season, always in autumn. The first to concern me was the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in September, then the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool in October, and finally the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM – ‘Chog-um’ to everyone at the Foreign Office), held that year in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
The UNGA is a massive foreign-policy jamboree where representatives from all over the world come together to express their views. Paradoxically, with few exceptions, their speeches are ignored by the world media, but for diplomats they set out in order of urgency each country’s hopes and fears. My speech contained a good deal of standard foreign-policy fare – although I had to fight hard for tough passages on the internal situation in China – and also some personal matters that I felt were important. One concerned the drugs trade.
Years earlier, during my Latin American tour as a member of the Whips’ Office, I had visited Colombia. Near the British Embassy in Bogotá I met some men in fatigues displaying weapons and devices for use against drugs traffickers. They turned out to be members of the British Army sent to help the Colombians in their fight against this lethal trade. I now offered to increase that help.
I also pleased the Africans with a lengthy passage on South Africa. ‘Apartheid cannot survive and does not deserve to survive,’ I said. ‘It is not something to be tolerated or to be patient with. It is something to oppose constantly and comprehensively.’ I not only believed this, I also thought it might sweeten the atmosphere at CHOGM the following month. I was wrong – it did not. But a scholarship scheme I announced for black South Africans was well received.
One of my earliest actions as foreign secretary had been to agree to open talks – led, on our side, by Sir Crispin Tickell, our Permanent Representative at the United Nations – with the Argentinians in Madrid. These had made some progress in re-establishing our still shaky relationship following the Falklands War, and I sought to carry it forward by meeting the Argentinian Foreign Minister during my time in New York. I also met Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, in an attempt to secure the release of a British citizen who had been jailed in Baghdad. Aziz attempted to link the case with that of an Iraqi in London who had been convicted of murder. I told him that British politicians could not – and would not – interfere with our legal system. He seemed pretty baffled by this. Years later Robin Cook, as Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary, mistakenly claimed that my meeting with Aziz had been ‘secret’. This had the effect of suggesting that we had been discussing illegal arms sales. It took the officials on whom I was obliged to call most of a Saturday searching through files to provide the information to refute this mischief.
Other bilaterals left their own memories. While a further meeting with Qian Qichen had been unproductive but friendly, one with the Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens was less friendly. I asked some questions about Israeli policy which offended him. ‘I’m not in a court of law – I don’t have to answer your questions,’ he said. I wasn’t seeking a row with him, and in fact spent much of my time later at Number 10 improving Anglo – Israeli relationships. But this was a tricky start. The Hungarian Foreign Minister was amusing, with anecdote upon anecdote to show that the European Commission’s bureaucracy was worse than the Russians’.
One meeting was unexpected. I had intended to invite the Egyptian Foreign Minister for a bilateral at the United Nations Plaza Hotel. Unfortunately one of our officials misread the telephone number in the Directory of Delegations, and invited the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia. As our relations with Ethiopia were decidedly chilly at the time, this gentleman was startled but accepted immediately. When he was met at the lift by Crispin Tickell and Stephen Wall, the penny dropped immediately. ‘Oh God,’ said Crispin. ‘It’s the Ethiopian. I know him. It’s the wrong man.’
Our unwelcome guest was shuttled into a side room while I was given a quick primer on Ethiopia. He was then hustled in for a twenty-minute meeting from which he departed with a look of extreme bewilderment. A few years before, I am told, the Foreign Office summoned an equally bewildered East German Ambassador to a meeting, in place of his West German counterpart.
It was at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool in October that I emerged from relative obscurity as Chief Secretary of the Treasury to the full glare of my new position. This was not the first time I had addressed the conference, but it was my debut as a Cabinet minister. Anti-European feeling in the party was becoming stronger. One young girl got tremendous applause when she said that, at the age of nineteen, she knew more about what was good for the UK than a sixty-year-old fuddy-duddy like Jacques Delors. The pro-Europe former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, then Vice-Chairman of the European Commission, who was only half-attending on the platform, joined in the applause, but I don’t think he can have heard her remarks. If the Prime Minister had announced that she was taking us out of the EEC the majority of those in the hall would have cheered her to the echo.
It was against this background that I put forward the government’s European policy. Here is what I said, well before I was prime minister, and in view of all that has taken place since I make no apology for repeating it:
I am not someone who believes in Europe right or wrong. We must judge it on its merits. But a clear-eyed look at Britain’s national interest shows beyond doubt that we have benefited from Community membership … Fifty years ago, Europe was full of young people with knapsacks going off to fight. Now it is full of young people with haversacks going off on holiday. That is a better Europe …
Today, I would not change a word of that speech. Nor would I change what I said about economic and monetary union.
It means different things to different people … So far, the discussion has centred on only one set of ideas. They would involve an end to national currencies, to independent national central banks and to national control over fiscal policy … We can’t accept these ideas but there are other ideas to discuss and we will put them forward.
We did, but alas, as time has shown, we were too late.
At CHOGM in Kuala Lumpur later that month, South Africa and the question of sanctions were the main sources of conflict, as we knew they would be. The UK opposed sanctions, believing them to be counterproductive. Everyone else supported them. There was no natural meeting point.
Margaret Thatcher tried to head off the expected trouble. She met Dr Mahathir, the Malaysian Prime Minister and Chairman of the Conference, on the eve of the first session, urging that South Africa should not dominate the discussion. Her hopes, never strong, were not realised. Mahathir’s silence was more expressive than any reply.
On the first morning of conference, Margaret Thatcher – incensed at remarks made by other heads of government about South Africa at the formal opening – quoted Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a figure known worldwide as an opponent of apartheid, on the perverse effect of sanctions. It was an effective, almost irresistible, debating point, but it was very provocative. Battle was joined. As the conference proceeded there was no sign of a conciliatory mood on policy towards South Africa, and a drafting committee of foreign ministers was set up to paper over our differences and agree a communiqué.
It met on 20 October, and was fairly bloody. There was dispute on nearly every sentence, and much of the discussion was emotional. I was utterly isolated, and was fighting on two fronts: to keep out the prejudicial wording proposed by others, and to retain the British view in the communiqué against opposition from every other foreign minister. The meeting became very bad-tempered despite all that Joe Clark, the Foreign Minister of Canada and Chairman of the group, did to keep it in order. The disagreement with the African and Asian foreign ministers was blunt, but the clashes with Gareth Evans from Australia were altogether rougher. We had clashed pre-conference when he had tried to bounce me into a meeting with leaders of the African National Congress, when our policy at that time was not to meet them. I had declined, and he had been very sore about it. ‘You’ve got your script, but you’ve turned up for the wrong bloody play,’ he yelled at one point.
In the drafting group our positions on sanctions were diametrically opposed. As each line was fought over the atmosphere became more sulphurous, and it spread to involve the other participants. When I queried the title of the Southern African section of the communiqué (‘Southern Africa – The Way Forward’), Gareth said,