European Diary, 1977-1981 Part 24

WEDNESDAY, 31 OCTOBER. Brussels and East Hendred.

Saw Donald Maitland for a final farewell call. I am sorry to see him go; my opinion of him has gone steadily up during the past two years.

Commission from 10.10 to 1.30. Fairly early on in the discussion on the paper it became clear that things were not going to be too awkward. I introduced it myself, fairly firmly indicating where there were possible areas of compromise and where there were not. Ortoli, Gundelach and, indeed, Davignon responded by saying that the areas of compromise were desirable but that they weren't going to press for going beyond that. So without too much difficulty we turned this dangerous corner. As a result we had a fairly relaxed subsequent luncheon; but, apart from the fact that Ortoli always manages to get the conversation into French, he played no national hand.

6.45 plane from Zaventem for my truncated East Hendred Toussaints holiday.39 Jennifer and I had decided that it was too difficult to get to Sare where we had intended to stay with the Beaumarchais', not having gone in the summer. We feared that they might be offended by this, but discovered that it did not suit them badly because Jacques had severe 'flu and they were not sure when they could get there themselves.

THURSDAY, 1 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

Up early, with an awareness that this November-the latter part of it in particular-was going to be a very testing month, what with my Dimbleby Lecture on the 22nd and then the Dublin Summit, and could turn out to be a fairly disastrous or at the very least a deeply disappointing month.

I then got down to a great day's work on Dimbleby. I clearly had to get the back of it broken on this holiday and as early as possible. I had already written nearly enough to fill the whole fifty minutes, but I was still lacking hard proposals, let alone peroration and conclusion, had a lot of otiose stuff at the beginning, and knew that I could not get down to an effective job of getting it into proper shape until I had a draft of the whole. Therefore I worked hard from 9.15 until 1.00, went out to a pub lunch at Clifton Hampden with Jennifer, and then proceeded to work equally solidly from 3.15 until 8.15, in other words eight and three-quarter hours solid writing during the day. It is difficult to tell how good it is, but I was very pleased to discover that I could still concentrate as hard as this on writing something without a draft and produce nearly three thousand words in a single day.

I was exhausted but satisfied at the end of it, when the Rodgers' arrived to dine. After dinner I read Bill bits of the more controversial part at the end. I think he was sufficiently post-prandial not to be taking it in too meticulously, but at least he was fully warned of what was coming and certainly showed no sign of reacting with deep shock or hostility. He had moved quite a bit since the talk we had had in the summer, when he was staying at East Hendred, and had tried to persuade me to come back into politics in the conventional way.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 3 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

Gilmours to lunch alone. I got Ian to read Dimbleby. He thought parts of the political stuff at the end were too right-wing, and in particular objected to my using the phrase 'the social market economy'! So I adjusted it for this and other helpful criticism. He was also against having the Yeats quotation in at the end (too hackneyed). On this opinion is divided.

SUNDAY, 4 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

To Sevenhampton with Jennifer and lunched with Ann and the Donaldsons. The Donaldsons are very keen to come to the Dimbleby Lecture which I shall arrange.

MONDAY, 5 NOVEMBER. East Hendred and Strasbourg.

11.30 plane to Paris for Strasbourg. Held up all the afternoon at Charles de Gaulle by the French air traffic controllers' strike. Strasbourg only at 6.45. Yet another dinner for Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon.

TUESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER. Strasbourg and Brussels.

Intensive telephoning between 10.45 and 11.45, partly to fix up with Robert Armstrong for Davignon to pay exploratory visits to him and to Wahl in the Elysee to see how much room there was for give on both sides,40 which visits had been suggested at dinner the night before.

Late afternoon plane to Brussels (late in both senses, the French air traffic controllers' strike again), but much worse than that, it was really intolerably b.u.mpy and disagreeable for the whole of the fifty minutes, so much so that they wouldn't serve any drinks. Just when one needed them most. I would have thought that some heroic girl might have crawled along the aisle handing out much-needed sustenance. Arrived in the Berlaymont feeling rather shaken but recovered and went to dinner with the Michael Jenkins'.

WEDNESDAY, 7 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

A highly unsatisfactory lunch with COREPER in the Berlaymont, at which they nearly all, with the exception of Noterdaeme, the new Belgian, and I think also Michael Butler,41 the new British Permanent Representative, complained hard about the reference paper containing options rather than a single precise recommendation with a figure: Nanteuil, but also the little ones, Dillon (Ireland) in particular, Dondelinger (Luxembourg), Riberholdt (Denmark), Plaja (Italy) a bit but not excessively, Lubbers (Netherlands) I think keeping quiet. It was rather disagreeable to have them yapping away quite so much, though I replied very robustly partly because I am so convinced we are right. Riberholdt and Nanteuil would like to have had a single proposition which they could have shot down, and thus improve their tactical position: the others, particularly Dillon, but to some extent Dondelinger, etc., were fighting a battle for COREPER's dignity and for them to have a specific role, which is not a primary interest of ours. So I was not unduly shaken by them.

After a long afternoon Commission, I had a three-quarters-of-an-hour arranged telephone call with Schmidt. He very much likes these long conversations, which I don't. He is rather good at them and we had a thoroughly productive discussion about what might or might not be done vis-a-vis the British. His general line was that Mrs Thatcher had some pretty unrealistic ideas, but nonetheless he was anxious to help her to what extent was possible, but she really had to compromise and think about things much more sensibly and seriously or she would be in great trouble. Then at the end he made some odd remarks asking how much of a crisis I thought there was in France as a result of the Boka.s.sa diamonds affair,42 speaking in a rather more detached way about Giscard than he had done before: not exactly unfriendlily, but as though he was genuinely seeking information. It is very much his habit suddenly to ask questions at the end of a discussion about any range of issues which are in his mind.

A late dinner party, rue de Praetere, for the Michael Butlers. Ann Butler is a bonus, but whether Michael is an improvement on Donald Maitland is more doubtful. He does rather bang away at issues without great sensitivity or feeling, as he showed in the COREPER lunch today, but he is a highly intelligent man and perhaps in some ways has a wider range of interests than Maitland, including-not that that much excites me-a great collection of Chinese porcelain.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 10 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

At 7 o'clock David Marquand came for a general political discussion but also usefully to read Dimbleby. He is very anxious for us to make a move in politics. Dimbleby he was constructive about, though fairly critical, and in a way not very enthusiastic, but perhaps this was rather good for me, particularly as he made, not on that occasion but subsequently by telephone, what turned out to be an essential point, that I should talk about the radical centre and not just the centre as such.

SUNDAY, 11 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

My fifty-ninth birthday. Hayden and Laura, Leslie Bonham Carter, Griggs, Thea Elliott and Charles and Ivana to lunch. Just as we were going in we were telephoned from Paris to be told that Jacques de Beaumarchais had died that morning in the Salpetriere Hospital. It was an enormous shock, although we had had an underlying worry about his health for the last fifteen months, partly because everything had gone so wrong since he returned from his previously brilliant career and highly successful emba.s.sy in London.

They were both of them immensely close friends of ours. There were hardly any of the barriers which there almost inevitably are between the British and the French. They had been here a great deal during their emba.s.sy, we had done four two- or three-day trips in England with them, we had stayed at Sare so often, and they had stayed in Brussels I think no fewer than four times during the previous year. We last saw him at Barbizon, where he seemed quite well when he came to lunch at the end of September. And we had intended to go to Sare the previous week.

TUESDAY, 13 NOVEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

Early train to Strasbourg. Crispin and I gave lunch to Stevy Davignon. He was back from his mission to the French and the British, and I thought him rather overoptimistic.

Christopher Tugendhat kindly gave me dinner. I found him quite interesting on budgetary questions, both British and the wider Community ones, but gloomy and worried-as we all are a bit -about the Parliament prospect.

WEDNESDAY, 14 NOVEMBER. Strasbourg.

Up at 7.50 on a dark, wet morning with the rain driving across the Place de la Gare, so that it looked like an 'umbrella' picture by Boudin or Corot. A debate on the British budgetary problems and convergence generally, which I opened for twenty-five minutes and which was reasonably satisfactory, with certainly no significant criticism along the COREPER lines that we had not been more specific. I did another twenty minutes near to the end at about 9 p.m. Then yet another dinner for the 'Four Hors.e.m.e.n', Ortoli, Davignon, Gundelach, plus, on this occasion, Emile Noel and Crispin. Too late, moderately satisfactory, too expensive.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 17 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

I had a meeting with Davignon, Ortoli and Crispin-Gundelach away in Italy, thank G.o.d (not thank G.o.d particularly that he was away: it would have been better if they had all been away) - which went on unbelievably from 6.30 p.m. until 9.00 achieving remarkably little, with Francis being at his worst. Therefore I was rather bad-tempered at dinner with our weekend guests.

MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER. Brussels, The Hague and Brussels.

Train with Crispin from the Gare du Nord to The Hague, where we first had a meeting under van der Klaauw's chairmans.h.i.+p and then a luncheon in the Catshuis which van Agt joined. The meeting was with a number of ministers-perhaps six or eight of them-and the lunch was equally strongly attended. It was a singularly satisfactory encounter with the Dutch. Quite a good detailed meeting beforehand and then, at lunch, although almost completely sacrificing my food as a result, I was able to give them an exposition of the British problem and why it existed and why it had to be solved as far as one could, which I think was more persuasive and more reasonable than anything I had done before on the subject and undoubtedly s.h.i.+fted them considerably. It focused my mind more sharply than previously, and they seemed very pleased with all aspects of the meeting and expressed themselves very strongly in this sense.

I had a brief talk at the end alone with van Agt and van der Klaauw and we got very near to what it might be possible for them to do.43 Also, when van Agt was briefly out of the room, van der Klaauw asked me whether I was a candidate to continue as President of the Commission, and I explained to him very firmly that I was not a candidate and probably not available, but not certainly so as I did not wish to be too much of a lame duck during the last year. He seemed to understand completely and van Agt, when he came back, I think took the same point.

Back to Brussels by train. Dinner at the Irish Emba.s.sy for Michael O'Kennedy, with the normal three on each side. There was serious talk over dinner and again an exposition of the British problem from me. Not as well done as in The Hague and they were more resistant, particularly Dillon who clearly has a very strong anti-English streak in him. I suppose the Irish all have to some extent and it is totally understandable.

TUESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

Finally cleared and sent to London for release the text of the Dimbleby Lecture. G.o.d knows how it will go, but at this stage one can only hope for the best. A short, early lunch with Martens, the Belgian Prime Minister. It was an attempt at a repeat of the performance with the Dutch the previous day. Simonet who was present was, if anything, more difficult than Martens. It was another useful exercise, undoubtedly making some progress with them though they are a step or two behind the Dutch. Foreign Affairs Council all afternoon and then a longish and fairly difficult (British budgetary) meeting with Gundelach and Ortoli.

WEDNESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

Three-and-a-half-hour Commission meeting. Lunched with COREPER at the Charlemagne. I don't know why these luncheons are coming so close together at the present time. This was a much easier and more constructive encounter than on the previous occasion two weeks before. Four-hour Commission in the afternoon, very long, late and wearing. The last three days have not been exactly the way to prepare and be fresh for Dimbleby.

THURSDAY, 22 NOVEMBER. Brussels and London.

The long-awaited Dimbleby day. I spoke to the European Youth Forum for about half an hour from 10.15. Afterwards to the Parliamentary Committee on Information, which I also addressed, again for about half an hour, and in this case had to listen and reply to a discussion of some length, for which I was not perfectly briefed. The 12.45 plane to London was fortunately late, so that I was able to stay with them until 12.35. Otherwise there could have been ill-feeling. Then, of all things, there was no drink and no lunch on the plane, on the splendidly inadequate ground that there were only three stewards instead of five. As there were only eight first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, they would not have had the slightest difficulty in serving drinks, and indeed lunch had they wished (tourist-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers don't get lunch in any case). Presumably there is some union rule about not being willing to do anything with fewer than five stewards. As a result all three of them did absolutely nothing for the whole flight, except make themselves coffee; extremely irritating.

To the Savoy Hotel, where I had taken a small suite and where I had a late, light lunch and a last read-through of the lecture, before going the few hundred yards to the Royal Society of Arts where John Harris met me at 4 o'clock. There we had a rehearsal of the walk-on and walk-off, and a run-through of a few pages to make sure that the timing was right. Our best calculations indicated that I should be about two minutes within the allocated forty-eight/forty-nine minutes.

Back to the Savoy with John and Jennifer for a rest, change and a drink, and then back to the Royal Society at about 7 o'clock, and proceeded to deliver the over-matured lecture to a full and fairly distinguished audience. Amazingly, I suppose the response to having an audience, all our careful calculations went awry and it took fifty-two minutes, but as the whole of the top echelons of the BBC were sitting in the front row, they could hardly cut me off.

Afterwards, feeling reasonably pleased, I went downstairs for a party for perhaps half to three-quarters of an hour. Everybody was really pretty enthusiastic and interested, the only person manifestly hostile being a somewhat bleary Ian Waller (of the Sunday Telegraph) who apparently went round saying it was absolute nonsense. The journalists in general, however, were more sceptical than the others, this applying, for example, to Fred Emery of The Times.

Of the politicians present, none was hostile and some were enthusiastic. Bill Rodgers, who had had an extremely important lunch with John Horam44 that day (who had had a great influence on him) said that suddenly in the course of the lecture he had had a vision of himself sitting in the headquarters of the new party with his sleeves rolled up, actually organizing things, which I took to mean-I hope rightly-that Bill had pa.s.sed over some emotional watershed. Ian Wrigglesworth was there and was also enthusiastic, and Phillip Whitehead,45 although much more detached, was certainly not hostile.

FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER. London, Brussels, Paris and East Hendred.

Inevitably woke up early full of angst and apprehension about what the newspapers would look like and what other reactions would be. In fact, the newspapers were by no means bad. A good deal of coverage and none of it or hardly any of it at this stage markedly other than what I would have wanted.

11.30 plane to Brussels-not that I wanted to go to Brussels, I wanted to go to Paris, but the wretched air traffic controllers' strike being still on and avion taxis being too extravagant (at any rate I had no excuse for one back from a private engagement), the only way to get to Paris was to go via Brussels, and motor.

Having achieved Paris, I went to the Elysee to see Giscard for fifty minutes. It was the usual sort of Giscard interview-polite, cool, even cold, though the coolness at least equal on my side by now to that on his. It was clear that he was willing to do a certain amount, made no complaint about our paper in the Commission's circ.u.mstances, clear equally that he wasn't going to do a great deal, clear that he was going to insist on a number of unrelated concessions in return for whatever he agreed to, clear too that he was leaning back and was going to be in a detached, pa.s.sively awkward mood (perhaps the best way of putting it) at Dublin. This meeting was not in itself particularly worthwhile, but it was important that I had gone through the motions of seeing him beforehand.

Then to Avenue Franklin Roosevelt for a quick, early dinner with Marie-Alice. I found her in a fairly poor condition, I suppose. Shattered certainly, but also embittered by the two years of official neglect which had preceded Jacques's death. She was extremely hostile to the French powers that be, and showed me a sharp letter which she had sent to Francois-Poncet in response to the rather ludicrous typewritten letter which he had sent to her on behalf of the French Government. She fortunately completely understood why we hadn't been able to go to the funeral and was pleased with the piece which I had written about Jacques over the previous weekend and which had appeared in The Times on the morning of Monday 19th. She was unwilling-at first I thought only superficially-to have a memorial service in London because it would have to be organized by the French Emba.s.sy. But towards the end of dinner I became convinced that she was serious about this and therefore decided that there was nothing more to be done. Nonetheless I enjoyed seeing her, it was not as wearing as it sounds, and she is still very much the highly individual, indomitable, totally splendid Marie-Alice. 9.30 plane (late) and East Hendred at 11.45.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 24 NOVEMBER. East Hendred, London and East Hendred.

To London to address the annual meeting of the European Movement, almost the last thing I wanted to do after the previous few days. There were three speeches, from George Thomson, Heath and me. I spoke pretty unprepared; I had a text but didn't like it. Lunch with the Gilmours at Isleworth. East Hendred at 4.30. I was very tired, but by this time, from letters and other responses, it was beginning to be clear that public reaction to Dimbleby had been better than the press reaction, though the press reaction had not been bad, and that the resonance was very considerable indeed.

SUNDAY, 25 NOVEMBER. East Hendred.

I did only a little desultory work in the morning. Although it was the weekend before a European Council-and a pretty crucial one I felt I had done most of the preparation I could on this, knew the subject well, and in any event having two major events running so closely together meant that Dimbleby at least had the advantage that I could not worry too much about Dublin.

The Sunday press was not bad: an immensely long but slightly confused leader in the Observer; a very good leader in the Sunday Times; a hostile leader in the Telegraph, predictably and not woundingly so.

Bradleys to lunch. Tom managed to go on until 2.30 without mentioning Dimbleby. At first I thought it was not exactly because he strongly disapproved of it (if so he would have told me) but more because, in Tom's curious switch-off way, he had been so preoccupied with Kettering Town or some such thing, that he just hadn't noticed that it had taken place. But when, however, I at last raised it half-way through lunch, he was fully aware of everything and all the reactions to it, and pretty strongly approving. What he disapproved of desperately was that by some appalling accident he hadn't been invited to the lecture itself and, even worse, he had been approached by David Owen on Westminster tube station on the Wednesday evening, he (Owen) having got a copy of the lecture, from the press no doubt, and he (Tom) having very little idea what was in it.

However, Owen had almost totally retrieved the position by telling Tom how much he disapproved of it, and by saying that it was 'very unfair of Roy to do this to those of us who have risked our careers for him'. To which Tom reacted violently, and not unreasonably, saying, 'You've risked your career for him? You've risked nothing at all. What better career do you think you could have had? You are a walking career,' and stumped off. Owen had denounced the lecture in not exactly violent but in slightly disagreeable terms in a speech, I think on the Friday at lunchtime, which had appeared in the press on the Sat.u.r.day.

MONDAY, 26 NOVEMBER. East Hendred, London, Dublin and Brussels.

To London by train and a little late (but we had warned her and she showed no sign of umbrage) to my hour's meeting with Mrs Thatcher: a shorter, more restrained, equally friendly, encounter than on the previous occasion. I could not quite make out whether she was prepared to compromise or not. I don't think she wants a break and she reiterated her point that there is no question of her leaving the Community, no question of an empty chair, no question of illegality. It is not clear either whether she will accept any sort of postponement.

Lunchtime plane to Dublin, and then an hour and a half's meeting with Lynch. This was almost entirely devoted to the agenda, although there was some discussion about where he had got in a previous meeting with Schmidt. I found him in very typical Lynch-like form, anxious to be guided on the agenda, though fairly pessimistic, and sensibly so, about the outcome of his European Council. There being a gap after this, we went to the Irish National Gallery, which was well worth doing, before our plane to Brussels. After dinner I went into the Berlaymont, where the lights would not work, and had a forty-minute telephone conversation with Schmidt. Sitting in total darkness, I rounded up things with him.

TUESDAY, 27 NOVEMBER. Brussels.

Studied the letters on Dimbleby which were pouring in from various addresses at this stage. They were remarkably favourable and of remarkably high quality. The numbers were not enormous (a few hundred) and never achieved vast proportions, but compared with previous big correspondences this one was notable for the complete conviction and commitment with which people wrote. And also for the fact that, whereas when, say, I resigned from the deputy leaders.h.i.+p, they broke 70/30 favourably, these broke literally 99 to 1 favourably, with the 1 per cent being dotty rather than against.

I then gave lunch for Poensgen, the new German Permanent Representative. He had been Amba.s.sador in Greece; he is an unimpressive-looking man and came with a reputation for being difficult. But I found him agreeable and sensible.

THURSDAY, 29 NOVEMBER. Brussels and Dublin.

To Abelag for an avion taxi to Dublin-we thought that even in present circ.u.mstances we could and should afford one on this occasion-with Ortoli, his Chef de Cabinet and my various staff in extremely cooped-up conditions. It was an extraordinarily long and roundabout flight, so that we had to go straight to the state luncheon in the President's house in Phoenix Park.

A rather good luncheon, but too large and too long. I sat between Martens and Simonet (very Belgian rather than very English this time). The Council started at 3.40 in Dublin Castle and went on until 8.10. There was a certain amount of routine stuff introduced by us first, which lasted longer than I expected (some, I think, were rather keen that it should do so). Then into the budget question about 6 o'clock, introduced briefly by me. Mrs Thatcher did quite well for once, a bit shrill as usual, but not excessively so. There was quite a good initial response. The Italians and the Irish, for instance, offered to pay their share and it was agreed without much question that we should fully apply the financial mechanism.

Schmidt started to cross-question me on how we could do things beyond that, which was difficult but not impossible. Then towards the end Mrs Thatcher got the discussion bogged down by being far too demanding. Her mistake, which fed on itself subsequently at dinner and indeed the next morning, arose out of her having only one of the three necessary qualities of a great advocate. She has nerve and determination to win, but she certainly does not have a good understanding of the case against her (which was based on the own-resources theory, or theology if you like), which means that her constantly reiterated cry of 'It's my money I want back', strikes an insistently jarring note. 'Voila parle la vraie fille de l'epicier,' someone (I think Simonet) said. She lacks also the third quality, which is that of not boring the judge or the jury, and she bored everybody endlessly by only understanding about four out of the fourteen or so points on the British side and repeating each of them twenty-seven times. But that developed over the evening. Up to the 8.10 adjournment there was no real progress but no disaster either.

Dinner was at Iveagh House. Mrs Thatcher sailed in last, but behaving rather well, particularly as I gathered that she had had (i) an explosive row with her senior officials on the way over in the plane, so that it nearly blew up over St George's Channel, and (ii) another explosive row in the interval between the adjournment and dinner. But she came in looking in full command of herself.

She kept us all round the dinner table for four interminable hours. During the first part, the bilateral conversations over dinner, she mainly talked to me (I was next to her) in order to avoid talking to Giscard, who was on her other side. Then there was a general conversation about nuclear defence, in which she upbraided, in a rather uncomprehending way, the little countries for their pusillanimous att.i.tude. She was somewhat supported by Giscard (who was not very comprehending or sensitive either), but not by Schmidt, who felt pa.s.sionately, on her side, about the substance but felt forced to intervene with a statement saying that neither she nor Giscard could understand non-nuclear sensitivities, because they had been nuclear powers for a long time, but he understood them even though he did not agree with them. (During this conversation she vouchsafed her only awareness of Dimbleby. The Belgian Prime Minister was justifying his hesitancy about cruise missiles by citing his coalition difficulties. Mrs Thatcher turned to me with a mixture of belligerence, good humour and total self-satisfaction and announced to a slightly bewildered table-none of them elected by the British system - 'And that is all your great schemes would amount to.') Back then to the budget question with her reiterated demand becoming more and more counterproductive. At times she was not bad and always maintained her temper though not her judgement, even under considerable provocation, particularly from Jorgensen who, partly because he can't speak English well, was at times behaving like a little street urchin calling out insults. Schmidt got frightfully bored and pretended (but only pretended) to go to sleep.

It was obvious to everyone except her that she wasn't making progress and was alienating people. Giscard was able to lean back, as he had in the afternoon, and shelter behind Schmidt, which is a bad position from the British point of view. There were no great rows, only the Jorgensen insults and Schmidt simulating sleep. Cossiga, attending his first European Council, was immensely active, perhaps talking a little too much, canva.s.sing heavily the idea of a special February European Council (the Italian presidency begins on 1 January) as things couldn't be settled in Dublin, to which I was moderately favourable and one or two other people maybe were too. Back to the Shelbourne Hotel very late.

FRIDAY, 30 NOVEMBER. Dublin and East Hendred.

During the night or while dressing I came to the firm conclusion that the only thing to go for was a postponement. Postponement is sometimes a mistake, if it is done just for the sake of postponement, but it appeared to me (a) that if one were in a room and didn't like the furniture, and another room was offered, at least try it, and (b) that people were rather frightened of a great quarrel in the Community, and with all the pressures upon us from the Iranian situation and the American reaction to that situation, the general impending economic threat, etc., that postponement might produce a better atmosphere in February or March, and (c), which in a sense is part of (b), that all sorts of things might happen in the next two months-the Americans might conceivably think it necessary to make some sort of pre-emptive strike in the south of Iran, or something of this sort, and that therefore there could be circ.u.mstances in which we could reach a settlement later, which we could not do now.

I tried to telephone Schmidt to this end, but missed him. At 10.00 I went (at her request) to see Mrs Thatcher in Dublin Castle where she was installed (perhaps incarcerated is the better word), because the Irish felt that nowhere else would be satisfactory from the security point of view (all the rest of us were in emba.s.sies or hotels). It was an unforgettable scene. Those two important knights, Sir Michael Palliser and Sir Robert Armstrong, were sitting in insp.i.s.sated gloom. The atmosphere was enlivened, if that is the right word, by a plaque upon the wall saying: 'In this room James Connolly, signatory to the proclamation of the Irish Republic, lay a wounded prisoner prior to his execution by the British military force at Kilmainham Jail and his interment at Arbour Hill, 12th May, 1916.' She wasted half the time on a harangue, which embarra.s.sed her two knights and bored me (the worst aspect was the time it wasted) but her purpose was to say that she would accept a postponement.

Then the so-called 'family photograph', during which I was urgently and obviously talking to Schmidt, trying to urge the postponement upon him as he and Giscard were leaning back and saying there was no point in it. Then the Council met from 10.40 to 2.40. We had a Commission text which we eventually got adopted. The Belgians had a less good text, but they helpfully accepted ours. But Giscard and Schmidt were unwilling to accept a postponement until Mrs Thatcher had said that she would approach the next meeting in a spirit of compromise. This for some time she declined to do, just going on banging away at the old points. Eventually Peter Carrington (who was out of the room too much, with various other things on his mind) had a word with her, and in her next intervention she said-the words coming out of her with almost physical difficulty, but given her character having meaning nonetheless -'Yes, I would approach such an early European Council in a spirit of genuine compromise.'

Giscard then said, 'I do not want there to be confusion between a compromise and a misunderstanding. You may think we have got a compromise, but what we may have is a misunderstanding which can lead to nothing but trouble for the future 'But he eventually agreed, though he was rather irritated by the draft which I put forward and indeed took Ortoli out to complain about it, having rather offensively asked: 'Is this the draft of the Commission, or the President of the Commission speaking personally?' I said I spoke with the authority of the Commission. It could manifestly hardly have been considered by the whole Commission, as they weren't there, but it was well within the terms of our paper. So it was eventually agreed that the Italians should make soundings as to whether the circ.u.mstances existed for having an earlier Council. We galloped through the remaining items not very satisfactorily, as some of them were important, notably Europe's weakening position in information technology. But the Council was wholly dominated by the British budgetary question.

Then a three-quarters-of-an-hour press conference with Lynch -a huge gathering of journalists as usual. He did it well, better than I would have expected. Questions came about equally to both of us. There was a certain amount of difference between us, enough to have excited Giscard had he been in the Taoiseach's position, but not to cause any drama with a modest, reasonable man like Lynch.

I flew to London in a howling gale, and, with a considerable feeling of relief, got to East Hendred by 7.00. It was nice to have both Dimbleby and the European Council over.

SAt.u.r.dAY, 1 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

To Didcot to pick up Bill Rodgers, who was returning from South Wales where he had been making a striking and helpful speech at Abertillery, brought him back to East Hendred, where we arrived at exactly the same time as s.h.i.+rley Williams from London. I talked with them for an hour or more before lunch and went over the position. There was a fairly good ident.i.ty of view, though both of them-s.h.i.+rley perhaps a little more than Bill-were anxious to say that it was always possible, although not likely, that things would go sufficiently well in the Labour Party that they would want to stay with it; but they were quite willing to contemplate all other possibilities. Bill in particular struck me as being emotionally committed (surprisingly for Bill) to a break. s.h.i.+rley has always been in a sense more intellectually open to it than Bill, but has not yet pa.s.sed over the sort of watershed that he did some time at the end of November-the day of my lecture, I think, though maybe a lunch with John Horam on that day was even more decisive than the lecture.

They both thought that if Healey were elected leader of the party, Callaghan going in perhaps a year's time, that would be a period of setback for us. There would be a tendency for people to rally to a new, tougher leader and give him a chance, but equally neither of them had any real faith in Denis doing anything new, giving any new direction, or had any loyalty to him. It was a very worthwhile talk. Bill even seemed keen to get down to almost small details of organization, which is a very good sign with him. But who can say what will happen?

SUNDAY, 2 DECEMBER. East Hendred.

Bonham Carters, Asa Briggs' and Wyatts to lunch. After lunch I talked seriously to Woodrow for perhaps twenty minutes or so, giving him a rundown on the Dublin Council. He had been on the telephone to Mrs Thatcher that morning and he spoke to her again after he had gone back and then telephoned me. I gave him a fairly accurate account of her performance, both the good and the bad parts.

THURSDAY, 6 DECEMBER. Brussels and London.

To London after yet another COREPER lunch. I travelled across with John Sainsbury, whom I was pleased to see. He seemed pro-Dimbleby. Other people I had seen in the morning, notably Chandler,46 the Director-General of NEDO, had also been pro-Dimbleby. I had Colin Phipps,47 ex-MP, who gave up his seat to seek a Euro seat but failed to get one and is now extremely anxious to be an organizing figure in some new party, to see me. I had always been a little suspicious of him, mainly because in the 1976 leaders.h.i.+p contest he had done us a good deal of harm by first of all announcing that he was a keen supporter of mine because I would clean out all the dead wood from the Government, which meant that the many people who feared that they might be dead wood immediately became extremely suspicious of voting for me, and then, having done this damage, switched to Healey a week later. However, on this occasion he was impressive: agreeable, easy, had done a good deal of work, very optimistic about the possibilities, and seemed to have contacted a lot of people.

FRIDAY, 7 DECEMBER. London and Dublin.

12.10 plane to Dublin. Lunched at the Hibernian Hotel with Denis Corboy, the head of our Dublin office. Then to Trinity College to be robed and to take part, fortunately without a speech, in the degree ceremony. We were greeted in Dublin by the news that Haughey48 had beaten Colley, by a fairly narrow but nonetheless decisive margin, for the leaders.h.i.+p of Fianna Fail and hence the Prime Ministers.h.i.+p following Lynch's surprising (not in substance but in exact timing) two days' old announcement that he was resigning. Lynch very kindly came to the ceremony, as did Michael O'Kennedy, which like all TCD things was rather splendidly conducted, all in Latin, in a very good hall.

Then an hour with Jack Lynch in his familiar old office in which I have often seen him, and Cosgrave before then. He was sad to be going, obviously feeling slightly that he had been pushed out. He did not conceal his dismay at Haughey's election, but reminisced agreeably about the past few years. A nice man, but not I suppose an immensely dynamic or effective one. However, he has held the leaders.h.i.+p for thirteen years, has been Prime Minister twice and has prevented a lot worse things happening in Irish politics. Not that I am convinced that Haughey, who is odd, colourful and possibly but not certainly dangerous, will be all that bad.

Afterwards I tried to cobble together a speech for the Trinity College dinner that evening. I had enjoyable conversations with on one side F. S. L. Lyons, the Provost and biographer of Parnell (which incidentally he, like me, p.r.o.nounces Parn'll), and the Professor of Greek on the other. The whole occasion was very typically TCD, which is quite good at trying to make Oxford and Cambridge seem rather redbrick.

MONDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Brussels and Strasbourg.

I had Peter Walker for lunch, rue de Praetere. He was anxious to be friendly and made a most unfavourable impression. He opened fairly soon after we sat down at the table by saying, 'I know you think that I don't get on well enough with Gundelach, but what you ought to know, indeed you may have heard already because I asked Ian Gilmour to tell you [he wisely hadn't told me], is that although you are always very pro-Gundelach, Gundelach when he came over and saw me made the most disobliging, disloyal remarks about you.' I know this is not entirely out of character, alas, with Gundelach, as I had heard it once or twice before. I think it stems partly from the fact that he is constantly on the verge of exhaustion and from the fact that he can't bear not being the star of everything. He has a rather misty, Nordic vanity. I, however, was determined not to rise to this, showed no great interest and didn't ask Peter Walker to say what Gundelach had said, which he was obviously very keen to do.

However, Peter obviously thought that he was on to a very skilful ploy and followed it up with a number of other almost equally disobliging or unfortunate remarks. He disavowed Ted Heath, saying he had never been a close friend of his, though perhaps he ought to go and see him because he thought he was in a very poor condition and had taken to eating chocolate biscuits from morning until night, which was a very bad sign. He said my Dimbleby Lecture was no doubt interesting, but in the House of Commons people had said it was my taking the temperature and that at one time in the past-which is without foundation -1 had launched the idea of forming a new party with Harold Lever, and then recoiled (quite untrue: much though I love him I would never start an organizational venture with Harold).

Conversationally, Walker was forthcoming, anxious to be friendly, and altogether left rather a nasty taste in my mouth: curious because he is quite an able man.

Then a very bouncy and full avion taxi ride to Strasbourg. It's very odd that the air between Brussels and London should always be so relatively calm-it is very unusual to bounce on that journey -and so frequently very rough between Brussels and Luxembourg or Brussels and Strasbourg. I think the meeting point between the Central European and the Atlantic weather systems must produce a concentration of unstable air.

The new Monday evening question time for an hour and a half, appallingly long. As I had rather thought, the new arrangement is likely to be the beginning of the end of question time: (i) a continuous hour and a half is not nearly as good as two three-quarters of an hour, and (ii) Monday evening means that not all that many people are there, and those that are there are mostly British because they are the only people who like question time.

Then I introduced the supplementary budget, in a rather dull speech of about fifteen minutes, but they seemed pleased that I had done it.

WEDNESDAY, 12 DECEMBER. Strasbourg.

Another filthy morning, and I worked rather gloomily on another speech, and then rushed up to the Parliament to be ready to open at 9 o'clock. Typically, this had been changed the night before without anybody telling us and in fact I didn't have to speak until just after 11 o'clock, when I delivered a fairly brisk, fifteen-minute report on the Dublin European Council and then listened to Lenihan,49 the new Irish Foreign Minister. Gave lunch with Crispin to Henry Grunwald,50 the managing editor of Time, and his interesting wife. We had quite a substantial meal, which was as well for we then returned for the Budget Council, which began at 3.20 and went on until just after 4.30 in the morning with nothing to eat at all and nothing to drink except for a few whiskies which I got from the British delegation at about 1 o'clock. It was a singular misapplication and waste of thirteen hours of continuous and exhausting session.

It was not a high-level Council. Lenihan was in the chair and in some ways was not bad, Lahnstein was representing the Germans, Bernard-Reymond the French, Nigel Lawson51 the British, an Italian and a Belgian I did not know, van der Mei (as slow and stubborn as ever) for the Dutch, Ersboll for the Danes. At first it seemed as though a compromise between Council and Parliament was likely, but gradually the hope of this faded away mainly because of the foolishness and chaos of the Council. The Parliament was less concerned with sums of money than with getting some effective control over agricultural expenditure for the future.