Commonwealth or Common Market?

...And the less efficient farmers of Europe are reluctant to admit competition even from France and Denmark, much less from Australia and New Zealand...

...But so far they have failed to come to an agreement, and France refuses to discuss the problem of the tropical Commonwealth countries until it has obtained satisfaction for its own former colonies...

...Thus, what so many British ministers have said in the last year cannot be treated simply as rhetoric...

...When the Common Market was first set up, France persuaded its partners to perpetuate this relationship by giving these ex-colonies the status of Associated Overseas Territories (AOT...

...It is instead a question of a managed market in which competition is controlled by quotas, import levies and other methods...

...There is no question here of agricultural free trade...

...As things now stand, the prospects of the negotiations succeeding are growing dimmer every week...

...The economic preferences they share with their partners are essential to their political unity...

...The problem is easily stated: Both the Common Market and the Commonwealth are economic entities which exist by discrimination against the outside world...

...Some people say that, nevertheless, Britain should accept inadequate transitional concessions for Commonwealth interests in the hope that eventually satisfactory global solutions will be found...

...There has never been any question of the Commonwealth as a whole applying to join the Common Market, because the economic interests of the two groups are diametrically opposed...

...France's Common Market partners are trying to revise AOT status so that it involves less preference and more aid...

...So far the Common Market countries are unwilling to offer such guarantees, except as part of a global arrangement through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, so that America can share the burden of competition from cheap labor...

...In the long run, what happens to cheap labor-intensive products from Asia is even more important, since the Asian—and ultimately the African—countries "cannot hope to raise their standard of living unless they can sell the products of their developing industries in the Western world...

...Australia's Deputy Premier has talked of convulsive upheavals in areas of his country's economy which produce exclusively for Britain...

...For these reasons Britain and the Common Market have decided to tackle the Commonwealth problem piecemeal...

...But, unfortunately, France's political influence in its former African colonies is maintained by the subsidies and preferences it grants their products...

...France and at least two of the new applicants for membership to the Common Market—Denmark and Ireland—are not prepared to put up with the industrial competition involved unless the Common Market can offer outlets for their own agricultural surpluses...

...If, for example, the Common Market fixes a high target price for grain and protects it by substantial import levies, Britain's farmers will benefit at the expense of the Commonwealth— and vice versa...

...In the Common Market economic integration is the instrument through which it is hoped to build a closer political unity, while the political unity of the Commonwealth historically preceded its economic preferences...

...Neither France nor the existing AOTs are anxious to dilute the advantages they gain from this arrangement by extending it to comparable British Commonwealth countries in Africa and the West Indies...

...As American political leaders have recognized rather late, the problems raised by Britain's application to join the Common Market can best be solved by global agreements which would involve the U.S., Japan and Latin America no less than Britain and the Commonwealth...

...By Denis Healey London It is now clear that the success of Britain's negotiations for joining the Common Market will depend primarily on its ability to obtain what Edward Heath, Lord Privy Seal and the main spokesman on Common Market matters, called "comparable outlets" for the goods the Commonwealth at present exports to Britain...

...The Administration has in fact been increasing discrimination against foreign shipping, and raising tariffs the moment foreign competition hurts domestic industry...

...This is hardly a trifling matter, for Britain is by far the most important single market for nearly all her Commonwealth partners, a few of whom send it up to 90 per cent of their exports...

...If America is now prepared to dismantle her own restrictions on trade for the sake of global agreements, Britain's application will have proved an invaluable catalyst...

...But despite all of President Kennedy's impressive speeches, America's recent actions give little hope of an early agreement along these lines...

...It is already agreed that little can be done to avoid discrimination against Commonwealth manufactured goods such as cars produced in Canada...

...But apart from the appalling technical difficulties of operating such a system, there is a direct conflict between the interests of British farmers and the interests of Commonwealth agriculture...

...And all Conservatives recognize an obligation to defend the interests of the white Commonwealth peoples who twice in the last 50 years have traveled 10,000 miles to fight and die for Britain in Europe...

...Moreover, German and American spokesmen have deeply disturbed Britain by either attacking the whole principle of Commonwealth preference, or announcing, as Chancellor Adenauer did recently, that the Commonwealth in its present form cannot survive Britain's entry into the Common Market...

...Similarly, the Common Market and the Commonwealth are political entities...

...Both in Europe and the United States, those who have staked so much on Britain's entry into the Common Market must recognize this fact and act accordingly...

...But there is frankly no chance of this, since British opinion is fully alert to the fact that the Commonwealth will disintegrate as a political entity unless its economic interests are guaranteed in Britain's entry to the Common Market...

...Broadly speaking, the Common Market Six are prepared to tolerate only limited external competition, and this must somehow be shared between Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth...

...Moreover, most of Commonwealth Africa does not want AOT status, regarding it as involving political subjection to Europe...

...This status not only gives their products free entry to the Common Market but also protects them by tariffs against competitors in other parts of Africa, allows them to protect their own infant industries by tariffs against European competition, and offers them $581 million in economic aid from Common Market countries for the first five years...

...The overseas Commonwealth countries want free trade in agricultural products and the right to protect their industries, while the Common Market countries want free trade in industrial goods and the right to protect their agriculture...

...At present, while Britain allows free entry to such Asian products, subject only to voluntary quota arrangements, none of the Common Market countries are prepared to expose their own industries to this type of competition—and to this extent the Common Market operates as a rich man's club at the expense of Africa and Asia...

...Most of the Common Market countries would be prepared to solve the problem of tropical foodstuffs by removing all tariffs on their entry into Europe...

...It is true that some British Conservatives have never reconciled themselves to membership in a Commonwealth in which the great majority of citizens are anti-colonialists with colored skins...

...Nor will the Governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand take defeat lying down...

...And since the proposed Common Market external tariff on most raw materials is likely to be zero or very low, products like Malayan rubber and Australian wool would not be affected by Britain's entry...

...But other Conservatives, and the Labor party as a whole, see the Commonwealth as an indispensable bridge across some of the main gulfs in world politics—between white and colored peoples, rich and poor, committed and uncommitted...

...This contradiction of interest in itself creates difficulties for any long-term association between the two groups...

...In addition, the Common Market countries fear that if they extend their preferential area to cover the major Commonwealth countries as well as Britain, they will so dilute the economic content of the Common Market as to destroy all prospects of eventual political union...

...In the short run, however, the most difficult problem involved in Britain's entering the Common Market is undoubtedly presented by Commonwealth grain and dairy products which compete directly with European agriculture...

...If Britain joined the Common Market under the present terms of the Rome Treaty, it would have to transfer to Europe all the commercial advantages it now gives the Commonwealth...

...Arrangements limited to the Commonwealth alone will simply transfer the disastrous effects of discrimination to other countries...

...New Zealand's Prime Minister has warned that his country is in danger of not only economic disaster but of political isolation as well...

...The real difficulties, however, arise over tropical foodstuffs from Commonwealth Africa and the West Indies, cheap laborintensive products like textiles from Commonwealth Asia, and temperate agricultural products from the white Commonwealth countries of Canada, Australia and New Zealand...

...Canada, 78 per cent of whose exports stand to be affected, has led the Commonwealth lobby...

...For its part, Britain wants not only "comparable outlets" for Asian products, but the guarantee of a steadily expanding market for them in Western Europe...

...If Britain is faced with a choice between the Common Market and the Commonwealth, it will certainly choose the latter...