Helsinki Group to monitor the Helsinki accords, was sentenced to seven years in prison. In July the dissidents Anatol Sharansky and Alexander Ginsburg were sentenced respectively to thirteen and eight years in prison and labour camps for ‘anti-Soviet agitation’. For any friend of freedom it was a time of heartbreak. And out of office there was little I could do to change it.
In fact, though I did not know it at the time, three developments were opening up the long-term prospect of turning back the Soviet advance. The first, paradoxically, was that they had become too arrogant. It is a natural and often fatal trait of the totalitarian to despise opponents. The Soviets believed that the failure of Western politicians signified that Western peoples were resigned to defeat. A little more subtlety and forethought might have secured the Soviet leaders far greater gains. As it was, particularly through the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, they provoked a Western reaction which finally destroyed the Soviet Union itself.
The second development was the election in September 1978 of a Polish Pope. John Paul II would fire a revolution in Eastern Europe which shook the Soviet Empire to its core.
Finally, there was the emergence of Ronald Reagan as a serious contender for the American Presidency. I had met Governor Reagan shortly after my becoming Conservative Leader in 1975. Even before then, I knew something about him because Denis had returned home one evening in the late 1960s full of praise for a remarkable speech Ronald Reagan had just delivered at the Institute of Directors. I read the text myself and quickly saw what Denis meant. When we met in person I was immediately won over by his charm, sense of humour and directness. In the succeeding years I read his speeches, advocating tax cuts as the root to wealth creation and stronger defences as an alternative to
In the early years Ronald Reagan had been dismissed by much of the American political elite, though not by the American electorate, as a right-wing maverick who could not be taken seriously. (I had heard that before somewhere.) Now he was seen by many thoughtful Republicans as their best ticket back to the White House. Whatever Ronald Reagan had gained in experience, he had not done so at the expense of his beliefs. I found them stronger than ever. When he left my study I reflected on how different things might look if such a man were President of the United States. But in November 1978 such a prospect seemed a long way off.
THE MIDDLE EAST
The hard-fought Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, changed the way in which Western countries regarded the Middle East. First, cuts in oil production, the huge hike in its price and selective embargoes against oil-producing countries friendly to Israel, imposed by the OPEC cartel of Arab oil producers, damaged the Western economies and caused enormous alarm. The dependence of Western living standards on unpredictable Middle Eastern politics could not have been more effectively demonstrated. Secondly, although the Israeli counter-attack had crossed the Suez Canal and driven Syrian forces to within twenty-five miles of Damascus, the Egyptians and Syrians had fought better than they had in 1967 and the Soviets had threatened to send troops in a ‘peacekeeping’ role. Thirdly, the United States responded by taking the leading part in bringing about disengagement between Israel and the Arab forces. From now on, American diplomacy, beginning with Dr Kissinger and carried on by President Carter, was the prime external force in the search for a Middle Eastern settlement.
For states like Syria, Egypt and Jordan, and for the PLO itself, life became more complicated, though more hopeful. Each had its own priorities, none of which could realistically be achieved by force of arms in the foreseeable future. Those who proved most cooperative in seeking an agreement with Israel were likely to receive the added bonus of American assistance for their economies, which the heavy demands of preparedness for war, combined with strong doses of socialism, had weakened. In such circumstances natural rivalries previously submerged or at least concealed by commitment to the ‘Arab cause’ came to the surface. Such was the Middle Eastern background to the visit I made to Egypt and Syria in January and to Israel in March 1976.
But there was also a tricky domestic political background. British politicians were in Middle Eastern eyes sharply divided between supporters of Israel on the one hand and supporters of the Arab states and the Palestinians on the other. Within the Shadow Cabinet, I was probably in a minority in feeling strong ties of respect and admiration for both Israel and the traditional regimes of the Arab world. Most of my colleagues were traditional Tory ‘Arabists’, although among the younger members of the Parliamentary Party there was considerable support for Israel, based in part upon her fearless pursuit of national self-interest. Jewish groups in Britain scrutinized closely everything the parties said about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hence, when Reggie Maudling, in a Commons debate in November 1975, appeared to call for British recognition of the PLO and the creation of a Palestinian state, this threatened to open Party divisions and I was bombarded by complaints.
I decided to spell out our policy clearly to a meeting of Jewish ex-servicemen in Finchley. This was that the Conservative Party believed that any Middle East settlement must be based upon UN Security Council Resolution 242, which itself stressed two fundamental requirements: the ‘withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ (i.e. the 1967 Six Day War); and recognition of the right of every state in the area ‘to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force’. I added that we condemned terrorism in whatever form and whatever cause it purported to serve.
For me at least, this position was not just a form of words designed to let us off the hook. I did
I arrived in Cairo on Wednesday 7 January 1976 and dined that evening with President and Madame Sadat. I had first met him briefly in London only two months earlier. Before dinner we had a long talk. I found him a powerful and direct personality who had a strong grasp of the power relations of the Western world. Sadat still had to play a shrewd diplomatic game, balancing America and the Soviet Union. Having dramatically ejected Soviet advisers in 1972, he had received Soviet support during the 1973 war, but was now inclined once more to look to the United States. Just two months after my visit, Egypt formally abrogated its 1971 Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union.
In our conversations, he claimed to be reasonably satisfied with the state of the Egyptian economy: at this time there were still some expectations that the destruction of Beirut as a financial centre might indirectly benefit Cairo, and he was hoping for help from the Gulf states. But I thought it significant that the President lamented the amount of money which had gone into paying for war which might have been used for the peaceful development of Egypt. He told me that he was ‘very tired’, and I suspected this was said as much on behalf of Egypt as on his own account. He felt that he had a good relationship with President Ford, which perhaps intimated the way his mind was turning. Indeed, he gave the impression that Egypt would remain neutral unless forced into another war. There were also telltale signs in his conversation of Egypt’s well-known rivalry with Syria. He told me that that country was providing arms to both sides in the Lebanese civil war and added that the Syrian Ba’athist Party was hated throughout the Arab world. I formed the impression that Sadat was a formidable man, capable of great boldness, who was contemplating a major departure in his country’s foreign relations; I could not foresee, however, just how dramatic that change would be. Less than two years later he was to make his historic visit to Jerusalem, which led to Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.
Sightseeing during my short stay in Egypt was a diplomatic necessity as well as a pleasure. But even this contained risks. Having climbed the great Cheops Pyramid, and still a little breathless, I came down to find a small group of cameramen, journalists and officials standing beside a camel. The camel driver’s name was Ibrahim and the camel was called ‘Jack Hulbert’, perhaps so named by an English Tommy after the popular long-jawed British comedian of the 1930s and forties. He was, it seems, a distinguished beast, and had been ridden on a previous visit by Alec Douglas-Home when Foreign Secretary. Everyone seemed to assume that I would follow suit. The
