Part 28 (1/2)
TUESDAY, 13 MAY Brussels
Briefly to dine with the Tickells to meet for the first ti personality Indeed it is a little difficult to iine him as President of the French Republic, but then it is always difficult to is before they occur, if they do But he was both highly intelligent and highly agreeable He ood impression because, when I asked hie doctor's hose fa man immediately after the war), his face lit up and he said, 'Jean Norman, not possible, how is she? Vous la connaissez? I remember that summer vividly J'avais dix-huit ans, et elle en avait deux de plus J'etais tellement amoureux d'elle She was the first love of my life Coine Giscard reacting with siic enthusias with a fortunately light agenda Then I had to greet the Grand Duke of Luxe who, accompanied by the Grand duchess, had come for a head of state visit which took the normal form of a short talk with me alone first, then an hour's session with the Coreeable and interested, and all ell
An early evening visit from Muskie, the new US Secretary of State I have known him for ten years, I suppose, and fortunately we had hio So we started, certainly on his side, on tererated friendly intireeable, in affairs, I don't know, but he see clear that he was going to be a more political Secretary of State than Vance
I asked hi the job After all he had been in the Senate for twenty years, and a Senate seat was a big thing to give up for what, while I did not wish to predict the result of the election, ht-month spell of office He said no, he had not hesitated for a hly fed up with the Senate He had had to fix one or two personal affairs before he had given an affirmative answer to the President, but on the substance of the issue he had not had a iven for Muskie by Tapley Bennett, US Ae and therefore pointless There were about forty people present, four tables, and I had sohbours After dinner, Muskie ish, hoood either Then after he had sat down at the end of it, he proceeded to try and hold the whole roo soht they were not greatly to the point and began to feel rather impatient with the amiable ex-Senator
Thewas that Siians, who had previously been strongly pushi+ng ap between Britain and the rest of the Coreat that the tilishman could be President of the Coht years would amount to I was insistent that it did not affect me, because, as he knew, I did not want another terht tinificant that he should have said it, and the reason that he gave It non a o
THURSDAY, 15 MAY Brussels, London and Sheffield
To Sheffield for a university-sponsored lecture on the Community and International Trade Formidable audience of nearly a thousand, I cannot think where they got them fro but quite sensible lecture
FRIDAY, 16 MAY Sheffield, London and East Hendred
755 train to London through spectacular May sunshi+ne, which gave even the flat and dull East Midlands countryside an unusual iridescence George Thoreat enthusiasn like this, he ht not have taken on the chairmanshi+p of IBA, as it would inhibit him in what he could do; a pity Motored to East Hendred, where so brilliant was the evening that ent up to the Doice, once before dinner and once in the twilight
SAturdAY, 17 MAY East Hendred and Naples
Avion taxi to Naples for a Foreign Ministers' , and to the Villa Rosebery on the sea to the north of Naples It is curious that it should have so firmly maintained its Rosebery name, as he only owned it for twelve years Lunch at 2 o'clock and then a fairly infor in that atteet so issue of the day, the BBQ, got nowhere Colombo did not force it, and Genscher, as inevitably the main potential interlocuteur as the representative of the country which would have to pay the et involved
SUNDAY, 18 MAY Naples and Brussels
Discussion over a general breakfast fro walk (I hope) on the terrace with a very frustrated Peter Carrington Then a brief visit to the Capodimonte Museum, which I had been to only once before Ran into a whole posse of French diplo that the BBQ was being discussed, had insisted on being at hand in Naples, which meant they had an entirely free-in both senses-cultural weekend), Jacques Tine, as passing through, the French Ambassador to Rome (Puaux) and, I think, maybe yet another Then to Brussels
FRIDAY, 23 MAY Brussels and Lucca
A special Coain on BBQ, which went doubtfully well 110 plane to Milan Spent about three hours working in the VIP room at the airport there and then plane to Pisa, and to La Pianella (Gilmours) by taxi only at 830 Arrived, typically, in rain Co from Northern Europe and India, it was the first rain we had seen for three weeks past
TUESDAY, 27 MAY Lucca and Brussels
Ian and I, called by the rigours of the BBQ, had to leave at 400, so the visit was very truncated and the weather, as so often at this season in Italy, very shaky We flew off in a British Govern to see Dohnanyi I motored from Wahn to Brussels, then took a special late Coet paper into shape Only s are always difficult to move to a decision
WEDNESDAY, 28 MAY Brussels
Saw Cheysson at 1015, Davignon at 1115 and then had a Co ave Henri Sietary proble in the afternoon
Coress but not all thatwith Ortoli, very hard-pounding, and then home to pick up Charles (my elder son), who had arrived unexpectedly to stay, and drove him to La Hulpe and Waterloo for about an hour Enjoyable talk with him Home and a dinner party for Ian (Gilmour), Michael Jenkins', Tickells, Hannay (Soan Office), and Ian's nice Private Secretary, Michael Richardson Hannay ground on tiresomely about the new draft of the Commission paper, which he are of, and which we had ha that on one vital point it gave away far too much Therefore rather a disputatious start to dinner But everybody else thought Hannay had gone on boorishly for too long and eventually we eneral conversation and cheer up a bit
THURSDAY, 29 MAY Brussels
Meeting with Coloain at noon I tried to catch back a bit of what Hannay had co: very partial success In a endhat, which I had never been near in the Con Affairs Council started at 330 and went on, with a break in the ot our paper ready and presented it, to 830 pes (the Council was entirely devoted to the BBQ, apart from purely routine items) Then we adjourned and dined from 915 to 1115 Neither Francois-Poncet nor Genscher was there In the latter case, this did not matter at all as Dohnanyi was active, less inhibited, keen on a solution, and knew the dossier much better than Genscher In the fore Francois-Poncet, I assumed, would be harder and sharper than Bernard-Reymond, who had not been particularly difficult in the early session But at dinner Bernard-Rey that he could not possibly stay the next day, giving a series of unconvincing excuses about what he had to do in Paris-so seeton became extremely irritated with him The atmosphere for an hour or so at dinner deteriorated to such an extent that Carrington was on the point of breaking off the negotiations before they had even started Fortunately, Ian Gilot hi still wide, though possibly not unbridgeable, the only thing to do was to adjourn and ain, possibly on the Saturday, which Bernard-Reyain said he could not do, possibly the Sunday, which was not attractive, or the Monday However, Coloently rejected this and said no, no, what he thought we should do was to proceed by a series of individual discussions with the heads of delegations, which he and I would conduct, and see how far we could get
Therefore we settled down at 1130 at night, Coloiero and Plaja also in the room most of the time, and proceeded to see everybody The exact order I cannot reton, or vice versa, but without getting particularly far, though Peter by this tireeable and quite skilful
ThenDohnanyi, who caht he could see a way through and he presented his solution with confidence and lucidity, and indeed it seemed to me a perfectly possible basis for settleain and I presented it to hiht therein it, so ent on with further discussions We saw the Benelux ether, and they did not h this was quite late in the night and they were a bit discontented at not having been brought in earlier: the Luxeeois in particular, for soian Minister (Notho rather easier The Irish were remarkably amenable, the Danes a bit sticky as usual, but not iain several ti, e see near to a settlement We then broke up for soht during which I had to sustain myself with Irish whiskey, which I do not much like, for the bar for some curious reason had run out of all other supplies By the , provided the French would accept-it was by no means clear either that they would or that they would not-was the question of a linkage between the 1981 agricultural payments and the supplementary payments to the British for that year In other words, the French-or anyone else if they so wished-would have an opportunity to block if they did not like the view the British took about the agricultural price settleainst my will, was in our paper, and it had been made semi-explicit at the insistence of nearly all the other ht, Davignon, Ortoli, Gundelach-a powerful trio
The British said they could not possibly accept this If it was explicit they could not defend it in the House of Coet the the risk Peter Carrington was not We then had a series of agitated cos, in the course of which Ortoli and I had our second row of the Council The first had been after my statement in the pre-dinner session when he said I had presented the issue in an unbalanced way-he was in a very agitated state all the tireat Paris pressure But as is mostly the case with Francis, as soon as we had had that row he apologized andoccasion he was huffing and puffing and walking around looking even more like Brezhnev than usual, and was clearly very tense So was I, for that matter This row remained unresolved
FRIDAY, 30 MAY Brussels and East Hendred
There was great pressure froet back to a plenary session, so we resuh ere suspended fro round the linkage proble conon) in the chair (the British co he would be a very partial chairly produced a satisfactory forenious Emile Noel, typically and with a sudden shaft of subtle brilliance, was the author It sees to different people However, it had been accepted by Michael Butler and Hannay who had been in the committee for the British
The French were a little reluctant to accept it, but there was then a considerable effort to persuade the round, and on Emile's, who naturally had the pride of authorshi+p They both argued with the French in a huddle behind their places at the table for some time, after which the French asked for a suspension for a quarter of an hour This lasted not fifteen but ninety-five minutes
When the French eventually trooped back into the rooht that after all this inter to be a repetition of Luxe apart at the end But miraculously and mysteriously the French announced quite simply that they would accept, but that they wanted a bit of the original British draft put in as well! Then I thought for ato be sticky, but no, they accepted too, and the whole thing was over by just after 10 o'clock, eighteen and a half hours after we had begun It was a prodigious achieve I did not believe could have come off had really been achieved and achieved very effectively For the ht that all the effort on the part of Coloton, Gilmour and others, and all the strain on ues, was made necessary only by a foolish woman's stubborn whim a month before The new settlement was only cosmetically different fro
We got back into ne to celebrate and then after an hour or so I went hoe breakfast there at noon, caught the 1245 and got to East Hendred by 2 o'clock I slept fairly contentedly all the afternoon Still good weather
SAturdAY, 31 MAY East Hendred
Up at 915, did a certain a to try to find out as happening within the British Government, and then went to ht her back for lunch, to which the Gilmours also came I had discovered on the telephone beforehand that the picture was that Ian and Peter Carrington had an extremely frosty reception froht froether three and a half hours with her, not apparently being offered even a drink, let alone lunch, until 230 Brussels time Then a drink, produced rather reluctantly on a direct request froton, followed by a late and apparently not very adequate lunch But it was not so much the refreshment as the atmosphere which depressed the the extremely reluctant to accept what they had so unexpectedly and successfully negotiated They left her feeling that she was going to see how things developed over the weekend and by noto recommend the settle had been quite satisfactory41 SUNDAY, 1 JUNE East Hendred
Lunch at ho, Wyatts and Charles Croquet in the afternoon Gordon Richardsons to a drink at 630 Drove to the Monureeable weekend, a sense of achieveht lifted
TUESDAY, 3 JUNE East Hendred and Brussels
945 plane to Brussels Relatively cale story announcing that I was resigning from Brussels immediately to launch a new party I did not take it too seriously, but it obviously caused a certain aitation and excite that I was definitely staying until the end of the year Nevertheless, with the BBQ te to loo Monday and the for on my mind
FRIDAY, 6 JUNE Brussels and East Hendred
East Hendred by 800, where Bonham Carters and Hayden and Laura had all arrived to stay just before ave them an outline for my speech for Monday Mark rather sensibly was inclined to take the view that if he were me he would say as little as possible, but this was not the view of the others nor at that stage mine
SUNDAY, 8 JUNE East Hendred
Half-way through lunch shi+rley Willia up to ask if I had heard her on The World at One and I said alas, not She said she hoped I would agree hat she had said and was very friendly As in fact what she had said, which was much quoted subsequently, was that a centre party was out because it would have no roots, no conscience, no principles, no God knohat else, this was rather a curious telephone call, particularly as I, not knohat she had said, nonetheless thought it a good idea to run through my speech with her, which I did, and she said it was ht (It did not of course actually e at the end where I referred to a possible revival of Liberal and Social Democratic Britain She said, 'Couldn't you use small letters and leave out the ”and” - ”liberal social de that if Paris orth a Mass, shi+rley was certainly worth an 'and' (and a lower case) I decided to do so, after which we rang off on terether in six months or so
MONDAY, 9 JUNE East Hendred and London
Motored to London Poisoned finger (which had developed on Saturday) worse To Kensington Park Gardens for a short tiraphers Then to the House of Coe, packed audience The speech took just under half an hour, and I answered, not particularly well or particularly badly, three or four questions afterwards Reception ht, but not wildly enthusiastic You could hardly expect that with an audience of hard-boiled journalists seasoned by a few parliauests like Neil Kinnock42 However, Tom Bradley and one or two other friends ere there see rather like Guy Fawkes having set fire to a fuse and wondering what on earth was going to happen
Awith Lindley, Phipps etc, from 700 to 830, by which ti the news bulletins They were obviously pleased with the impact and so was I, at the time at any rate
John Harris came to dine and atched the various news bulletins, including hearing Denis Healey describe it as 'all bunkuressively rather than skilfully by Denis, though he was able to use shi+rley's words of Sunday with considerable effect
TUESDAY, 10 JUNE London and Brussels
The speech was doood deal of fairly adverse comment The Guardian had a definitely unfriendly leader So did one or two other papers, but the Financial Times was much more friendly than it had been after the Dimbleby Lecture The Tireat deal of space Had barely ti for the 945 plane to Brussels
The President of Costa Rica for a briefat 730, followed by a Berlay Central As