The Common Market

(This is the last in a series of articles on aspects of British politics.)

It is not in itself terribly surprising that last month's party conferences did not reflect Britain's pervasive new sense of urgency and change, for the history of postwar party activity has above all been one of immobility and parliamentary bickering. What is perfectly astonishing is that the history should continue two years after the Common Market and the startling prospect of joining it have infiltrated British political life with a demand that the Government make a serious effort at decision and negotiation.

The Government's reaction, after all this time, remains tepid; even the decision to apply for membership in the E.E.C. was voted in a fashion extraordinarily nonchalant. The reaction of Labour remains officially non-existent. The Common Market has got the attention it deserves only from the press, notably the Economist, the Guardian, and the Observer, who have studied it, shouted about it, and provided most of the intelligent debate about it for months. Their opinion is strongly pro-European (for membership), and unlike their friends in Westminster they are not afraid to proselytize.

Through their efforts the economic questions, at least, have grown more familiar, though scarcely less complex. Nobody doubts that the E.E.C. is a highly dynamic group of nations. Aided by the Marshall Plan and an ever-increasing amount of U.S. investment, it has accomplished far more among the Six than the Labour Government of 1945 ever hoped for in Britain. The members have developed new raw materials, a newly skilled labor force, and a new approach to long-range planning; both capital and labor begin to move freely among them. By 1970, when the last internal tariffs are removed, the Common Market ought to be a glowingly healthy economic organism. Not so the British Commonwealth of Nations, whose postwar growth is static by comparison, and whose chances for a significant influx of investment capital are negligible.

I do not for a moment intend to use this fantastically over-simplified description to suggest that Britain throw itself immediately into Europe to make certain of its association with dynamism rather than with stasis. It would admittedly have to restructure or get rid of its high-tariff industries (the smaller ones are particularly vulnerable), to reconcile Labourites and housewives to a steep rise in food prices, and to impose a weird system of planning heavily favoring rapid-growth sectors. The food problem, which would arise as soon as Common-wealth produce were no longer able to enter duty-free, might possibly be mitigated if the E.E.C. allowed Britain to maintain a set of preferential tariffs for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But such preferences subvert the very idea of a Common Market, and France in particular will be content with Britain's joining only if it joins unequivocally.

Unequvocal membership means total economic integration, and this raises questions of corresponding political integration. Extremist Tories cry that Britain will lose its economic, hence political, hence cultural sovereignty; extremist Labourites fear they will never have a chance to try state Socialism. Since the E.E.C. has decided to abandon its founders' hope for a tight European federation, niether protest is really valid, but there is a strange legitimacy to more moderate British desires. Mr. Macmillan wants, ideally, a loose federation with both Europe and the Commonwealth, for he understandably cannot bear to let the Commonwealth go. It is more than a symbol of past grandeur, it may become a cultural tie between East and West, and Britain more than ever fancies its role as international mediator.

But although African nations will have the opportunity to associate themselves with the new European complex, links to the older nations of the Commonwealth may have to be worn away. The nations most hostile to Europe will be bitter about the economic break, and they show no signs of wanting to lessen their bitterness by forming so much as a joint customs union among themselves.

I write "will" now instead of "would" because Britain has already, possibly without wanting to, made a choice. Not only does the application constitute a kind of moral commitment, but the failure of negotiations at this stage could cause a severe rift in the Atlantic Alliance. Beyond all this, Britain may be beginning to realize that it needs the Common Market badly, if only to reinject itself with a vital spirit of activity. The Government cannot always sustain itself, as it did recently, by simply reaching into the International Monetary Fund with a draft for $2 billion.

Suddenly the Tories have a lot to do: they must negotiate cleverly with Europe; they must devise a planning apparatus sufficiently radical to deal with the 50 per cent tariff reduction that will hit British-Common Market industry by 1963. They must, in short, get efficient, for they are not so capable as their better newspapers to cope with the new concepts of economic life.

If some of these things are done, an atmosphere of some bounce and energy may creep into the offensively superior blandness of Westminster, and if the Common Market alone can bring Britain to understand its post-war role more clearly, full membership will be worth some Commonwealth hostility.