Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [465]
Then we drove to the great cathedral of Speyer nearby, in whose crypt are to be found the tombs of at least four Holy Roman Emperors. As we entered the cathedral the organ struck up a Bach fugue. Chancellor Kohl, knowing how much I love church music, had thoughtfully arranged this gesture. Outside, a large crowd had gathered which I understood was telling the Chancellor how right he was to get British and American tanks off German soil and stop the low-level flying.
Only afterwards did I learn that Helmut Kohl had taken Charles Powell aside behind a tomb in the cathedral crypt to say that now I had seen him on his home ground, on the borders of France, surely I would understand that he — Helmut Kohl — was as much European as German. I understood what Helmut meant and I rather liked him for it. But I had to doubt his reasoning.
This desire among modern German politicians to merge their national identity in a wider European one is understandable enough, but it presents great difficulties to self-conscious nation-states in Europe. In effect, the Germans, because they are nervous of governing themselves, want to establish a European system in which no nation will govern itself. Such a system could only be unstable in the long term and, because of Germany’s size and preponderance, is bound to be lop-sided. Obsession with a European Germany risks producing a German Europe. In fact this approach to the German problem is a delusion: it is also a distraction from the real task of German statesmanship, which must be to strengthen and deepen the post-1945 traditions of West German democracy under the new and admittedly challenging conditions of unification. That would both benefit Germany and reassure her neighbours.
EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
By now attention in British politics was turning to two issues which, much as I sought to disentangle them, became entwined: the elections to the European Parliament and the occasion of my tenth anniversary. On the second of these, I had given strict instructions to Central Office and the Party that it should be handled with as little fuss as possible. I gave one or two interviews; I received a commemorative vase from the National Union; and a rather attractive publication was issued by the Party, which was a modest success without being exactly a bestseller. But, of course, there were plenty of journalists anxious to write ‘reflective’ pieces on ten years of Thatcher and to conclude, as I knew they would, that a decade of this woman was quite enough.
In such an atmosphere it was natural that the Labour Party would claim that the 1989 European elections were a ‘referendum’ on Thatcherism in general and the Bruges approach in particular. I might have accepted that the European elections were a sort of judgement on Bruges if we had had European candidates who were Brugesist rather than federalist. With a few notable exceptions that was not the case.
As every advertising expert or political strategist will tell you, perhaps the most important requirement in any campaign is to have one clear message. But the Conservative Party now seemed to have two quite contradictory messages which Peter Brooke, as Party Chairman, and Christopher Prout, as leader of the European Democratic Group (EDG — the Conservative MEPs from Denmark, Spain and the UK) struggled to try to reconcile. Many leading members of the EDG had gone into the European Parliament because their views were out of sympathy with the rest of the party: they were a residue of Heathism. Their criticisms of the campaign strategy, of our general policy towards Europe and — whenever they thought they could get away with it — of me too rebounded directly on themselves. For, by undermining the Party’s credibility on European matters they destroyed their own political prospects.
I had put Geoffrey Howe in charge of preparing the manifesto. He tried to reach a consensus and consequently it was an unexciting document, although nicely written by Chris Patten. The advertising by contrast was sharp but not very good. I was shown the last