A team for Europe

Peter Kirk

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Members of Parliament are seldom less harmfully employed than when they are out of the country. Whether it be a 'fact-finding' mission, a delegation of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association or the InterParliamentary Union, or even the more regular delights of the Council of Europe or Western European Union, the peripatetic MP can be little more than an object of innocent fun. Minordamage to international relations may from time to time occur, but otherwise little can be damaged except his own liver.

Whether this is in fact a correct judgment, it was certainly one which was much in the minds of the five Government Whips who, in September 1972. set out to explore the European Parliament to see what sort of Members might profitably be sent there. The European Communities Act was safely through Parliament, the two Commissioners. Sir Christopher Soames and Mr George Thomson. had been nominated. the Labour Party was locked in anguished debate as to whether it should formally take part in Community institutions, and the time had now come to explore the one Community institution which was least known and least regarded, and which would require parliamentary representation on a scale previously unknown to the British House of Commons.

It was not so much the numbers involved; they were in fact the same—thirty-six—as those of the Council of Europe. It was the extent and nature of the work and the conditions of service which required a good deal of investigation before the Whips' Office could come forward with the necessary recommendations of the Prime Minister as to who should go.

From that original mission, a number of things, including a radical change in my own life, were to spring. What they found, one of them has sincedescribed to me as thoroughly alarming, and likely to become more so if the Labour Party, then in Opposition, decided, as seemed inevitable, not to take part. From being a body like the Council of Europe, where a Member attended a plenary a maximum of five weeks in the year, with a couple of days' committee meetings every month, the European Parliament even then

—and it has increased considerably since—

seemed to meet almost incessantly. It had a plenary every month except August. and

committees meeting virtually all the time in

between in Brussels. Though its powers were limited, the extent of. its interests was very wide, and required specialised knowledge of a type which it might be difficult to recruit. It was organised in political groups, not national delegations, and the power of those groups within the Parliament was almost complete.

Furthermore, it was essential from the point of view of the Government, whose action in forcing through the European Communities Act under the guillotine had been highly controversial, that all the Community institutions should function well, and particularly that they should function in a way that was comprehensible to the British public. From that point of view, therefore, the role of the Parliament was crucial; however weak and boring it might appear to be, it must appear to work in something like the same way as the British Parliament, or the image of a bureaucratic machine beavering away in Brussels under absolutely no sort of control at all, which opponents of our entry had consistently conjured up during the interminable debate on entry, would seem to be vindicated by the event.

The decision was taken, therefore, not to head the delegation with a venerable retired cabinet minister, as was the custom with other such bodies, but to select from among the ranks of junior ministers one who knew the European scene, who was still reasonably young, and who might be prepared to regard this as something of a challenge. I understand that five names were considered, and that finally I was chosen because of my long experience of Council of Europe affairs! had been a member of the Consultative Assembly off and on for nine years, broken by two junior ministerial hitches--as well as my support for the European idea going back long before I first entered Parliament in 1955.

When, about a month after the Whips' mission returned from their investigations, Ted Heath rang me and asked me whether 1 would be prepared to take the job on, it needed all his considerable powers of persuasion. I knew virtually nothing about the European Parliament, regarding it as the fifth wheel on the coach. I had visited it once, when making a film about the Community for Ranks, and I had sat through the annual joint meetings between the Parliament and the Council of Europe, which had usually proved drear to a degree. But beyond that, it was a mystery to me. Furthermore, I was enjoying myself at the Navy Department, and had no desire to move unless it was upwards, and this definitely did not seem to be promotion. I asked for twenty-four hours to think it over, and it was only after long discussions with my wife—who was as dubious as I was about the whole thing—that I decided to give it a try. There is nothing more obscure in the governmental machine than a junior minister at the Defence Department. and although 1 had some doubts whether

this could really be regarded as promotion, and certainly financially it was the reverse, I thought that, given the publicity which would certainly surround our entry, one might be able to make something of it.

A good deal of preparatory work had already been done, of course, but I still wanted to see for myself and, the European Parliament actually being in session at that moment, I wanted to set off for Strasbourg straight away to make contact. And here, for the first time, 1 ran up against the bogey which was to be the bane of all our lives for the next two and a half years—the dual mandate. As it happened, the Government were on the point of introducing their wages policy, and although the Whips were no doubt anxious to make sure that I was fully prepared for Europe, they were naturally even more anxious to maintain the Government's majority in the House of Commons. For a week, any sort of travelling was out, so 1 had to turn to the domestic end.

Here, there was an immense amount to do. For some months, tentative lists of possible European Members had been floating round the Whips' Office(one of them. an early edition, subsequently reached The Times. which printed it, causing total confusion, with furious reproaches frOm people on It who did not want to go to Europe, and even more ferocious reproaches from those not on it who did), but at the same time there had been a promise given to the 1922 Committee that there would be a selection committee fully representative of the back-benches which would make the final decision. Now that I had been appointed captain—without reference to the selectors-1 obviously had to be included in this team, only to discover to my horror that there were selectors who also wanted to play. Furthermore, various hostages to fortune had been given in the form of half-promises to various eminent people that they would get a place in the team, and as a result we had so many runners who thought that they were qualified that we could have done the whole thing three times over.

On top of that, there was a very considerable 'horses for courses' problem. So much of the European parliamentary work is done in technical committees that it demands certain special skills. One needs a few generalists, of course, but the importance of the common agricultural policy, for example, demands at least three farming specialists—not difficult in the Tory party. though it has caused Labour some difficult)/ since they joined—while the whole competition policy side demands high-powered lawyers, and these are not so easy to come by in the British Parliament these days.

Political considerations dictated certain choices as well. Scotland, Wales and Ulster should all be in. We must have at least two anti-Marketeers. Right and left in both economic and political terms within. the party had to be balanced as far as possible, and yet at the end of the day, we had to end_ up with a reasonably. coherent group. Ot course, some of these various elements could

be contained within a single individual. One of the European Parliament's few powers lay in the budgetary field, and it was obvious we could do with a good accountant. Rafton Pounder, than an Ulster Unionist Member, filled that bill admirably, and brought with him the Ulster ticket, as well as being a moderate anti-Marketeer. But other qualifications did not fall so easily into line, and indeed so far as Wales was concerned, we had to look to the House of Lords, with Lord Brecon, a former Minister of State, filling the gap. (Unfortunately, within a few months, he was snatched away to become Chairman of the Welsh Water Board, and we could not find a substitute. Sir Brandon Rhys-Williams, although a London Member, had to become our statutory Welshman.) This problem of matching Members for the tasks awaiting them is something we are going to have to give a lot of thought to in selecting our candidates for the direct elections due within a couple of years. Obviously, we can do nothing about the regional problem, but although we are likely to end up With a good deal more than the eighteen members we started off with (sixteen now) we shall still have to ensure in some way that enough of them have the necessary qualifications for the work to be properly done. It would be quite absurd to end up with thirty merchant bankers or thirty farmers.

While all this hectic selection was going on, I had one particular Member in mind. Derek Walker-Smith has been one of my Oldest friends in Parliament, and for many Years we have represented neighbouring constituencies. He is a very eminent lawyer, a passionate and effective Parliamentarian, and easily the most dangerous—from my Point of view—of those who were opposed to our entry to the Community,. Somehow, he had to be persuaded, and I was prepared to do everything I could to get him to join US, even to the extent of getting the Prime Minister to bring pressure to bear—and anyone who has tried to persuade Ted Heath to do anything he does not want to do will understand how strongly I felt. Derek was understandably reluctant: he was against the whole project anyway, he had a flourishing practice at the Bar, he was one of the most senior members of the House of Commons, and he felt no need of further adventures. But finally he agreed. It was, I an"' certain, one of the most important things which I managed to do. His contribution to the development of democracy Within the Community has been so great that it would be an impertinence even to Praise it. I only hope he enjoyed it as much as he seemed to.

We now, after weeks of argument, had our twelve Commons Members. The six Members from the Lords were easier to Choose. To begin with, their Lordships were nut going to have selection committees or any nonsense like that. George Jellicoe, at that time Leader of the House, simply produced some names, and the Chief Whip, Lord St Aldwyn, commented on them. I knew only two of them, and decided on the other four largely by inspiration. One chose herself. We lacked the statutory woman, and the offer of Lady Elles solved that particular problem. It also solved a large number of other problems as well, as there can never have been a woman who was less than purely statutory. Her wide-ranging talents made her one of the most active members of the team and one of the most valuable, even when she was doing nineteen other things at the same time.

Eventually, by cajoling, bullying, insulting, we managed to get together eighteen people who were to be the first British in the European Parliament., The Liberals had chosen two, Lord Gladwyn and Russell Johnston, and the Independent peers had elected one, Charles O'Hagan, who was rapidly to prove himself one of the most effective of the lot of us. It was a sad day for the European Parliament when he had to retire on the arrival of the Labour delegates in 1975, and I hope he will soon be back, either through direct elections or otherwise.

By the time the European Conservative group first met in London in the middle of December, we knew a lot more about what we were supposed to do, and we had also increased by two. The Parliament, as I have said, is run by the political groups, and the first major problem was to decide whether we wished to affiliate to an existing group, or whether we would go ahead on our own. Actually, we had very little choice in the matter. The only existing group we could possibly join was the Christian Democrat group, and thete was a marked reluctance on both sides to take the plunge. On the British Conservative side, there was a strong feeling that our supporters would take only just so much, and if the first thing we did was to change our name and apparently bring religion into politics, this would cause uproar. On the Christian Democrat side, there was the hatred of the word 'Conservative', which, in most of Europe is synonymous with 'reactionary', which,even without the strong confessional links which are almost the only thing which bind the Centre Right parties of Europe together, would be enough to keep us out.

On the other hand, it looked pretty bad to turn up at Strasbourg as a uni-national group; this, after all, was hardly the European spirit we had been preaching. Fortunately, there was a modest substitute which we finally decided to adopt. The Scandinavian Right also called itself Conservative, and with the prospect of Danish and Norwegian membership, this gave the opportunity for a Conservative group which could at least look international, even if overwhelmingly British. The result of the Norwegian referendum made this look slightly less attractive, but still, with two Danes, we were quite presentable, and it was accordingly a twenty-strong Anglo-Danish Group which presented itself to the European Parliament. It was also a great benefit to us in the person of Knud Thomsen, the senior Dane, a former Commerce Minister,. who was an unending fount of commonsense, wit, and devastatingly crushing remarks.

Meanwhile, I had been free to continue my researches on the ground, which proved to be interesting, if at times frustrating. A quick trip to Brussels for briefing went off well, with the UK delegation proving, as one would have expected, extremely wellinformed. But our forays to the Parliament itself were less rewarding. Our first visit to 'Luxemburg flushed only the SecretaryGeneral himself out of the covey, and the second was even worse.

Hugh Rossi (who was at that time the European Whip) and 1 decided to attend the December session of the Parliament at Luxemburg. It looked like being particularly interesting, as, for the first time, a motion of censure was being moved on the Commission which if carried by the required majority would have meant they would all have had to resign. (As that Commission was going out of office two weeks later anyway, this was a largely nugatory exercise, but I drew on it heavily when the Conservative group tried to do the same thing three and a half years later.) Luxemburg being the most difficult place in Europe to reach by air after Strasbourg, we set out early, only to learn, when we changed planes at Brussels, that Luxemburg was fog-bound—not an unusual occurrence, as I was to discover.

Our intrepid pilot set off after some delay, discovered while still in the air that Luxemburg was still shut in, and landed at Metz, from where, after about an hour, we were loaded into a bus. We drove to Luxemburg, through the frontier, to the city, through the city, passed the Parliament building— without stopping—and out to the airport, where we drove through the Customs fence so that we could be properly Cleared through Immigration and enter the Grand Duchy in the accepted way. By the time we reached the Parliament, we were in a state of some bedragglement which was not improved by learning that the staff of the Parliament had gone on strike—something which, under the dynamic leadership of the chairman of the Staff Association, it does with alarming frequency—the debate was over, and everyon had gone home.

It was not the most propitious introduction to the European Parliament, and a lesser spirit might have been a little put off by it. Nevertheless, we clearly had to try. The next session, in January, would see our entry, and one must not be put off by these minor difficulties. Through the beginning of the month, I gave endless conferences and television interviews, and, as there did not seem to be very much happening in the political scene elsewhere, we got a good deal of attention. On 15 January 1973 we took off from Heathrow in a tiny Air France plane in driving rain, our last view of England the soddened tarmac and the Earl of Bessborough's tweed cap, blown from his head, being rescued by a soaked stewardess.

This is the first of two articles by Sir Peter Kirk