given the circumstances. âIn 25 minutes we sorted most of the problems out. We then went over to the President and then another very good 25 minutes of discussion with officials present. He displayed the same toughness as he had always in the year before and I felt quite confident that we could hold the Americans and that the Anglo-American position was not going to be undermined by UN and State Department sections. I went back with Vance and we worked out the sort of criteria for roundtable talks and the sort of invitation we would send. It was already clear that the Americans were particularly keen, with Lagos coming on, to make progress and wanted to hammer down dates. I decided at 6.30 that we would keep the booking that we had already made on the plane, that there were advantages in getting out, not getting involved in the UN debate and reporting to Cabinet. âSo I left the Embassy and flew back that night on the plane and managed to get quite a lot of sleep, only to be woken up just before arriving in London to find that Andy Young once again had blown a gaffe and had made a ludicrous statement about Britain being just about to back off the whole issue and making a parallel with our attitude with Palestine, which was historically inaccurate but also deeply offensive. I drove straight from the airport to Cabinet, reported to Cabinet and was helped greatly by Merlyn Rees120 describing what had appeared on BBC radio as being a very damaging report, and that I had flown back from America either in a huff or in a panic because of the Andy Young statement. So with the agreement of the Prime Minister, it was let out from the Cabinet that we had discussed Rhodesia and had agreed with the line that had been adopted at my meeting with the President. And I then left the Cabinet early, went on the radio at The World at One and downplayed the Andy Young remarks. I did not want to damage Andy Young, and I have never wanted to be hooked up with this anti-Andy Young campaign, who for all his weaknesses is a great asset in any policy which had to stick in Africa. He has considerable support among the Front Line States, he is an engaging guy, his heart is in the right place, and I must say that I felt that a lot of the anti-Andy Young sentiment in Britain was basically antiblack sentiment and I was going to have no truck with it. However, I could not allow this statement to go on the record unchallenged and so I joked it off, that Andy Young tended to shoot from the hip, which seemed to go down quite well and made the headlines in all the evening newspapers. âThe next day I was greatly helped by a marvellous picture of me leaving London airport to go to the Cabinet meeting, with an Avis rental car advertisement on the newspaper. I was reading the newspaper and the big black headline said, âNo one tries harderâ. In a strange way, for all the difficulties and obstacles, I think this expressed a good many peopleâs sentiments. They may not agree with all my policies, but I think that I was trying desperately hard to bring about a peaceful settlement. In some strange way the Andy Young issue coming right out at the moment into the open helped me with public opinion. People began to see now that there was a division between the President and Cy Vance on the one hand and Andy Young in the United Nations on the other. And a lot of the innuendos and remarks about differences in the American situation, which had to be denied, were now obvious and open and this helped. Cabinet endorsed the consequence of the conclusion and the issue of roundtable talks. âAt that time the main difference with the Americans was my insistence, which I have expressed earlier in the Pilgrim speech, that we could not go along with the Front Line Presidentsâ wish to base an all-party conference on the Anglo-American plan. I had in the Pilgrim speech incorporated the suggestions from Julius Nyerere that we were not going to the talks as a neutral umpire, but that we had ideas and views of our own, that we were 120
Merlyn Rees (Lord Merlyn-Rees, 1920-2006), Labour politician. Home Secretary, 1976-9.
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