European Diary, 1977-1981 (83 page)

Then I had two people from the American
National Geographic
magazine (why?) for a remarkably dull lunch. After that a tedious and oddly wearing Commission meeting for three and a half hours. Then Peter Shore to dinner, because he had asked to see me and I thought I would quite like to hear his views. He was very late and not very apologetic, but I found plenty to talk to him about. I found him very anti-Benn, whom he thinks rather mad, skirting round the mountain of Healey, very pro-Foot. His view on world politics is that of an old-fashioned Atlanticist of the 1950s, very pro the Americans, on nearly all their attitudes, wise and unwise, which they have taken up over both Iran and Afghanistan. He is bitterly anti-Europe, particularly the French, where one has a bit of sympathy with him, but he goes much too far and regards them as not so much a nation as a conspiracy against the public weal. But the whole impression was one of somebody who is agreeable, intelligent, but miles off being a great man, and not very inspiriting either.

WEDNESDAY, 13 FEBRUARY.
Strasbourg.

Michel Poniatowski
¹⁸
to lunch at the Maison des Tanneurs. Lots of gossip about French politics, he telling me exactly what he thought of everybody. The important people in the Government were those who had a certain influence outside their Department: Barre (obviously), Deniau, Giraud, and that I think was about it. François-Poncet was definitely not in this category. Poniatowski was very interested in movements in English politics, centre party, etc. He was surprisingly well known to the restaurant management, although he had never been there before; and a group of
French publishers' salesmen at the next table was very interested to engage him in conversation about the termination of the French equivalent of the Net Book Agreement, which seems to be having the consequences which had always been predicted for such a change in England, i.e. the closing down of about half the serious bookshops of Strasbourg-and no doubt in the rest of France as well.

SATURDAY, 16 FEBRUARY.
East Hendred.

Sevenhampton for lunch with Ann Fleming, Donaldsons, John Sparrow and Robert Blakes. I was pleased to see Robert Blake who is an interesting and serious man. Sparrow not in very good condition, though thoroughly agreeable. The Donaldsons looking remarkably fit for their age, although rather Healeyite. They were strongly in favour of the centre party, but it depended a bit on Denis not being elected leader of the Labour Party.

MONDAY, 18 FEBRUARY.
East Hendred and Rome.

To Rome for a meeting with Cossiga at the Palazzo Chigi at 5.00.1 am not sure that he knows quite where to go on the British budgetary question (henceforward referred to as the BBQ). However, we were at least able to agree that there was no point in having an earlier European Council. Then to the Hassler Hotel before dinner at the British Embassy–the first time that I had been in the Villa Wolkonsky for nearly ten years-with the new Ambassador (Ronald Arculus) and Carrington, who was there with his very bright Assistant Private Secretary, Paul Lever.

TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY.
Rome and Brussels.

Political Cooperation, which went on from 10.45 until 3.45, when I left to go back to Brussels. Though I say that it ‘went on', this could hardly be described as a continuous process, because Ruffini, who is an absolutely hopeless chairman, occasionally left it quite unclear whether we were in session or not, in a way rather reminiscent of the Tokyo Summit last June. At one stage we just sat around for about half an hour, while he had a telephone brought in, attempted
to telephone somebody-God knows who; we were discussing the Moscow Olympics, so perhaps it was Brezhnev, perhaps it was Lord Killanin,
¹⁹
or perhaps it was Cossiga. And failing to get through -most likely to Cossiga, I suppose—he at one stage threw the telephone on the floor, with predictable results. Then another was brought in and he eventually got through, and so in conditions of some farce we proceeded.

The statement of Afghanistan ‘neutrality' was disposed of quickly and well, but then there were hours of unrewarding debate about an Olympics statement. François-Poncet, who had been helpful on the neutrality proposal, had obviously come with instructions on the Olympics (i) not to agree to a statement, and (ii) not to get isolated. The two objectives proved incompatible and he got fretful and marionette-like, jerking his arms about.

THURSDAY, 21 FEBRUARY.
Brussels, London and East Hendred.

To the Cercle Gaulois for a lunch given by Heath in connection with the European Youth Orchestra. Friendly, interesting talk with him. He made quite a good little speech. Then saw Van Ypersele about the state of play on the European Monetary Fund and other EMS questions. 4.45 plane to London.

SATURDAY, 23 FEBRUARY.
East Hendred.

The day of our Carrington/Schmidt dinner, Schmidt rather to my surprise having stuck to his engagement and come to England specially to do it. We had asked Edward and Sally, which somehow made it easier to leave Schmidt and Carrington alone for some time. Dinner went moderately well. Hannelore Schmidt nicer, easier and more interesting than I had expected, speaks very good English, ex-Hamburg schoolteacher, much interested in the preservation of wild flowers and botanical conservation in Germany, but also in a lot of other things too. Helmut, benign and looking rather better, but as usual no small talk and both Edward and Jennifer found him quite difficult to talk to.

Edward only seized his attention by asking him if he was going to blow up the world (hardly within the Germans' capacity now), to which he replied no, but that other people might easily do so. I left Carrington and him alone for an hour and a quarter after dinner, but then brought them into the drawing room and we went on for too long so that it was 12.45 before they all went. I think no business of great value was transacted. Schmidt was not well enough briefed on the BBQ to be able to discuss it in detail, Carrington said. But it was good from the point of view of personal relations and there was some interesting world politics discussion.

MONDAY, 25 FEBRUARY.
East Hendred, Dublin and London.

10.40 plane to Dublin. Drove straight to a talk alone with Haughey, the new Taoiseach, whom by a series of accidents I had never met before. (The most notable ‘accident' was in April 1970 when I went for an Irish holiday after my last budget on the day he was due to present his first budget. In the event he claimed he fell off his horse in the courtyard of his house, and the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, presented his budget instead of him. By the time we got back from Ballylicky a week later, when Haughey was supposed to give us lunch, he had not only fallen off his horse but been dismissed from the Government and faced criminal charges for gun-running, from which he was subsequently acquitted, it should be said. So Lynch gave us lunch instead.)

Found Haughey, as I had been forewarned, extremely engaging. Much quicker than previous Irish Taoiseachs, though perhaps (but I am not sure) less trustworthy. Very well informed about British politics, Dimbleby Lecture, etc. Mostly agreeable gossip before lunch. Lunch at Iveagh House, usual form, Foreign Minister, several officials and Crispin present, and quite good. Rather intensive but sensible arguments, mainly about agriculture but one or two other things as well.

Back to London by 5.00. To Michael Barnes's flat, where I had an hour's meeting with about ten ‘new party' plotters. I thought the hour was rather good and brisk but apparently the discussion got all over the place later.

Then dinner at Bridgewater House, given by Edwin Plowden and
attended by five or six of his senior businessmen. Of the old ones, there were John Partridge and David Orr, whom I think very good, and Peter Baxendell, the chief British man in Shell, and Maurice Hodgson, the Chairman of ICI. All of them I think sympathetic to proportional representation, some of them to the idea of a centre party if the Government failed, but still putting more faith in Mrs T. than I would have expected. Edwin rather to the left of the others. However, in response to a tentative query from me, they made it clear that there was little prospect of money. Big companies with many shareholders do not like political subscriptions, they said.

WEDNESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY.
Brussels and Belgrade.

George Weidenfeld to lunch rue de Praetère. Mainly gossip about America, but George was also quite interesting and sensible on British politics, preoccupied by a mixture of who he might have to dinner with us in April, and how we might organize the centre party.

In the early evening an avion taxi to Belgrade, which was too fast so that we arrived well before the welcoming party was ready for us. Drove to the so-called Residence Villa, an old Prince Paul
²⁰
nid d'amour,
I would guess, on a low hill about two or three miles from the centre of Belgrade.

THURSDAY, 28 FEBRUARY.
Belgrade.

A morning of hazy sunshine with the temperature just above freezing point. The physical atmosphere, which struck both Crispin and me during the next two days, was curiously like China, exactly a year previously. To New Belgrade and the large rather good building in which most Government offices seem to be situated for a meeting, followed by lunch, with Djuranovic, the Prime Minister, an effective but unmemorable Montenegran. In the past twenty-five years a whole new city with a population of about 300,000 has been built across the Sava from the old town.

The Yugoslavs were anxious to give an impression of calmness, business as usual, collective leadership already functioning and
ready to take over full responsibilities in the face of the manifestly impending but slow death of Tito. They were pleased with their agreement with us and discussed quite sensibly the follow-up to it, and then gave us a long review of their approach to world affairs which suggests some justifiable apprehension but not panic about the exposure of their position. Their main concern is their quarrel with Bulgaria over Macedonia and the possible escalation which might arise from this. For the rest their relations with their Communist neighbours, Rumania above all, but also Hungary and indeed Albania, are quite good. They showed some disenchantment with the way in which the non-aligned movement has been taken over by Castro even while Tito, one of its two founder members, is just alive. This will push them towards a lower international profile in the future.

An interesting talk with the Foreign Minister Vrhovec, a bright little Croatian who had just returned from Delhi. He was very reserved towards the Carrington plan for the neutralization of Afghanistan (said the Indians were too), but took a definitely more favourable line when I explained to him that ‘neutralization' was the wrong word and that ‘neutrality', which was much more of a subjective state, was better. It was much nearer to non-alignment, provided that this was not ‘non-alignment' in the bogus Cuban sense.

He also suffered from the illusion that the British Government was implacably hostile to Mugabe and would not contemplate a Zimbabwe Government with him in control, and the associated illusion that we were primarily concerned with our trading interests in Rhodesia. I told him that nothing would have pleased us better from an economic point of view than for it to have been obliterated from the face of the earth some time ago. British trading interests in Africa were those with Nigeria (growing) and those with South Africa (diminishing) but both of them very substantial and the whole difficulty of policy was to maintain some sort of balance between the two: a difficult enough problem without the complication of Rhodesia.

FRIDAY, 29 FEBRUARY.
Belgrade and East Hendred.

Lunch given by Andov (the Trade Minister and our main host). Quite friendly, unbuttoned talk, rather typical of an end-of-a-visit
lunch, during which I, for the first time for instance, talked about Ivana (my half-Yugoslav daughter-in-law), asking did they know this and discovered -1 think genuinely—that only the Ambassador in Brussels knew it, and had not bothered to pass it on, which did not suggest a very neurotic régime. I was impressed by this. Plane to London at 5.30.

MONDAY, 3 MARCH.
East Hendred and London.

Left on a most beautiful morning to visit, appropriately, the Meteorological Office at Bracknell: a Crispin enterprise. I found it fascinating, with a lot of interesting discussion about both weather and climate. Then to London and the Turf Club for lunch, once more with Peter Carrington,
²¹
and with Ian Gilmour. Useful but not memorable talk with them.

TUESDAY, 4 MARCH.
London, Paris and Brussels.

Early plane to Paris. To the Brasserie Lipp where I met Crispin. Then disaster struck. I discovered that I had left my diary in the plane, or at any rate did not have it. At 11.30 I saw Barre at Matignon for an hour and a half. He was alone, relaxed and surprisingly confident, talking very much more as a head of government, very much less as Giscard's adjutant, than on previous occasions. This I suspect was not due primarily to the fact that Giscard was away for ten days, longer than ever previously, but much more to a feeling of confidence in his own position. I thought him a bit complacent about the French economy, but not quite as pedagogic as usual. He listened with interest to my exposition of what I regarded as a slightly subtle world macroeconomic case for an energy levy.

There was a good atmosphere throughout, as there generally is with Barre, and a hint of some progress on the BBQ. He told me that he did not see a solution at 1500 million units of account, that it was not only France that was blocking this. This was a great illusion. There were a lot of other countries, including Germany, who would not pay the amounts this involved. I said maybe, but that the Germans might well pay their share of, say, a thousand million
which might provide the basis of a solution if they thought they could carry the French with them. There was no contradiction or dissent from Barre. Merely a suggestion that we should put forward a solution (with a slight implication that it could be along these lines) about a week before the European Council. Then he took me round the lower rooms of Matignon, including that in which the ‘Matignon Pact' was signed by Blum in 1936. Apparently Matignon only became the residence of Présidents du Conseil in 1935, Pierre Flandin being the first occupant. Then a very brief impromptu press conference
sur le perron.