European Diary, 1977-1981 (72 page)

TUESDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER.
East Hendred
.

During the morning I saw Gundelach and Ortoli to try and warm them up for the Commission's consideration of the reference paper on budgetary convergence
²⁶
in the afternoon and thought that both of them seemed more or less all right.

A long and rather wearisome special Commission meeting for four and a half hours after lunch. Not only was it wearisome, but
also extremely difficult, with grave doubts at the end of the day as to whether we were going to get a sensible paper at all. Natali made the tactical mistake, because he wasn't wholly satisfied with its strength, of coming out against the paper as a whole, and therefore played into the hands of Gundelach and Ortoli who wanted greatly to weaken it. Davignon talked in rather the same terms, and all round the table, apart perhaps from Giolitti, who for once was more sensible than Natali, and Tugendhat, there was remarkably little support for what we had worked on so carefully. However, I thought it could probably be put together again and that indeed proved to some extent to be the case. That evening I had a rue de Praetère dinner with Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, into which I staggered rather exhausted. After another three and a half hours it was fairly clear that they, having blown off, would the next time round be prepared to accept something at least tolerable, provided greater obeisances were made to Community mythology.

WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER.
Brussels, London and Rome
.

To London early to attend the Mountbatten funeral. I was seated between Luns, who talked in a loud voice the whole time (two goes a week of Luns is more than enough), and Ducci,
²⁷
who was representing the Italian Government and who talked in a soft voice some of the time.

The service, curiously, I did not find particularly moving, or even enormously impressive, though I suppose it was. The Prince of Wales read the lesson well and there were great, familiar, and moving hymns, but as nobody around me (being mostly foreigners) could sing them, the sound somehow did not swell up and rather got lost in the high roof of the Abbey. But it was an occasion. It was perhaps the last great funeral of its sort. Of those that I have attended, only Churchill's has been comparable, and I suppose Dickie would have been pleased with it. There was no great sense of loss about him, for his life had manifestly run its course, and therefore there was no special quality of poignancy, as, say, with Tony's service in the same place two and a half years before.

5 o'clock plane with Jennifer to Rome. It was a rather beautiful
evening. We stayed at the Grand Hotel—as opposed to the Hassler -for the Italian Government were putting us up.

THURSDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER.
Rome and Palermo
.

By Italian military aircraft to Palermo. Drove round the edge of the city to the Hotel Villa Igiea, which has a fairly splendid position on one side of the Bay of Palermo (though with slightly too good a view of the shipyards, which are very near on the right). Typically, in spite of all the talk about the unrelenting summer sun of Sicily which beats down from June to October, it was raining when we arrived.

Then I had an extremely hard day's work. A one-and-a-half-hour meeting with the President of the Regional Government and about twelve members of his junta, if that is the word. This I thought would be an informal exchange of views, but in fact he opened with a longish prepared statement, lasting nearly half an hour, quite tough though perceptive and well-informed. He was indeed in general quite a bright man, called Matarella, apparently the son of the old mafia leader in the western part of the island, including Palermo, where mafia rule prevails, but was thought not to be
mafioso
himself.
²⁸
This meant that I had to make a substantial reply fairly impromptu, but this was not in fact too difficult to do, particularly as I had to be interpreted in chunks to the room, whereas the interpretation of his speech was merely whispered into my ear. His Regional Council was very well disciplined as none of the others spoke a word.

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

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

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

FRIDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER.
Palermo, Catania and Taormina
.

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

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

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

SATURDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER.
Taormina
.

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

SUNDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER.
Taormina, Rome and Urbino
.

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

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

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

MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER.
Urbino and Rome
.

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

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

TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER.
Rome and Brussels
.

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

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

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

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

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