Behind Diplomatic Lines_Relations with Ministers Read online

  21 SEPTEMBER 1987

  Slight embarrassment at my morning meeting when I referred to some proposals by Tom King to ‘suspend’ the Anglo-Irish Agreement while talks continue with the unionists. Christopher Mallaby reminded me quickly that this was extremely secret, and I had to shut up – conscious that I was blushing furiously. Much amusement among the under-secretaries; Rodric Braithwaite told me afterwards that everyone was relieved and delighted to see Homer nodding for once!

  I spoke today to John Acland (Antony’s ex-General brother) to follow up reports of improper arms dealing with South Africa. I had told Geoffrey Howe last week that I was slightly nervous of being sued for slander, in spite of the legal adviser’s view that this was not possible. When Geoffrey said that he agreed with that advice, I told him it was a comfort to have reassurances from my resident QC.

  22 SEPTEMBER 1987

  After talks with, and a lunch for, Gilbert Pérol, Secretary General at the Quai d’Orsay, I took him to call on Lynda Chalker. Lynda talked to him for an hour, mainly on community subjects.

  25 SEPTEMBER 1987

  A minor row blew up this morning over the arrangements made by the embassy in Paris for a Home Office minister, John Patten, which led him to comment that the FCO only gave proper treatment to their own ministers, and to write (according to his private secretary) an offensive letter, saying that if the embassy were not prepared to make proper arrangements for him, they could lend him a car, book him into a hotel, and leave him to himself – pretty ungracious, considering that Ewen Fergusson had offered him the residence and a meal.

  29 SEPTEMBER 1987

  I gave lunch to Robin Butler, who told me of some extraordinary behaviour by the Lord Chancellor (Michael Havers) at the bicentennial celebrations in Philadelphia this month, at which Havers publicly complained that he had been treated ‘like a ghost’. David Wilson later sent a telegram from Hong Kong, saying that Havers had behaved badly there, also showing that he was incapable of mastering a brief or maintaining his attention for more than a minute or two. I am very worried that this could bring forward Geoffrey Howe’s transfer. [A few days later, I told Geoffrey Howe about Havers’s misbehaviour in Hong Kong and Washington. Geoffrey assured me that there was no question of him becoming Lord Chancellor. It sounds as if another candidate, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, is likely to replace Havers soon. Many years later, we were on the same Swan Hellenic Cruise with the Mackays. I told him that Swan Hellenic was having difficulty fitting Lord Wright of Richmond on their computers. James Mackay replied: ‘That’s nothing! They call me Lord Mackay of Clash F’.]

  30 SEPTEMBER 1987

  Discussion at perm secs (the weekly meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary) this morning on the new taxation rules, at which the chairman of the Inland Revenue, Anthony Battishill, told an astonished meeting that all gifts were taxable, whether they were passed on elsewhere or not. I pointed out that this presumably made me liable to be taxed on a £4,000 watch offered by King Fahd, and which I had passed on for disposal by Customs and Excise. Battishill looked fairly shaken, and admitted that this was technically correct. He agreed that the rules would have to be looked at again. I also talked to Brian Unwin, who has just taken over at Customs and Excise, and said I would like to discuss with him the whole question of the disposal of gifts. [Geoffrey Howe later pulled a remarkable coup by getting the sale of gifts repayable to the FCO budget to be put towards the purchase of gifts for VIP visitors.]

  2 OCTOBER 1987

  Other ministerial misbehaviour came to light today, with accounts of a meeting between Lord Trefgarne and the Australian High Commissioner, Doug McClelland, about Australian naval personnel in the Gulf, whom the Australians want to withdraw. Trefgarne apparently implied that Anglo-Australian relations would be severely affected. McClelland is said to be bitterly offended, but efforts are in hand to smooth things down and apologise.

  Charles Powell told me it had been a bad week for the PM’s relations with Geoffrey Howe, who had irritated her enormously by insisting on arguing that we should keep our minds open on the question of United Nations activity in the Gulf (on which the PM had expressed her views with ludicrous firmness in Berlin).

  5 OCTOBER 1987

  I started the day with a bilateral with Geoffrey Howe, whose view of one of my colleagues seems to have softened slightly following David Mellor’s appreciative comments. Geoffrey said he was prepared to move him from bête noire to bête grise! His main worry, as he put it, is that a meeting between the Prime Minister and the official in question would be like two trains moving towards each other on the same track.

  There is a widespread feeling in the service that if the government really thinks that the economic situation in Britain, and Britain’s status, have so improved, we should be prepared to put more resources into abroad. The paradox is that the PM thinks that our status has improved precisely because she has reduced public expenditure. Perhaps she is right?

  19 OCTOBER 1987

  After my absence in Vancouver for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), John Caines gave a description of the proceedings at my morning meeting today. Tony Reeve is bitter that all the strategy carefully worked out for CHOGM was totally ignored. The Prime Minister was rather naively affected by what she described as African ingratitude for our aid – quite unjustifiably, since the Mozambicans are constantly telling everyone how helpful she has been to them.

  20 OCTOBER 1987

  My honours meeting this afternoon broke up after Alan Munro had told an improbable story about a Nigerian chieftain called the Bum of Tum, who was invited to join a Durbar for the Queen, and to give a loyal address. Unable to attend, he sent a telegram saying: ‘My Loyal Address is PO Box 1, Tum; signed BUM.’

  21 OCTOBER 1987

  I had a long bilateral with Geoffrey Howe, much of it on the subject of the PM’s isolation and unwillingness to accept advice. Geoffrey discussed the possibility of himself or others, e.g. Whitelaw or Hurd, talking to the PM about it, but they won’t. Tony Galsworthy commented that this was nearly a plot discussion. Geoffrey mentioned the possibility of even threatening resignation again, as he did last summer.

  He also gave me an account of a private minute that John Houston had given him, recording a talk with Ray Pendleton of the US embassy who, very unprofessionally, had told him that the Americans did not bother at all with the FCO, and concentrated all their attention on No. 10 ‘which, as we know, tells the FCO what to do’.

  Geoffrey also discussed with me how we could keep our position open vis-à-vis the ANC, after the PM’s extraordinary outburst at Vancouver, where she publicly called it a terrorist organisation, and claimed that Geoffrey had only met Oliver Tambo in his capacity as President of the European Community. We think there is an FCO spokesman’s comment which directly contradicts this and which some clever MP is going to dig up. Geoffrey dealt quite skilfully with the question in Luxembourg yesterday.

  23 OCTOBER 1987

  A call by our ambassador to Sweden reminded me of the ambassador who called on George Brown as Foreign Secretary. After some discussion on the Swedish economy, George Brown said: ‘I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but I don’t think I have ever met anyone who speaks English as well as you do’ – to which his caller replied: ‘Secretary of State, you do realise, don’t you, that I am the retiring British ambassador to Sweden.’

  10 NOVEMBER 1987

  I called on David Mellor to discuss Romania in advance of Geoffrey Howe’s meeting with Foreign Minister Totu next week. He is turning the heat on the Yugoslavs over the Zagreb air crash claims, and has turned down an invitation from Fitzroy Maclean (already accepted) as a mark of displeasure. I rather doubt whether this is sensible.

  12 NOVEMBER 1987

  A lunchtime meeting in the office with new Labour MPs – a pretty unimpressive lot, except for Diane Abbott, who infuriated her colleagues by talking too much, but who met her match in Catherine Pestell after a snide remark about the F
CO all coming from Oxford and Cambridge. Tim Eggar pointed out that she herself had been at Newnham; but most of them seemed very ignorant and full of prejudices.

  16 NOVEMBER 1987

  Virginia and I went to the Lord Mayor’s banquet, sitting opposite John Wakeham, the Lord Privy Seal, and his wife (an ex-secretary at 12 Downing Street, whom he married after his first wife was killed in the Brighton bombing). She complained that the size of three Conservative election victories had resulted in an undisciplined and inexperienced opposition, who were no longer susceptible to deals ‘through the usual channels’. Parliament has been becoming increasingly rowdy, with an expulsion last week.

  John Wakeham also told me that the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay, is (apart from Geoffrey Howe) the first Lord Chancellor in living memory (did he mean senior politician?) to have the total support and respect of both politicians and lawyers. Michael Havers is still hanging on to his Admiralty House flat (supposedly on security grounds) immediately below the Wakehams, who either have to pass through the Havers flat or climb ninety-one steps!

  18 NOVEMBER 1987

  Geoffrey Howe held the third of his priorities and resources meetings today. I introduced the meeting by describing the steady decline in FCO finances, due largely to the high proportion of our expenditure which goes on pay and allowances, inadequately refinanced by the Treasury. Chris Patten played a helpful role, while David Mellor and Tim Eggar vied with each other in claiming to represent the yuppies! Mellor also – with supreme tactlessness – pointed out that East–West relations had previously been given so little importance that they had been entrusted to a parliamentary under-secretary! He is not loved by his colleagues – particularly by Tim Eggar, who is, of course, a parliamentary under-secretary.

  1 DECEMBER 1987

  A bad day, with two rather unsatisfactory meetings with Geoffrey Howe. This morning’s meeting was to look at visa policy in the light of a community threat to harmonise visas, on which Geoffrey was at his most Hovian – dithering and indecisive.

  The second was a small meeting on finance, at which he was in a bad temper and grumbling about ‘managerial incompetence’ over the discovery of a shortfall in this year’s budget. But he has had a hell of a programme recently, including unproductive and difficult visits to Madrid and Brussels in the past two days. [Somebody later told me that Geoffrey had been so struck by the look of gloom and despondency on my face at the end of this meeting that he was full of remorse, and wondering what he could do to make me happy! He apparently admitted that he had been quite unreasonable. Two days later, Geoffrey again reverted to his complaints about ‘managerial incompetence’. Not much sign of remorse!]

  I spent most of the morning and lunch with Jürgen Sudhoff, the newish German PUS (Meyer-Landrut having gone to Moscow). One problem is that Kohl and Thatcher so dislike each other. Sudhoff and I agreed that it would help if they occasionally telephoned each other. Sudhoff told me that Kohl had telephoned her after the Brighton bomb, and felt hurt that she had never called him back.

  2 DECEMBER 1987

  Alan Urwick called before leaving for Ottawa later this week. I told him that I had pulled Derek Day’s leg at Vancouver, saying that he could be confident that he was leaving Canada when the relationship between our two heads of government (Thatcher and Mulroney) could never be worse!

  Mrs Thatcher’s relations with her European colleagues are not much better. Not only are the press, as usual, painting lurid pictures of Britain versus the rest; we are cross with the French about hostages; with the Germans about the Franco-German Treaty; with the Spaniards about Gibraltar airport; and with the Irish about the Extradition Treaty.

  10 DECEMBER 1987

  Geoffrey Howe spoke very well at a Near East and North Africa Department (NENAD) heads of mission conference, including a reference to the view of Britain as a ‘has-been’ – having today seen Julian Amery’s account of his call on Sultan Qaboos, who had been told by King Hussein that Shultz had advised him to pay no attention to ‘The two European has-beens’, i.e. Britain and France. Pretty intolerable behaviour and very unwise; virtually everything said in the Middle East gets repeated sooner or later.

  14 DECEMBER 1987

  The news tonight reports that Willie Whitelaw [Lord President and Deputy Prime Minister, of whom Margaret Thatcher once famously claimed that every Prime Minister needs a Willie] had collapsed during a carol service – coincidentally, just after some press speculation that Geoffrey Howe might take his place. I am sure that Geoffrey would resist hard the idea of going to the Lords, particularly having just issued a rather magisterial letter to his constituency chairman about the public services.

  15 DECEMBER 1987

  I was nevertheless told that Geoffrey Howe had this morning been making some rather nervous enquiries of the Chief Whip about Whitelaw’s illness and his own position.

  17 DECEMBER 1987

  The press are still speculating on who will succeed Willie Whitelaw, with a vicious attack on Geoffrey Howe in The Sun today suggesting that he is a useless and sleepy Foreign Secretary – ‘the worst ever’ – and that he might as well sleep in the House of Lords. There is also speculation that Humphrey Colnbrook might succeed; but he told Geoffrey today that he would like to be Governor of Bermuda.

  23 DECEMBER 1987

  I minuted yesterday on whether the foreign affairs committee should visit Iran or not. The majority opinion in the office is against; but I endorsed Middle East Department’s view that they should go if they want to. Geoffrey Howe was said this evening to be very doubtful, but ‘reluctant to disagree with the views of his PUS’!

  1988

  4 JANUARY 1988

  A letter today from Nicholas Barrington, reporting on Lord Glenarthur’s visit to Islamabad. I shall have to have a word with Geoffrey Howe about it, particularly since he supervises Hong Kong Department.

  Geoffrey is not yet back from his Christmas break, but has been firing off comments and questions throughout!

  5 JANUARY 1988

  The press today is full of David Mellor’s remarks of disapproval (‘an affront to civilised values’) of Palestinian camps on the west Bank and Gaza – clearly a deliberate piece of publicity-making, though he may genuinely have been driven to go further than he meant to do by his emotional reaction to Israeli treatment of Palestinian children. He nevertheless rang up News Department last night, obviously worried that he might have gone too far. The Independent summed it up, rather unkindly, with a cartoon showing one Palestinian saying to another: ‘You have just been visited by the Mellor Publicity Show.’

  7 JANUARY 1988

  I was told today by David Logan (head of Personnel Department) that the process of getting the present top jobs in place had been a very long tussle with No. 10, and that my own appointment as PUS had only been agreed by Margaret Thatcher as a ‘trade-off’ for Michael Alexander’s posting to NATO. I am not sure if this means that she wanted Michael as PUS, or, indeed, if she was persuaded that he could wait for five years.

  8 JANUARY 1988

  The Prime Minister’s visit to Nigeria shows that she could not resist saying at her press conference in Kano about sanctions: ‘We have won the argument.’ (Why does she have to spoil things by triumphalism of this sort? She did the same at Nassau, with her gesture to show how little Britain had moved on the sanctions argument.)

  11 JANUARY 1988

  The PM has clearly returned from Africa convinced that she has acquired a special relationship with Moi and Babangida, and that she really has won the argument over sanctions. It will now be even more difficult than before to persuade her that the rest of the Commonwealth have anything to say on South Africa. She is also apparently convinced that we should have more contact with Savimbi over Angola.

  The press today has backlashed against David Mellor over the West Bank, including a particularly poisonous leader in the Mail on Sunday against FCO Arabists (and myself in particular), describing Mellor as ‘the Boy Minister’, s
ent by me to the West Bank to insult the Israelis. [Peter Jenkins later produced a staunch riposte in The Independent, arguing that the ‘Rolls-Royce Diplomatic Service’ was regularly treated as a scapegoat by ministers and public opinion; that the scapegoats have served us well; and that skilled diplomacy has ‘continued to buy Britain an influence considerably greater than our true weight and status in the world’.]

  Willie Whitelaw resigned over the weekend, but Geoffrey Howe has not been appointed to succeed him as Deputy Prime Minister. There was much telephoning yesterday, including contact with the Chancellor, about whether Geoffrey should in future chair the Star Chamber. It would be ironic if he decided he could not, after all, put in a public expenditure bid for the FCO because it conflicted with his Star Chamber duties.