation I had with him alone was political, a reversion to the possible Carrington plan, some of it was what one might call gossip about our responsibilities, my talking to him about future German Commissioners, for instance, and some of it was just conversation, with his talking about his pattern of life, his reading (he had amazingly just been reading the complete plays of Oscar Wilde, and the night before had read a whole Agatha Christie novel during a long insomniac spell). He struck me as being in an attractive mood, in some ways a bit unhinged, but on balance, as always, an interesting and formidable man.
I left him feeling nearly as exhausted as he said he was. Crispin and I drove back on a still most filthy night, getting to rue de Praetere just after midnight. I went to sleep feeling distinctly uneasy about the Political Committee speech, the reactions to it, and the fact that I had probably been too ca.s.sant with Luc de Nanteuil and not much better with Dillon and the other members of COREPER. It had been an extraordinary day and no one could say that the interview with Schmidt was dull or that relations with him were inhibited. But these close personal relations don"t seem to be leading to any solution of the budget problem.
FRIDAY, 1 FEBRUARY. Brussels.
Commission meeting at noon. Rather an awkward time on b.u.t.ter, as there was strong feeling, reasonably courteously put on the part of Gundelach, Ortoli and Cheysson, that I had gone too far on banning b.u.t.ter sales in the Political Committee the day before. No doubt some of them had been n.o.bbled by their governments. However, I was able to hold the thing without too much difficulty, getting quite strong support from dear old Natali and fairly dear old Haferkamp. Still it was quite an awkward little storm, slightly bigger than in a teacup.
Then Henry and Shirley Anglesey arrived to stay the weekend. I went to the Berlaymont, first to telephone Cossiga in Rome, and then to have a short hour"s meeting with Andov, the Yugoslav Trade Minister who was here to try and conclude our long-drawn-out negotiations for a contractual link agreement with the Yugoslavs. I was very keen on this happening, particularly as I proposed to go to Yugoslavia at the end of the month and had to get the agreement out of the way before this would be possible. Andov seemed at first a rather dour Soviet-looking little man, but I slightly warmed to him later when I took him to the lift.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 2 FEBRUARY. Brussels.
Filthy weather, and Jennifer, seized with some awful stomach bug, was unable to get up. Angleseys and I left at 11.45 to try and do Waterloo before or after lunch, and to lunch at the now favourite Trois Canards at Ohain. Before lunch we did the Panorama and Hougoumont, but decided that the pouring rain was too much for the Mound. Then a successful and enjoyable lunch and back to the Mound where, despite cold driving rain, we crept in through a hole in the hedge and clambered up the gra.s.s bank, a formidable feat.
After that into the town of Waterloo and the Wellington Museum, which in spite of a number of curious solecisms in the labelling is definitely interesting. Then we had the success of discovering on enquiry, but without too much difficulty, the burial place of the first Marquess of Anglesey"s leg (Uxbridge when he lost it), which is more or less opposite the Wellington Museum, in a sort of water-closet in the garden of what now looks like a nursery school. A very successful day given the weather; Angleseys very good guests, full of enthusiasm and interest.
SUNDAY, 3 FEBRUARY. Brussels.
Still in filthy weather I took the Angleseys on an afternoon expedition to Malines, where, by remarkable luck, we coincided with the installation service of the new Archbishop, Cardinal Suenens"s successor. A great Ma.s.s, a packed cathedral, with people climbing up on pulpit supports and any dais or ledge that they could find. There was a very wide age spread, Catholicism clearly thriving in Flanders. There was a great array of purple in front of the altar, including Cardinal Willebrands from Utrecht, Suenens and, obviously, his successor.
TUESDAY, 5 FEBRUARY. Brussels.
Peter Carrington and Crispin to breakfast, rue de Praetere, at 8.45. A satisfactory conversation on a variety of issues, but not least because he was enthusiastic about the idea of a meeting with Schmidt, though preferred it to be at East Hendred; and said that he then could handle Mrs Thatcher all right. He agreed with me, not exactly reluctantly, but extremely nervously, that if we could try and get a settlement around 1000 million units of account, maybe he could sell it to her, maybe it was reasonable, etc.
I sat next to Carrington again at lunch and had a further long talk about my future wishes in relation to the Commission,16 and what I thought about a possible replacement as a British Commissioner.
In the Foreign Affairs Council Gundelach disposed of the b.u.t.ter issue, for the moment at any rate, rather satisfactorily. He is at his best on an occasion like that, looks confident, is persuasive.
WEDNESDAY, 6 FEBRUARY. Brussels.
We dined with Madame Feher, the widow of the Hungarian chemical manufacturer who made his business into the second chemical firm to Solvay in Belgium. Remarkably good pictures. The dinner was for General Rogers,17 Haig"s replacement, but I did not talk to him much. Talked most of dinner to Marie-Louise Simonet and after dinner to Hedwige de Nanteuil, with whom I had a sort of love-in with messages of how upset Luc had been because he thought he had had a row with me, which he hated, about b.u.t.ter, on which he was acting under instructions, and my sending a message back to him saying it was partly my fault, not on the substance, but I feared that I had shown a lack of courtesy to him before lunch: and there was a great deal of cooing all round, including for two minutes with Luc himself, at the end. It was as well, as we are dining with them tomorrow evening and I am in any event probably the person in Brussels official life who most likes Luc.
MONDAY, 11 FEBRUARY. Brussels and Strasbourg.
Schmidt on the telephone at 2 o"clock, with the rather surprising good news that he wanted to go ahead with the Carrington meeting and that he would like to dine at East Hendred on Sat.u.r.day, 23 February.
Avion taxi to Strasbourg for the normal boring hour and a half of questions which didn"t start until 6.20 and therefore didn"t finish until 7.50. I thought that was supposed to be a fixed feast, but nothing, alas, is fixed in this Parliament. I did not have many questions and they gave no great difficulty. The only tricky point was when somebody tried to ask me a question not on the paper at the beginning and I had very firmly to say that if the Parliament conducted its business like that it would get into a great mess. There would be imprecise answers and it would be unfair to those who put questions down. They seemed to accept this.
TUESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY. Strasbourg.
I delivered my annual Programme speech at 10.00. Crispin, who can be quite a severe critic, said he thought it was the best of the four Programme speeches, but that perhaps wasn"t saying much.
Then I had two people from the American National Geographic magazine (why?) for a remarkably dull lunch. After that a tedious and oddly wearing Commission meeting for three and a half hours. Then Peter Sh.o.r.e to dinner, because he had asked to see me and I thought I would quite like to hear his views. He was very late and not very apologetic, but I found plenty to talk to him about. I found him very anti-Benn, whom he thinks rather mad, skirting round the mountain of Healey, very pro-Foot. His view on world politics is that of an old-fashioned Atlanticist of the 1950s, very pro the Americans, on nearly all their att.i.tudes, wise and unwise, which they have taken up over both Iran and Afghanistan. He is bitterly anti-Europe, particularly the French, where one has a bit of sympathy with him, but he goes much too far and regards them as not so much a nation as a conspiracy against the public weal. But the whole impression was one of somebody who is agreeable, intelligent, but miles off being a great man, and not very inspiriting either.
WEDNESDAY, 13 FEBRUARY. Strasbourg.
Michel Poniatowski18 to lunch at the Maison des Tanneurs. Lots of gossip about French politics, he telling me exactly what he thought of everybody. The important people in the Government were those who had a certain influence outside their Department: Barre (obviously), Deniau, Giraud, and that I think was about it. Francois-Poncet was definitely not in this category. Poniatowski was very interested in movements in English politics, centre party, etc. He was surprisingly well known to the restaurant management, although he had never been there before; and a group of French publishers" salesmen at the next table was very interested to engage him in conversation about the termination of the French equivalent of the Net Book Agreement, which seems to be having the consequences which had always been predicted for such a change in England, i.e. the closing down of about half the serious bookshops of Strasbourg-and no doubt in the rest of France as well.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 16 FEBRUARY. East Hendred.
Sevenhampton for lunch with Ann Fleming, Donaldsons, John Sparrow and Robert Blakes. I was pleased to see Robert Blake who is an interesting and serious man. Sparrow not in very good condition, though thoroughly agreeable. The Donaldsons looking remarkably fit for their age, although rather Healeyite. They were strongly in favour of the centre party, but it depended a bit on Denis not being elected leader of the Labour Party.
MONDAY, 18 FEBRUARY. East Hendred and Rome.
To Rome for a meeting with Cossiga at the Palazzo Chigi at 5.00.1 am not sure that he knows quite where to go on the British budgetary question (henceforward referred to as the BBQ). However, we were at least able to agree that there was no point in having an earlier European Council. Then to the Ha.s.sler Hotel before dinner at the British Emba.s.sythe first time that I had been in the Villa Wolkonsky for nearly ten years-with the new Amba.s.sador (Ronald Arculus) and Carrington, who was there with his very bright a.s.sistant Private Secretary, Paul Lever.
TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY. Rome and Brussels.
Political Cooperation, which went on from 10.45 until 3.45, when I left to go back to Brussels. Though I say that it "went on", this could hardly be described as a continuous process, because Ruffini, who is an absolutely hopeless chairman, occasionally left it quite unclear whether we were in session or not, in a way rather reminiscent of the Tokyo Summit last June. At one stage we just sat around for about half an hour, while he had a telephone brought in, attempted to telephone somebody-G.o.d knows who; we were discussing the Moscow Olympics, so perhaps it was Brezhnev, perhaps it was Lord Killanin,19 or perhaps it was Cossiga. And failing to get through -most likely to Cossiga, I suppose-he at one stage threw the telephone on the floor, with predictable results. Then another was brought in and he eventually got through, and so in conditions of some farce we proceeded.
The statement of Afghanistan "neutrality" was disposed of quickly and well, but then there were hours of unrewarding debate about an Olympics statement. Francois-Poncet, who had been helpful on the neutrality proposal, had obviously come with instructions on the Olympics (i) not to agree to a statement, and (ii) not to get isolated. The two objectives proved incompatible and he got fretful and marionette-like, jerking his arms about.
THURSDAY, 21 FEBRUARY. Brussels, London and East Hendred.
To the Cercle Gaulois for a lunch given by Heath in connection with the European Youth Orchestra. Friendly, interesting talk with him. He made quite a good little speech. Then saw Van Ypersele about the state of play on the European Monetary Fund and other EMS questions. 4.45 plane to London.
SAt.u.r.dAY, 23 FEBRUARY. East Hendred.
The day of our Carrington/Schmidt dinner, Schmidt rather to my surprise having stuck to his engagement and come to England specially to do it. We had asked Edward and Sally, which somehow made it easier to leave Schmidt and Carrington alone for some time. Dinner went moderately well. Hannelore Schmidt nicer, easier and more interesting than I had expected, speaks very good English, ex-Hamburg schoolteacher, much interested in the preservation of wild flowers and botanical conservation in Germany, but also in a lot of other things too. Helmut, benign and looking rather better, but as usual no small talk and both Edward and Jennifer found him quite difficult to talk to.
Edward only seized his attention by asking him if he was going to blow up the world (hardly within the Germans" capacity now), to which he replied no, but that other people might easily do so. I left Carrington and him alone for an hour and a quarter after dinner, but then brought them into the drawing room and we went on for too long so that it was 12.45 before they all went. I think no business of great value was transacted. Schmidt was not well enough briefed on the BBQ to be able to discuss it in detail, Carrington said. But it was good from the point of view of personal relations and there was some interesting world politics discussion.
MONDAY, 25 FEBRUARY. East Hendred, Dublin and London.
10.40 plane to Dublin. Drove straight to a talk alone with Haughey, the new Taoiseach, whom by a series of accidents I had never met before. (The most notable "accident" was in April 1970 when I went for an Irish holiday after my last budget on the day he was due to present his first budget. In the event he claimed he fell off his horse in the courtyard of his house, and the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, presented his budget instead of him. By the time we got back from Ballylicky a week later, when Haughey was supposed to give us lunch, he had not only fallen off his horse but been dismissed from the Government and faced criminal charges for gun-running, from which he was subsequently acquitted, it should be said. So Lynch gave us lunch instead.) Found Haughey, as I had been forewarned, extremely engaging. Much quicker than previous Irish Taoiseachs, though perhaps (but I am not sure) less trustworthy. Very well informed about British politics, Dimbleby Lecture, etc. Mostly agreeable gossip before lunch. Lunch at Iveagh House, usual form, Foreign Minister, several officials and Crispin present, and quite good. Rather intensive but sensible arguments, mainly about agriculture but one or two other things as well.
Back to London by 5.00. To Michael Barnes"s flat, where I had an hour"s meeting with about ten "new party" plotters. I thought the hour was rather good and brisk but apparently the discussion got all over the place later.
Then dinner at Bridgewater House, given by Edwin Plowden and attended by five or six of his senior businessmen. Of the old ones, there were John Partridge and David Orr, whom I think very good, and Peter Baxendell, the chief British man in Sh.e.l.l, and Maurice Hodgson, the Chairman of ICI. All of them I think sympathetic to proportional representation, some of them to the idea of a centre party if the Government failed, but still putting more faith in Mrs T. than I would have expected. Edwin rather to the left of the others. However, in response to a tentative query from me, they made it clear that there was little prospect of money. Big companies with many shareholders do not like political subscriptions, they said.
WEDNESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY. Brussels and Belgrade.
George Weidenfeld to lunch rue de Praetere. Mainly gossip about America, but George was also quite interesting and sensible on British politics, preoccupied by a mixture of who he might have to dinner with us in April, and how we might organize the centre party.
In the early evening an avion taxi to Belgrade, which was too fast so that we arrived well before the welcoming party was ready for us. Drove to the so-called Residence Villa, an old Prince Paul20 nid d"amour, I would guess, on a low hill about two or three miles from the centre of Belgrade.
THURSDAY, 28 FEBRUARY. Belgrade.
A morning of hazy sunshine with the temperature just above freezing point. The physical atmosphere, which struck both Crispin and me during the next two days, was curiously like China, exactly a year previously. To New Belgrade and the large rather good building in which most Government offices seem to be situated for a meeting, followed by lunch, with Djuranovic, the Prime Minister, an effective but unmemorable Montenegran. In the past twenty-five years a whole new city with a population of about 300,000 has been built across the Sava from the old town.
The Yugoslavs were anxious to give an impression of calmness, business as usual, collective leadership already functioning and ready to take over full responsibilities in the face of the manifestly impending but slow death of t.i.to. They were pleased with their agreement with us and discussed quite sensibly the follow-up to it, and then gave us a long review of their approach to world affairs which suggests some justifiable apprehension but not panic about the exposure of their position. Their main concern is their quarrel with Bulgaria over Macedonia and the possible escalation which might arise from this. For the rest their relations with their Communist neighbours, Rumania above all, but also Hungary and indeed Albania, are quite good. They showed some disenchantment with the way in which the non-aligned movement has been taken over by Castro even while t.i.to, one of its two founder members, is just alive. This will push them towards a lower international profile in the future.
An interesting talk with the Foreign Minister Vrhovec, a bright little Croatian who had just returned from Delhi. He was very reserved towards the Carrington plan for the neutralization of Afghanistan (said the Indians were too), but took a definitely more favourable line when I explained to him that "neutralization" was the wrong word and that "neutrality", which was much more of a subjective state, was better. It was much nearer to non-alignment, provided that this was not "non-alignment" in the bogus Cuban sense.
He also suffered from the illusion that the British Government was implacably hostile to Mugabe and would not contemplate a Zimbabwe Government with him in control, and the a.s.sociated illusion that we were primarily concerned with our trading interests in Rhodesia. I told him that nothing would have pleased us better from an economic point of view than for it to have been obliterated from the face of the earth some time ago. British trading interests in Africa were those with Nigeria (growing) and those with South Africa (diminishing) but both of them very substantial and the whole difficulty of policy was to maintain some sort of balance between the two: a difficult enough problem without the complication of Rhodesia.
FRIDAY, 29 FEBRUARY. Belgrade and East Hendred.
Lunch given by Andov (the Trade Minister and our main host). Quite friendly, unb.u.t.toned talk, rather typical of an end-of-a-visit lunch, during which I, for the first time for instance, talked about Ivana (my half-Yugoslav daughter-in-law), asking did they know this and discovered -1 think genuinely-that only the Amba.s.sador in Brussels knew it, and had not bothered to pa.s.s it on, which did not suggest a very neurotic regime. I was impressed by this. Plane to London at 5.30.
MONDAY, 3 MARCH. East Hendred and London.
Left on a most beautiful morning to visit, appropriately, the Meteorological Office at Bracknell: a Crispin enterprise. I found it fascinating, with a lot of interesting discussion about both weather and climate. Then to London and the Turf Club for lunch, once more with Peter Carrington,21 and with Ian Gilmour. Useful but not memorable talk with them.
TUESDAY, 4 MARCH. London, Paris and Brussels.
Early plane to Paris. To the Bra.s.serie Lipp where I met Crispin. Then disaster struck. I discovered that I had left my diary in the plane, or at any rate did not have it. At 11.30 I saw Barre at Matignon for an hour and a half. He was alone, relaxed and surprisingly confident, talking very much more as a head of government, very much less as Giscard"s adjutant, than on previous occasions. This I suspect was not due primarily to the fact that Giscard was away for ten days, longer than ever previously, but much more to a feeling of confidence in his own position. I thought him a bit complacent about the French economy, but not quite as pedagogic as usual. He listened with interest to my exposition of what I regarded as a slightly subtle world macroeconomic case for an energy levy.
There was a good atmosphere throughout, as there generally is with Barre, and a hint of some progress on the BBQ. He told me that he did not see a solution at 1500 million units of account, that it was not only France that was blocking this. This was a great illusion. There were a lot of other countries, including Germany, who would not pay the amounts this involved. I said maybe, but that the Germans might well pay their share of, say, a thousand million which might provide the basis of a solution if they thought they could carry the French with them. There was no contradiction or dissent from Barre. Merely a suggestion that we should put forward a solution (with a slight implication that it could be along these lines) about a week before the European Council. Then he took me round the lower rooms of Matignon, including that in which the "Matignon Pact" was signed by Blum in 1936. Apparently Matignon only became the residence of Presidents du Conseil in 1935, Pierre Flandin being the first occupant. Then a very brief impromptu press conference sur le perron.
THURSDAY, 6 MARCH. Brussels and Lisbon.
Half an hour on the telephone with Dohnanyi, agreeably but not tremendously pointfully, about the BBQ at his instigation. 11.10 plane to Lisbon. Down into Lisbon at 1.15 in rather indifferent weather. Met at the airport by Sa Carneiro, the new Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic though rather right-wing party, plus the Christian Democrat Foreign Minister Freitas do Amaral, whom I had met in Luxembourg a few weeks before, plus their wives. Mrs Sa Carneiro, as we thought she was, was rather a good-looking lady who might have come straight off the Yale campus. In fact she turned out to be a Danish publisher. Mrs Freitas do Amaral was totally different, very Latin, also rather engaging. Jennifer"s plane from London was rather later than mine and during the wait "Mrs Sa Carneiro" enlivened proceedings by expressing distrust of TAP (Portuguese Airlines) and asking me if I knew that the initials were known (by whom?) to stand for "take another plane".22 An afternoon meeting with Sa Carneiro in the Prime Ministerial residence, the old Salazar house, though he (Sa Carneiro) does not live in it, where I had seen Mario Soares two and a half years before. Driving through the streets, Lisbon looked slightly tidied up, a little less like Calcutta than it had begun to do on the previous occasion. It seemed in better working order. This was certainly true of the hotel, which had abandoned autogestion since we were last there.
Sa Carneiro raised no subjects of great importance but talked interestingly, well, and friendlily, and was amazingly well informed about my background, writings, etc. He is a very small man, about 5 "3" I would think, but with great drive, and talks very good English, even better French and I think pretty good Spanish as well. I was definitely rather impressed by him, but maybe too much influenced by his going so out of the way to be particularly nice to me. Then I saw Freitas do Amaral for forty-five minutes. Quite a useful talk in which we discussed the timetable for the outstanding negotiations, but again did not get into substance.
Back at the hotel Soares came to see me for an hour. He had come back from Paris more or less specially that afternoon. Attractive, friendly, expressing himself well in imperfect French, but a little woebegone and complaining. He was in something of a "we was cheated" mood, but his resentment was not against Eanes, the President of the Republic, who had dismissed him, but with whom he had clearly had a rapprochement and about whom he was anxious to speak friendlily, but against the Government, which he held to be exacerbating political differences in Portugal.
He added that his commitment to Portuguese adhesion to the Community was complete, but that with this polarization of politics he was beginning to have trouble on the issue with his own Socialist Party. He was clearly not happy in opposition, not personally bitter about Sa Carneiro, though complaining hard about some const.i.tutional scheme of the Government, which sounds a pretty good bit of gerrymandering. They apparently plan to increase the number of seats-from four to perhaps thirty-for Portuguese emigrants, of whom there are about a million in the Community and two million outside. This could obviously be a fine recipe for producing a quiverful of pocket boroughs.
Then to Cintra where we had a dinner, as on the previous occasion, in the magnificent hall at the Palaccio da Vila with about 150 guests and speeches afterwards. I sat between "Mrs Sa Carneiro" and Mrs Freitas do Amaral. "Mrs Sa Carneiro", I had discovered in conversation with Soares, is not married to Sa Carneiro. They have been together for about two years. She is called "Snou", has been in Portugal for about fifteen years as a publisher, is clearly quite a powerful and indeed agreeable lady, but Sa Carneiro is very bold in such a Catholic country to seek a divorce from the mother of his several children. ("When I marry Mrs Snou", only a slight variation from a line in an old American musical, kept occurring to me.) This was the first occasion on which "Snou" had appeared in public as his consort and this was no doubt provoked by Jennifer"s coming and the banquet having to be made bis.e.xual. I thought I detected a slight frostiness between Mrs Freitas do Amaral and her. The speeches went quite well, both Sa Carneiro"s and mine.
FRIDAY, 7 MARCH. Lisbon.
Lunch was another grand official banquet-at the Foreign Ministry-sitting this time between the Freitas do Amarals. More speeches. Then to the Presidential Palace for a long interview with General Eanes. I had heard in the meantime that the Sa Carneiros were proposing to come out and lunch with us informally at Cintra the next day, as they wished to continue the talk. Perhaps inspired by this knowledge, Eanes kept the conversation going much more animatedly than last time. He was more unb.u.t.toned and relaxed, seemed to me to have become a more rounded personality, but nonetheless made it absolutely clear that he was on pretty bad terms with his Prime Minister. No direct criticism but solid silence about him, accompanied by at least four or five tributes in the course of the hour to Soares.
Then towards the end he said he could go on as long as I liked. But when we came out about ten minutes late we found Sa Carneiro had been left cooling his heels. When I indicated to Eanes that it would be unwise for me to keep my press conference waiting indefinitely, he responded by saying that he was at my disposal any time during the weekend and would I come and see him again. Our weekend off was being rather seriously eaten into by compet.i.tive bidding from President and Prime Minister.
Then to the Italian Emba.s.sy, a very splendid late seventeenth-century building in a rundown quarter, and there did a rather exhaustive briefing of the Nine. I thought the amba.s.sadors were rather an impressive lot for once. The "Brit", as on the previous occasion, was Lord Moran, ex-John Wilson,23 who wrote a good book about Campbell-Bannerman.
SUNDAY, 9 MARCH. Cintra, Lisbon and Brussels.
Drove in and saw Eanes in his private presidential apartments at noon. He was very friendly. I think he is an honest man but not nearly as quick as Sa Carneiro, and some of his explanations of the plots, etc. which are going on seem to me a little unconvincing. His basic view was that the divide between the parties should not be allowed to grow too wide: this is partly because he does not like parties and wants to strengthen his own position, but partly because he has a general and desirable commitment to holding Portugal together, and a particular one to keeping the European enterprise as a national and not a party enterprise. Then back to Brussels.
MONDAY, 10 MARCH. Brussels and Strasbourg.
Decided I must go on to a strict regime. Avion taxi in rather depressed mood to Strasbourg at 3.45. Listened to Gundelach"s statement on b.u.t.ter sales to Russia which he did pretty well and which was accepted by the more sensible Tories and by the House generally. There were one or two shrill comments but a solid one from Henry Plumb, though balanced by a menacing willingness to vote for anything against anybody by the disagreeable Aigner. Question time from 6.00 to 7.30 which ambled on in its usual boring way. Then back to the hotel and as a subst.i.tute for dinner watched Mrs Thatcher on French television there was a girl interpreter, possibly specially auditioned, with a peculiarly disagreeable voice.
WEDNESDAY, 12 MARCH. Strasbourg, London and East Hendred.
I had a lunch at La Wantzenau organized by Henry Plumb and Madron Seligman for six youngish Tory MPs, including some of the most difficult ones on the b.u.t.ter issue. Once or twice they were tiresome but it was well worth doing, I think. Evening plane to London.
MONDAY, 17 MARCH. East Hendred, London and Brussels.
One-and-a-quarter-hour meeting with Mrs Thatcher at Downing Street. This was a good deal calmer than on some previous occasions. Nothing very memorable was said, although she was clearly willing to contemplate a package deal at the European Council, provided the actual phrase was avoided, and willing also to talk at any rate in terms of two-thirds of the shortfall, or even a little less. It was perfectly friendly throughout and she showed more willingness to listen than previously. Jim Cattermole and Tom Ellis24 and George Foulkes,25 as the officers (the last two new) of the Labour Committee for Europe, to lunch at the Athenaeum.
Then to Brussels and dinner at home for the Italians, Ruffini, Zamberletti, Plaja on their side: better than on the previous occasion, but Ruffini still far from scintillating.
TUESDAY, 18 MARCH. Brussels.