Britain to Market

For 900 years the accident of 20 miles of Channel water has given Britain a proud aloofness from the European Continent. As recently as last month, Punch could lampoon a "European" as "one who believes Britain to be part of Europe." But last week, with diffident step, Britain was moving toward what Prime Minister Macmillan has frankly admitted "will be one of the gravest decisions Britain has ever taken." The question: to join, or not to join, the six nations of the Continent's flourishing Common Market (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) in economic--and perhaps, ultimately, political--union.

When the Six first got together in 1957, Britain refused to join for various reasons: doubt that the Common Market would succeed, respect for her Commonwealth ties, and historic insularity. But as the Six's tariff walls have precipitously tumbled within and the Common Mar ket's economy boomed, Britain has felt increasingly envious--and isolated. Britain's hastily assembled European Free Trade Association of the Outer Seven proved pale competition for the spurting Six; E.F.T.A. partners Denmark and Sweden are restive and dissatisfied. In Parliament, press and pub, Britons were debating the far-reaching issues that the Common Market poses.

Sovereign Choice. Parliament's Tory and Labor backbenchers last week held a three-hour debate on Common Market entry. (Macmillan and Labor's Hugh Gaitskell were conspicuously absent to ensure that the issue did not come to a premature vote.) Though Britain's immediate problems in entering the Common Market are economic--protecting her farmers, safeguarding Commonwealth trade--the ultimate question involved is national sovereignty and prestige. This issue cuts straight across party lines.

The Tory right wing is anti-Common Market, believing Britain is still physically powerful enough to go it alone as a great power; e.g., they regret the abortive Suez invasion only as a failure of nerve and not of policy. The Labor left wing is also antiMarket in order to retain Brit ain's unilateral capacity to act; it is the left's impression that Britain is still morally powerful enough to sway world opinion, particularly by giving up the atom bomb to shame everybody else into disarming. When Laborite Roy Jenkins forcefully argued that Britain ought to go into the Common Market to end the division of Europe that has spawned three wars in the last 100 years, he was interrupted by both camps, but refused to be shouted down. "The Suez group and the extreme unilateralists are the reverse side of the same coin," he snapped. "They're both based on a greatly exaggerated view of Britain's importance in the world."

Relative Status. Tory Nigel Birch concurred on Britain's shrunken international power, carried the argument a step further by depicting the new potency of Europe if Britain added its considerable weight to the Common Market. The result "would be a population larger than Russia or America," he said, "a community occupying the fairest part of the earth, comprising the most intelligent, hardworking people in the world--and far better able to help the Commonwealth and supply capital and know-how to underdeveloped countries." On the other hand, if Britain stayed out, Birch warned, it would not long retain what Britons like to regard as their first-friend-and-counselor role with the U.S. "As the relative power of the Six and ourselves changes, so will our special position with the U.S. tend to decline."

Despite the lack of a vote, the debate indicated Parliament's present division on joining the Common Market: approximately 20% for, 20% against, the remaining 60% undecided but clearly leaning toward entry if various compromises can be met. If anything, Parliament seemed less ready than the British public generally. In business and industry, the big companies such as the British Motors Corp. and I.C.I. are already on record as anxious to join. Smaller, less efficient firms are more worried.

Britain's highly protected farmers were at first fiercely opposed, but are now coming around. They are enticed by the wider European market, convinced that since Britain produces more per acre and per man than any nation in Europe, they will more than hold their own. With the single exception of Lord Beaverbrook's Express, the British press is enthusiastically pro-Common Market, and most editorialists reproach Macmillan for his hesitancy.

Headlined the Laborite Daily Mirror: GO IN AND FIGHT--OR STAY OUT AND LOSE.

The Tie that Binds. Britain's biggest stumbling block on the road to the Common Market is the Commonwealth. Hard est hit by any change in the status quo would be New Zealand, virtually Britain's farm, which in recent years has shipped as much as 92% of its exports of butter, cheese, meat and wool to Britain. Australia and Canada are also worried, but less so, since they are less dependent on purely agricultural exports. India, Malaya, Pakistan and the Commonwealth partners in Africa are, in fact, plugging for the Common Market as a great new arena in which to sell their raw materials.

As the British public argued, the government cautiously shifted into low gear. Commonwealth Relations Minister Duncan Sandys set off for successive visits to New Zealand, Australia and Canada to explain Macmillan's Common Market thinking--and listen to objections and suggestions for riders to be attached to Britain's conditions of entry. Meeting in London last week, the Outer Seven nervously agreed to stick together in wooing the Six to prevent anyone's jumping the gun--but also agreed that no single nation could veto the marriage if the terms suited everybody else.

At week's end Macmillan in an informal speech at Bowood, Wiltshire, revealed some of his own thinking. "I cannot tell you what we shall do; but I can tell you some of the things we shall not do," he said. "The government is not going to let down the British farmer." Neither would it let down the Commonwealth economically, though "on the political side I've no doubt that the Commonwealth would be actually strengthened if we could reach a fair agreement with Europe." Whatever the problems, Macmillan made plain his own predilection: "I am not one of those who think that we cannot achieve a tolerable solution."

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