142

Years of Upheaval

Europe and — recently, anyway — help had arrived from across the sea. To the majority of the British, entry into Europe reflected at best a distasteful adjustment to necessity. Heath, by contrast, not only accepted that Britain's future lay with Europe, he preferred it that way. And so, paradoxically, from 1970 to 1972, when the other European leaders strove to improve their relations with us — Willy Brandt in Federal Germany to balance his overtures to the East. Pompidou to end the isolation that had threatened his predecessor — Heath went in the opposite direction. His relations with us were always correct, but they rarely rose above a basic reserve that prevented — in the name of Europe — the close coordination with us that was his for the taking.

The very setting of the meetings between President and Prime Minister in early February 1973 highlighted the uncomfortable relationship. As a sign of special respect Nixon took Heath and his party to Camp David the second day so they could continue their conversations in a relaxed, informal, and personal atmosphere. But small talk was not the forte of either leader; they were both better off in set-piece encounters across a conference table. On the way to Camp David — about halfway there — the Presidential helicopter was forced to land because a heavy fog had suddenly enveloped the Presidential retreat. The journey had to be completed by automobile. British Cabinet Secretary Sir Burke Trend (now Lord Trend) and I in the follow-up car speculated on what our two chiefs might be talking about, assailed in part by the usual fear of advisers either that they would be proved dispensable, or — more altruistically — that they would be held responsible for the execution of decisions that their chiefs would neglect to pass on. But above all we had trouble imagining how these two withdrawn men would conduct a social conversation in the back seat of a car when there was neither agenda nor any of the normal supports of governmental ambience. I have never learned what, if anything, was discussed. All I got was Nixon's cryptic comment that it had been "tough going."

When we reached Camp David at last and managed to turn to the agenda, the meeting proved interesting but inconclusive. Nixon assumed that he was dealing with a kindred spirit and a partner in a common design. He was not wrong about the former. But for Heath, revitalizing the Atlantic relationship was simply not a priority. He agreed with Nixon's analysis of world affairs and added thoughtful elaborations. But when it came to drawing joint conclusions, there was a nearly impenetrable opacity about Heath's formulations, which, given his intelligence, had to be deliberate. Heath was acute in his assessment of Southeast Asia and the Middle East; he was scathing in his comments about the new, leftist Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, whose uninformed comments about our Christmas bombing had made him a particular object of Nixon's wrath. But the harmony of views grew more complicated when we turned to Atlantic relations.

The Year of Upheaval

In one of his mental issues, inward-looking selves in serious weaponry disrupt the Alaskan poses. Nixon ordinate goals leaders of the cooperation of

Heath could on prescription agree that a wanted to post stitutions had joint study group flourishing "superessary. So many meetings between cussed in exist

Heath'sCLUSICS, he was useful a reluctant to give formulate answer of Anglo-Ameri cause his Foreign in the Foreign collaboration a foot-dragging. ing very concrete British as supporting Atlantic ity — though we had made.

Whereas with have on global was true of our Republic of Ge his policy worried because I was a but I must make

When I first went to Berlin, courageous strong, friendly

The Year of Europe

143

In one of his more eloquent expositions Nixon explained the fundamental issue. An America in a dangerously isolationist mood and an inward-looking, protectionist European Community risked finding themselves in serious conflict. Public opinion and the realities of nuclear weaponry demanded visible efforts to relax tensions. Yet they could disrupt the Alliance unless we had first elaborated a shared set of purposes. Nixon urged that Britain and America form study groups to co-ordinate goals and strategies. He proposed a summit meeting of all the leaders of the industrial democracies to symbolize a new impetus to the cooperation of the free peoples.

Heath could not have been more helpful on diagnosis or more evasive on prescription. He endorsed Nixon's presentation of the problem. He agreed that a new initiative in Atlantic relations was necessary. But he wanted to postpone any elaboration of a partnership until Europe's institutions had evolved further. He did not take up Nixon's proposal for joint study groups. Naively, we ascribed this to the fact that the still flourishing "special relationship" seemed to make new groups unnecessary. So many exchanges were taking place, including bimonthly meetings between Burke Trend and me, that all issues could be discussed in existing forums.

Heath's reluctance was based not on tactical but on philosophical considerations. He did not dismantle the existing machinery of consultation; it was useful as a source of intelligence on our thinking. But he was reluctant to give it new assignments. He wanted Europe as a unit to formulate answers to our queries; he was determined to avoid any whiff of Anglo-American collusion. Heath's attitude was partly obscured because his Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and his colleagues in the Foreign Office were still following more established habits of collaboration and did their efficient best to hide their Prime Minister's foot-dragging. We in turn took silence as consent, especially since nothing very concrete needed to be decided right away, and counted on the British as supporters in what we took to be the common task of strengthening Atlantic unity. And so the meeting with Heath ended in ambiguity — though we did not at the time understand just how little progress we had made.

Whereas with Heath we thought we had harmony on policy (and did have on global issues) and difficulties on the personal level, the opposite was true of our relationship with Chancellor Willy Brandt of the Federal Republic of Germany. I personally liked him — Nixon less so — but his policy worried us both. I avoided a portrait in *White House Years* because I was afraid my ambivalence might lead to misunderstanding, but I must make the attempt now.

When I first met Brandt in the 1950s, he was the mayor of embattled Berlin, courageously vindicating the freedom of his people. He was bluff, strong, friendly, outgoing, and at the same time oddly remote from the

The Year of Europe

191

substantive views in response to ours, the Europeans have now decided to withhold these views until they have first prepared a collective position among themselves through discussions from which we are excluded. The intention, as I understand it, is then to present this collective view to us and thereafter to conduct the exchanges by means whereby we are asked to deal with instructed European representatives. I must honestly tell you that I find it astonishing that an endeavor whose purpose was to create a new spirit of Atlantic solidarity and whose essence should have been that it was collaborative at all stages should now be turned almost into a European-American confrontation.

In these circumstances, you should know that we will take no further initiative in either bilateral or multilateral forums but will await the product of the Nine in September and then decide whether and how to proceed. . . .

Let me say now, however, that I have reached the following conclusions regarding my proposed trip to Europe: I will not come to Europe unless there is a result commensurate with the need for strengthening Atlantic relationships. I cannot consider meetings in multilateral forums in which my European colleagues do not find it possible to participate. I do not believe that it will serve the purpose envisaged in our initiative and, I thought, agreed between us when you were here in May, for me to sign communiqués in Europe not signed also by other heads of government.

One cannot know what the impact of these letters would have been had they been sent by an unimpaired President. But our allies knew that Watergate had reached a new climax with the discovery of the White House taping system. There is little doubt that without Watergate, the need for the letters would never have arisen. As it was, our allies knew not only that I was the principal drafter — which had always been the case — but also that the President, for domestic reasons, could not give the matter his continuing attention. But in any event, it was too late for recrimination, as soon became clear in the next consultation with Great Britain.

Sir Burke Trend arrived in Washington for Anglo-American bilateral talks the day the letter to Brandt was dispatched (July 30). In light of the Copenhagen decision he had nothing to talk about. There was a painful session with my wise and gentle friend. We both realized that if these tendencies continued, we were at a turning point in Atlantic relations. For the sake of an abstract doctrine of European unity and to score purely theoretical points, something that had been nurtured for a generation was being given up. Atlantic — and especially Anglo-American — relations had thrived on intangibles of trust and consultation. They were now being put into a straitjacket of legalistic formalisms. Trend had lived too long in the old framework, based on mutual confidence, to be anything but uncomfortable with his brief. He came as close to showing his distress as the code of discipline of the British Civil

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192

Years of Upheaval

Service and his high sense of honor permitted. But matters had gone beyond his level in the hierarchy.

That the British government was determined to change the existing pattern became even clearer when, again without any prior consultation or warning, it introduced a draft text of an Atlantic Declaration at NATO in early August. What made the gesture more astonishing was that London had never responded to the texts we had transmitted on July 8. (We received a negative reply to those only on August 17.) The British draft was notable for its blandness. Moreover, it was to be kept separate from the Community effort — preventing a comprehensive document. And it was to be dealt with by the 'natural timetable' of the Alliance. This meant that the earliest time for a summit would be at the next NATO Council meeting in December, a time when Nixon had specifically declared he could not visit Europe because of the need to prepare for the Congressional session. When, still caught up in old patterns, we complained about lack of consultation, Her Majesty's Government replied:

> We are, however, in trouble already with some of the smaller members of the Nine for the delay with which they have learned of some of our discussion with the White House . . . We think wherever possible we should go for multilateral discussion from the outset . . . [T]he nature of the Atlantic relationship is not something that can be agreed through purely bilateral discussion. Action, as opposed to explanations, will have to be multilateral.

Simultaneously, we learned that the Community had submitted the text of a draft declaration to Japan, with the comment that a document negotiated between Europe and Japan would be concrete, while if we participated it would of necessity be vague. We had never been told of the existence of such a project, still less consulted about its contents. The snub was plainly intended because the tactic was unnecessary. Japan's primary concern was to stay out of the line of fire. Japanese diplomats from time to time inquired politely but with studied indifference about that anomalous Year of Europe in which they had been invited to participate. But they made it plain that while exclusion from a serious effort would be resented, they had little interest in participating in a Western family squabble. It was in this manner that what started as an effort to foster Atlantic unity turned into a device to organize all the democracies against the United States.

Though bureaucratic inertia and Watergate despair impelled us to continue to go through the motions, the Year of Europe had lost its meaning.

## The Year That Never Was

THE formal part of our proposal, a new Declaration of Atlantic Relations, was finally accomplished a year later when Nixon was the sole

The Year of Europe

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278

Years of Upheaval

any additional agreement between ourselves relating specifically to the preven-
tion of nuclear warfare.

Our response owed no little to discussions we had initiated with the British government. During the summer we had briefed our major European allies, and China, on the outlines of the Soviet proposal. At the end of July 1972, I had used the regular visit to Washington by Sir Burke Trend, the British Cabinet Secretary, to show him the Soviet draft of July 21. I asked for British advice, and indicated that we would proceed only in tandem with London. On August 10 the Foreign Office sent its Soviet expert, Sir Thomas Brimelow, and a small group of advisers to Washington to review the project in detail.

London could not have made a happier choice. Cherubic, unflap-
pable, not quite successful in obscuring his penetrating intelligence be-
hind the bland exterior of the perfect civil servant, Brimelow became
an indispensable part of the negotiations. He was a profound student of
Soviet behavior. He had an unsentimental assessment of Soviet pur-
poses. He was convinced that the threat of general war was one of the
chief fears of the Soviet Union; anything that lessened Soviet concerns
on that score would weaken deterrence. In his view, the Soviets wanted
to reduce the margin of their own uncertainty while seeking to magnify
allied inhibitions against the use of nuclear weapons. Our course must
thwart those designs.

Brimelow, as did we, judged existing Soviet drafts unacceptable. I outlined a possible strategy of seeking to transform the Soviet approach into a statement of principles of political restraint proscribing the threat of force, nuclear or conventional. Brimelow agreed with the objective and counseled stalling — easy to accept since it coincided with what we were already doing. We knew that we would be able to achieve Soviet acquiescence only if we could slow down exchanges until some new deadline — like a summit — would produce Soviet anxieties sufficient to modify Brezhnev's proposal fundamentally. So we marked time, us-ing the need to end the Vietnam war as a pretext.

Patience was not Brezhnev's strong suit. He used every opportunity to try to speed up negotiations. On my visit to Moscow in September 1972, he tried to lure me into a drafting session by urging me to indicate my objections to the Soviet text line by line. But this would make the Soviet draft the basic document and we objected to it in principle, not in details. I temporized by repeating at inordinate length the position that I had given to Dobrynin on September 7: no condominium; no implication that the United States and Soviet Union were seeking to protect only their own territory; no suggestion that conventional war was acceptable while nuclear was not. Brezhnev professed to be puzzled about such base suspicions of Soviet motives. If the Soviet Union re-

Détente: Zavidovo to

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Détente: Zavidovo to San Clemente

281

technical arrangements would prove impossible and the summit would have to be postponed to November after all. Shortly afterward I was invited to Zavidovo to complete preparations, and the date of the summit was firmly established for June 18.

Now, if ever, was the moment of truth. We had skillfully avoided any final commitment to the project. We should probably have dropped it now that the Vietnam war was over and the summit was settled. But the price of stalling had been the implication that we would negotiate something; abandoning the negotiation — though in retrospect correct — seemed then too drastic.

On March 5, 1973, I summed up for Brimelow my analysis of Soviet motives and our objectives:

Their motives are obvious: to create the impression of détente, to create the impression of great power bilateralism and to give them a relatively free hand for blackmail — at the same time they are steadily increasing their strategic forces in an eerie way. Now it could also be to leave open the option of genuine détente further down the line. . . . So our objective . . . is to give them enough of the form without any substance.

I asked Brimelow whether, now that the Vietnam war was over and we had achieved Soviet agreement to a summit, we should drop the whole project. Brimelow remained suspicious, but he acknowledged that we seemed stuck on SALT, the Mideast, and the European Security Conference; our long-range objective was to enmesh the Soviets in "a less competitive relationship, and we cannot get there by telling them to go to hell."

Of course Nixon and I bore the ultimate responsibility for proceeding. Brimelow's job, after all, was not to make American policy but to help steer it in the safest directions. Once the strategy was settled, Brimelow applied his subtle mind to change the Soviet proposal from a renunciation of nuclear weapons to an agreement to renounce the threat of force in diplomacy. What emerged was like a Russian *matryoshka* doll that has progressively smaller models nested each inside the other. By a series of carefully hedged conditions, the avoidance of nuclear war became an objective rather than an obligation; the objective in turn was made to depend on refraining from the use or the threat of force by one party against the other, against allies of the other, or against third parties. Thus nuclear weapons would be renounced only after a renunciation of the threat of war in diplomacy, and if that condition was not fulfilled, the basic premise of the agreement disappeared. Indeed, it then worked the other way: It legitimized nuclear defense. To reassure allies, the draft continued to stress that the agreement did not affect existing obligations or the right of collective (or individual) self-defense.

Brimelow's role was an example of the Anglo-American "special re-

play. So he
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282

Years of Upheaval

relationship" at its best, even at a time when the incumbent Prime Minister was not among its advocates. There was no other government which we would have dealt with so openly, exchanged ideas with so freely, or in effect permitted to participate in our own deliberations. All documents were made available to the British, sometimes with a time lag, but significant moves were always joint ones. Brimelow occasionally showed us British analyses. He did most of the actual drafting. The final version owed, in fact, more to British than to American expertise.

When I set out for Zavidovo on May 4, I was thus left with selling Brezhnev a draft about 180 degrees removed from his original design. It was a weird negotiation extending over several evenings of occasionally heated exchanges. Brezhnev's idea of diplomacy was to beat the other party into submission or cajole it with heavy-handed humor. My tactic was to reduce matters to easy banter to avoid personal showdowns and to give emphasis to our sticking points when I turned serious. The negotiation became a contest between a bull and a matador, except that at the end of the contest the matador for all his intricate cape-play had only slightly winded the bull, who was assembling his energies for a new charge.

During breaks, while Brezhnev and his team disappeared into other rooms, my colleagues and I stepped out onto a balcony in Brezhnev's office. We asked ourselves whether the text as it was evolving would help or hurt our ability to protect China and other third countries. We tended to think that it was marginally useful. In the meeting room Hal Sonnenfeldt attempted to apply in the Soviet Union the methods by which he kept abreast of my activities in Washington: He sought to read upside down Brezhnev's briefing paper, which the General Secretary had left on the table in front of him. For once Sonnenfeldt failed.

On the first day of talks Brezhnev began with a long speech extolling the virtue of his version of the nuclear treaty — a "clear-cut and lucid agreement" that would contain provisions causing "no alarm," he reassured me. "I wouldn't bet on that," I replied drily. Undeterred, Brezhnev rambled on about its historical importance for the United States and the Soviet Union, climaxing with the first of several sallies indicating that China was his real target:

> And at least here in this group we should not pass over in silence the fact that there do exist in the world other nuclear powers as well, and there have to be such points in the agreement to show them it would be wrong to play with nuclear war.

Joining in a US-Soviet alliance against China was not exactly our idea of détente. Nor was I about to be bested in the department of long speeches, especially when the passage of each hour improved our bargaining position.

Détente: Zavidovo to

In my response I indicated that I was willing to negotiate on a number of unique historical issues, but I reserved the right to each negotiation. I proved more persistent than the United States, but I did not manage to get it est. I mentioned the done, of course). Brezhnev should treat our all points to avoid introduction of unlikely propositions with, say, France, or the United States. Indeed, he added, we should be adapted to the Soviet view that the Politburo knew the agreement would hardly be blamed for its content about.)

The first session on Saturday evening was very funny, and it was followed by jokes, we turned at any point to use which text to use. We decided to use our experience as it is to believe that the issue was whether the United States disputed portions of the points to avoid introducing the use of nuclear weapons. Brezhnev text aloud. Brezhnev

This having completed the passage of time, I had to basic approach with a bilateral nature of the United States and the Soviet Union. He opened with a long speech, which, I thought, was an invitation to ... exclude the other two. He then said that, between either party and seven words — leave

516

Years of Upheaval

October 13-14: The Failed Cease-Fire

AFTER our Friday night discussion with the British, I had expected to have early on Saturday morning, October 13, their considered response to the cease-fire initiative proposed by the Soviets; the plan was for Britain to introduce in the Security Council late that afternoon a resolution calling for a cease-fire in place. I was perturbed when we heard nothing by 9:30 A.M. that day, since by then it was late afternoon in the Middle East and **Sir Alec's consultations** should have been completed.

Therefore, I called Dobrynin to say that if we did not have a British decision by noon, we would ask Australia to introduce the cease-fire resolution. Dobrynin said he would have to check with Moscow but "I don't really see that there is any difference." I said that we had ominous indications that an Egyptian offensive into the Sinai was imminent and warned that trickery would seriously harm our relations. Dobrynin thought that we should stick to the agreed course regardless of the unpredictable actions of the parties. He saw no insurmountable obstacles to a joint abstention from a Security Council appeal for a cease-fire.

No sooner was I finished with Dobrynin than **Sir Alec telephoned**. To understand his impact, a word must be said about **our estimate of him**. While he was not truly analytical, he was one of the wisest men I have known. He was that rarest of statesmen, one whose integrity disarms even his critics. He exuded a rectitude so matter-of-fact that he never needed to appeal to it. Because he was totally trustworthy, his word counted, even if it was painful. Because his judgment was prudent, his insights were central to any consultation. For a statesman, values lived are more reliable than postulates articulated. Home inspired confidence in full measure. He was deceptively underemphatic; he would lead his interlocutor to the desired conclusion by a Socratic dialogue that was as penetrating and relentless as the manner in which it was put forward was diffident. He was an unconditional friend of the United States. He stood for the common values of freedom. There was quite literally no one whom we trusted more.

Home's assessment now was that a cease-fire in place was a mirage. Sadat would not accept anything less than an Israeli commitment to return to the 1967 frontiers. Our proposal would not fly unless Moscow was willing to pressure Sadat by cutting off his military supplies; he doubted the Soviets were prepared to go this far. Home proposed instead a compromise including a cease-fire in place, an international police force for the rest of the occupied territories, followed by an international conference. There was no chance that Israel would accept this scheme, which in some ways was even more disadvantageous to it than Sadat's. After all, the introduction of an international force presupposed

The Middle East

an almost inane
Sadat was as
Home it was
I told Cromer

I explained
the assumption
but would yield
powers. I could
by deliberate
as they were
to see whether
they going to
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world without
I immediate
nonplussed. I
cease-fire res-
this scheme of
Sadat disap-
Dobrynin. I
Home.

At 1:40 P.M.
"Australian
sense whatev-
who introduc-
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course it had
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"to pour stuf-

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again only wh-

At 3:35 P.M.

590

Years of Upheaval

decided to deliver it around 5:30 in the morning Washington time. In-
sofar as the Soviet decision to intervene depended on our message, it
gave us additional time to complete our preparations. And by then the
Soviets would notice our troop movements. At 1:03 A.M. I informed
Ambassador Cromer for the British government of our various alert
measures and of the letter from Brezhnev. I told him that we would
formally brief the North Atlantic Council an hour after delivering our
reply to the Soviets, or about noon Brussels time. We hoped that Britain
would support us in the North Atlantic Council as well as in other
capitals.

It was a classic example of the "special relationship" with Britain as well as of the limits of allied consultation. We shared our information with Britain as a matter of course, despite the fact that the Heath government was doing its utmost to distance itself from us in Europe and had rather conspicuously underlined its different perspective in the Middle East. We could not consult the other allies in advance because we wanted the Soviets to pick up our readiness measures themselves and not through allied leaks, which would inevitably include any reassurances we might have given and thus lessen the sense of determination we thought it essential to convey. In retrospect I think this procedure was wrong. We could have informed our allies an hour or two before delivering our reply to Moscow; we should have risked the leaks.

At 1:35 A.M. Dinitz reappeared. He urged on behalf of the Prime
Minister that we not ask Israel to pull back to the line it occupied at the
time the original cease-fire went into effect (on October 22). I assured
him that we had no intention of coercing Israel in response to a Soviet
threat.

At 1:45 A.M. Scowcroft, at my request, called Dobrynin again with
the same message as before, adding only that we had still several more
hours of deliberation ahead of us. Dobrynin could infer from my refusal
to talk to him that we were in no mood for negotiations. Once again he
replied that he would report, offered no reassurance, and said that he
would stand by. Concurrently, we notified the commander of our forces
in Europe that he was to delay the scheduled return to the United States
of troops participating in an annual NATO exercise designed to test our
ability to reinforce Europe rapidly.

At 2:09 A.M., minutes after the conclusion of our formal meeting, I
told Dinitz that we had completed our reply to Brezhnev. We would
offer no new proposals except to augment the UN observer force. We
would unequivocally reject joint military action and we would resist
unilateral intervention by force, if necessary. I also asked Dinitz, for
my information, how long it would take Israel to destroy the Third Army
if a showdown became unavoidable.

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702

Years of Upheaval

All this made perfect sense if fostering the internal arrangements of the European Community were the sole priority of Western policy. But if there was any merit in our concept that transatlantic ties needed a new moral compass course, the legalism of the Europeans defeated its purpose. By the time a declaration of common goals emerged from so formalistic a procedure, it would be robbed of all inspiration and meaning.

The problem came to the surface in an exchange between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and me. "But how can we make a reality of the European entity if we don't speak together?" said the venerable British Foreign Secretary. "Who else can we use as our representative rather than the Chairman of the Council, who is appointed every six months?" That was not what bothered us. We objected not to dealing with the Chairman of the Council but to the refusal of all the other members to deal with us. I told him:

We welcome a common European position and we support the idea of European unity. However, if the price for this is that we cannot talk with our traditional European friends, then over time this could create a massive change in our relations.

The question was why Europe should deal so formalistically with its closest ally, shutting off the bilateral channels of consultation elaborated over two decades and more. Our allies did not handle their diplomacy with any other part of the world in this manner. Indeed, the odd — let us be frank, infuriating — aspect of the dialogue was that the very leaders who found such ingenious formulas for avoiding the American President were at the same time pressing us to attend a collective summit with Leonid Brezhnev to conclude the European Security Conference. On that occasion, all of them intended to meet with their counterparts from Eastern Europe and especially the Soviet Union, without putting forward their Chairman as the sole spokesman.

At other times, we might have pulled out of the enterprise. But we had a residual hope and were in something of a dilemma. Indeed, weakness can tempt governments into a persistence they would never risk in happier times. With Watergate we were not eager to advertise any loss of Presidential authority, and beyond that debacle there was the ironic problem that we could terminate our initiative now only at the cost of being accused of undermining European unity. All our allies, having geared their cumbersome Community machinery to the Atlantic dialogue, were eager to continue the process, for it was a useful foil against which to elaborate their European identity. No one wanted a crisis; and no one knew how to conclude the project without one. Suspended between success and failure, we waited, if not patiently, at least in relative silence.

In September 1973, after a summer hiatus, the Year of Europe twitched into life again. We heard that the Community members' polit-

Troubles with A

ical directors (I present a draft of the report to the leader 10. We were reception by old friends of the boss in Paris, and he was satisfied with substance would be OK).

Since we [the principles], there could agree. He in it but implied

Where Joben cynicism: Contingent on the document

On September 10, 1973, Europe's response to the document; it improved by the time these months had gone by. Andersen had read the text, with no problem. Andersen, a man of letters, had no problem at having to co-mark's powerful leagues, and Denmark could essay a similar text.

Andersen had on the draft document to run no risk of meeting almost any of his chief purposes. Europe could possess offices of the political decisions. Andersen's professional society, the Political Science Association, is one of the most powerful in the field. Andersen has no problem with his own version of the political decisions. His version is of utmost imp-

KISSINGER: Our no consultation want to meet with the leader of the Communists is of utmost imp-

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warmly welcomed by Home in a personal message on my departure; in Moscow on October 21 I had briefed the British and French ambassadors within an hour of the completion of my cease-fire talks with Brezhnev; indeed, thanks to the communications breakdown described in Chapter XII, it is probable that London and Paris learned the results of my discussions in the Kremlin before Washington and certainly before Jerusalem. But when the October 22 cease-fire came under stress, the tenuous allied cohesion evaporated. On October 23 our Ambassador in Bonn, Martin Hillenbrand, was abruptly informed that the Federal Republic would no longer approve shipments of American equipment to Israel from German ports; a second strong German démarche was made the next day. The formulation of the German request was symptomatic: State Secretary Paul Franck of the Foreign Office suggested to Hillenbrand that the Federal Republic, having shown understanding for our interests during the war, was now entitled to ask for our understanding of their interests (as if German interests had not been involved and they had done us a favor).

The alert screwed tensions tighter. Our allies did not take comfort from the fact — as they might have — that even during the crisis of authority over Watergate, the United States was prepared to run a major risk to defend the global equilibrium. Instead, they concentrated on the indisputable fact that there had been no prior consultation over an alert that involved US troops stationed in Europe. The alert had been brought about by our conviction that the Soviets were contemplating sending troops into the Middle East and that we had only a few hours to warn them off. We sought to demonstrate that we took the prospect of Soviet intervention seriously.

Afterward, there were press reports of the "shock wave" that had crept over Europe after the "explosive news" of the American alert.⁴ There were widespread complaints that some allies had learned of the alert only from news tickers. This was, of course, not true of all governments. As noted in Chapter XII, we had informed British Ambassador Cromer early on October 25 of both Brezhnev's threatening letter and our readiness measures, barely an hour after making the preliminary decisions and well before they had been implemented. And Cromer had later confirmed that London agreed with our assessment of the seriousness of Brezhnev's threat. However, Britain had the same problem with our advance notice of the alert as with our special consultations on the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War (see Chapter VII). unwilling to draw attention to the fact that they still enjoyed preferential status in Washington, British officials did nothing to stem the tide of criticism from the other allies — and fell in with the prevailing brou-haha over inadequate consultation. On October 31 the *New York Times* reported that Prime Minister Heath on the previous day had pointedly

Troubles

refused to

Abstractive we had eye was readiness would give us a livered answer for resoluteness would be obtained at all limits of via our action.

The absence of not brooked accepted situation but not action, and it fell to students to estimate such as to whenever it is not in the hamstrung intervention.

Dissociation by which order to give obstacle to United Nations Security Council. Sadat had their exclusive participation, ambassador reopening

The alert — given peremptorily

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refused to endorse the nuclear alert — raising temperatures in Washington a few more notches.

Abstractly, our allies were justified in their complaints. Realistically, we had little time and we had to balance serious considerations. Our eye was on an imminent Soviet military move; our plan was to increase readiness and permit the Soviets to detect our preparations. This, we hoped, would give the Soviets pause; our written reply to Brezhnev, to be delivered around 5:30 A.M. Washington time, would give them a pretext for resolving the issue. Our Ambassador to NATO, Donald Rumsfeld, would be instructed to brief NATO an hour after our note to the Soviets was delivered. We chose this timing above all because we knew that to obtain allied support we would have had to give reassurances of the limits of our commitment; we preferred that these not reach Moscow via our allies until the Politburo had made at least a preliminary decision.

The allies were really objecting not so much to timing as to the absence of opportunity to affect our decision. But imminent danger did not brook an exchange of views and, to be frank, we could not have accepted a judgment different from our own. There was no middle position between alert and no alert. At issue were only readiness measures, not actions. In our perception, nevertheless, it was a clear emergency, and it fell to us to act as custodians of Western security. Whether our estimate of the danger was correct must be decided by more impartial students of the period. But on that night of potential crisis, our duty was to act on the facts as we perceived them. Of course, unilateral steps such as the alert can only be a last resort; allies should be consulted whenever possible. But emergencies are sure to arise again; and it will not be in anyone's interest if the chief protector of free world security is hamstrung by bureaucratic procedure in the face of imminent Soviet intervention.

Dissociation from the alert ironically extended even to the diplomacy by which we sought to end the looming US-Soviet confrontation. In order to give the Soviets a face-saving way out — and to erect a legal obstacle to a unilateral Soviet move — we had promoted the idea of a United Nations Emergency Force from which all permanent members of the Security Council were excluded. We thought we had won when Sadat had accepted our proposal. But Britain and France objected to their exclusion, though I do not understand to this day what benefit participation in a UN force would have conferred on them. Their UN ambassadors briefly threatened a veto even though this would have risked reopening the issue of Soviet troops in the Middle East.

The Federal Republic of Germany on October 25 — the day of the alert — chose to make public what it had already told us privately; a peremptory government statement was issued:

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countries like Britain and France to be excluded from a peace conference on the Middle East. But their conduct guaranteed that Israel would not accept them as impartial, and even to us the Europeans seemed closer to the Soviet position and therefore objectively served to frustrate the only strategy that, in our view, had a chance of working. We were under the impression that the overriding concern of some of our principal allies was not to elaborate a long-range strategy but to end Arab oil cutbacks aimed at them — if necessary at our expense. The line between building a safety net for the contingency of our failure and engineering it was eroding.

America and its democratic allies were drifting not only apart but into a competition. We were not alone in our uneasiness about these trends. Sir Alec Douglas-Home was sufficiently concerned about them to write me a personal letter on November 29, the day after his Prime Minister's outburst. He insisted that NATO was the linchpin of Britain's foreign and defense policy. At the same time, "I don't think you would feel us to be of much value as a friend and ally if we support American policy blindly, even when we think it wrong." He went on to explain that Britain for years had advocated a consistent course on the Middle East; it had not changed under the impact of recent events. He then summed up his views on how to transcend the crisis:

> We are firmly alongside the United States on East/West issues which could lead to serious confrontation. In any case of uncertainty the benefit of doubt would weigh decisively on the American side of the scales. But you must from your side do everything possible to reduce the area of uncertainty — that is to take us more systematically into your confidence and consult with us during the period of build-up towards crisis and confrontation. I think this applies to the Middle East also where, if I may say so, I think that over the years American Administrations have not given enough weight to such policies of ourselves and others, which have a lot and, perhaps more than a lot, to be said for them. . . . I am sure that our aim should be to restore the old intimacy and I can see no reason why this should not be possible.

> Home, as I have already emphasized, was one of the wisest and most decent men I have had the privilege to meet. We never questioned that for him, Atlantic partnership was a moral necessity; unlike his Prime Minister, he did not see Britain's European vocation as requiring the loosening of transatlantic ties built up over three decades. There was little in Home's letter with which I disagreed. He had a point in his criticism of previous American policies. We, in turn, were willing, nay eager, to improve the process of consultation. My concern was that the new procedures of the European Community were working against this objective. None of us had a pat answer for how to reconcile European identity and Atlantic partnership, especially when that "identity" was

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demic life, slightly overwhelmed by the propinquity to power and not at all sure how I would fare. "You will be a great success." she had said then. "You have that twinkle in the eye."

Mrs. Longworth was one of the few members of the old Eastern Establishment from whom Nixon felt no threat or condescension. She was now beyond ambition and she was wise. She remembered a Washington where the President could go riding every afternoon in Rock Creek Park and spend months at a time in Oyster Bay. She had seen too much of human foibles and of Washington skulduggery to be impressed by the self-important. She had experienced the perishability of fame; she knew the meaning of character. At the height of my power she had told me once that the day would inevitably come when I left office and then my test would be how I reacted to my successors — not publicly but in the recesses of my soul. Would I have compassion for their discomfitures or secretly relish them? She confessed that she and her father had failed that test miserably during the Administration of President Taft.

I met Alice Longworth regularly at the home of various friends; once or twice she invited me to dinner. She held court now in her musty old house on Massachusetts Avenue. A frail old lady with wispy gray hair, she nevertheless seemed more up-to-date and more relevant than most of the colleagues with whom I had just spent the day. We had all talked glibly of revolutionary change and the need to rise to our challenge. But as I thought of current leaders, I saw none who would age as gracefully as Alice Longworth. Lacking the inward assurance, they would be afraid to risk themselves. How many world leaders would be impressive separate from the power they exercised? How many could stand failure or loss of office without losing confidence in themselves? And if they were afraid to fail, how could they succeed? How would they dare to transcend the conventional — the requirement for truly dealing with revolutionary events — when they were emotionally anchored in it?

Within minutes of my return to my office, the humdrum reclaimed us. **Sir Alec Douglas-Home** — the minister who came closest to Alice Longworth's qualities — called to report the result of the European causus. All the Europeans, he said, were absolutely firm with the French that there had to be a follow-up to this conference. They simply could not tolerate failure. Jobert was dead set against follow-up machinery of any kind, but his colleagues were willing to proceed in the plenary session to declare that they all agreed to appoint officials to a follow-up meeting; France could either join or reserve its position.

Home added that Jobert had cabled back to Paris for instructions. He warned that we must not wind up with a "washy formula, a papered over thing." Aware of my Gaullist leanings, he urged me to hold firm with Jobert. I repeated once more that I would not move beyond agreed positions and that I would consult with him before doing anything.

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dedicated officials ensured that the American side was by far the best prepared and that the conference — contrary to Jobert's petulant remarks — was one of the most productive and effective in memory.

A century earlier, that would have been the end of it. But in our time there is a referee for international events awarding the palm of victory: The media follow their own necessities and they pronounce on the significance of the outcome. The diplomat is considered biased; the journalists act as judge and jury and they decide what the public will hear or read. By nature they are more finely attuned to the drama of the moment than to the trends of the future, which they discount with a skeptical, even cynical, eye. No international gathering is really over, in other words, until it has been explained in the media. Therefore each of the chief protagonists of the Washington conference was compelled to mount the stage, act out his part in the drama, and promote his own perceptions, seeking to influence future events by shaping the interpretation of current ones. And thus the news conferences by Jobert and me during the course of the afternoon must be seen as the last stage of the Washington conference. (Of course, other delegations also briefed their own press but they neither received the attention nor did they seek it, since it was in their interest to play down controversy and to hedge their bets.)

I let Jobert go on first, not simply as a matter of courtesy but so that I could adjust my remarks to his. He would, I judged, stress the struggle of the moment; this would only lend emphasis to my proposed theme of the necessity of cooperation. Jobert knew my purpose well enough but he had in fact no choice, because with Europe six hours ahead of Washington he had to make his case quickly or not at all. Jobert was at his most acerbic. He rejected the proposition that the Washington Energy Conference had accomplished anything of consequence. It was all a clever American ruse to dominate Europe:

> I believe that quite wrongly, the headlines used in this affair were too large. After all, from our viewpoint this conference has been a minor one, slightly slap-dash in its preparation and even a little slap-dash in the way it was conceived, because when it was convened all these important lines were not yet apparent. A lot of papers had to be received later. . . . [It seems to have been] a slightly political operation probably for the benefit of the United States — consciously or unconsciously, I do not know — and . . . energy was largely an excuse.

He repeated his Baghdad wisecrack that the Washington conference was not like the Congress of Vienna; in other words, it was not destined to leave any permanent mark. He reiterated that he had never wanted to come in the first place; he had yielded reluctantly to the entreaties of his European partners and with goodwill toward them (not, by implica-

Energy and the Democrats

tion, toward the United States.

But since they want Government's object soon as they were going to satisfy everyone.

This was a not too bad betrayal, I think, but explain how a voter in the European elections of the European "Some people speak of home they will be in" would have defeated the one who was chosen for choosing American concepts. What a parallel between the two abroad — he in Mexico, now represented as an American; he was French, see things. I think Morocco in fact and therefore I would have defeated it, and we carried it out in a day, we hoped, indeed, in the conference, it was required an emphasis.

Forbearance is not what would have defeated it, but it would have been carried out in a day, we hoped, indeed, in the conference, it was required an emphasis.

Therefore I opened the conference.

[T]his conference, the world was facing serious questions in which we find it very difficult to see anything in part by lack of information. Our destiny had escaped us.

To this supply of the problem of the rapid escape of the United States by these two phenoms and the rapid increase of multilateral action.

We hold this view.

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was increasing its oil production by one million barrels a day, helping to stabilize prices. The sense of panic in Europe immediately diminished. European attitudes began to change. In some ways our firm reaction had lanced the boil. If we no longer pressed for an Atlantic Declaration or for a trip by Nixon to Europe, the Europeans could no longer imagine that they had leverage on us. The substantive disagreements were no cause for crises. We favored European unity: we simply did not want its organizing principle to be hostility to the United States. What we asked for in consultation was what the Community did with every other area of the world. The blowup had developed from an unusual mix of events and people. Nixon's Watergate ordeal, the growing weakness of both the Heath and Brandt governments, and Pompidou's fatal illness threw Atlantic policy into unnecessary confusion.

Other events began to alter the political landscape. By the time the explosion occurred, Edward Heath — almost compulsively reluctant to separate from France — had been defeated in the election of February 28. The successor Labour government under Harold Wilson had a more subtle view of the requirements of European unity. When I passed through London a month later, the new Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, told his subordinates in my presence that he wanted an end put to the mutual needling. On March 16 the German Ambassador in Washington, Berndt von Staden, came up with an idea for new consultative machinery: The Community would no longer delay consultation until the foreign ministers had frozen the various projects in concrete. What did I think of consultations after the political directors had agreed but before an issue had been put before the foreign ministers? I told von Staden that this would probably solve the procedural problem.

On March 24 I stopped in Bonn, at the request of Scheel, on the way to Moscow. Brandt unexpectedly joined the meeting. The German leaders transformed von Staden's ideas into a formal proposal. I accepted it on the spot, having previously discussed it with Nixon. While we were at it, we reviewed a whole host of issues before the Alliance and reached a common position. There was no longer any hint that this was prevented by Community procedures.

A little more than a week later, Georges Pompidou died, and therewith Jobert's tenure drew to a close. In early April I had most conciliatory meetings with Scheel and Gaston Thorn, then Luxembourg Foreign Minister, whose career proved to what extent integrity, intelligence, and goodwill in even a tiny country can be turned into important, sometimes decisive, factors. The British took over the drafting of the NATO declaration. Key elements of the proposed declaration between the United States and the European Community were incorporated into it; the rest were dropped. The new French government under the Presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, with Jean Sauvagnargues as Foreign Minis-

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claim that I had the confidence of the whole Party, especially as I was also regularly elected to the Shadow Cabinet by my colleagues in the House of Commons.

In April 1972 Jack Jones, the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, urged me to stand for election as Deputy Leader of the Party at the time of Roy Jenkins' resignation from that office. The Deputy Leader was elected on the votes of Members of Parliament alone, and I declined his suggestion not only because I was happy in the post of Treasurer but because I preferred my membership of the National Executive Committee to be the result of election by the whole Conference. In the end Ted Short was the choice acceptable to all, and as Deputy Leader he gave Harold Wilson steady support.

Roy Jenkins' resignation brought other changes. As a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had been the Opposition spokesman on Treasury matters. Harold Wilson asked Denis Healey to take over from him, and me to take over Denis's responsibilities for Foreign Affairs. I was very ready to do so and used the next two years to travel extensively, to the United States, the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and a number of other European countries, as well as the Middle East and the Far East, to prepare myself if we should win the election. I renewed many former friendships and acquaintanceships and learned a great deal.

Of all the visits I made at that time it is of Vietnam, North and South, that the most vivid impressions remain. The war between the two halves of the country was fought with the intense ferocity of all civil wars. North Vietnam was backed heavily, but indirectly, by Soviet and Chinese advisers and arms; the South had the direct support and intervention of American troops and arms. The Soviet Union was wiser than the United States, for by her direct involvement America had committed her prestige in a way that the Soviet Union had not. As the war dragged on with no sign of an eventual victory, the struggle rent a distracted America, troubled about both the morality of the enterprise and the possibility of victory. The South Vietnam Administration was widely and correctly seen to be corrupt and guilty of excesses against its own people, while America's television screens were filled nightly with pictures from the fighting, bringing home to the American people the destructiveness of modern warfare, on behalf of a cause about which many Americans were half-hearted and which grew increasingly unpopular.

Henry Kissinger eventually found himself saddled with the task of extracting the United States from the conflict on the best terms available.

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He aimed to leave South Vietnam in a position where it could maintain its independence without giving North Vietnam the chance to claim a victory over the United States. Kissinger undertook the protracted negotiations with great skill, but he had an impossible hand to play, made all the more difficult by President Thieu's open opposition in Saigon to American policy, and also by the inflexible attitude of the North Vietnamese negotiators who, although ready enough to acknowledge their military inferiority to the United States, were also confident they would outlast them. I heard an echo of their attitude in a military museum I visited in Hanoi early in 1973. I tagged along behind a group of North Vietnamese soldiers and listened to a thumbnail sketch of Vietnam's long history from the young woman guide. This was the burden of her message: 'In our long history, we Vietnamese people always win our wars. We repulsed Chinese invaders; we defeated Japanese fascists; we expelled the French colonialists; and now we shall drive out the American imperialists'. I heard the same message in many different forms during my stay in North Vietnam.

The stubbornness of the North Vietnamese negotiators caused a short breakdown in the peace talks with America in December 1972 and in frustration the United States Government resumed massive air attacks by B52 bombers on Hanoi and Haiphong. This so-called 'Christmas bombing' led to feelings of violent revulsion in the United States, as well as in other countries throughout the world, and if it had continued would undoubtedly have caused Congress to cut off further funds with which to prosecute the war.

Both President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have since revealed that even while the bombing was going on, the two sides continued to exchange messages privately; Nixon justified the bombing on the grounds that it brought North Vietnam back to the negotiating table, and that when talks were resumed Henry Kissinger extracted a peace agreement on essentially the same terms as Hanoi could have obtained before the bombing. In Britain the Labour Party led the widespread opposition to the 'Christmas bombing', and a month later the National Executive Committee decided to send a three-man delegation of Ian Mikardo and myself, together with Tom McNally, the Secretary of the Party's International Department, to visit both South and North Vietnam. Mikardo and I both happened to have been born in Portsmouth, and although we frequently disagreed on politics and tactics, our personal relations were good. Tom McNally was a young, able and cheerful travelling companion,

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who looked after our needs and who could be kept content provided he was served with a constant diet of fresh newspapers. Never was there such an omnivorous reader. His knowledge and a mature judgement beyond his years impressed me and a year later in March 1974, after we had won the election and I became Foreign Secretary, I asked the Labour Party to release him to serve as my adviser, a role in which he was invaluable for the following five years, first at the Foreign Office and later when I became Prime Minister.

The peace agreement negotiated by Henry Kissinger had come into force on 27 January 1973, less than a fortnight before our party arrived in Saigon, but it was obvious that the cease-fire was not being observed. In Saigon at night we could hear the occasional 'crump' of a distant shell but as the cease-fire was only a fortnight old, we did not know whether this was the dying embers of the conflict or a deliberate intention to flout the agreement. The 'leopard spot' nature of the conflict confused the situation, for at the time of the cease-fire Vietcong guerillas effectively controlled many small areas dotted around in the South, with no marked frontier between their villages and those held by the Government. The peace agreement had laid down that Hanoi should not infiltrate troops or supplies into South Vietnam, but observing this would have meant their abandoning the reinforcement of the Vietcong guerillas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, and it seemed unlikely that they would do this.

When we saw South Vietnam's President Thieu we sought his opinion on the peace treaty, and especially the provisions for the withdrawal of American troops and the re-unification of North and South Vietnam by negotiation. Thieu responded cordially and showed considerable interest in hearing how the situation appeared through the eyes of European socialists. He was a small, dapper man, with a ready smile, slicked-down hair, an open manner and air of technical competence and self-confidence. No stooge he, whatever the propaganda might say. In our presence he uttered no criticism of the United States, although he made clear his profound opposition to the decision to withdraw their troops; instead, he concentrated his remarks on his readiness 'to take a risk for peace', as he described it. He told us that he was willing to permit all Opposition groups in South Vietnam to campaign in an election to be held in the near future.

His manner was convincing, but it would have had more effect if we had not previously talked with several non-communist Opposition

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groups who were opposed both to Thieu and to the Vietcong, and who had produced irrefutable evidence of the imprisonment of their members. Their attitude could be summed up as one of believing Thieu when they saw his promises come into effect. In response to our questions, the President did admit that the Government held forty-one thousand political prisoners, of whom a few thousand had not been tried. We asked if we could visit some of them but were refused and he riposted that we should ask the Vietcong when we reached the Northern capital of Hanoi to see the fifty thousand South Vietnamese whom they had kidnapped from their villages. We suggested both to him and to Hanoi, when we reached it, that a panel of independent international jurists under the auspices of the Commission to oversee the peace agreement should be allowed to investigate the question of political prisoners and make recommendations. In both capitals we were listened to without enthusiasm.

I was surprised to find close personal links existed between leaders in the North and the South. Thieu told us that he himself was a Northener and I understood him to say that he had been at school with at least one member of the Politburo in Hanoi; another South Vietnamese Minister asked us to convey his greetings to a senior figure in the North who had been a near neighbour before the war. It was truly a fratricidal struggle.

During our visit we flew by helicopter to An Loc. While we were in the air the door remained open with a machine-gunner posted at the entrance, and we were accompanied by a more heavily armed gunship. The town was only sixty miles north of Saigon, the South Vietnam capital, but South Vietnamese troops had been surrounded and besieged by North Vietnamese forces for nine months, and helicopters were the only means of communication. We were told that the airstrip on which we were due to land was regarded as too near to North Vietnamese lines and we put down on a road on the outskirts of the town, where we hurried to waiting jeeps to get out of gunshot. The town itself was a scene of desolation almost as severe as Stalingrad, but not on the same scale. Life went on and small boys clambered over burnt-out Russian T52 tanks, standing on the turrets in order to get a better view. There were occasional small explosions but the morale of the defenders seemed good, despite being cut off by thousands of guerillas and North Vietnamese troops. The British Military Attaché who accompanied us was less than impressed by the North Vietnamese tank tactics as he deduced the manner of their attack from where the burnt-out hulls lay. We spent several hours in the town and were happy to return to Saigon without mishap,

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especially as two days later another helicopter attempting the same
flight was shot down by a North Vietnamese missile.

We were advised that the only way for us to get from South Vietnam to North Vietnam was to fly by way of the neutral country of Laos. Once in the capital, Vientiane, we might find it possible to transfer to an International Control Commission plane that made irregular flights from there to the Northern capital. The Royal Laotian Airlines aircraft turned out to be an elderly Dakota, the much-used wartime DC3. Boarding was very informal and I enquired about several red ribbons hanging from the wings. I was told that these were prayer tapes to ensure a safe journey, but even prayer tapes could not increase our confidence when, during the flight, the pilot announced that he would have to come down as an air battle was imminent and fighter aircraft were about to take off from an airfield below us. We watched the air battle over our heads until it was safe to take off again, and eventually arrived at Vientiane, where John Lloyd, the British Ambassador, took us in hand.

Poor Laos. Its neutrality was totally abused. In the east of its territory the North Vietnamese came and went as they pleased up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the south of the country, irregulars from Thailand were fighting. In the north-west the Chinese built military roads with impunity and without regard to frontiers, while throughout the country American bombers rained down tons of high explosives in support of official Laotian forces which were struggling to maintain a semblance of independence. Meanwhile, in Vientiane, government and communist leaders met each other at cocktail parties. This was a country of subsistence farmers torn apart by invaders, yet the principal items in its foreign aid programme were a television service, a Coca-Cola plant and a brewery. We were glad to hear that the British contribution was an experimental unit for improving strains of rice. Corruption was on a mammoth scale, with a ruling élite profiting handsomely from the war, and a large batch of CIA agents who scarcely bothered to conceal their presence. Gentle, passive people, corrupt leaders and alien intruders all formed a mixture that made us sad and angry that a small, inoffensive country should be subjected to such barbarities.

The Prime Minister, Souvanna Phouma, lived in a simple, almost un-
guarded one-storey villa. He received us with a resigned dignity. As
Prime Minister he presided over a coalition Cabinet, 50 per cent of which
was communist and 50 per cent non-communist, depending upon Ameri-
can support. He told us, without conviction, of his hopes for a genuinely

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neutral Laos, free from foreign intervention, but under questioning ad-
mitted that he believed the communist Pathet Lao Party would play an
influential and perhaps the dominant role. Although the Vietnam peace
agreement negotiated by Kissinger had provided for the withdrawal of
foreign troops from his country, he did not doubt that the North Vietna-
mese would retain at least ten thousand men in Laos to safeguard the
Ho Chi Minh Trail. At a later meeting, we asked the Control Commission
representatives how such a clear infringement could be reconciled with
a peace agreement on which the ink was scarcely dry, only to receive the
reply, 'This is not a peace-keeping force, but a peace-observing force.'
True enough, but this offered no comfort for the future and as there was
no goodwill on North Vietnam's part, the agreement that Henry Kissinger
had painfully hammered out in Paris was a dead letter in Laos even at
the moment it was signed.

The Laotians retained their sense of humour, however. In the centre of Vientiane stood a massive concrete column, somewhat resembling the Arc de Triomphe. I enquired what historic event was commemorated and was told it was quite new. Apparently, the CIA had decided that Vientiane needed a new airstrip, and the United States had transported many tons of cement to build it, but the Laotians, who are as stubborn as they are gentle, decided they neither wanted nor needed another airstrip. Instead, they used the concrete to build a useless column in the city centre and, in deference to the Americans, christened it 'The Vertical Runway'.

Hanoi could hardly have offered a greater contrast to Saigon. The public face of the South's capital had worn a hectic, feverish flush. Hanoi's visage by contrast was grim and grey. Saigon was bustling and Americanised, with small restaurants outside which ill-clad beggars asked for food. It was 'Hondaville', with well dressed girls riding dangerously side-saddle on motorcycle pillions, and well pressed military uniforms much in evidence. Hanoi was a city of grey tunics, black trousers and bicycles. The bridges over the Red River leading from the main airport to Hanoi had been destroyed by bombing, and as our car crossed the dangerous temporary pontoon bridge one of our first sights was of groups of young girls, looking very different from their sisters in Saigon, laboriously trundling huge barrels of black tar across the bridge for road-making.

Hanoi itself was a faded and neglected copy of a pre-war French
provincial town which had retained its broad streets and tree-lined

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avenues, but where non-essentials such as a coat of paint on the deteriorating buildings enjoyed a very low priority. The military were far less in evidence than in Saigon, although the outward signs of war were plentiful with numerous air-raid shelters and streets pock-marked with one-man bolt holes sunk into the pavements, each with a concrete lid for the occupant to pull over his head as he jumped in during an air-raid.

The inner city of Hanoi had been little damaged, but industrial areas were devastated and we visited one densely-populated housing area that had been completely flattened during the 'Christmas bombing'. Large bomb craters existed where houses had formerly stood, but already the people were busy marking out afresh the obliterated boundaries of their homes and stacking piles of bricks to rebuild. Civilian casualties here had been very heavy.

We asked to visit the port of Haiphong since we had been told before leaving Britain that some British ships had been tied up unable to leave because the Americans had heavily mined the channel to the sea. Along each side of the road between Hanoi and Haiphong were long lines of crates, each neatly stencilled with its contents. The numbers were so great that we lost count and I assumed they were supplies from the Soviet Union that had never been unpacked. Our hosts offered a different explanation, namely that when the 'Christmas bombing' had begun, factories had hurriedly dismantled their machines, crated them and removed them from the industrial areas in the city.

We found two British ships and introduced ourselves to the astonished crews, who received us like visitors from another planet. They had been in considerable danger when the docks were bombed, but had not been hit. They entertained us royally and we were able to carry home a number of hastily written letters to their families, and promised to press the authorities to speed up the clearance of mines in the navigating channel.

Our next meeting was with Pham Van Dong, who had been Prime Minister of North Vietnam for twenty years, during the whole of which period his country had been at war. Thieu had appeared briskly competent; Souvanna Phouma in Laos gently powerless; Pham Van Dong was composed but slightly diffident until the conversation warmed up, when he demonstrated the total self-confidence of the Marxist who is certain that history is on his side. He was evidently relieved that the war against America had ended, but made clear that he would not shrink from further conflict with South Vietnam, although for the time being he was ready to wait, believing that what he called 'the inner contradictions'

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in the Southern regime would lead to its eventual collapse. He said with great emphasis that the future of Vietnam must be settled by the Vietnamese themselves, and he was utterly confident that the dedication and self-discipline which had already won a great victory over the 'foreigner' would prove equally effective in the forthcoming political battle.

Pham Van Dong was equally dogmatic when we discussed the question of aid to enable the country to recover from the ravages of war. He dismissed our proposals that aid should be channelled through United Nations agencies, or through an international consortium. He said, rather loftily, that he would be ready to discuss aid from abroad if it was offered on a purely bilateral basis. As to the United States, they were under an obligation to pay full compensation to his country for the losses it had suffered. His diffidence had vanished and was replaced by a single-minded determination that had no regard for the sensitivities of others.

I did not give much for the future of South Vietnam when we came away. Nevertheless, it remained militarily stronger than the North, and in our subsequent report to the Labour Party the three of us agreed that if economic, social, political and military capacity were taken together, President Thieu had 'the capacity to survive on all fronts for at least two years, but beyond that period, speculation is worthless'. It was not a bad judgement for in fact the final crisis and defeat for Saigon came just two years later, in April 1975.

The United States still seems unwilling to draw the lesson of the tragic story of Vietnam, namely that in a confrontation between two dictatorships, one of which is a society that lives by corruption and tolerates great extremes of wealth and poverty, and the other a body of inflexible, single-minded, self-confident Marxists, the rigid discipline of the communist will eventually triumph. The West should be careful whom it backs. It has been a mistaken policy to proceed on the assumption that a regime is entitled to aid and support no matter how corrupt or dictator-ridden, provided it is sufficiently anti-communist. This attitude is not only morally dubious, but usually a profound policy error.

Another visit during my period in Opposition was to the Middle East in January 1974. I have recalled it especially because it marked the beginning of a close relationship between President Sadat of Egypt and myself. I had known the leaders of Israel well for many years, but had never previously met Sadat and was anxious to do so before the British general election, which seemed likely to take place during 1974. My visit

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Harold Wilson put the matter to a Cabinet meeting in December. The discussion was temperate and a decision was reached that until negotiations were completed and the whole package could be seen in its entirety, the doctrine of collective responsibility for Government policy should apply, but that at the end of the process a further decision would be taken on how Ministers should conduct themselves during the referendum. Notwithstanding this, Tony Benn began the New Year of 1975 by sending an open letter to his constituents which he intended should convey his continued opposition to membership, no matter what the terms of our re-negotiation. When asked how he reconciled this with the Cabinet decision, he explained that he had written to his electors not as a Cabinet Minister but as their MP, so that they should understand that continued EEC membership would weaken the bond between an MP and his constituents. Such dissembling cut no ice with Harold, and he curtly told Tony Benn that his letter was not within the spirit of the Cabinet's December conclusion, adding that if any individual member of the Cabinet jumped the gun, others would do the same. Tony Benn's action made it more difficult for the Prime Minister to restrain the pro-Marketeers in the Cabinet from also stating their views publicly, and he feared the Cabinet would be thrown into public dispute and the Party into turmoil even before we knew the result of the re-negotiations. He therefore told Benn to refrain from any further public pronouncements of his own views and to remain within the terms of the Cabinet's decision. One of Tony's blind spots was his inability to understand that for him to argue that he was keeping within the letter of the law, when he clearly offended against its spirit, aroused hostility even among those of his colleagues who shared his opinions on the merits of the issue.

Michael Foot and Peter Shore pursued their opposition strongly within the Cabinet itself and in letters to the Prime Minister, concentrating especially on some sentences in the Paris agreement which they believed weakened the right of a nation to use its veto to prevent a Community decision from becoming effective. They objected also to the move towards electing members of the European Assembly by direct universal suffrage. I had no real difficulty on either score, and once again I do not believe that experience has borne out their fears. Michael and Peter are both men of integrity, who behaved with total loyalty and in a spirit of comradeship during a period which was difficult for all of us.

The strains were telling, and it was clear that the time would come when it would be impossible to hold a divided Cabinet together any longer; in

Harold's words, its members would have to be let off the lead and be free to express their own views. We were agreed that we must make this period as short as possible, if the Government's authority in other areas was not to be fatally weakened. Accordingly, he and I decided that we would do our best to bring the re-negotiations to a conclusion at the next Summit meeting, which was to be held in Dublin in March 1975, with Garret Fitzgerald, the Prime Minister of Ireland, in the Chair.

We intensified our negotiations in Brussels and my colleagues and I paid even more frequent visits. So great was their wariness that it had been my practice to circulate a record of every conversation I held in Brussels to all Cabinet Ministers, irrespective of whether or not their Departments were directly affected. I had begun this in the hope of disarming suspicions that I might be exceeding my instructions, but the consequence was that both sides in the Cabinet examined minutely each nuance in my hurriedly dictated reports, and then shouted or whispered contradictory advice on the next step.

I found this somewhat irksome and on one occasion unwisely circulated a minute to the effect that I would no longer send every communication to everyone, although I would maintain the closest consultation with those particular Cabinet Ministers whose Departmental interests were under discussion. My intention was that the Cabinet should judge the result of each separate set of negotiations as each item was completed. This was a mistake, and brought indignant complaints from some Ministers. Harold backed me, saying that I was not getting the help and support I was entitled to, but promised that the Cabinet would be kept informed of every significant development. This was accepted and I was very grateful to him for getting me off the hook for an initiative that could have been better phrased.

As a result of the efforts of my Cabinet colleagues, rapid progress was made in the early months of 1975. Henry Kissinger, the United States Secretary of State, visited me in February and during the course of a long talk, I described the state of our negotiations. The United States rightly did not express any formal view on the British Government's attitude, but Henry Kissinger and I had struck up a good relationship and I always treated with him on a basis of frankness. He responded with generosity and I took advantage of this to get his own views 'off the record'. As I expected, he favoured Britain's continued membership, but said significantly that if the decision went the other way, we could be sure that the United States would do all it could to help Britain and to sustain the

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relationship between our two countries. It might mean that we would work together even more closely than before, taking into account Britain's economic problems, but in any event Britain need not fear that she would be cold-shouldered. This was genuinely meant and it was reassuring to know, but neither he nor I was under any illusion that a withdrawal could be painless or that a closer relationship with the United States would not involve Britain paying a price for such support.

This talk with Henry Kissinger was part of a regular system of consultation and information which included Commonwealth Governments and bodies such as the TUC International Committee, the Labour Party and the CBI. The meetings with the TUC were particularly interesting. There was no precedent for such occasions – that organisation and the Foreign Office lived in different worlds. But the world of labour is international and trade union leaders have many overseas links, which sometimes gives them a slant on issues different from the experience of our Ambassadors. Jack Jones was Chairman of the TUC Committee and he and I agreed to hold meetings at fairly regular intervals in which we would discuss any issue they wished. I found these occasions very helpful and used them to explain the reasons for the Government's actions on such issues as Greece, Cyprus, Chile, South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal. One result was that despite the opposition of Congress to Britain's membership of the EEC, we experienced little hostility on other questions.

I encouraged our Embassies to create opportunities to meet with British trade union leaders when they travelled overseas to attend international conferences. Our people were often too modest to use the resources of the Embassies in the proprietorial manner of some I know, but they had contacts and sources of information which threw valuable light on the work of the Embassies. It was also helpful for officials serving overseas to meet trade union leaders fresh from home and hear at first-hand their views, especially as industrial relations are given such partisan treatment by the press. I found that most Embassies welcomed this.

In preparation for the Dublin meeting of the Heads of Government of European Community members on 10 March 1975, I drew up a minute in the form of a balance sheet, and sent it to the Prime Minister. On the credit side, there would be no practical difficulties for us about economic and monetary union or our ability to control capital movements, about harmonisation of VAT or our regional policy; no one would make waves about these. We had secured a substantial improvement in the Commonwealth Sugar Agreements, and the new Lome Convention, which offered

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technical cooperation to Africa and to the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean and the Pacific, was now ready to be signed. On the debit side, we had not secured adequate safeguards for New Zealand, and although good progress had been made since December 1974 in devising a budget mechanism to reduce Britain's net financial burden, its adoption would be a political decision and not merely a technical solution. Hence we could run into difficulties, which might cause us to say that re-negotiation had failed.

We were already in difficulty about the Common Agriculture Policy, for I could not claim any fundamental re-negotiation of its principles. On the other hand, the German Chancellor and other Heads of Government had expressed their strong dissatisfaction with its operation and acknowledged that changes would have to be made. It was not the strongest moment to press our objections for at that time world prices for grain were (unusually as it turned out) higher than the internal Community price, so I could hardly argue that the British housewife was being denied cheap food. And I was in no doubt that if the member states dallied over reform, it would be forced upon them eventually because expenditure would grow faster than revenue. The inevitable deficit would force a fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, but I could not forecast how soon it would come. It was clear that Dublin would be a tough meeting. We knew that some Heads of Government would try to play off concessions by them on New Zealand's dairy products in exchange for concessions by us on the Budget. Helmut Schmidt's attitude to our claims would be influenced by whether or not the Prime Minister would state once again his intention positively to recommend and support a satisfactory new settlement. The French would want to hear a positive statement from us on European unity however remote this might be in practice.

The press of Europe and the world, knowing that the re-negotiations were approaching a climax, arrived in Dublin in force and heightened the drama. Hans-Dietrich Genscher took me on one side before the first session began. He was an ardent believer in European unity, a man who endeavoured to build bridges whenever difficulties arose between the member states, and a hard worker who kept his finger on the pulse of the Community. He radiated an air of solid judgement and I listened carefully as he told me that the Dutch and the Danes would be very difficult about importing New Zealand butter and cheese, and the Germans too had similar difficulties, but he believed they would make concessions

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Neither Greek nor Turkish Cypriots fully accepted the imposed constitution; neither community felt any moral responsibility for it, and both parties twisted it to their own advantage, or ignored it if they could do so. Archbishop Makarios became President. He had been forced to yield on his demand for Enosis, and now he found himself thwarted in his plan for a truly united Cyprus. In 1963 he put forward certain proposals to establish majority rule but the Turkish minority rejected them.

Tension grew and both sides reached for their guns. Grivas, who had left the island after it secured independence, returned in 1964 and took over supreme command of the newly formed National Guard. He was well versed in the arts of terrorism and there were brutal shootings of civilians, to which the Turks responded with equal ferocity.

In an attempt to keep the peace between the communities, the Security Council of the United Nations sent a mixed force (UNFICYP) to the island. On more than one occasion Turkey threatened to invade the island to safeguard the Turkish minority, and hostility grew in 1967 when a coup in Athens by a group of Army Colonels established a military dictatorship which revived the call for Enosis. But Makarios had tasted independence and had gone cool on union with Greece. He began to make attempts to improve relations with the Turkish minority but this was bitterly resented as treachery by Grivas and his EOKA guerrillas, who turned against Makarios and made two unsuccessful attempts on his life – the second in 1973.

While the cauldron bubbled Britain's general posture was to detach herself from the internal difficulties of the now independent island and confine her interests to the Sovereign bases. Cyprus joined the Commonwealth; Makarios became a regular attender at Commonwealth Conferences and relations between him and Britain became warmer, while Britain supplied troops to bolster the United Nations Peace Keeping Force.

The settlement of 1960 had left Britain with residual responsibilities. The intended effect of independence and of the 1960 constitution was that Britain should abandon sovereignty, Greece should abandon Enosis, and Turkey should abandon her demand for partition of the island. This arrangement was buttressed by a separate Treaty of Guarantee, under which the three nations became guarantors of the island's new status, and undertook to prohibit either the union of Cyprus with another state or its partition. Article IV provided for the three nations to consult together in the event of the Treaty being violated, and if concerted action was not possible each of the three Powers reserved the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty'.

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The treaty also permitted Greece and Turkey to station contingents in Cyprus and in 1974 Greek army officers acting under orders from the Greek Military Government began to fan the Enosis flames and attempted to undermine Makarios. By this time he was openly at odds with Athens and on 2 July 1974 called on the Greek Military Government to withdraw all Greek officers from the island and to cease to give active support and arms to Grivas and EOKA. This demand set in train a series of events which in the course of the next four years were to lead to the overthrow of Makarios, the downfall of the Greek military dictatorship in Athens, the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, the prospect of war between two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, and the effective partition of Cyprus. The call made by Makarios to Greece coincided with a visit to London by Henry Kissinger, the United States Secretary of State. He was returning to America following a summit meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev in Moscow – the last they were to have before Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974.

Kissinger was somewhat weary from a succession of visits to other European capitals to brief the NATO allies on the Moscow talks, but this did not prevent him from giving me a most comprehensive account of the SALT talks, which were of stupefying complexity and now seemed likely to end in deadlock. We discussed our response to the Soviet demand for the inclusion of French and British nuclear deterrants in the talks, which both Governments opposed, the possible political developments in Spain and her future relationship with NATO, the situation in the Middle East, the prospects for oil supplies, and touched on a number of other issues. I mention these because at no time in our long discussions did either of us speak of the Cyprus situation, and I can only conclude that we had no inkling that the ten thousand-strong Greek National Guard would launch a coup d'état against their own President within the next seven days. Over the years I had come to regard Cyprus as the villagers who continue to cultivate their vines on its slopes regard Mount Etna: knowing that it is always likely to erupt but not expecting every subterranean rumble to lead to disaster. So Makarios's demand on 2 July for the withdrawal of the Greek officers might be no more than another rumble deep in the heart of the volcano.

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We were soon enlightened. Early in the morning of 15 July I received an immediate 'flash' message, reporting that a coup had been launched by the Greek National Guard under the pretence that they were intervening to stop fighting between different Greek factions on the island. In truth they were themselves responsible for the fighting by their attacks on Makarios's supporters. The report added that they had attacked and occupied the Presidential Palace and claimed to have killed Archbishop Makarios. The airport had been seized and was closed, and the leaders of the coup had installed one Nicos Sampson as President in place of Makarios. My first thought was 'Nicos who?' as the name was totally unknown. He turned out to be an unsavoury adventurer who was one of the leaders of the terrorist EOKA guerrillas.

The news pushed other problems off my desk and during the morning I sent urgent messages to the Greek and Turkish Governments, calling attention to provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee for the territorial integrity and security of the island, and asking for their reaction. We urged the need for restraint by both countries.

It was the height of the holiday season and one source of great concern was that many thousands of British holiday-makers were on the island and could easily become involved in the fighting. The British High Commissioner, Stephen Olver, at once made their welfare and safety his first responsibility, and during the period of the emergency, both in this matter and many others, I had the utmost regard for his energy, determination, stamina and coolness.

Foreign Office officials are the butt of many jokes, but whatever their shortcomings, it has been my happy experience that whenever a real emergency does arise they will accept any challenge, however remote from their daily experience, assume great responsibilities and work tirelessly and with skill. On that first morning I sat down with the Foreign Office Ministers, Sir Thomas Brimelow, the Permanent Under-Secretary, and other officials to identify the general lines on which we should proceed. I had no hesitation in accepting that it was for Britain to take the initiative with Greece and Turkey. Quite apart from the safety of British dependents and holiday-makers, we had a prime interest in the safety of our sovereign base areas, and as a party to the Treaty of Guarantee, we were concerned that the *coup d'état* should not escalate tension between Greece and Turkey. In those first hours we were unaware of the degree of culpability of the Greek Colonels' regime itself in precipitating these events.

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It was Napoleon who said that international incidents should not govern foreign policy, but foreign policy, incidents. In Cyprus the two were intricably bound. There was a multiplicity of interests and concerns whose impact and implications defied the exactitude of predetermined solutions. The groundwork that had been laid for the island's future in the constitution of 1960 had been undermined from the beginning by both communities, aided and abetted by elements in the two countries which had devised the constitution. Sir Thomas Brimelow summed up the position: 'We have become familiar with deaf ears in Cyprus. For eleven years Britain had urged negotiations between the communities – nobody listened.'

The conclusions we reached on the morning of the coup were as follows: We should aim to avoid an armed response by Turkey. The Greek Military Government was probably culpable. Despite this, Britain should proceed at once to consult with both Greece and Turkey as laid down by the Treaty of Guarantee, and thereafter with Cypriot representatives. Even if Makarios was dead, we should not recognise any other government of Cyprus for the time being. On the other hand, the Cyprus Government had serious defects in its treatment of the Turks and we need not aim at a restoration of the *status quo ante*. For years, the Turkish Cypriots had either been denied or had not practised their rights under the 1960 constitution. We should endeavour to remedy their position and even establish a better relationship with the Greek Cypriots.

I went down to the House and reported. Alec Douglas-Home, who was acting as the Shadow Foreign Secretary, was helpful and urged that we should not hesitate to defend the British bases if attacked. A few hours later, news arrived that the Greek National Guard had lied in reporting that Makarios had been captured and executed. In fact, he had escaped, was in hiding and had sent a message secretly requesting that he be given refuge in one of the British sovereign bases. These are not legally part of the territory of Cyprus and, after consulting the Prime Minister, I at once gave permission and an RAF helicopter was sent to collect him from his hiding place near Paphos, in the extreme south-west corner of the island. This was accomplished safely and he was flown to the British base at Akrotiri. Fighting was still going on and if his presence there had become known it might have prompted disturbances or even an attack. Our apprehension coincided with his wishes and an RAF aircraft therefore flew him to Malta and onwards to London as his main concern was to present his country's case as quickly as possible to the Security Council in New York.

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He told me that following the two previous unsuccessful attempts on his life, he had expected that the palace might be attacked at some time and so was not wholly unprepared. When the shelling started, he made his way to a little-known exit from the palace, threw off his ecclesiastical robes, scrambled along a ditch and, helped by friends, made his way to a waiting car which carried him unrecognised away. Dom Mintoff had earlier telephoned me from Malta to say that the Archbishop had no money or clothes, but by the time we met he was again fully clad in his regalia, dignified, composed, philosophical, and grateful to the RAF for his rescue. However, he was critical of the Americans, whom he felt had been too lenient with the Greek Colonels' regime. He said bitterly that it had only been necessary for the Colonels to declare themselves anti-communist to win a measure of understanding. I was able to tell him that the Prime Minister of Turkey would arrive in London for consultations on that very evening of 17 July, but I had not yet received a reply from the Greeks.

Both British and Turkish Governments refused to have any dealings with Nicos Sampson, and I dispatched a firm note to the Greek Government calling on them to withdraw their officers from the Cyprus National Guard and recall them to Greece. In doing this I was backed by the Archbishop's opinion that if the Greek officers were withdrawn the Sampson regime would at once collapse and open the way for a more representative Administration. He added realistically that he himself might not be able to return personally for some time to come. Makarios's criticism of America was understandable. They had objected strongly to his declaration that he would take help from anywhere - even the Soviet Union - to maintain the independence of Cyprus, believing that such a course would have undermined the south-eastern flank of NATO, about which the West was rightly sensitive. I had no doubt that Makarios was genuine in his desire for Cypriot independence - indeed that was the reason for his break with EOKA - and by openly supporting him, we could avoid him turning to Moscow. This I did. Like him, I did not believe there was any long-term prospect of the survival of the Greek Military Government. The proud independent spirit of the Greek people would break through in due course, and in the meantime, the regime should be made to feel the weight of the West's dislike.

One of my earliest steps as Foreign Secretary had been to demonstrate Britain's disapproval of the regime by authorising the cancellation of a flag-flying visit by Royal Navy ships to Greek ports. The difference in

emphasis between the United States and Britain about the attitude that should be adopted towards the Archbishop extended to other matters, and although our two countries were agreed on broad objectives, we differed on procedures and tactics. This persisted throughout the ensuing weeks and we did not succeed in establishing the coordination of policy that I had hoped for and which was necessary.

The failure was not merely caused by our different perceptions. It was another malign consequence of the Watergate affair, which at that time was rapidly approaching its climax and engaged so much of Henry Kissinger's attention that on occasion he and I lost contact during critical hours. In discussion I have never found Henry impervious to reason or argument. He has the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into the feelings of his interlocutor and transmuting them into a constructive course. But it is hard to do this over the trans-Atlantic telephone, and his preoccupation with the consequences of Richard Nixon's final days as President prevented us from having that continuous face-to-face personal contact that would have settled differences and enabled Britain and America to march together.

Britain felt a special obligation to Cyprus as a member of the Commonwealth, and to her people because of our past links, as well as our responsibility under the 1960 Treaty. The United States had neither a similar background of history nor a similar treaty relationship. Their principal concern was to avoid an extension of Soviet influence in the Middle East, and to the extent that this meant preventing Turkey and Greece from getting at each other's throats, British and American policy coincided. But it also resulted in the United States being less willing to antagonise either the Greek Colonels in the early stages of the conflict or the Turks after their invasion. I felt fewer inhibitions.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of Turkey arrived at No. 10 Downing Street on the evening of 17 July, accompanied by some of his Ministers' and two Generals. On our side were the Prime Minister, Minister of Defence Roy Mason, and myself. Ecevit was very direct. In view of the coup he no longer recognised Greece as a Guarantor of Cyprus and he would not therefore meet them for the consultations among the three powers, as laid down in Article IV of the 1960 Treaty. There must be immediate action to bring about an effective Turkish presence on the island to save Turkish lives. This could be achieved if we would allow the British sovereign bases to be used by Turkey for the purpose of landing troops in Cyprus. If Turkey was permitted to use these facilities she would

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minimise any embarrassment that might arise between the Greeks and
ourselves. In future it would be necessary for Turkey to have secure
access across the sea at a point somewhere close to Turkey. In an interest-
ing aside which showed how much relations had improved between
Makarios and the Turks Ecevit added that he was 'almost weeping' over
the departure of the Archbishop, and hoped that one day a dialogue with
him might create a sense of nationhood on the island.

I had not been prepared for this direct request to use British bases, but it was an impossible proposition. The island needed fewer Greek troops, not more Turkish troops, and we had called on the Greek Government to withdraw their National Guard officers. Both the Prime Minister and I emphasised that the legal status of the bases was different from the rest of the island and that to permit them to be used for a third country's troops to enter Cyprus would certainly give rise at some stage to a direct challenge to their status by the Government of Cyprus. Harold Wilson then suggested an alternative way forward. Despite Ecevit's declaration, Turkey and Britain had a responsibility to set the Treaty of Guarantee in motion and both countries should jointly invite the Greeks to join us in London for the consultation provided by Article IV. I added that the Turkish Government should not confuse our objective of restoring democracy and constitutional legitimacy in Cyprus with restoring the *status quo ante*, for Britain recognised that the Turkish Cypriots had legitimate grievances that needed remedy.

After an adjournment for dinner together, both sides returned to the Cabinet Room where we went over the same ground again. Despite all our efforts, Ecevit adamantly refused to send a joint message to the Greek Government inviting them to a meeting, although he saw no objection to Britain meeting the Greeks separately. Early on the following morning, I tried to restart conversations with the Turkish Foreign Minister, but although he came to see me, he was under instructions and we could make no progress. My final message was that Britain expected Turkey not to resort to unilateral military action and so worsen an already bad situation. The Foreign Minister gave me no assurance on the point and when the Turkish Prime Minister and his party left London later that day, we did not know what action they would take. On 18 July we at last received a reply from the Greek Military Government. Brigadier Ioannidis was as uncompromising as Ecevit had been. He told our Ambassador that Greece would not come to London for talks, either between the three Guarantor Powers under the Treaty or bilaterally with Britain.

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Britain was faced with a situation in which two of the three Guarantor Powers had declined to play the part they had undertaken to do in the Treaty of 1960, but the matter could not be left where it was. We needed to remove any pretext for a Turkish invasion and our policy became one of securing the overthrow of Sampson and the return of Makarios, with new safeguards for the Turkish minority. The Sampson regime was no more than surface deep and the Military Government in Athens was running into difficulty. I therefore worked to increase converging pressure on Athens by Britain, by the European Community of which France held the Presidency, and by NATO. Above all, we would need the utmost United States pressure on the Military Government in Athens, for America had more influence than any other country.

My belief was that prompt withdrawal of the Greek National Guard officers who had initiated the coup might persuade Turkey to stay her hand. I urged the United States on 17 July to use their influence with the Greeks to procure the downfall of Sampson, and Henry Kissinger sent Joseph Sisco, Assistant Under-Secretary of State, to London overnight, with the intention that he should travel on to Athens. Sisco arrived in London before Ecevit had left for home and he offered to travel to Ankara for talks on 20 July, after he had seen the Greek regime. Ecevit was clearly determined to keep the United States at arm's length and rebuffed him, saying that his visit would not be convenient. Sisco and I reviewed the situation and both of us shared the view that, despite Ecevit's tactics, military action by the Turks was not imminent.

I urged on Sisco the need to evolve a joint Anglo-American policy as the only way of containing the serious Turkish-Greek differences. Not only did the United States have much more influence with both countries than Britain, but our experiences in the Second World War led me to be a strong advocate of Anglo-American cooperation when crises developed. I had no intention of exposing Britain to the kind of differences with the United States which existed at the time of the Suez invasion and which had resulted in a terrible setback for British arms and influence. During that contest the radar of the American fleet had deliberately interfered with and confused the signals of the British and French ships. Further, American destroyers had moored themselves alongside Egyptian ships in harbour so that the Royal Navy could not fire. I was determined that if military force had to be used in Cyprus, there must be a clear understanding with the United States, with their support fully guaranteed.

I admired very much the diplomatic skills which Henry Kissinger had

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demonstrated after the Arab-Israeli War. No one could handle the Greeks and Turks better if he were so minded, and I therefore sent him a detailed personal message on 19 July urging the need to coordinate British and American views on the best way to bring the situation under control. I made certain proposals on lines of policy. These were: to assert the legitimacy of Makarios; to work for the disappearance of Sampson; to use the constitution for the legal appointment of a successor to Makarios if he was unable to act; to revise the military agreements under which Greek and Turkish armed forces were present on the island; and to consider constitutional changes which would give better protection to the Turkish minority. Procedurally we should work bilaterally, aiming to bring the parties together, but also using the United Nations for this purpose.

In short, at that stage very great pressure was needed on the Greeks in order to remove any excuse for a Turkish invasion. To this end I asked that America should redouble its efforts. Because of President Nixon's preoccupation with Watergate, it seems to me that Henry Kissinger was unable to get any clear guidance from him. He telephoned our Ambassador in Washington with his reply, saying that the United States would certainly not work to keep Sampson in office and agreeing that this was the least desirable outcome. On the other hand, he was cool about Makarios's return, although he would go along with my efforts - perhaps one step behind. The United States would not be hurried into committed positions on constitutional change, and as to putting pressure on the Greeks, he would be ready to do so only once it was clear what our goals were in the matter of constitutional change. This was of no immediate assistance to me, for constitutional discussions would obviously stretch into the future, whereas pressure on the Greek Government to withdraw their officers was needed without a moment's delay if the Turks were to be denied an excuse for acting.

Whilst this exchange was taking place we became aware that Turkish troops and ships were on the move, and some time after midnight Turkish forces landed on the island. I was awakened with the news at 4.20 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 20 July as a result of a telephone call from Henry Kissinger to my home. I telephoned at once to the Resident Clerk at the Foreign Office to alert the Private Office staff to send a car to collect me, but it had not arrived in the few minutes it took me to get dressed. I went into the street, but there were no taxis at that early hour and very little other traffic. A van was approaching, which I flagged down and asked the driver if he would be good enough to take me urgently to Downing Street.

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He looked somewhat suspicious and said he was on his way to start his delivery round (milk or bread - I forget which), but fortunately he recognised me and a few minutes later the delivery van and I drove in style down Whitehall.

Now that the crisis had burst, my spirits rose and my energies re-doubled. First I awakened both Greek and Turkish Ambassadors, who came at once. I saw them separately and reminded both that their countries had by Treaty guaranteed the territorial integrity of Cyprus and had further agreed to prohibit either Enosis or partition. The provisions of the Treaty were now being violated by both countries and we had a joint responsibility under Article IV to consult together to bring this state of affairs to an end. I therefore formally called on the Greek and Turkish Governments to meet with the British Government immediately, either in London or at any other agreed location, and asked the Ambassadors to convey this at once to Athens and Ankara.

On this occasion it did not take long for the Greek Junta to respond. By eight o'clock the Greek Chargé d'Affaires informed us that his Government was not willing to meet with the other Guarantors and that unless Turkish troops were withdrawn from Cyprus, Greece would declare war on Turkey and declare a state of Enosis that would permanently unite Cyprus with Greece. The Turks made no reply during that day.

My next step was to call in the Soviet Ambassador. It was still very early in the morning and he was unaware of the invasion until I explained to him what had taken place and what I proposed. I told him he would be kept closely informed of developments for, although I certainly did not expect Soviet assistance, I did not want Soviet misunderstandings to complicate further a tangled situation. Foreign Office officials continued to brief Soviet representatives privately whilst the tension was at its height, with some advantage to the general situation. The Russians were watchful and questioned us closely throughout the period about our actions and our intentions, and my policy was to respond as frankly as possible. As was to be expected, they made propaganda about our supposed intention to convert Cyprus into a NATO base, but their heart was not really in it for they knew we were being candid with them. There was only one occasion on which I had a major grievance against them, namely when the Soviet Union vetoed a Security Council Resolution to expand the United Nations Force on the island. I complained strongly but privately and twenty-four hours later they abandoned their veto, allowing the force to be strengthened.

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I am told that the use of the international telephone as a method of dealing with crisis diplomacy hampers professional historians who are hungry for written evidence in their search for truth. No doubt it also frustrates the man on the spot and is probably little improvement on the more sedate exchanges of earlier times. The belief that personal contact leads to more accurate understanding is often true of face-to-face contacts, but much more doubtful when the telephone is used.

The weekend of 20 July was a period of heavy, unrelieved pressure on the energies of the American Secretary of State. Pressure had been growing week by week for the impeachment of the American President and on the day of the Turkish invasion, Nixon had called Kissinger to California for consultations. During the following week Congress was to begin televised proceedings and these could lead to a vote on whether to impeach. Nixon was desperate to construct a majority to prevent this. Kissinger flew from Washington to San Clemente in California with the result that he and I were out of touch for all of Saturday. He has subsequently written that so many documents relating to Watergate were being sent over the circuits to President Nixon that he had to secure special priority for cables about the Cyprus crisis.

Sunday 21 July was a mad day of activity. Henry and I spoke on the telephone about nine or ten times, and it may be of interest to those who wonder how such matters are conducted if I set down some of the telephone conversations that were held that day.

12.45 I telephoned Ecevit and urged an immediate cease-fire in accordance with a Security Council Resolution of the United Nations. He promised to put the proposal to his National Security Council later today. Would he be ready to meet me? Says he can't afford to be too far from Ankara, but suggests Switzerland as the venue. I tell him Greeks have demanded that Turkish Air Force should not bomb a convoy of Greek ships en route to Cyprus and urge compliance. He agrees provided the warships accompanying these ships turn away. (We telephone Greeks to tell them of this exchange.)

13.20 I telephone Bruno Kreisky (Chancellor of Austria). If Switzerland is not available as a meeting place, could Ecevit and I (and perhaps Greeks) meet in Vienna? He agrees.

13.30 Kissinger telephones. Arrangements for cease-fire are making progress. Greeks accept without conditions. Two Governments will announce and subsequently I can announce further talks between the three Guarantor Powers.

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13.45 Kissinger telephones. Greek Government is very weak: Athens should not be asked to make more decisions than it can handle. This may slow down the timetable for talks. Kissinger says Turks are not now ready to cease-fire.

15.55 Kissinger calls. He says if cease-fire is not agreed he has authority from President to threaten removal of United States nuclear weapons from Turkey. Also, if war breaks out between the two countries, nuclear weapons will be removed.

16.25 Kypraios, Greek Foreign Minister, telephones in highly emotional state. Turkish Air Force is bombing Greek Cypriots, cannot wait three days for cease-fire. If cease-fire is not agreed immediately, the Greek Army will launch an attack on Turkey.

16.50 I reach Kissinger, and tell him the Greek Government will decide at 19.00 today on beginning hostilities. Kissinger says United States supports removal of Sampson. Kissinger says he has told Ecevit that the United States will proceed to remove nuclear weapons from Thrace and Anatolia if there is no cease-fire. This has made Ecevit think again and he has promised a further answer within thirty minutes.

16.55 During my call to Kissinger am told that Ecevit is waiting to speak to me (presumably as a result of Kissinger's ultimatum). He says he wants to postpone a cease-fire because the Greek Colonels may resign and there may be a Moscow-inclined Administration in Greece by tomorrow. I reply 'no dice' unless he also wants war and tell him what I know of Junta's intentions. His best course is to accept Security Council's Resolution. He says he intends to tell Kissinger he accepts cease-fire 'in principle', but will not implement completely until Tuesday 22 July. He complains that Greek ships are landing troops in Cyprus under cover of flying the Turkish flag and Greek planes have Turkish-speaking pilots on board to confuse. I propose that the three Powers meet in Vienna at 08.00 on Tuesday 22 as soon as cease-fire is in place. He will let me know.

17.20 I telephone Kissinger and tell him of Ecevit's response. I say I believe he will come to talks. Now Turkey accepts cease-fire in principle, I suggest he pressures Greeks to come to Vienna.

17.55 Kissinger calls. Joe Sisco is going to see the Greek Junta now. They want a cease-fire tonight and a meeting on Tuesday morning. If they won't buy a cease-fire 'in principle' effective Tuesday, he and I must both tackle Ecevit again.

20.40 I tell Kissinger there must be a definite cease-fire by 14.00 on 22 July so that the three Powers can meet. He asks me to telephone Ecevit

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and he will do the same. We should both send notes on the same lines to Athens. Would I approach the Nine to do the same?

21.00 I speak to Sauvagnargues (French Foreign Minister) who is acting for the Community. He agrees to take action in both capitals at once.

21.40 Kissinger calls. Sisco is still with Greeks. They are naturally more interested in assurances from the United States than Britain. He says the Junta don't love Britain. Turks now promise effective cease-fire tomorrow. He will propose noon Washington time. I suggest noon local time. I say we are getting reports that Turks have bombed and sunk some of their own vessels. This will not improve their mood.

22.25 I speak to Kyraios about proposed cease-fire and urge him to come to Vienna on 22 July. He says he will not meet Turks until they adhere to the terms of the Resolution passed by the Security Council.

23.00 Sauvagnargues calls to say that French Government will despatch note on behalf of Nine tonight.

23.10 Kissinger telephones. Ecevit has now finally agreed to recommend acceptance of cease-fire for 14.00 tomorrow.

These almost continuous telephone exchanges were slotted into many other activities that day. It was necessary to keep the Prime Minister thoroughly up to date as well as remaining in close touch with the Minister of Defence. Broadcasts had to be made to our own people, and emergency evacuation arrangements for the many thousands of British tourists and holiday-makers. Roy Hattersley took charge of this aspect and like everyone he turned to the task with tremendous zest, unafraid to take decisions.

Thousands of Greek Cypriots were fleeing from the area where the Turkish Army was fanning out whilst other thousands of Turkish Cypriots living in Greek Cypriot areas were taking refuge in Turkish strongholds to escape the wrath of the Greeks. Our first step was to advise the seventeen thousand British residents and dependents of servicemen who lived among the civilian population to withdraw to the sovereign base areas, where they would have protection from the inter-communal hatred. Stephen Olver, sometimes telephoning London from the basement of his office in Nicosia whilst a violent battle raged around it, speedily organised a convoy of a thousand cars to take British evacuees to the nearest British base. A British armed convoy was sent from Dhekelia to escort them and 4,500 passengers drove perilously from Nicosia to the southern base. All arrived safely. It was a successful mixture of improvisation and planning. Britain had undertaken to help the

nationals of other European countries as well as Americans, and they and some other British residents and holiday-makers grouped together to make their way north to Kyrenia, hoping to be evacuated by sea. Turkish tanks were already in the town and our High Commissioner engaged in some delicate negotiations.

Large crowds of evacuees gathered on the beaches and the Royal Navy, with crews at action stations, came close in to the shore, despite some slight attempted harassment by the Turkish Navy. I called Bulent Ecevit to complain about this and he admitted that the Turkish Navy had orders to keep the Royal Navy ten kilometres from the coastline. I warned him that our ships were going in and that we would hold Turkey responsible if there were any incidents. Fortunately for the Turkish ships they did not attempt to enforce their orders, and by 9.15 a.m. on Tuesday morning 22 July, with Turkish ships watching, HMS Devonshire and HMS Andromeda had safely embarked every single person who wished to leave.

I believe Ecevit himself was anxious to avoid any action that might have led to an armed clash with the United Nations Forces or with Britain, but some fire-eating Turkish Generals were at large in Cyprus, backed by a belligerent Turkish Ambassador. At one stage Turkish tanks began to mass around Nicosia and the Commander of the United Nations Force reported that they feared an attack on their positions at the airport. They possessed only side-arms for protection. We at once offered reinforcements to the United Nations forces and flew 1,300 extra troops from Britain to Cyprus. Their arrival had a steadying effect.

The Turkish Government had given an undertaking not to take over the airport at Nicosia, but despite this they continued to inch forward, slowly edging the United Nations forces back. As soon as the British 16/5th Lancers. reinforcements were in position I asked that they be given orders to stand fast and not give further ground. At the same time Phantom aircraft were flown out from Britain to give them air cover. I telephoned Ecevit personally and told him of the orders the 16/5th Lancers had received, that they would hold their ground and resist any further encroachment. If they were fired on they would respond. We held an acrimonious conversation, at the end of which Ecevit undertook to look into the matter personally, saying that Ankara did not always know what was taking place on the island. The upshot was satisfactory, for the Turks halted their gradual push forward and the airport did not pass into their hands although it remained closed.

The cease-fire finally came into force on 22 July and on the following

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day the humiliated Greek Junta resigned, while in Cyprus Nicos Sampson was replaced by a respected Greek Cypriot leader, Glafkos Clerides, as Acting President. In Athens Constantine Karamanlis, a statesman of wide experience, formed a new Government committed to democracy and at once reversed the Junta's position by agreeing to take part in three-party talks under the Treaty of Guarantee. The Turks also changed their position and assented. By agreement we switched the venue from Vienna to Geneva; I met the other two Foreign Ministers there on 25 July in the Palais des Nations.

With the arrival of a democratic government in Greece, British policy acquired a new element. It was important for the Greek people and for international relations that Greek democracy should be strengthened. The new civilian Government must not be brought down by the folly of its predecessor, nor humiliated in the forthcoming talks with Turkey. George Mavros, the newly appointed Foreign Minister, had been arrested by the Greek Junta for applauding my decision in the previous spring to cancel the British naval visit to Greece, and was exiled to the island of Cos. He said with a smile when we met at Geneva, 'You took the action. I paid the price.' But as he also attributed his later release to the efforts I had made on his behalf, we began (and remained) on good terms. He was a convinced democrat and a leading liberal politician, very conscious of the dignity of Greece, sometimes irascible when under strain (he occasionally threatened to walk out), but anxious to reach an agreement with Turkey.

Turan Gunes, the Turkish Foreign Minister, was a dark, loquacious character who looked somewhat like Groucho Marx but without the humour. He was capable of repeating the same interminable argument time after time until the words lost their meaning. He was moved neither by passion nor patience. He was an expert at obstruction, once holding up one of our meetings for several hours as he elaborated his objections to the name-plates that identified us at table. He sometimes disappeared without trace at critical moments and was said to be visiting the casino. It was typical of Gunes that a few hours before the Turkish invasion he had on my instructions been asked by our Ambassador in Ankara, Sir Horace Phillips, to confirm categorically that the Turkish sea-borne force was not about to land. He gave what Phillips later described as a 'duplicitous assurance' that they had been given no instructions to attack. Despite this I at first gave him the benefit of the doubt, but soon was convinced that he used stalling tactics merely to gain time and prevent progress.

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The Turkish delegation became little more than a cypher, and on one occasion this resulted in Ankara repudiating a rare agreement that had been hammered out between Mavros, Gunes and myself. It seemed to us that Gunes had little or no authority. Behind him stood the Turkish Cabinet, and behind the Cabinet stood the Turkish Generals. I told him that I was negotiating with a highly random telephone wire, the British role being that of patient referee and mediator, with my officials continuously bringing forward new initiatives and proposals.

The talks developed into a gruelling cliff-hanger with the Turks as well as the Greeks at times inclined to say that they were prepared to face war rather than 'retreat' or 'humiliation'. With up to fifteen thousand fighting troops landed on the island the Turks held most of the cards, and as our formal sessions were rarely productive, I spent much of my time bilaterally with one or the other in an endeavour to secure two major objectives: first, to make the cease-fire stick; and second, to prepare the ground for a new settlement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots that would strip the Turkish Army of any excuse for remaining in the field. Henry Kissinger continued his diplomatic pressure from afar and ten days after the invasion had begun, on 30 July, both parties were ready to sign a declaration committing themselves to a standfast cease-fire, acceptance of the principle of a buffer zone between the two sides to be patrolled by United Nations forces, and agreement to meet again on 9 August with the addition of representatives of Greek and Turkist Cypriots to consider the wider issues involved in a lasting solution.

These were important gains, provided both sides adhered to them, although the size and shape of the buffer zone and the precise functions of the United Nations Force remained to be delineated. But within a day of my return to London, the new Acting President of Cyprus was complaining of violations of the cease-fire by the Turks and mutual accusations of infringements grew as a team of British, Greek, Turkish and UNFICYP representatives began demarcating the buffer zone. The second round of talks therefore began on 9 August in an atmosphere of charge and countercharge. The Turks were flushed with success and their Government enjoyed a new-found popularity at home, while the Greek Government was too weak to be able to compromise.

It would be tedious to recount the wearisome exchanges of the following days: their flavour can be gathered from the account I sent to the Prime Minister at the end of our very first meeting. 'I am fairly satisfied at having prevented the meeting from breaking up in disorder ... At

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least they managed to [put their case] without anyone walking out and we are to meet again tomorrow. I did not hope for much more.'

From the beginning Gunes was adamant. His position was as follows: the Greeks themselves had overthrown the 1960 constitution and the island would not return to it. Our declaration of 30 July had failed because thousands of Turkish Cypriots were refugees. Their permanent safety must be assured and this required a geographic division into two separate zones, autonomous in internal law and administration, but unified within a federal state. He demanded an answer from the Greek Foreign Minister and the Acting President. Clerides was firm but patient. He agreed that the 1960 constitution was unsatisfactory and required substantial change, but he was not prepared to accept a new constitution at the hands of the Guarantor Powers. Cyprus was an independent sovereign state and the communities themselves must work out the necessary amendments. He accepted that a degree of internal autonomy was required for the protection of both Turkish and Greek communities, but neither he nor Archbishop Makarios, who had remained in New York, could accept federation based on a geographical division.

Mavros reinforced this, adding that the Greek Government would be humiliated by such a solution. We adjourned and the British team spent some time trying to discover by bilateral talks with each side whether there was any room for accommodation. As the days went by, we were forced to conclude that there was no 'give' of any kind in the Turkish position, although the Greeks might have been willing to concede some kind of autonomous administration in separate regions.

I must also place on record that during these talks Gunes reassured me on two occasions that Turkey had no intention of her troops advancing nor of them remaining on the island. But my doubts increased, especially in the light of a talk I had with Dr Waldheim, the Secretary General of the United Nations, who called on me in Geneva. He was deeply concerned that the Turkish Prime Minister had brusquely informed him that the United Nations Force had no judicial right to take action in any area controlled by a Guarantor Power, and he should therefore withdraw the Force from the Kyrenia-Nicosia Turkish enclave. Kurt Waldheim said he was haunted by memories of U Thant's disastrous decision to withdraw United Nations forces from Sinai in 1967. I agreed and encouraged him to make a robust response.

The next day we met again. I told him of my growing belief that the conference would end in deadlock and if so, the Turks might resume their

advance, perhaps in the week of 18 August. This would be bound to carry them through areas patrolled by the United Nations Force. On the previous occasion Britain had provided reinforcements to the United Nations very rapidly and if the occasion arose we would once again supply troops, equipped with anti-tank guns and heavy artillery. If we did so would the Secretary General seek authority for United Nations Forces to stand astride any Turkish line of advance, thus placing the onus on the Turks to decide whether to advance in the knowledge that the British troops, acting under the authority of the United Nations, would not be pushed aside?

Waldheim said that UNFICYP's original mandate did not extend to resisting the forces of a member state, but in the prevailing circumstances he did not believe that the Security Council would be an impediment to this. The Soviet Union would probably not oppose and the Chinese would absent themselves. He was very ready to cooperate, and I was heartened by his staunchness. Although I was in no doubt that the Soviet Union would not be unhappy if we all became embroiled in Cyprus, there was a balance of risks and my assessment was that if we showed ourselves sufficiently resolute the Turks would at the last moment back off. They had done this in earlier years and once again within the previous few days, when they had been faced by the 16/5th Lancers at Nicosia Airport.

I gave a private briefing to the British press and, as I had intended, it soon became public knowledge that in view of the uncertain situation the British Phantom aircraft, together with the added British troops sent to the island, would not be withdrawn and would be reinforced if necessary. I reported to the Prime Minister and also explained my thinking to Arthur Hartman, the American Assistant Secretary of State, who had accompanied me to Geneva at Henry Kissinger's request, adding that I feared that the still-fragile Greek Government of Karamanlis might be driven from office if the Turks broke the cease-fire. Hartman responded that there was no longer an odious regime in Athens, no illegal regime in Cyprus, the Turkish Cypriots were protected, and there was a strong United Nations Resolution. These were rational arguments that should appeal to Turkish intelligence, and restrain them from action. I replied that I could not agree with the assumption that we were in a rational situation and I asked Arthur Hartman to convey to Washington my misgivings and proposals, and ask that prudent forethought be given to possible Turkish military intentions so that the attitude of both our countries could be decided before a response was needed.

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At noon on Sunday 11 August 1974 he returned with the Administration's reply. Hartman is an able career diplomat, a European and Soviet expert, courteous, quiet but firm in manner and an excellent analyst. On 352 this occasion he abandoned the relaxed informality we had become accustomed to as he informed me stiffly that the United States was not happy with Her Majesty's Government's approach. Dr Kissinger had spoken to Prime Minister Ecevit following the receipt of the British assessment urging him to refrain from military action and making clear that Turkey would get no support from the United States if they made any further advance. As a result of this conversation he was convinced that Ecevit understood that further action would have serious consequences and Kissinger had asked Hartman to tell me that he had received assurances from Ecevit on this score with which he was content.

Hartman added that the Secretary of State would react very strongly against any further announcement of British military activities, because it would have an adverse effect on his tactics with Ecevit. He said that the best course was to keep the diplomatic talks going, and he hoped I would be prepared to listen and wait. The Turkish Foreign Minister should be receiving fresh instructions from Ankara allowing him to be more flexible. I responded that I was doing my best to keep discussions alive, despite the fact that the Turkish Foreign Minister was preventing us from meeting by absenting himself from arranged sessions, but I asked him to tell the Secretary of State of my anxiety that the Turks were not being handled effectively, nor were we preparing our response in the event of further Turkish military action. I believed the worst interpretation should be put on Turkish future intentions and there were sufficient pointers in this direction for us to prepare contingency plans. What was the United States prepared to do if the Turks enlarged their bridgehead? Hartman replied that Kissinger would not get himself boxed in on this question – even to focus on this eventuality would influence events to move on to a military plane. The Secretary of State had the same objective as I had but reached a different assessment on how they could be achieved. My response was that Dr Kissinger was mistaken. The Turks had backed off at Nicosia Airport, but it was highly likely they would try again.

I told Hartman that I had earlier made clear to Ecevit that although the British troops facing them were wearing United Nations berets, they would stand their ground in face of a Turkish Army encroachment and my country would not be prepared to see them pushed aside. Since that conversation the Turks had been heavily reinforced, but Britain was

19 Arriving at the Treasury for the first time as Chancellor, October 1964.

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The family at Cneuters on 26 July 1978 for Audrey's birthday and our fortieth wedding anniversary.

Front row: Margaret Jay, Tamsin Jay, Tobin Hubbard, me and Audrey, Sam Hubbard, Tom Hubbard and Julia Hubbard. Behind: Jennifer Callaghan, Kate Callaghan, Alice Jay, Ian Hubbard, Patrick Jay, Joanna Hubbard, Sarah Callaghan and Michael Callaghan. Our tenth Grandchild, Joe Callaghan, was not born until 1981.

ready to strengthen a static defence against possible lines of Turkish advance by moving in more reinforcements and flying in further Phantoms. I would repeat the warning to the Turks on whom would fall the onus of challenging the United Nations, but I must be assured of American support if I were to do so, and in the light of our conversation this would apparently not be forthcoming. I continued that I understood American concern with the broad issues of the south-east flank of NATO but the United States was ignoring other perspectives, including Britain's role as a Guarantor Power and the safeguarding of the lives of thousands of British citizens.

As soon as Arthur Hartman had left, I fired off a telegram to Henry Kissinger, saying that these important differences were impairing our mutual confidence. I reiterated that it was not sufficient to approach the Turks solely through the medium of diplomacy. The correct policy was to tackle them on parallel lines, namely to convince them that we were in earnest on both the diplomatic and the military level. This was the most likely way to achieve results. As to his complaint that the British had introduced a military dimension, I reminded him that the reality was that this dimension was constantly hanging over the heads of the British troops who were heavily outnumbered by up to twenty-five thousand Turkish soldiers.

Kissinger's response was to telephone Ecevit once more to renew his personal plea that Turkey should adhere to a political solution, telling him that he could expect no support if the Turks made a military move and that the United States would mount a major diplomatic effort to halt them. Kissinger told me that he would give every support to British efforts to save the crisis by diplomatic means, but he did not consider threats of military action either helpful or appropriate, as they distracted attention from the political options. I recognised both Henry's ability and the influence of America, which had been very considerable in securing the cease-fire on 22 July, but I was convinced that more would be needed on this occasion. The only thing that might deter the Turks was the conviction that they would face military opposition if they attempted to advance further.

I continued with our diplomatic efforts, but with every hour that passed our team became more gloomy. There were flashes of common sense. Acting President Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, the leader of the Turkish Committee, both brought intelligence and genuine concern to the discussion on the future of their country. If it had been left to them

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it is conceivable that they might have hammered out an understanding. But Denktash was not a free agent, and confessed to me that in the last resort he was obliged to obey his masters on the Turkish mainland.

By the evening of 12 August matters had reached an impasse. Clerides was near despair when I told him that there was no prospect of a determined stand by the United Nations, the United States and Britain of the kind I had worked for. Despite Waldheim's earlier optimism, the United Nations forces were ready to withdraw if the Turks advanced, while the United States was not prepared to put military pressure on the Turks. In these circumstances I suggested he should work for the best possible accommodation. Both he and Denktash had already agreed on the need for constitutional revision, the creation of a federal system which would accord with the bicommunal character of the island, and both of them were keen to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the island. He had hinted earlier that he might be ready to consider two internal zones and I urged him to consider very seriously the establishment of two autonomous Administrations with defined geographical boundaries within a federal state. I read out a draft prepared by my staff that covered these points, and which proposed that further discussions should take place in Nicosia immediately between him and Denktash, followed by a report to the three Foreign Ministers in Geneva on a later date in September.

Clerides promised to consider these proposals subject to the reasonable condition that his acceptance of such a framework would be conditional on all Turkish forces withdrawing from Cyprus. We agreed to call in the Greek Foreign Minister, and at the end of our talk both Clerides and Mavros said that they were willing to return to Athens and Nicosia to consult their colleagues and secure their reaction to the proposal for two zones. They would leave at once and would return to Geneva the following evening with their answer.

As the Turks and Greeks had both given up tripartite meetings I at once took this proposition personally to Gunes. He responded angrily. Unless Clerides was willing to state in advance of his departure that he accepted the principle of a single geographical zone for the Turks he, Gunes, would also leave Geneva and bring the conference to an end. I urged patience, saying that in my opinion Clerides would in fact advocate such a single zone when he met his colleagues but would probably argue for a smaller area to be allotted to the Turkish minority than they claimed. Gunes remained adamant and also declined to attend a further joint

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session unless he was assured beforehand of Clerides' agreement. When we parted I enlisted Henry Kissinger's aid and we both telephoned the Turkish Prime Minister. He may subsequently have instructed Gunes to attend a further meeting and accordingly we met for a final gruelling but pointless session in the company of observers from the United Nations.

Gunes repeated his demands, putting them in the form of an ultimatum. Did the Acting President and the Greek Foreign Minister accept here and now that there should be a Turkish region extending from the Turkish sector of Famagusta to the Turkish sector of Nicosia, continuing on a line that would extend to 34 per cent of the area of Cyprus? Further, that this new zone must be established within the next three or four days? He must have a reply that very evening and if Clerides and Mavros were unable to indicate their acceptance there would be no point in continuing the conference. He would have no more to say.

Despite this, the death throes of the conference continued for several hours. Clerides and Mavros repeated once again that they must have time for consultations in Nicosia and Athens. They were ready to return to Geneva within thirty-six hours. I asked Denktash if he would agree but he replied that he was bound by the Turkish Government; he would attend a further meeting only if the Turkish Foreign Minister would do so. I appealed to Gunes to accept the time that Clerides and Mavros had asked for. Once more Gunes refused. There was no formal end to the proceedings. Gunes rose from the table at which we sat, ungracious as ever, and departed, followed by his aides. The time was 2.25 a.m. on the morning of 14 August. The rest of us shook hands and filed out wearily. I gave a press conference in which I did not spare the Turkish tactics. Even while I was speaking, the Turkish Army was advancing once more, breaking the cease-fire. Gunes had played out time.

At 5.00 a.m. on the same morning the Greek Cabinet met in the Ministry of Defence. With the exception of the Prime Minister, Constantine Karamanlis, those who were present demanded that Greece declare war on Turkey forthwith. The Prime Minister, who kept a cool head throughout, proposed as an alternative that Greece should request NATO's immediate assistance in accordance with the dictum that an attack on one is an attack on all. The Greek Cabinet agreed but Joseph Luns, the Secretary General of NATO, was told by the Turks on the next day that 'a visit from him would not serve any useful purpose and might be counter-productive'. Luns withdrew. Karamanlis saw there was nothing more he could do to save Cypriot unity. He withdrew Greece

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from NATO and, unwelcome though that was, by doing so he saved his country from a war that would have been disastrous for the future of the new domocracy.

More than a decade has passed and Turkish troops are still on the
its own and held elections which have consolidated the island's division.
The prospects of unity within a federal Cyprus grow more dim, especially
with the heightened tension arising from the legitimate security concerns
of both Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea.

In August 1974 there was a fleeting opportunity to remove the problem
from the world's agenda, and we failed. Nevertheless, when I look back
on that fateful and absorbing period there were some rewards. Demo-
cratic government in Greece was an uncovenanted bonus and I believe
Britain did a great deal to assist its consolidation in those first days of
uncertainty. The British Armed Forces did wonders in evacuating both
British and other nationals from Cyprus unharmed and have never re-
ceived sufficient thanks. Archbishop Makarios survived and lived to
render valuable service when he later returned to Cyprus.

Ten years after the events *The Times* argued in an editorial that it was 'a grave, unforgiveable error of omission' for Britain not to have delivered an ultimatum to Turkey when the second Geneva conference broke down. *The Times* believed that the Turkish Generals might have been dissuaded from resuming hostilities. A contrary view is held by Henry Kissinger, who has written that no pressure by the United States at the time would have succeeded. All opinions are speculative but I am convinced that Britain would have been courting military disaster if heavily outnumbered British troops, trained to guard a base, had taken the offensive in the face of opposition from the United States. The subsequent failure would have resembled a second Suez.

The direct converse of this argument has also been advanced, namely that Britain should have cooperated with the Turks and allowed them to use the sovereign bases in order to be able to control their invasion. This was neither a feasible short-term option nor the basis of a long-term solution, and we would have been utterly friendless. There is no question that the Turkish Cypriots had for many years been denied their political rights under the 1960 constitution, and their basic human rights. My proposal for trilateral negotiations to pave the way for effective amendments to improve the minority's position under the constitution could have remedied that, but for Britain to have cooperated with the Turks to impose a Turkish regime in the north of the island was unthinkable.

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Neither of these courses was suggested at the time and I dismiss them now. Britain behaved honourably and fulfilled her obligations to the limit of the possibilities open to us. This was widely acknowledged at the United Nations General Assembly in the autumn of 1974 and subsequently by Prime Minister Karamanlis. We must deeply regret the failure. Others may distribute the blame but I do not feel ashamed of what we tried to do.

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12

Portugal's return to democracy - Anglo-Soviet relations - the Falklands - Southern Rhodesia

After the second Turkish invasion a month passed before Henry Kissinger and I could meet and discuss, as between friends, our differences over Cyprus. With time to reflect I realised how difficult his situation had been during those fateful days in August when the vice-like pressure on President Nixon to resign office had overlapped the crisis in Cyprus.

Kissinger had been caught up in the drama and strain of Nixon's last days, during which time disasters had followed closely upon one another. Terms of imprisonment were passed on his principal aides for conspiracy and perjury, and three successive votes by the House Committee impeached the President himself. The drain on energy and nerve must have been almost unbearable at a time when every moment of our attention was needed to avert the invasion of a sovereign country and the possibility of war between two NATO allies.

Henry Kissinger had told Sir Peter Ramsbotham, our Ambassador in Washington, that there were days at a time when he had been out of touch with Cyprus developments, and this was an undoubted handicap in coordinating our approach. In Washington in the autumn of 1974 criticism was directed at America's role during the Cyprus crisis, and the Secretary of State bore the brunt. When we met he was obviously angry about the criticism, but we discussed the issues in a way that was appropriate to what I referred to as 'a difference of opinion in the family'. At the end he said with a charm and warmth I could not resist, 'Jim, you and I have a trusting relationship, and I shall always open my mind to you knowing you will understand, even when we have differences.'

We shared this sense of trust and I never hid my views from him, whether about Vietnam, Rhodesia, European-American relations or much else. Beneath his outer certainty there lurked a basic anxiety which, with the passing of the years, has now vanished as a result of his happy marriage to Nancy Maginnes in 1974. He possesses the perception and insight of a deeply sensitive person and bleeds freely when criticised. Yet

despite his own sensitivity he can be scathing about those he works with.

He was born in Germany and did not leave for the United States until he was fifteen; he had lived under Hitler for five years, but I have always heard him speak of the country of his birth with great understanding and affection. He is very proud of having achieved the office of Secretary of State, 'an office I have never imagined within my reach', and was determined to uplift it and make America an effective leader of the Western World. His strategic sense, a feeling for history, coupled with great negotiating skill and persuasive powers made him the most outstanding figure to operate in the foreign affairs scene for many years. Yet until his marriage, even in moments of triumph he seemed to have a distrust of success. When he had moments of self-doubt I believed it was in all our interests that he should be reassured and I made it my task to do so. The flexibility and quickness of his mind gained him a reputation in some quarters for deviousness, and I therefore place on record that he never misled me in any of our joint enterprises.

He is intensely curious, always anxious to learn, and a man of great personal kindness. When he learned that my city of Cardiff was conferring its Honorary Freedom on George Thomas and myself, he insisted on flying the Atlantic at considerable inconvenience to his schedule to be present with Nancy, and they spent a whole day at the festivities. The advance news of his intention created considerable interest. On the day itself it seemed that every demonstrator in the United Kingdom had descended on Cardiff from afar, waving protest banners about Kissinger's various alleged misdemeanours. This view was not shared by the ordinary people of Cardiff, who greeted him enthusiastically. As we entered the City Hall, I noticed among the forest of banners attacking Kissinger a small group of placards held aloft proclaiming 'Callaghan, Murderer of Cyprus'. I pointed these out to Henry to prove he was not alone in the dog-house. He turned to me in mock fury. 'I resent those placards,' he said. 'I demand star billing wherever I may be.'

He is a true American in his approach to problems: they exist to be settled, not lived with, and solutions can be found. But he is also European in his anxious awareness that mankind is fallible and that age-old problems have their own momentum and may in the end prove intractable. It was a rewarding experience to have served with him.

Despite the setback in Cyprus, 1974 registered some important gains. At one end of the Mediterranean the Greek Colonels were overthrown, while at the other, the Portuguese people experienced a 'bloodless' revolu-

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a sharper focus. Those who argue that such contacts are dangerous mistake the point. We will not learn to live together by mentally or physically isolating ourselves.

My last major engagement as Foreign Secretary was to receive Andrei Gromyko in London in March 1976 for three days of talks covering bilateral and European topics, Middle Eastern problems, and a smattering of domestic politics. Harold Wilson had announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister shortly before the visit and Gromyko was keenly interested in the Labour Party's method of electing a new leader. He told me he was confident that on the next occasion we met I would be the Prime Minister, and this excursion into an area that was not normally discussed prompted me to ask a similar question about the Soviet system. Romanov's name had been much mentioned in the press as a possible successor if Brezhnev stepped down, and I enquired whether he was in fact the leading contender. Gromyko replied that he was a very able man, but (with an expressive shrug) the recent publicity would be of no significance when it came to the question of succession. Romanov was but one of a group of younger men which was rapidly coming to the fore and it was impossible to tell whether the next leader would be one of the older or younger members of the Politburo. It could be either, he claimed, because in the USSR a new leader 'tended to emerge'. I told him that this was the formula the Conservative Party had formerly used to find their leaders, but they had now joined the modern world. When would the Soviet Union do the same?

He smiled and passed to the position in Yugoslavia, where Tito's age had given rise to speculation about the future. Gromyko volunteered that in the post-Tito era the Soviet Union would have no desire or intention to try to reincorporate Yugoslavia into the Warsaw Pact sphere of influence. Although this was no more than I had expected it was interesting that he had been thinking about the matter as Henry Kissinger, the French Foreign Minister Sauvagnargues, Hans-Dietrich Genscher of Germany and I had recently discussed the same thing and reached similar conclusions about Yugoslavia's relations with the West. I was therefore able to tell him with confidence that the West, including the United States, would likewise do nothing to disturb the *status quo*. Gromyko later asked me to confirm again that this was what we intended and I did so, adding that we feared the complications that might ensue between East and West if Yugoslavia were to break apart and its component parts move in different political directions. Gromyko agreed that this would be dangerous and the

Soviet Union would not want it to happen. Helsinki had brought, in his words, 'a warmer breath' to Europe, and the Soviet Union would not seek unilateral advantage.

Gromyko was very firm in ruling out German reunification. 'Never, never, never,' he repeated. I said that the imprisonment of the aged Rudolph Hess in Spandau had become ludicrous and that the four powers should make other plans for his future that would replace the existing elaborate arrangements. Gromyko rejected this. There could be no change. Hess, he said, was a living symbol of German Fascism, and no personal consideration could outweigh the terrible fate of the innumerable victims of the Second World War.

We exchanged views about the Middle East, arms control and bilateral issues such as trade, and a request I had made that the Soviet Union should afford overflying facilities for Concorde flights to Tokyo. Gromyko replied that he was not offering a negative response, but domestic aspects of the matter in the USSR had not yet been resolved. There were environmental problems of noise and they needed more time.

On family reunification and the question of giving exit permits to Soviet citizens, I repeated a tactic that had produced results in our previous meetings. I handed over a list of persons with a request for consideration, but without entering into a long discussion, which I had found only produced the standard defence of the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs. It was my experience that if we did not make huge publicity about certain cases, dissidents and Jews were often quietly allowed to leave, especially during the period of detente. Gromyko left the list lying on the table between us, as he had done on earlier occasions, but then departed from our usual practice by saying that he wished to make some informal remarks. He had noted the appearance of certain demonstrators when he had visited the Tate Gallery with Mrs Gromyko, accompanied by my wife. There had been nothing insulting in their behaviour and he would have liked to talk with them and explain the reasons for Soviet policy, as the mass media did not take an objective line. I replied that if he had time this could be arranged and added that for my part I felt the same objections to the reporting of Northern Ireland by the Soviet media. They failed to project any of the complexities of the problem. Gromyko did not follow the matter up.

As I expected, there was no official response to the list of would-be emigrants I left with Gromyko, but during the ensuing months we heard from time to time of exit permits being given to certain of those on our

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13

Harold Wilson's resignation – the office of Prime Minister – Cabinet colleagues – the Great Debate on Education

When I was a Minister I looked forward especially to the twelve days of Christmas as a period when it was possible to lead a rational life. Parliament was up; members and their constituents were enjoying the post-Christmas festivities which in recent years have extended into the New Year; Cabinet business slowed down to a trickle; London seemed half empty, and there was time to enjoy a leisurely lunch and still go home at a reasonable hour.

The post-Christmas period at the end of 1975 was about average for the Foreign Secretary, although there were two matters that needed close attention at the end of the year. The skippers of the Icelandic gun-boats were pursuing aggressive and dangerous tactics in their dispute with Britain over fishing-ground limits. First, on 28 December they deliberately involved HMS *Andromeda*, one of our frigates, in a collision at sea. Fortunately no one was injured. This was one of a series of such incidents in which our ships were provoked but where retaliation would have called down cries of bullying. I said as much to Henry Kissinger and he replied with a quotation from Bismarck, 'The weak are strong because they are reckless. The strong are weak because they have scruples.' Unfortunately, we could gain very little sympathy in international circles.

The second matter concerned Dr Shirley Cassidy, a medical missionary working in Chile who had been arrested by the Chilean secret police for giving medical attention to a wounded guerrilla fighter. She had strayed into the dark undergrowth of Chilean repression when she was asked by a Chilean priest to go to a convent to treat a man with a bullet in his leg. She paid several visits, and became aware that he was a guerrilla fighter who had been given sanctuary. Despite her attention his condition deteriorated in the absence of proper medical facilities, and he was removed secretly to the residence of the Papal Nuncio in Chile. She was asked to continue her treatment but following one of her visits she was arrested by the Chilean secret police and questioned to discover what she knew.

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PRESIDENT: 'Are you contemplating import restrictions?'

PRIME MINISTER: 'Not at the moment, but this is the alternative strategy that is being dangled in front of people.'

PRESIDENT: 'We would have reservations, and hopefully, Jim, you could avoid the trade limitation.'

PRIME MINISTER: 'If the alternative strategy were adopted it would call into question Britain's role as an Alliance partner which I am anxious to preserve.'

PRESIDENT: 'We certainly need you standing tall and strong, and I assure you, Jim, I will work with you on that.'

I never had cause to doubt Gerald Ford's word or his good faith. It may seem strange that a Republican President and a Labour Prime Minister could work so confidently with each other. The reason was that although the President was a quintessentially loyal member of his Party and I was of mine, we both accepted that the interests of our two countries and of the Alliance transcended political differences. Since those days our feelings of mutual respect have grown into friendship. Unfortunately, when he lost the Presidential Election to Jimmy Carter on 2 November, his influence quite naturally waned, at the time when we most needed his help.

I knew there would be renewed pressure from a sector of the Parliamentary Labour Party and also from the TUC for import controls, which were being peddled by some circles on the left as a specifically socialist alternative strategy. I attempted to counter this impression in my Conference speech, reminding the delegates that on a previous occasion when they had been introduced, in the 1930s, it was by a Government with an overwhelming Conservative majority. In short, there was nothing in their ideological pedigree; their introduction should be considered only on its merits.

This did not dispose of the argument which was to recur a number of times in Cabinet discussions during the negotiations with the IMF. We had to decide how to handle the IMF team, and the Chancellor began to prepare for this as soon as he returned from the Party Conference. He and I knew he would face a restive Cabinet. Ministers had agreed to reductions in their future public expenditure as recently as July, and they were 'justified' in assuming that what they had then agreed would put the Government back on course. In addition, another cause of pain was that although the incomes policy was working, it had not yet had time to slow down the rise in prices and there was dissatisfaction among our supporters

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in the country. There was also some grumbling to the effect that the Government was being pushed from pillar to post, that the economy was bleeding to death, and that protectionism was necessary to restore a coherent strategy for recovery. Although sterling had steadied after the Chancellor had announced his intention of negotiating a loan with the IMF, it was still in a fragile state and loose chatter abounded.

At that time I regret to say I received well authenticated reports that a prominent front-bench Conservative spokesman, who has since served in Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet, was in Washington trying to influence the Administration very strongly against the Labour Government. Despite this, however, Helmut Schmidt, who had recently returned from the States and knew of the incident, told me that both President Ford and Henry Kissinger were sympathetic to our efforts, but that William Simon, the Secretary to the Treasury, and Arthur Burns, the Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, were unhelpful.

Helmut Schmidt had offered me his friendly advice from the outset. He believed the trade unions' restraint on pay had been a significant element in the right direction, but he also held the view that further steps were necessary in budgeting and currency policy. We talked the matter over together during his promised weekend visit to Chequers following his election victory. We sat together in the historic Long Gallery in front of a blazing log fire. Outside, the cattle were picking at the grass, and in the distance I could hear the plough at work.

I enquired what help Germany could give to assist the long-term stability of Britain's overseas sterling holdings, and in reply Helmut Schmidt unfolded the picture of the German currency reserves. They were largely held in dollars and financed the American deficit, a subject on which he was lengthily and disapprovingly vocal. If Germany were to recall part of her dollar reserves this, together with similar assistance from the United States and one or two other countries, would make it possible to devise a plan that would offset the instability of the sterling overseas balances, and bring much-needed relief. He promised to follow up this idea with the Americans, and did so, but once more we were foiled on the political front by the hiatus that arose following President Ford's defeat on 2 November. On the technical front, in the labyrinth of the Central Banks and the Treasury, there was never any real enthusiasm for such a solution. They used the excuse that they wished the completion of the IMF negotiations to take place first. These officials were so shortsighted that they were unable to understand that the announcement of

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such a scheme would have made these negotiations more acceptable and enabled us to conclude them with less political difficulty.

Three days after the American election result, when these matters had come to a complete halt, I had a long telephone conversation with the German Chancellor. From this emerged an unexpected offer that was to be of tremendous reassurance during the difficult weeks that followed. It was this. Without any request or prompting from me, Helmut Schmidt said he felt Germany must be ready to act when required, in order to make the British Government feel a little more secure. Therefore, on a personal basis, he undertook that if ever an acute danger of necessity should arise, Britain could draw upon Germany within twenty-four hours, and the German Government would make whatever improvised arrangements were necessary.

He explained that as he headed a Coalition Government he would find it necessary to clear this understanding with his partners, and he had already begun to explain something of the situation to them, so that there would be fuller understanding if such a step were ever required. Since he had asked me to regard this assurance as a personal one, I told only the Chancellor and then arranged for the Secretary to the Cabinet, Sir John Hunt, to pay a private visit to Bonn in order that both sides should be clear about what would be done if we ever needed his proffered assistance. During the weeks that followed, this tangible expression of his confidence and support was a tremendous reassurance.

One of our difficulties about securing a safety net for sterling was a suspicion in the IMF that if we acquired such a safety net, we would not reduce Public Sector Borrowing. I had met the leader of the IMF team at the Chancellor's request and informed him this was incorrect but I am not certain he believed me, although both Gerald Ford and Helmut Schmidt did. In an attempt to remove this impression, I asked Harold Lever to go to Washington to talk to the American Treasury, the IMF and the Federal Reserve Bank. I telephoned President Ford in Washington to ask him to receive Harold.

His voice was still a little husky, recovering from having lost it completely at the end of his gruelling election campaign. I enquired how he was feeling and he told me that he intended to leave Washington for good as soon as Jimmy Carter took over in the following January. He would move out to the West where the climate would improve Mrs Ford's health. I did not know it at the time but this was to lead to some happy consequences for Audrey and me. In due course Gerald Ford built a

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new home at Beaver Creek, high up in the beautiful Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, and every year since I ceased to be Party Leader Audrey and I have visited them, making new friends and strengthening our own friendship.

The President at once agreed to my request to receive Harold Lever, but his authority was inevitably waning and despite Harold's skill at presentation and his persuasiveness, supported by help from Henry Kissinger, he could not break down the opposition of the United States Treasury, nor of Arthur Burns who was adamant and refused point-blank to participate in any talks about a safety net until the IMF talks were completed.

During my own conversation with the IMF, I had indicated my idea of an appropriate settlement. I had previously agreed with the Chancellor that we could not sustain the most recent forecast of a borrowing requirement of more than £10 billions for 1977/8, but I was not willing to go below the £9 billions that the Cabinet had agreed as recently as July, as that seemed a reasonable figure. But the health of the domestic economy and the confidence of foreign investors required that the Government should take the steps necessary to validate the figure of £9 billions, and this I was ready to do.

The Treasury had told us earlier that sticking to this target should enable the economy to move back into balance, and had even forecast a small surplus in the United Kingdom's overseas balance of payments in 1978, by which year North Sea oil would be flowing, with the prospect of a massive favourable turn-round in our balance of payments in the 1980s. In the meantime the incomes policy was about to bring down the rate of inflation, and in addition I had hopes that we would begin to see results from the cooperation of the CBI and TUC in working out the industrial strategy to which both sides had agreed, with beneficial effects on productivity and efficiency, supplemented by the work of the National Enterprise Board and the Scottish and Welsh Development Agencies. The seed had been planted, but the harvest was some way ahead and everyone was impatient for quick results. The country needed a breathing space, and I was ready to go with the IMF as far as was necessary to restore validity to our July estimate, but no lower.

The IMF took this badly and the Chancellor and I had to decide what to say to Cabinet. My aim was to keep the Government intact by preventing any Ministerial resignations; second, to keep the Party together by making clear that as we had no Parliamentary majority, failure to support

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I should interpose that our discussions of these matters were made easier by the relaxation of pressure on our domestic economic position following the conclusion of the 1976 IMF negotiations. As the months elapsed we had become almost embarrassed by the inflows of sterling and were able to reduce interest rates steadily. The economy was reviving, our inflation prospects improving; we were in a position to decide whether or not to terminate our 'stand-by' arrangements with the IMF and at the beginning of 1978 we repaid $1 billions to the Fund. The Chancellor could in fact have repaid more, but it was cheap money (we paid 43 per cent interest) and although this was not generally appreciated, it was worth our while to keep to part of the loan.

Although it had not been so intended when President Giscard issued his invitation to Rambouillet, the International Economic Summits later took on an existence of their own, and my regular seminar at No. 10 proved highly useful in proposing initiatives that would then be sent back to Departments to be worked up before coordinating our position for summit meetings. Giscard was intellectually restless. Like President de Gaulle, he believed in an active French presence. The West displayed instability and had no vision of its economic future and Giscard thought we should confront the matter. He had spoken of the idea of a high-level meeting for some time and returned to the subject at a lunch given by Harold Wilson at the Helsinki Conference for President Ford, Chancellor Schmidt and President Giscard, at which the Foreign Secretaries of the four countries were also present.

Gerry Ford had seemed rather unenthusiastic about Giscard's proposal, and as we sat in the garden of the British Embassy drinking our after-lunch coffee in the warm July sun, it was to him that Giscard mainly addressed his ideas. Helmut Schmidt too had previously sent us a paper prepared by him, containing a plea for the United States to be less domestic-orientated, urging it to take into account the international repercussions of its policies and suggesting a summit attended by the four of us plus Japan and Italy. Harold Wilson backed the idea and with Henry Kissinger also speaking in favour, the United States President agreed. We decided that each Head of Government should appoint a personal representative to prepare for the conference, and asked France to act as host.

Harold Wilson and I then left the hospitality of the Embassy to visit Tito, and the only hitch in the proposed arrangements occurred when in the hot-house atmosphere of Helsinki the Italians heard a rumour that

they were not to be invited, and uttered a cry of pain which was only stilled by our reassurance that they would be there. Harold Wilson and I proposed adding Canada and President Ford agreed, but Giscard was adamant and no invitation was sent. We had agreed that such a summit must be properly prepared in advance, and for this purpose meetings took place in New York and elsewhere between the Heads of Governments' personal representatives. These were soon christened 'sherpas' because, like Tibetan mountaineers, their task was to carry the load to the summit. They worked to a brief which ran as follows: international cooperation in economic matters was as important as in defence matters; expectations should not be raised too high; it was not the purpose to produce a perfect blueprint for the future, but we should build on the personal relationships between the Heads of Government. The intention was to hold an informal discussion in the broadest political framework with no holds barred. Each Head of Government was asked to give a completely candid assessment of the economic prospects of his own country, to be followed by an examination of future world difficulties as a whole. To keep the atmosphere informal, attendance was limited to three from each country - the Head of Government and the Foreign and Finance Ministers, making a total of eighteen participants. Supporting staff would not attend the sessions.

The castle at Rambouillet, the location of the summit, was hardly big enough even for eighteen, and each day helicopters came and went from Paris, their rotor blades bending the saplings in the park and whirling the fallen autumn leaves into the air, as if in a snowstorm.

Accommodation was so cramped that the best the French Foreign Minister could do was to digest urgent telegrams on a table placed in a corridor, while the officials in the British delegation worked in Napoleon's bathroom. But none of this detracted from the country house atmosphere that Giscard had intended and in which he felt so much at home. Thrown closely together, the coolish atmosphere soon warmed up and President Ford in particular relaxed. Ford genuinely believed in a cooperative approach and wished to avoid a confrontation with Giscard, an objective that was more easily achieved because a French-American dispute on monetary matters had been partially settled a week or two before the meeting. In a way this agreement could be counted as a success of the Rambouillet meeting, for the knowledge that the summit was to take place spurred the negotiators of both sides to settle.

Two other factors assisted immeasurably: one was that with only one

PRIME MINISTER

479

THATCHER'S
CAPITALIST
REVOLUTION 3

By Howell Raines

IN THE DAY AFTER PRIME MINISTER Margaret Thatcher called a general election for June 11, she appeared in the House of Commons wearing a black dress and the icy expression of contempt she reserves for gazing upon Socialists. The "right honorable gentlemen" of the Labor opposition were howling like a football mob. "Frit, Frit. Frit," they chanted at one point, taunting the 61-year-old Prime Minister with a colloquialism for "afraid."

Mrs. Thatcher did not look "frit." If anyone seemed edgy, it was the man sitting across from her, on the opposition front bench. Neil Kinnock, a balding man with a freckled scalp and a nose like a knife blade, leaned forward, twining his fingers together. In the United States, his political style would be likened to that of a bantam rooster. A cocky son of the Welsh working class, he is a fighter, a bit of a strutter, and a great talker.

In the 15 minutes set aside for questioning the Prime Minister, Mr. Kinnock sprang to his feet and addressed Mrs. Thatcher across the low table separating the Labor and Conservative benches: "In the general election, will the Prime Minister debate with me face to face on television?"

Mrs. Thatcher rose slowly. "I fear," she said, "such a debate would generate more hot air than light."

The words hit Mr. Kinnock squarely in his reputa-

Howell Raines is The Times's London bureau chief.

KATALIN ARKEL/NETWORK J.B. PICTURES
suburb, home to many of today's "haves."

BARRY LEWIS/NETWORK J.B. PICTURES
Margaret and Denis Thatcher, at 10 Downing Street.

THATCHER

*Continued from Page 18*

wretched and brutal," warns Mr. Kinnock. Her re-election, he adds, will recreate a Britain "where everybody can either stand on their own feet or live on their knees."

MRS. THATCHER INspires such apocalyptic visions because she is a polarizing figure with unbending resolution as her trademark. This quality, according to Norman Tebbit, the Conservative Party chairman, reversed the "ratchet of British politics in which the convention was that everyone agreed that it was always going to move to the left."

The resolve that seems admirable to Mr. Tebbit seems autocratic and uncaring to Mrs. Thatcher's opponents. Her regimen of tight-money supply and privatization, for example, bankrupted many overmanned, state-subsidized industries and swept away 1.7 million jobs. Unemployment, 1.1 million when she was elected in 1979, now hovers at 3 million, or 11 percent. Yet at no point has Mrs. Thatcher's belief in her economic policy been shaken by cries of pain and outrage from the declining industrial regions.

"She possesses a quality which Proust called the certainty of the second rate," says Roy Hattersley, Labor's deputy leader. "It means that you do, in fact, go on when every rational person and sensitive person around you might say 'This is wrong.'"

By going ahead as unemployment crippled northern England, however, Mrs. Thatcher laid the foundation for what the Tories call their "economic miracle" in London and the "home counties" of southern England and in a few hotspots of growth such as Silicon Glen, near Glasgow. In these places, declining inflation, lower taxes and deregulation of the financial markets ignited booms in the service and consumer economies.

And in these places, Mrs. Thatcher also laid the foundations of a political approach that depends on separating the "haves" from the "have-nots" as voting blocs.

It is the beneficiaries of this unevenly distributed prosperity upon whom she is counting for re-election. With the national vote split among three parties, they make up a plurality of the "haves" who ought to be able to give the Conservative Party the mini-

mum 40 percent of the national vote needed to control Parliament. Under Britain's "first-past-the-post" electoral system, that's national vote would probably convert into enough first-place finishes in the 650 constituencies for a majority in Commons.

With her standing in the polls at 40 to 44 percent when the election was called, Mrs. Thatcher cannot count this contest "home and dry," as the British say. But she seems likely to lose only if she commits some huge — and uncharacteristic — political error, through some calamity beyond her control or through a sudden inflammation of the "throw-them-out" attitude that last surfaced in British politics when Harold Wilson was defeated in 1970, after blowing a lead as high as 12 points in some polls.

As the campaign began, Labor gained in the polls by stressing the unemployment issue, but a number of factors are, in fact, still working in Mrs. Thatcher's favor. The Labor Party is beset by open warfare between its radical and moderate socialists. The Alliance, potentially a threat to Mrs. Thatcher's hold on "soft" Tories and suburban moderates, remains ideologically blurred because of disputes between the Liberals and the more conservative Social Democrats.

Moreover, Britain's working class is gradually being replaced by an expanded middle class, and union membership has declined from 30 to 22 percent of the electorate. Voters are abandoning Labor and becoming increasingly receptive to Conservative policies, in much the way traditional Democrats migrated to the Republicans in the 1970's and 80's in the United States.

"What we're looking at is structural social change, which brings attitudinal change, which brings political change," says Robert M. Worcester, an American who has become one of Britain's best-known poll takers. "Couple that with the divided Labor Party and the two-headed Alliance and that pretty well assures the re-election of Margaret Thatcher."

THE GREAT QUESTION that hovers over Margaret Thatcher's career is why a woman so widely regarded as a successful Prime Minister should be so widely disliked. The great

paradox is that her lack of popularity may not matter politically. Her associates say that as a matter of personal preference and political tactics she chose to seek respect rather than affection.

Mrs. Thatcher said as much herself in a recent television interview: "What is the good of having a leader who cannot make up his or her mind, never knows what to do, hems and haws, cannot make decisions at the right time, is not respected by other people? He might be a very nice person, but not a leader."

Still, some of her associates complain about the snobbery that undercuts Mrs. Thatcher's standing among what one Tory politician called "the Volvo-driving, wine-society, middle classes of Dulwich and Hampstead." These educated, middle-class professionals, along with the old High Tory aristocrats from the country estates, regard Mrs. Thatcher as uncultivated and needlessly callous toward the less fortunate. Indeed, the belief that Mrs. Thatcher has coarsened British society is almost an organizing principle of Alliance strongholds in the affluent suburbs and university towns.

"Winning the argument and

GAMMA-LIAISON

The 1982 Falklands War stirred nationalism that helped Mrs. Thatcher politically.

Alan Walters, an ideologi-
cal soulmate and an eco-
nomic adviser in the first
term, remembers the "shout-
ing matches" at staff meet-
ings. "But there is no per-
sonal animosity, no personal
residue at all," he says.
"She'll smile at the end and
say, 'Now, we've got the next
piece of business.'"

By other accounts, few peo-
ple shout back these days. In
fact, Mrs. Thatcher's bullying
of male Cabinet members is so
notorious that it has become
part of the sexist stock humor
of British politics. "I think,"
says Denis Healey, Labor's
shadow foreign minister,
"from the word 'go,' people
saw her as the best man in her
Cabinet, and still do."

Mrs. Thatcher runs her
Cabinet as a cauldron of con-
flict.

As one survivor recalls, it is
not a pretty process: "At the
Cabinet table, her technique
was to directly undermine
everyone's position by re-
marks like, before the chap
even started presenting his
case, 'I can see your civil ser-
vants have got at you,' or,
'This is a very weak paper.
How have you let people pull
the wool over your eyes?' ...
From then on, the whole thing

(Continued on Page 76)

is sort of sliding away from you and
you're trying to get back and say,
'That's not fair, Prime Minister.' One
really often heard it, very often, be-
cause it wasn't fair."

This technique has brought Mrs.
Thatcher unquestioned dominance of
the Conservative Party. It has also
produced what seems an unenviably
austere personal life. She and her hus-
band, Denis, a retired oil executive,
though not exactly reclusive, do not cut
important figures in London social life.
Their private existence in the living
quarters at No. 10 is simple, almost
spartan. Mrs. Thatcher does much of
the cooking, basic British, and they em-
ploy only one housekeeper, paid out of
the Prime Minister's pocket.

With her two adult children, twins,
living elsewhere — Carol, a freelance
journalist, has her own flat in London,
and Mark, an auto executive, resides
in Dallas — Mrs. Thatcher's office
staff has become, in a sense, a second
family. But it is a very formal kind of
family, united and driven by her pas-
sion for work. In fact, Mrs. Thatcher
glories in comparisons between her
grinding existence now, with its regi-
men of five hours of sleep a night, and
her girlhood in Grantham, in a stark
apartment above her father's gro-
cery. In such accounts, the word
"work" recurs like a drumbeat.

"The only way we could get on was working," she recently told interviewers on Soviet television.

"We live 'over the shop,' as it were,"
she continued. "We have a flat over
No. 10 Downing Street, which is the
office of the Prime Minister. . . . And
. . . [after] working all day, . . . I start
about 10 o'clock at night to work on
my papers. I think it is the most fasci-
nating thing I have ever done . . . and I
do not wish to do anything else."

Poring over her papers into the small
hours of the morning, Mrs. Thatcher
packs her memory with the facts that
she uses to pummel her Cabinet and
dominate the opposition in her twice-
weekly appearances before Parlia-

ment for what are called Prime Minis-
ter's Questions. The House of Com-
mons is a noisy pit that makes a Con-
gressional debate or a Presidential
news conference seem very tame.
David Howell, a former Cabinet mem-
ber, sees these sessions as a core se-
cret of Mrs. Thatcher's success.

"Because of her aptitude for always
attacking when attacked, because she
can carry all the facts in her head, be-
cause she can be completely cool in
her emotions, she can, on the whole,
dominate Prime Minister's Ques-
tions," Mr. Howell says. "Some of
those outside might think, 'What the
hell's that got to do with it?' — and the
answer is that it would only need a
run of six or seven sessions in four or
five weeks, with the Prime Minister
coming out wounded, for the whole
party to start saying, 'We must get
somebody else.'"

No one doubts that Mrs. Thatcher
has had to perform better, to be tough-
er, to argue more forcefully because
she is a woman. But her friends say
this necessity fits her preference; she
actually likes argument better than po-
lite discussion. Opponents respect her,
but they also like to make fun of the
self-consciously stately figure that
Mrs. Thatcher presents to Parliament.
She does, indeed, seem more queenly
than Elizabeth II. So they jibe at her as
Queen Boadicea, the warrior queen of
British prehistory.

Unlike predecessors such as Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher has not had the benefit of a supportive relationship with Queen Elizabeth. In his book "The Changing Anatomy of Britain," Anthony Sampson said their weekly meetings "are dreaded by at least one of them."

But even if they are not close, the
Queen and the Prime Minister are
part of a unique political symbiosis
that works to Mrs. Thatcher's advan-
tage. Her failure to curry public favor
and to win affection is simply not the

(Continued on Page 80)

MIKE ABRAHAMS/NETWORK-J.B. PICTURES

A giant Thatcher image seen at the Conservative Party Congress in Bournemouth last fall.

liability that it would be in the United States, and the institution of the Royal Family is part of the reason. "The British don't need to love their Prime Minister," says a Western diplomat. "They love their Queen."

IT IS AN IRONY OF MARLBOROUGH, that Margaret Thatcher's career, given her anti-Soviet credentials, that a key moment for understanding her political makeup should have occurred in Moscow. According to a reconstruction from several sources, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev spoke with feeling about his hopes for revitalizing the Soviet Union, Mrs. Thatcher felt an immediate empathy with him.

"I'm sympathetic with the problems of changing a society because I've faced these problems myself," she is quoted as saying. Exhorting Mr. Gorbachev not to give in to the pressure now mounting on him within the Soviet Union, Mrs. Thatcher concluded: "You have to have the courage to stick with it. It won't go right in the early years. It's taken me eight years to start to achieve the kind of change in our society I wanted to see."

She had first to change her own party before she could change the policies installed in the four decades since the Clement Attlee government of 1945 nationalized the industrial economy and completed the establishment of the cradle-to-grave welfare system.

Until Mrs. Thatcher took over, the Conservatives had been content to serve as the accountants of the welfare state, policing the Socialist economy around the edges but not disturbing the governing consensus that had continued through Labor and Conservative governments alike. Over time, according to Sir John Egan, the chief executive of Jaguar, that consensus degenerated into an "unconscious conspiracy." Neither the "barons" of the trade unions nor the "grandees" of the Tory Party wanted to disturb this policy gridlock that prevailed while the "British disease" of decline took hold in the 1960's and 70's.

Then, in 1975, Margaret Thatcher, a little-known former Secretary of State for Education and Science in the Heath Cabinet, led the "peasants' revolt" within the Tory party. Her election as party leader marked an end to the dominance of "the older-type, traditional Tory, mainly coming from public school, the landed gentry," recalled Labor's Denis Healey. It became more oriented toward small businessmen, middle-class professionals and strivers who, like Margaret Thatcher, had worked their way up from humble origins.

Within a few years of her election as Prime Minister in 1979, Mrs. Thatcher purged the "wets," or old-style, liberal Tories, from the Cabinet and replaced them with tax-cutting, capitalistic true-believers,

or "dries," as her ideological clique is known. Then she proceeded to wring out the economy as well, driving inflation down and letting unemployment soar. Almost magically, the Falklands War of 1982 bailed her out politically. She rode a tide of nationalism to victory in 1983 and over the course of two terms nailed down the economic reforms that are the foundation of Thatcherism.

She broke the power of the labor unions, her final victory coming in a titanic struggle with striking miners in 1985. She privatized the best state-owned industries — such as British Telecom, British Airways and, most recently, Rolls-Royce — by selling shares to workers and the general public.

She began selling off Britain's "council houses," or publicly owned rental apartments, to the people occupying them and encouraged home ownership for others through mortgage-tax deductions. One million council houses switched from state ownership to private owner and the percentage of adults living in their own homes increased from 52 to 66 percent.

Mrs. Thatcher called her programs of property and stock ownership "popular capitalism." Under her, the number of Britons owning stock increased fourfold, to 8.5 million, almost 20 percent of the electorate. Invest-

ment in private pension plans was also legalized.

Only very belatedly did the opposition parties seem to realize the political import of Mrs. Thatcher's grass-roots economic reforms. Britain was acquiring an American-style property-owning middle class. In short, every time Mrs. Thatcher created a new stockholder or homeowner, she was also producing a potential Tory voter.

"Popular capitalism is on the march," Mrs. Thatcher proclaimed jubilantly as she kicked off the present campaign, promising a third term of "more families owning more property, more homes, more shares, more second pensions and more savings." Yet there is evidence that she herself did not initially recognize the potential of her ownership programs for drawing voters out of the Labor Party.

According to Robert Worcester, who polls for Labor, homeowners are twice as likely to vote Tory as public-housing renters. Moreover, 57 percent of the people who bought stock during the privatization program — factory workers who make up an indispensable part of Labor's historic electoral base — plan to vote Conservative. Now, Mr. Worcester predicts, the curbing of trade unions and the democratization of property ownership may be followed by a "third Thatcher revolution." It would consist of the Prime Minister's proposals to shake up the education system with open admissions and a national curriculum, to shift inner-city rehabilitation from Labor-dominated local governments to private developers, to privatize more of the National Health Service and to convert some unemployment to "workfare."

"Whether she thought this through four or five years ago, I don't know," says Mr. Worcester. "But it's sure falling into place."

MR. THATCHER IS a good politician. She is also an exceptionally lucky one. Even the political crippling of President Reagan, her closest international ally, did not pull her down. Instead, it enabled unnamed Whitehall bureaucrats to salt the British papers with the argument that, with the American President embattled, and perhaps addled by age, Mrs. Thatcher was now the "senior Western leader" with the best understanding of Mr. Gorbachev and the best chance of preventing Mr.

Reagan from blundering into an arms-control agreement that would endanger Western Europe.

She has been extraordinarily lucky, too, in coming along when British parties were going through a process of realignment. Labor, with its dwindling working-class base, is appealing to a Britain fast disappearing. The Alliance of Liberals and Social Democrats may well represent the politics of the future, with its centrist message aimed at the expanding middle class. But right now its voters are widely scattered, rather than concentrated in dependably winnable constituencies.

Because the Alliance comes second to the Tories in many prosperous suburbs, Conservative strategists are watching nervously for any signs of an Alliance surge. That could endanger Mrs. Thatcher's parliamentary majority. But talk of a deliberate effort to deny her a majority by a merging of the Labor and Alliance forces in a campaign of "tactical voting" has receded. The Alliance leaders are now eager to use this election to replace Labor and become the major opposition party.

This year, if the Prime Minister's luck holds, the anti-Thatcher majority

among British voters will remain split, and her detractors will continue to marvel that such a grandiose personage can balance herself atop such a slender reed of popular support. It is a good point. In 1983, her party got only 42.4 percent of the national popular vote. No Conservative Prime Minister in this century has led the party to a smaller popular total in winning a Parliamentary majority.

But the numbers do not fully explain the relationship between the British people and this sharp-tongued, hecataving, autocratic, inflexible, often insensitive and altogether fascinating woman. To an American, it is reminiscent of the Reagan Presidency at its high tide. Even those who found his domestic policies callous and his defense and foreign military policies fraught with danger had to concede that on some level Mr. Reagan had rekindled the national spirit. Britain, before Thatcher, was a country settling into its role as "the sick man of Europe." Its journalists and scholars had produced a shelf of books suggesting that the decline was terminal. Her election was a signal that the sick man wanted to survive. Now, typically, Mrs. Thatcher is prescribing bigger doses of even stronger medicine. ■