Dwelling on unity
Tim Renton
MEMOIRS These are family memoirs rather than a serious political autobiography, and they are distinguished by their naivete. Trudeau dismisses the fact that he failed to involve his Finance Minister in the discussion of a $2.5 billion package of Government spend- ing cuts with the comment that it was mid- summer, the Minister was in his constituency and in any case was
a good soldier and a happy warrior and we quickly moved on to fight more battles side by side.
When he wins an election with a majority of nearly 100 reduced to two, he drives to the Governor General's residence full of confidence dressed in a native buckskin jacket, and in a sports car, in order to show that 'there was no question in my mind of giving up'. Would that Heath, Major, Lamont and Co. could act with such sprez- zatura.
Trudeau was Liberal Prime Minister of Canada for 16 years, 1968-79 and 1980-84. He describes with dignity and with extreme brevity the break up of his marriage to the beautiful, erring Margaret. That sadness apart, the memoirs are full of happy snaps — with Chou Lai, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Nixon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, on a camel, on an elephant, building an igloo. He travelled a good deal but there is little perception of the serious side of foreign affairs, or, indeed, of Cana- da's potential position as the arbitrator between the United States and the Third World, a position nurtured by Lester Pearson.
His view that, in his first visit to the Sovi- et Union, he laid the foundation for the subsequent 'detente in East-West relations fills but six lines and his first official trip to China is covered in one paragraph. He describes at greater length a day skin- diving with Castro, and his surprise at learning that Castro, in spite of his cigar- smoking, could go down 30 or 40 feet and hold his breath for a full minute while wait- ing for a fish to appear. Unfortunately, he does not disclose the reaction of President Nixon, with whom he quarrelled regularly, to this strategic revelation.
Trudeau attended many Commonwealth Conferences and clearly got on more easily with black members of the Commonwealth than with Margaret Thatcher. Yet, despite his length of time in office, he never achieved the status of a bridge-builder.
What, then, concerned him most? With- out doubt, the question of the federal unity of Canada and the status of Quebec in Canada. Himself a Quebecois from Montreal, he was brought up to argue for equality between Francophone and Anglo- phone within Federal Canada. Describing the October crisis of 1970, when a Quebecois Minister was murdered, a British diplomat kidnapped, and it appeared as if separatists in Montreal might be near revolution, he changes char- acter and writes as a man of metal who has taken off his fancy hat and tie in order to toil in earnest for what he is determined to keep — a united Canada.
The same theme dominates the later years of his Premiership. The election of the provincial Parti Quebecois Govern- ment in 1976 under Levesque provoked the referendum campaign of 1980 on whether Quebec should separate from Canada. That, in turn, led to some of Trudeau's finest speeches. They came from the heart and they won the day. From there he pro- gressed to the 1982 Constitution Act which finished Westminster's responsibility for Canadian affairs. He describes in great detail the negotiations with difficult provin- cial premiers who trusted neither him nor their colleagues. Winning the agree- ment of nine of them, and leaving Levesque outwitted and isolated, was the moment of his greatest triumph. As he puts it in his memoirs, Canada's Constitution came home.
The triumph has not lasted. With last October's General Election, the question of the survival of Federal Canada has again come to the fore, the Bloc Quebecois is now the second largest party in the Federal Government and its leader, campaigning for eventual independence for Quebec, is also the Leader of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition.
But Trudeau, wise man, resigned in 1984, on a high and at a time of his own choice. The description of his life after politics is contented and the most sensitive part of his book. How wise of him to be able to write:
I systematically refuse — with very few exceptions, maybe one or two in almost ten years — to speak in public for the record.
Those interested in obtaining more inde- pendence for Scotland and Wales should read the passages in these Memoirs about Quebec and separatism. But to John Major, if he wishes 16 years in No. 10, I would follow Simon Jenkins's example and recommend Il Principe as the role model rather than Pierre Trudeau.
Tim Renton was Government Chief Whip, 1989-90.
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