European Diary, 1977-1981 (80 page)

Immediately after the event, however, this speech and reactions to it added to my gloom. I felt that I had somewhat misjudged the moment, which had not been the case with the November lecture, and had condemned myself to being stranded on a ledge halfway up a cliff, committed to some dramatic political action, but lacking the strength and resources single-handedly to launch a new political movement.

It would obviously be both a more attractive and a more feasible project if it could be done with some major collaborators. At that stage this meant primarily Shirley Williams and William Rodgers. David Owen I did not then regard as a likely ally. I knew that he had disapproved of the Dimbleby Lecture. I subsequently discovered that he was more favourably disposed towards the press gallery speech, having shifted his position when shouted at in the special Labour Party Conference on 31 May. The other two were in friendly touch with me and were already semi-detached from the Labour Party, although reserving their position until they saw the political developments of the autumn, both the decisions of the regular party conference in late September and the result of the leadership election (following James Callaghan's withdrawal) in early November. I was more than prepared to wait that length of time for them, although I would not have done so indefinitely.

The Labour Party political developments of the autumn, when they came, were as unfavourable for its own electibility and as favourable for the prospect of a new party as could easily be imagined.

Following this I had seen Bill Rodgers on 5 October and David Owen on 19 October. They had both moved substantially since the separate August meetings which I had had with each of them. However, I still inclined to the view that the odds were slightly against Bill making the break.

On 10 November the result of the second and final ballot for the Labour Party leadership was announced. The first ballot, a week before, had given Denis Healey a surprisingly insubstantial lead
over Michael Foot. It was a position in which Foot could easily overtake him, and that was precisely what happened–by a margin of ten votes–in the second ballot. Apart from the strength of the left-wing challenge, Healey suffered from some right-wing defection.

From that date onwards I do not think that I doubted there would be a significant break-away from the Labour Party. On 29 November David Owen informed me that he was definitely prepared to be part of a new party, although he indicated very clearly that he did not think I should be its leader. This struck me as
menu détail
compared with the great news that he was willing to move. He said that he was fairly sure that Shirley Williams would do so too, although he had some doubt about Bill Rodgers. I, however, had a very satisfactory talk with Bill on 11 December.

So my last Brussels weeks passed to the accompaniment of sporadic pieces of news which made the British political prospect seem markedly more promising. It was a vast improvement on June and July. I no longer felt stuck on the cliff ledge.

From early November onwards everything began to be for the last time: my last visit outside the Community, my last Strasbourg session, my last European Council, my last Council of Ministers, my last COREPER lunch (rather a joy), and eventually my last night in the rue de Praetère house, which was dismantled from 15 December. In addition to these naturally occurring ‘lasts' there was a whole series of more or less formal specially arranged farewells: to eight member governments (it seemed ludicrous to include the British on this occasion), to the Parliament, to the Council, to the Commission
huissiers
and drivers.

I went to England for Christmas on 19 December. I was still President until 6 January 1981, but effective power ceased with the beginning of the Christmas holidays. I returned to Brussels only for a brief two days on 4 January.

THURSDAY, 3 JANUARY.
London.

Ian Gilmour to lunch at Brooks's. An enjoyable and, up to a point, useful talk. He is off on a great tour of all the Nine countries, presumably to try and arrange a compromise agreement, though his instructions are remarkably unclear, and the position is made more confused by the fact that Geoffrey Howe
¹
is going to do four or five of them, not with Ian but more or less overlapping. Certainly the Foreign Office view is that they would settle for some reasonable compromise, but to what extent this represents a thought-out Cabinet view I don't know.

We talked a bit at the end about post-Dimbleby centre party issues. He seemed to have one main point that he wished to make to me, that it was a great mistake for me to give any impression—as apparently had appeared (though unobserved by me) in one or two newspapers—that I might come back from Brussels before the end of the year. It was crucial (to what?) to make clear that I would serve out the year. Equally he takes at once a slightly cautious view (as I would expect) about what we might achieve, believing, as he always has done, that one needs to have great interests behind one to succeed in politics. But at the same time also believing it just possible that we might achieve success more quickly than is within the bounds of my imagination. In other words, that we might find it very difficult to advance slowly but that it was just conceivable that the collapse of Conservative support would be so great that one might, in some sort of loose alliance with the Liberals, even win the first general election.

Another meeting later in the day with three ‘conspirators' on new party matters, Jim Daly, GLC transport chairman, John Morgan, old
New Statesman
writer, Harlech Television figure etc., whom I didn't expect—it is curious how more people than you expect turn up on these occasions—and a man called Clive Lindley, who is one of those curious Welsh marches businessmen, rather
like Colin Phipps.
²
They were all quite sensible and I hope they are all right. It is going to be very difficult to manoeuvre everyone into position.

FRIDAY, 4 JANUARY.
London and East Hendred.

George Scott's great press lunch (for editors to question me on European issues), at which nearly every editor in London turned up with the exception of William Rees-Mogg. We had Fredy Fisher of the
FT,
Peter Preston of the
Guardian,
Deedes of the
Telegraph,
Trelford of the
Observer,
Harry Evans of the
Sunday Times,
Charles Wintour of the
Evening Standard,
Molloy of the
Mirror,
Andrew Knight of the
Economist,
and the editors (whose names I cannot remember) of the
Express
and the
Evening News,
as well as one or two people from other papers. Only a moderately successful occasion. Nobody asked questions about British politics, except for the
Express
editor, who started off with a silly brash question, which rather killed the subject. After that a tolerable, not more, discussion on Europe.

Then, with clearing weather but not rising spirits, I motored with Jennifer to East Hendred. The first few days of January are usually one of the most depressing periods of the year.

SUNDAY, 6 JANUARY.
East Hendred.

Tried to do my David Bruce tailpiecet
³
before the Ginsburgs and Thea Elliott and the Wayland Kennets came to lunch: Wayland a great centre party man, and David Ginsburg sympathetic but cautious, and kept describing a lunch he had had with Denis Healey and insisting how important it was that Jim should be replaced by Denis: so far as I am concerned it is Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

MONDAY, 7 JANUARY.
East Hendred.

Drove up to the Downs for the sunrise at 8.00. David Steel to lunch. I had a good talk with him for three hours. He is very agreeable, sensible and curiously mature. He also looks remarkably like Hayden (Phillips), to an extent I hadn't realized before. He perfectly understands that there is no question of me or anybody else joining the Liberal Party. He equally is anxious to work very closely, and possibly, if things went well, to consider an amalgamation after a general election. He would like the closeness at the time of the election itself to take the form not merely of a non-aggression pact, but of working together on policy and indeed sharing broadcasts, etc. He says that for this point of view he has overwhelming support in the Liberal Party.

He agreed with my view that a lot of the calculations were based too much on deciding how much water there was in the kettle, as it were, and how it could be shared out, whereas there was a lot more to be brought in from outside, people uncommitted to and uninvolved in politics. He agreed that it would not be sensible to think purely in terms of the Liberals having Tory seats and our having Labour seats: this was too simple an approach. He fully accepted my point that if, which I was not committing myself to in any way, I wanted to fight a bye-election during 1981, it would probably be much better to do this in a Tory-held seat than in a Labour-held seat, and indicated that his people would make way for me in those circumstances. Altogether a thoroughly satisfactory talk.

After he went I walked three miles to above West Hendred in the twilight until I left for the Oxford Farming Conference at 7.00. Brief drinks in Worcester and then on to the Randolph Hotel for a rather excessive five-course dinner, sitting between the agreeable chairman and Henry Plumb.

They accepted my speech, with its rather hard message, quite well, but obviously not enthusiastically. However, it was at least as well received as Peter Walker's speech, which was intended to be more to their taste and was based on the fallacy that surpluses can be dealt with in a way that is thoroughly acceptable to British farmers, which I believe is nonsense. Somebody has got to be hurt, including the British, if that problem is to be dealt with.

TUESDAY, 8 JANUARY.
East Hendred and Brussels.

3.45 plane to Brussels. Dinner at home for Ortoli, Gundelach and Davignon, together on this occasion again, with Emile Noël and Crispin (Tickell). Gundelach more subdued than usual. I think the intractable problem of agricultural prices, plus probably his feeling that the next presidency (of the Commission) is slipping away from him, plus his normal state of semi-exhaustion, is having a slightly rattling effect upon him.

WEDNESDAY, 9 JANUARY.
Brussels and Paris.

5.17 TEE from the Gare du Midi to Paris to see Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais, and dined with her near the old Saint-Eustache church of revolutionary fame.

THURSDAY, 10 JANUARY.
Paris and Brussels.

At 7.00 I was driven swiftly through the dark, cold, fairly empty streets of Paris to the Gare du Nord, where I was able to equip myself, surprisingly early, with the English newspapers as well as some French ones. I read them over breakfast and watched a grey dawn across the plains of Picardy.

A curious man was opposite me in the restaurant car. He spent no less than one and a half hours reading every word of
L'Humanité,
a remarkable feat of slow concentration which pointed irresistibly to his being either a plodding functionary of the French Communist Party or, more probably, a member of the Deuxième Bureau, or whatever that organization is now called. He then read the
Canard Enchainé
but got through that at a more normal pace, and then became very impatient to leave although there was no steward to pay. So he eventually got up and departed, I assumed to find the steward.

A few minutes later a young, non-French-speaking Dutchman arrived and sat in his place, whereupon the steward came and presented him with a bill. He said he hadn't had breakfast, the steward pointed unbelievingly to the dirty plates around him, I rashly intervened, ‘Non, non, ce monsieur vient d'arriver. Ce n'était pas son petit déjeuner. Il y avait quelqu'un d'autre. Il avait la
note à la main quand il est parti.' ‘Dans quelle direction?' asked the steward. So I said I thought towards the rear of the train. The steward then accusingly said, ‘He was a friend of yours?' I said, ‘Certainly not.' He then said would I go with him and find the man. I said, ‘Even more certainly not,' and the whole thing was on the verge of escalating out of control into a most ridiculous scene.

However, the train at least got to Brussels on time, and the incident provided me with a peg for my speech at the change of presidency dinner that evening at Val Duchesse. I was finding it desperately difficult to think of anything remotely fresh to say at my seventh dinner in this series.

FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY.
Brussels, Rome and Brussels.

Took off for Rome just as dawn was breaking on a most beautiful, hard-freezing, clear-skied, Brussels morning. At 11.30 to the Quirinale to call on Pertini, the relatively new octogenarian Socialist President of the Republic, whom I had not met before. Slight worry as to what on earth I was going to talk to him about, for I assumed a statutory half-hour or so, but no problem emerged, for despite it all having to be done through interpretation and our sitting around in an awkward-sized group of about fourteen people, the conversation galloped along, with a great deal of history and a flood of personal judgements (he is tremendously impressed with Mrs Thatcher), accompanied by long expositions of his attitude to world politics stemming from his wartime experiences. A verbose, dynamic, interesting, unconventional little man; the interview, quite unexpectedly, lasted one and a quarter hours.