The G7 summits: declassified records published for the first time
The first G7 summit took place in Rambouillet in November 1975 (in fact with only six attendees).
Records of these annual meetings of the leading world heads of government are now beginning to be available in British and US archives, and margaretthatcher.org will place them online as they are released year on year.
1975 november 15-17: rambouillet
The inception of the Group of Seven (G7) summits is usually viewed as a French initiative, the inspiration of President Valery Giscard D'Estaing. The mid-70s were perhaps the zenith of French post-war influence and Giscard's diplomacy in the early years of his seven year Presidency (1974-81) was confident and effective: certainly he was the first publicly to float the idea of a summit, raising it during a conversation with American journalists in July 1975 when he argued that currency stability was essential to economic recovery in the West. The French were campaigning to persuade the Americans to return to a fixed parity exchange rate system of the kind that had existed before 1971 under the Bretton Woods Agreement, with central banks committed to intervene in defence of the rate. (Of course, such a system would not have been based on the dollar, as Bretton Woods had been, if they had had their way.) Strong domestic forces were in play, unemployment in France approaching one million and most of the other participating countries experiencing economic difficulties, Britain very much to the fore.
But the British records show that the West German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, and US President, Gerald Ford, also played their part in forming the G7. Following discussions at a four power lunch during the Helsinki Conference on 31 July, Schmidt drafted a paper for Henry Kissinger (a copy of which was handed to the British) laying out a programme of work for such a meeting, making international reflation the core objective. Ford had already endorsed the proposal after discussions with the German Chancellor a few days before. The French attachment to fixed parities was not a popular one and the British, Germans and Americans converged on the view that the summit should only take place on a wider agenda.
Rambouillet was not billed or even intended to be an annual event, the first in a series still running. But some familiar features of later summits were there from the first, such as the careful advance preparation of summit conclusions by senior officials (later called the "sherpas", here known as the Carlton Group from the name of the New York hotel at which they first met). Their role was to ensure that something of substance would be seen to emerge from the summit, because a meeting at head of government level could not take place without concrete results to show, on pain of collective loss of face. And one encounters at Rambouillet also one of the G7's enduring characteristics, an insoluble conflict between a desire to keep numbers small and the determination of states and individuals to be invited to a prestigious gathering. Giscard aspired to create the elusive country house atmosphere at the small Château de Rambouillet 30 miles south west of Paris, proposing to invite the heads of government of five states: the US, Japan, Germany, France and Britain. He immediately met with irresistible pressure from Italy to add its name, and of course foreign and finance ministers clamoured for a place too, with success. He hoped to keep officials at bay, but "the mandarins were compressed rather than suppressed" (as the British Ambassador put it). The host's honour was saved, though: he arranged to billet all but the heads of government at an inconvenient distance from the Château and loftily excluded Canada altogether.
The French did not achieve their largest objective at the summit, having to settle for a declaration of common interest in exchange rate stability. But this was reckoned a significant diplomatic achievement all the same, and a notable step towards the more constructive French approach to the US which Giscard advocated.
Economic weakness left the British in a poor position at the summit: the prospect of future crisis left UK Ministers playing a defensive hand designed to keep open the option of introducing selective import controls. Indeed, an on the record statement to that effect was made unilaterally by the Prime Minister to British journalists immediately following the summit, and the line was greeted with foreboding by the French and Germans. But the records do not suggest perhaps that participants saw much risk, in the short-term at least, of a return to full-scale protectionism.
Each participant had been allowed to table one item for the agenda. Session Four was an informal one, without agenda or notetakers; the British memorandum is based on personal notes by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Four Power lunch at Helsinki (31 July 1975) - extract from the French record
Helmut Schmidt "Private Memorandum on International Concertation of Economic Action" (c.31 July 1975) - endorsing idea of an economic summit
Rambouillet Summit - Session 1 (Saturday 15 Nov 1975, 6pm - British record) - General Economic Outlook [Schmidt]
Rambouillet Summit - Session 1 (US record)
Rambouillet Summit - Session 2 (Sunday 16 Nov 1975, 11am - British record) - International Economic Problems (Trade) [Miki], (Monetary) [Giscard]
Rambouillet Summit - Session 2 (US record)
Rambouillet Summit - Session 3 (Sunday 16 Nov 1975, 4.15pm - British record) - Energy, raw material [Ford] & relations with developing countries [Wilson]
Rambouillet Summit - Session 3 (US record)
Rambouillet Summit - Session 4 (Monday 17 Nov 1975, 10am - British record) - Foreign affairs, especially Spain [informal session]
Rambouillet Summit - Session 5 (Monday 17 Nov 1975, 11.50am - British record) - East/West relations [Moro], discussion of summit declaration
Rambouillet Summit - Session 5 (US record)
"The Rambouillet Declaration" (Monday 17 Nov 1975)
British Ambassador to France's despatch on Rambouillet (25 Nov 1975) - role of the summit in French policy
British Foreign Secretary's despatch on Rambouillet (12 Feb 1976) - includes various summit documents as annexes
Read all Rambouillet material on this site