Under Ceausescu

The Ceauşescus' state visit to Britain, 1978

A rifle, a dog and a knighthood for Nicolae - and a brooch and honorary degree for Elena ... Christopher Lawson concludes his two-part series

Posted: 16/04/2009

In mid-June 1978, in the last months of my contract, I watched, desultorily, the three-day state visit of the Ceauşescus to London unfold on my black-and-white television in my apartment in the Zona Industriala. Communist control ensured that the main impression, apart from the pomp and pageantry served up by their British hosts, was similar to other state visits. Sweet-faced girls showered the visiting couple with bouquets. The girls came from families at the Romanian embassy in London. Talks with bourgeois politicians were pursued in a "cordial" atmosphere, while talks with Gordon McLennan, General Secretary of the crumbling British Communist Party, were, as ever, "fraternal".

The cover of Private Eye which appeared the week of the Ceauşescus' state visit to London, was reprinted after their execution. (Reprinted with permission.)

In the total absence of opinion polls in the communist era, it is almost impossible to measure the popularity of the Ceauşescus' global gallivanting. Was there indifference or even jealousy, given that the average Romanian could not dream of foreign travel on that scale? In fact, especially after Ceauşescu's 1968 speech against the invasion of Czechoslovakia, it is probably true to say that there was an element of reflected glory. Romanian "intellectuals", especially those who were regular listeners to Radio Free Europe and the BBC, or those in Transylvania, who had occasional access to Western newspapers and magazines, took some vicarious pride in the president's foreign travels and his promotion of Romania.

Jokes followed visits to a monarchy. Elena wakes up early in the marital bed - a favourite scenario for bancuri (eng: jokes) and says: "Mai e state?" In the ungrammatical dialect of Wallachia the subtext means: "Are there still more countries to visit?" Ceauşescu misunderstands. "Darling, you can call me Your Majesty in the privacy of our own home. But on formal occasions, please stick to Comrade".

Two state visits to Britain usually take place each year. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises the monarch, who acts as host, on which heads of state should be invited. The visitors normally stay in Buckingham Palace during the three-day visit. After a ceremonial welcome and the inspection of a guard of honour, a horse-drawn carriage brings the head of state, accompanied by the Queen, back to Buckingham Palace. On the first evening there is a banquet in their honour. On the final evening the guest returns hospitality at an alternative location, in this case Claridge's. The visiting dignitary meets the British prime minister, government ministers, and leaders of the main political parties, as well as the heads of diplomatic missions in London. At a dinner hosted by the City of London, the king or president has the opportunity of meeting leaders of commerce and industry.

While royal favourites Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark have paid two state visits, in 1974 and 2000, Her Majesty's ministers have also required the Queen, since she inherited the throne in 1952, to invite to London a number of less desirable figures, from the kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko of then-Zaire in 1972 to the murderous Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 1994. Significant interests are often at stake, both economic and geopolitical. "The more involved we are, the more possibilities of influence we have" is the line of thinking. Often a policy of constructive engagement, however discredited, can move an authoritarian regime toward reform more effectively than one of isolation, although this was hardly likely in the case of communist Romania. Timothy Garton Ash, perhaps Britain's leading public intellectual, calls this "offensive détente." For Britain, trade is the overriding issue. In Ceauşescu's case, the agenda included what appeared to be a promising aircraft deal.

In June 1978 Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu were simply following in the footsteps of the egregious Joseph-Desiree Mobutu, who had bestowed upon himself the title "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake." This makes "Genius of the Carpathians" and "Danube of Thought" sound positively modest. In Britain, "Sunny Jim" Callaghan was prime minister, holding together a divided party and clinging to power with a narrow majority.

At the time British Aerospace had been negotiating for months to sell Romania's Tarom airline a fleet of BAC 111 aircraft, some of which were to be assembled in Romania. As bait, Callaghan offered Ceauşescu an official visit. The Romanian leader insisted that nothing less than an invitation from the Queen would be acceptable. The aircraft contract was subsequently signed, but descended into legal battles after the Romanians did not want to part with hard currency to pay for the aircraft. Romania had signed a protocol with British Aerospace the previous year. A final contract covering the purchase and licence production of the One-Eleven in Romania was signed during the visit.

The devastating earthquake of 4 March 1977 (which I also experienced) had caused losses to Romania of two billion dollars, killed at least 1,500 people, injured more than 11,000, and damaged 35,000 buildings, 33,000 of which had been built before the second world war. On 1st August, 1977, 35,000 miners from the Jiu Valley had protested against a new decree that raised the age of retirement from 50 to 55 and reduced the miners' pensions. Ceauşescu had agreed to the demands, then arrested the leaders, transferred 4,000 men and replaced them with Securitate informers that created a climate of fear which endured until December 1989.

Commercial deals were not the only reason why President Ceauşescu was welcomed to Britain - his "independent" line within the communist school pleased Western leaders. Mr Callaghan praised his "statesmanship". Mrs Thatcher, as opposition leader, shook his hand, while the Queen praised the Ceauşescus for their "heroic struggle" and said how much Britain had been impressed by "the resolute stand you have taken to sustain the independence of Romania".

She presented him with the spectacularly inappropriate gift of a rifle and telescopic sight. Elena was given a brooch. That otherwise admirable politician, David Steel, the Liberal leader, gave the Romanian leader a black Labrador puppy he called Corbu and came to love with distraction. The Romanian ambassador in London was officially ordered to shop at Sainsbury's every week for British dog biscuits, which were then sent back in the diplomatic bag. Many sources say that Corbu was soon given the rank of colonel in the Romanian Army. Unfortunately, Corbu became a part of the dictator's own fantasy world. Soon the dog was to be seen being driven through Bucharest in a limousine, with its own motorcade. Corbu always slept with Ceauşescu at night. During the day it slept in Villa 12A, complete with bed, luxury furnishings, television and telephone.

The Queen awarded Ceauşescu a KGCB. With the stay in Buckingham Palace, this was one of his conditions for the visit. In return, he gave Her Majesty the Order of Socialist Romania (First Class). As is now well known, in the last days of 1989, during the Ceauşescu's final, desperate escape by helicopter, she returned the Romanian Order and instructed that the President's name be removed from the Register of the Order of the Bath. It is an error to imagine that the West was unaware of the true nature of his regime. Bernard Levin wrote a corruscating piece in the Times on Ceauşescu's nepotism, published to coincide with his visit, in which he called Ceauşescu a racketeer. And there was a famous Private Eye cover.

The Ceauşescus at home. On of the many propaganda images produced in Romania under their rule.

Other Western governments had also honoured the Romanian leader. In 1968, during les evenements du mois de mai (eng: 'the events of May') de Gaulle had left a million-strong demonstration in Paris to pay a six-day visit to Bucharest. There he had personally bestowed the Legion d'Honneur on Ceauşescu, saying "A regime like yours is good and useful but a similar one would be impossible in France or Great Britain." (I have been unable to discover whether the order was withdrawn before his execution and death. Since it was a personal gift from the General, it probably was not.) During his November 1980 state visit to Denmark Queen Margrethe had awarded Ceauşescu the Order of the Elephant. She revoked the Order on December 23, 1989 for the first time in Danish history. The insignia were returned to Denmark and Ceauşescu's name was deleted from the official rolls.

The President was also taken to Bristol during his three-day visit. Well-briefed, his British hosts conversed about Henri Coanda, the great Romanian pioneer of the air and builder of the world's first jet-powered aircraft, who, between 1911 and 1914, had worked as technical director of Bristol Aeroplane Company. He had designed several aeroplanes known as Bristol-Coanda aeroplanes, one of which had won the first prize at the International Military Aviation Contest in 1912.

The French President, Giscard d'Estaing, had warned the Queen that, when the Ceauşescus visited Paris, the party had stolen plates, clocks, porcelain and other movable items from their bedrooms, while Romanian security men had ripped out phones and electric wiring, presumably looking for bugs. The Queen was furious that Ceauşescu should assume that Buckingham Palace would be bugged. She "instructed her staff to keep a watchful eye on the Romanians". Pilfering from the palace was kept to a minimum.

Romania was to manufacture 80 BAC 1-11s and 225 Rolls-Royce Spey engines. Production continued in Romania on the ROMBAC 1-11, with kits being shipped for assembly there. The first flight of the redesignated ROMBAC 1-11 took place on 18th September, 1982, and production continued until 1989, when the ninth airframe was delivered. The production line had originally intended to deliver up to 80 aircraft but the deteriorating political situation in Romania closed it early. There were three reasons for the failure of the Rombac initiative. First, Romania's economy and international position deteriorated to the point where supplies for One-Eleven manufacture slowed to a trickle. Second, the market foreseen by the Romanians failed to show an interest, though some Rombac machines were leased out to European operators. Third, the One-Eleven's noise level and fuel economy had failed to keep pace with US and West European competition. Total production for the 1-11, from both British and Romanian factories, was 244, with a further two airframes being left incomplete in Romania.

Rumour had it that the Romanians resorted to barter deals afterwards and that the bulk was paid for in the form of consignments of rotten strawberries.

Academician Doctor Engineer Elena Ceauşescu, the self-appointed tsarina of Romanian science, badly wanted an honorary degree from Oxford and appointment as Fellow of the Royal Society. In the words of Mircea Codreanu, a diplomat at the Romanian Embassy in Washington, she was "an ignorant, uneducated, primitive kind of woman, who really thought that if she had some titles after her name, it would change her image". Oxford refused. Elena had, after all, left primary school after four years to harvest in the fields, and her falsified academic record was an open secret.

An emissary of the Romanian Academy of Sciences was dispatched to London to put her case but the Royal Society would not play ball. Oxford and London were sounded out about the possibility of an honorary degree, but again there were no takers. The Foreign Office and the Romanian ambassador, whose job was on the line, became increasingly frantic. Then the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Polytechnic of Central London came to the rescue with offers of a fellowship and an honorary professorship.

Neither the institute nor the polytechnic betrayed any doubts as to her scientific standing and treated her to the full works. With a picture of Nicolae Ceauşescu on the wall and in the presence of such luminaries as Dorothy Hodgkin, an incredibly distinguished figure, and Sir Frank Hartley, vice-chancellor of the University of London, Professor Sir Richard Norman, as president, bestowed the fellowship of the institute. He hymned Elena's contributions as a 'distinguished scientist' to macromolecular experimental chemistry, singling out her work on 'the stereospecific polymerisation of isoprene, on the stabilisation of synthetic rubbers, and on copolymerisation'. This was work which had 'the dual merit of increasing our effectiveness in exploiting chemistry for the benefit of mankind'. In addition to her certificate she was presented with a special commemorative scroll lauding her role as a 'distinguished chemist'. From the Institute of Chemistry Elena then proceeded to the Polytechnic of Central London, now the University of Westminster. Here, following the playing of the Romanian national anthem, she was made a professor, honoris causa, the first such distinction granted by the polytechnic to a foreign scientist. She was hailed by Professor Terence Burlin, Senior Pro-Rector, as one of the most distinguished graduates of the Bucharest Polytechnic and as someone who, in the course of a highly productive research career in the difficult field of polymer chemistry, had undertaken research of great distinction. He praised her for steering her children into the sciences.

Professor Burlin concluded by listing some of the honours conferred on Elena by academic institutions worldwide, which including her honorary professorship of the National University of Engineering in Peru. By the end Elena had amassed well over a hundred such distinctions and at her drumhead court martial continued pathetically to insist on her status as an academician.

The Queen never forgave the prime minister and the foreign secretary, for persuading her to have the Romanians stay at Buckingham Palace. She referred privately to Ceauşescu as "that frightful little man".

On their return to Romania at the conclusion of the state visit the Ceauşescus were showered with the oriental obsequies that attended their every activity. By 1978, they were bizarre and hyperbolic enough to have given their Western champions serious pause for thought. Institutions ranging from the Romanian Academy of Sciences to the Satu Mare Women's Committee deluged Elena with telegrams hailing the 'homage' paid by prestigious scientific institutions in Britain to her 'brilliant scientific merits', her 'prodigious activity', 'her brilliant activity as a world famous scientist', which had now received international confirmation. The Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Polytechnic of Central London could hardly be held responsible for such eulogistic guff. But a little more political sophistication on their part might have alerted them to the certainty that their flattering attentions would be shamelessly exploited by the Romanian authorities and could serve only to enhance a personality cult that by 1978 was already grotesque.

The British government had unofficially agreed to "shield" Ceauşescu from any unpleasantness arising from demonstrations. The distinguished exile Ion Ratiu mounted a one-man demonstration outside Claridge's, where Ceauşescu gave a banquet in honour of the Queen. He was arrested but released the following day when he stressed he was merely exercising his freedom of speech.

Back in Iasi, a Romanian friend thought the whole operation had been a triumph for M15 and M16, and the British department of psychological warfare. Everybody Ceauşescu had met, from Callaghan to Owen, from the Duke of Edinburgh to Prince Charles, had been a six-footer. It was the first time Romanians had seen their diminutive dictator, who was a mere five foot four in height, look up when he shook hands with Westerners.

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