European Diary, 1977-1981 (77 page)

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 leadership, 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 Ambassador 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 circumstances 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. ‘Voilà parle la vraie fille de l'épicier,' 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 attitude. She was somewhat supported by Giscard (who was not very comprehending or sensitive either), but not by Schmidt, who felt passionately, 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, canvassing 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 circumstances 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 embassies or hotels). It was an unforgettable scene. Those two important knights, Sir Michael Palliser and Sir Robert Armstrong, were sitting in inspissated 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 embarrassed 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 circumstances 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.

SATURDAY, 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 Shirley Williams from London. I talked with them for an hour or more before lunch and went over the position. There was a fairly good identity of view, though both of them—Shirley 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. Shirley has always been in a sense more intellectually open to it than Bill, but has not yet passed 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 leadership 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.