European Diary, 1977-1981 (104 page)

¹⁹
Not exactly. That had been earlier in the House of Commons. This one (14 July 1940) said: ‘Should the invader come … we will defend every village, every town, every city…'

²⁰
Cledwyn Hughes, b. 1916, cr. Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos 1979, having been MP for Anglesey from 1951, and a member of the Cabinet from 1966 to 1970. Now leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords.

²¹
The 7th Marquess of Anglesey, b. 1922, author and Chairman of the Historic Buildings Council for Wales, had married Shirley Morgan, daughter of the novelist Charles Morgan; she was then Chairman of the Welsh Arts Council.

²²
Roy Hattersley, b. 1932, has been Labour MP for Birmingham, Sparkbrook since 1964, was Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection 1976–9, and has been deputy leader of the Labour Party since 1983.

²³
Patrick Devlin, b. 1905, cr. Lord Devlin 1961, was a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1961–4 before unexpectedly retiring to authorship and occasional inquiries.

²⁴
Filippo Pandolfi, b. 1927, Italian Minister of the Treasury 1978–80, and later of Industry and of Agriculture.

²⁵
Over the summer of 19781 decided that the internal working of the Commission and its
services
needed improvement, particularly through a loosening of the rigidities which prevented the most effective deployment of personnel. This was the first point discussed that year at the
cabinet
strategy meeting at East Hendred in late July. A small outside committee of inquiry, seemed to me the best chance of overcoming national defensive-ness and innate conservatism. This committee took shape under the chairmanship of Dirk Spierenburg, a Dutch diplomat and former Coal and Steel Commissioner, with British (Dick Taverne), French, German and Italian members.

At about the same time President Giscard d'Estaing conceived the idea of having ‘Three Wise Men' to look at the relationship to each other of all the European institutions. This obviously embraced the external powers of the Commission, but not its internal working. The two inquiries were slightly confusingly parallel to each other, but not strictly overlapping. Neither transformed Europe, but I think mine produced more practical result than did his.

²⁶
Raimundo Bassols y Jacas, b. 1925, was Spanish Ambassador to the Community throughout my presidency and later Ambassador to Morocco.

²⁷
Renée van Hoof was (and is) the head of the excellent Commission interpretation service. She became Madame Haferkamp in 1986.

²⁸
I did not think that I could dictate to a senior vice-president who should and who should not be in his party for a particular visit. He said that he needed her for interpretation purposes, not with the Chinese but within his multinational team.

²⁹
Sir Derek Walker-Smith, b. 1910, cr. Lord Broxbourne 1983, Conservative MP for Hertfordshire and a middle-rank minister 1955–60, was a Member of the European Parliament 1973–9.

³⁰
And as it turned out the only time.

³¹
Stanley Johnson, b. 1940, was an official in the Commission's Environment and Consumer Protection Service 1973–9, a Conservative MEP 1979–84, and is now back in the service of the Commission.

³²
I had seen a Home Office man the previous week.

³³
Konstantinos Tsatsos, b. 1899, philosopher and lawyer, was President of Greece 1975–80.

³⁴
Pope Paul VI had died on 6 August. His successor Pope John Paul died on 28 September.

³⁵
Konstantinos Mitsotakis, b. 1918, was Greek Minister of Coordination and Planning 1977–80, of Foreign Affairs 1980–1, and has been leader of the new Democratic Party since 1984.

³⁶
George Mavros, b. 1909, had been a Minister or Governor of the Bank of Greece for much of the time between 1946 and 1966 and again briefly in 1974. Imprisoned under the Colonels. In Opposition in 1978.

³⁷
Andreas Papandreou, b. 1919, was leader of the Opposition 1977–81, and has been Prime Minister of Greece since 1981.

³⁸
Samuel Brittan, b. 1933, has been principal economics correspondent of the
Financial Times
since 1966.

³⁹
Rather a euphemism for the transfer of resources to the poorer countries to encourage them to come into the EMS.

⁴⁰
René Monory, b. 1923, was French Minister of Industry and Trade 1977–8, of Finance and Economics 1978–81, and of Education 1986–8.

⁴¹
Technical term for an attempt to reconcile differences between the two arms of the budgetary authority.

⁴²
Donald Bruce, b. 1912, cr. Lord Bruce of Donnington 1975. Labour MP 1945–50, MEP in the last years of the indirectly elected Parliament.

⁴³
Curiously, it subsequently emerged that the British thought they were on stronger legal ground on one or two of the minor ones than on the major one—the size of the so-called Norway pout box (an area closed to fishing for this type of fish) - on which our own legal services were so doubtful.

⁴⁴
I suppose, in retrospect, that we were sensitive to the story because, while strictly
non vero,
it had its
ben trovato
element.

⁴⁵
Following the death of Pope John Paul I on 28 September, his successor Pope John Paul II, formerly Cardinal Wojtyla of Cracow, had been elected on 16 October.

⁴⁶
Lady Benson, 1907–81, was married first to Condé Nast and then to the English banker, Sir Rex Benson. She was the mother of Leslie Bonham Carter and the owner of Bussento, the house in the south of Italy which we frequently visited.

⁴⁷
Milton Gendel, b. 1924, is an American art historian who is the widower of Judy Montagu, the daughter of the recipient of so many Asquith letters.

⁴⁸
It was advanced as a ploy to teach the French not to play anti-
communautaire
games, and while I thought it a good joke, I did not have time to spare to serve on a leisurely committee of inquiry.

⁴⁹
The four big countries had ten votes, the Netherlands and Belgium five, Denmark and Ireland three and Luxembourg two. The importance of getting away from eighteen was that it set a precedent for flexibility when Spain and Portugal came in.

⁵⁰
A few years later this disappeared, and after my return to the House of Commons in 1982 my relations with this angular and insular but exceptional and distinguished English eccentric (b. 1907, Labour MP for Battersea 1946–83, President of the Board of Trade 1964–7, cr. Lord Jay 1987) were happily repaired.

⁵¹
Josef Ertl, b. 1925, a Bavarian member of the FDP, was German Minister of Agriculture 1969–83.

⁵²
The power of the American Government to waive so-called ‘countervailing duties' was due to expire on 3 January 1979. Unless they took urgent legislative steps to extend this power the effect on European imports into the USA was likely to be considerable and the climate in which MTNs were carried on substantially worsened.

⁵³
Jelle Zijlstra, b. 1918, was Prime Minister of the Netherlands 1966–7, and head of the Dutch Central Bank 1967–81.

⁵⁴
Paolo Baffi, b. 1911, was Governor of the Bank of Italy 1975–80.

⁵⁵
Paul Volcker, b. 1927, was President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank 1975–9, and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 1979–87.

⁵⁶
Ten years later that particular bit of the future has still not arrived.

⁵⁷
Emile van Lennep, b. 1915, Treasurer-General of the Dutch Ministry of Finance 1951–69, then became Secretary-General of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and remained there until 1984.

⁵⁸
Laurens Brinkhorst, b. 1937, was Netherlands State Secretary for Foreign Affairs 1973–7, deputy leader of D66 (a new political party) 1977–82, and European Community Ambassador in Tokyo 1982–6.

⁵⁹
Paul Delouvrier, b. 1914, was Prefect of the Paris region 1966–9, and Président Conseil d'Administration, Electricité de France, 1969–79.

⁶⁰
Umberto La Rocca, b. 1920, was Political Director of the Italian Foreign Ministry at this stage and closely associated with Andreotti. Later Ambassador to the United Nations.

⁶¹
Commission name for the large reception hall on the thirteenth floor of the Berlaymont.

⁶²
Too optimistic as it subsequently emerged. See pages 349–53.

⁶³
Not a very good judgement as he has since been in considerable legal trouble.

⁶⁴
Barend William Biesheuvel, b. 1920, was Prime Minister of the Netherlands 1971–3.

⁶⁵
(Sir) Patrick Wright, b. 1931, Ambassador to Luxembourg 1977–9, Saudi Arabia 1984–6, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office since 1986.

⁶⁶
This was exceptional in my European life, except from Brussels to London and vice versa. The explanation on this occasion was that my staff for the Parliament (Hayden Phillips and Laura Grenfell) had gone back to Brussels, and Crispin Tickell had gone ahead to Washington.

⁶⁷
The venue of a Giscard-organized four-power meeting which was pending in January, and attendance at which did James Callaghan so much accidental harm.

⁶⁸
An announcement of full diplomatic relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China came on Friday, 15 December.

⁶⁹
Anthony Solomon, b. 1919, was Treasury Under-Secretary 1977–80, and head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank 1980–4.

⁷⁰
William Miller, b. 1925, was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank 1978–9, and Secretary of the Treasury 1979–81.

⁷¹
Jacques de Larosière de Champfeu, b. 1929. Under-Secretary of the Treasury 1974–8, Chairman of the Deputies' Group of Ten 1976–8. Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of IMF 1978–86; Governor of the Banque de France since January 1987.

⁷²
Mrs Katherine Graham, b. 1917, has been the proprietor and publisher of the
Washington Post, Newsweek
etc. since the death of her husband Philip Graham in the 1960s.

⁷³
Tom and Joan Braden have straddled Washington since the beginning of the Kennedy presidency.

⁷⁴
Henry Brandon, b. 1916, was
Sunday Times
correspondent in Washington 1950–83. His wife since 1970 has been Mrs Reagan's social secretary.

⁷⁵
Kitty Carlisle (Hart), actress and singer, is the widow of the impresario Moss Hart.

⁷⁶
William Paley, b. 1901, was President of CBS 1928–46 and Chairman 1946–83.

⁷⁷
Mrs Vincent Astor, née Brooke Russell, the last station on the mainline of the Mrs Astors of New York.

⁷⁸
Princess Marella Caraciolla de Castagneto, married to Giovanni Agnelli since 1953.

¹
Francis Pym, b. 1922 (cr. Lord Pym 1987), had been Conservative Chief Whip 1970–3, and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 1973–4. Despite this entry he was Defence Secretary 1979–82 and only Foreign Secretary 1982–3. His father was Leslie Pym, MP for Monmouth 1939–46.

²
Sir Nicholas Henderson was due to retire as Ambassador to Paris in April 1979.

³
For the start of a six-day ‘Lomé' tour of two francophone and one anglophone African countries.

⁴
Abdou Diout, b. 1935, was Prime Minister from 1970until 1980 and has been President of Senegal since then.

⁵
This was the peak (or trough) of the ‘winter of discontent'.

⁶
James Lees-Milne, b. 1908, was on the staff of the National Trust 1936–66 and has been a prolific author during and after these years.

⁷
Neil Bruce, b. 1919, was a Balliol contemporary who was subsequently a BBC foreign correspondent and a lecturer in international politics at Keele University.

⁸
The Court of Justice ruling of November 1978 had in effect upheld the Commission's right to insist on a Community Agreement for the supply of nuclear materials from Australia, assuring the same terms to all users, and denied France's asserted right to conclude a parallel bilateral agreement.

⁹
The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is a means of giving tariff preferences on behalf of developed countries to developing countries. The GSP was agreed in 1968 at the Second Session of the UNCTAD in New Delhi. The preferences are nondiscriminatory, autonomous (i.e. not contractually agreed) and non-reciprocal. The European Community began such arrangements in 1971, the USA in 1976. The Community scheme applies to 128 independent countries and more than twenty dependent countries. China has benefited from the Community scheme since 1980.