The Common Market-Two Articles:

...The first is that, because of the grotesque inadequacy of its technical-training facilities, Britain is desperately short of skilled workers and could consider itself fortunate if it succeeded in attracting any from the Continent: In recent years, skilled and adaptable East German and Spanish immigrants have made important contributions to the economic achievements of West Germany and France, respectively...

...The African members would prefer free entry for tropical products to all developed countries rather than the neo-colonial implications involved in becoming Associated Overseas Territories in the Common Market...

...Like President Kennedy, he sees Britain essentially as an Anglo-Saxon power which would act in America's interest rather than Europe's if it were a part of the European Economic Community (EEC...

...But Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin muffed the opportunity, preferring instead to pursue traditional imperial mirages in the Middle East...

...Continental Europeans would then be bound to suspect that, having failed to undermine their Community from outside, Britain was seeking to sabotage it from within...

...But neither man will be there for long...

...But there are immigrants and immigrants...

...Thus de Gaulle's handling of publicity for his recent talks with Prime Minister Macmillan in Melun suggests that he is more concerned with insuring that France is not blamed for Britain's failure to be admitted to the Common Market than he is with helping London to succeed...

...Blimp's Last Stand By Ray Alan London Thousands of jobs and millions of dollars' worth of ultramodem plant, which could have helped invigorate stagnant industrial regions in Northern England, South Wales and Central Scotland, are being created by British capital in the already booming Common Market countries—merely because it has taken Britain's political leaders so long to start thinking about European integration...

...In practice this means that while the British government will continue to press for transitional arrangements, it will not accept the permanent end of free entry to Britain of Commonwealth foodstuffs and Asian manufactures unless comparable outlets are guaranteed for goods thus displaced from the British market...

...Both are to be found in France, where they are more comprehensive, and operate at a higher level of efficiency and sophistication, than anything the Labor government ever achieved in Britain...

...There are few men they hate more than Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta...

...Equal wage-rates for women, not yet attained in Britain, are the EEC rule...

...The Right-wingers who adopt this pose usually turn out to be sympathizers of "Keep-Britain-White" agitation...

...Politically, no underdeveloped nation I have recently visited desires closer effective ties with Britain than with the United States, France or Germany...

...President de Gaulle has always shared Adenauer's view...

...This may be the only way to solve the problem of the hinge at present...

...As for other areas, old-age pensions and unemployment allowances are more generous in Germany...

...But until early this month it was always assumed that Britain's entry into the EEC would have to come before the search for global solutions...

...Continental spokesmen have made clear what they mean by "within the framework of the treaties" and "transitional solutions...

...Moreover, underdeveloped countries cannot be expected to remain underdeveloped merely for Britain's convenience: As their own industries grow, traditional British markets will disappear anyhow...

...True, it would be difficult for de Gaulle to bloc Britain's entry on political grounds without creating strains within the EEC which might even destroy it...

...Educational opportunities, especially at university level and in the spheres of craft and technical training, are also greater in most EEC countries than in Britain...

...The Hinge of Europe By Denis Healey London In one of those moody asides in which he vents his growing political frustration, Chancellor Adenauer recently remarked that though the Common Market might just be able to absorb Britain, it could not possibly digest the Commonwealth as well...

...He also clearly enjoys dangling the British on a string...

...Although this affects only a tiny proportion of their total trade with Britain, Prime Minister Robert Menzies of Australia and Deputy Prime Minister J. I. Marshall of New Zealand took the unprecedented step of issuing a joint public statement of disapproval while they were in the midst of discussions with the British government...

...On the contrary, now that France is disengaging from Algeria, articulate Africans and Arabs classify Britain with Portugal and Spain—"the colonialist barnacles...

...Castle is aware, recent smallpox outbreaks in Britain have been traced to Pakistani immigrants, and there have been no comparable outbreaks in continental Europe...

...Now perhaps the tide has turned...

...Reasonably enough, the Rome treaties are held to deny the advantages of the European Customs Union to countries which do not accept its obligations...

...Second, it is, hard to see why Continental Europeans should wish to "flood" Britain...

...In this respect Adenauer and de Gaulle represent only a minority view, even in their own countries...

...has no less an interest in the rational disposal of its food surpluses than Canada and Australia...

...Undoubtedly, they feared the agreement might set the pattern for the treatment of their vital agricultural exports to Britain...

...At the same time, the Indian representative in Brussels publicly protested that London's proposals for the treatment of Asian manufactured goods would not meet India's minimum need for markets in Europe...

...It will prosper and expand whether Britain joins or not...

...All-out French opposition would alienate the Benelux states and Italy, which wish to see Britain join, and might split the Common Market countries...

...And within a few years it will be a multiracial as well as a multilingual community, Unking Europeans and Africans, Moslems and Israelis, and, just possibly, providing a peaceful facesaving means of enabling East Germany, Spain and Portugal to slip out from under authoritarian rule...

...The debate inside Britain on European integration is only now— five years after the signing of the Rome Treaty—engaging public interest, and it is generating more heat than light...

...Since the Continent by itself is not prepared to provide these outlets, there must be some wider agreement within the free world as a whole...

...Even if it fails, and Britain joins the EEC, by constant sniping and harrassing it might still so inhibit the Government as to prolong those negative, divisive aspects of Whitehall's policy toward Europe which have done Britain so much harm in the recent past...

...British professional men are tending increasingly to buy villas on the Continent for holidays and retirement...

...The Common Market is already a powerful magnet, attracting Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Israel and several African states...

...West Indians and Pakistanis are, one suspects, preferred to Continental Europeans because their skin color and educational handicaps mark them out for the humblest employment...

...So the Commonwealth must lose its present preferences in the British market, though Britain may be allowed to phase the establishment of a European preference in place of Commonwealth preference during a period of under 10 years in order that the other Commonwealth countries may have a transitional period to adjust to the loss of their advantages...

...It is unrealistic for both economic and political reasons...

...But standards of treatment and comfort in Continental hospitals are frequently higher than in Britain, and waiting lists are shorter...

...Many sincere Laborites have been led to believe that British social services would have to be recast, and might suffer irreparable damage, if Britain joined the EEC...

...Certainly most of the Commonwealth countries would favor global agreements for their major exports over continued preference in the British market, where capacity is limited whether Britain joins Europe or not...

...the difficult issue will be temperate foodstuffs...

...A similar speciousness characterizes the argument that Britain cannot join EEC because it would lead to the exclusion of Commonwealth immigrants, chiefly West Indians, who flock to Britain in search of the employment and education their own impoverished countries cannot provide...

...But an overwhelming majority of Europeans do believe that the Common Market cannot digest the Commonwealth economically...

...As for France's opposition to Britain's entry into the EEC, it appears to be primarily tactical...

...Although neither Conservatives nor Laborites have established a clear party line on the Common Market, it may yet become an electoral issue...

...Fortunately these problems do not depend on the passage of Kennedy's new tariff legislation, which was unwisely tied to the assumption that Britain would join the Common Market first...

...or, "After all, it's very useful to have a supply of unskilled immigrants to do the dirty jobs...

...There are two obvious rejoinders to this assertion...

...But the British negotiations with Europe have pointed up more than ever that the economic problems of the free world cannot be solved in a purely regional context...

...Since Europe alone is unwilling to compensate the Commonwealth for its losses in the British market, however, the negotiations seem to have shown that there is really no alternative...

...Obviously, de Gaulle would prefer the EEC to remain a tight little club dominated by France and West Germany...

...Commonwealth Minister Duncan Sandys, speaking in an impressive two-day debate in the House of Commons, said: "Let no one imagine that we have decided to join the Common Market on the best terms we can obtain, whether they are satisfactory or unsatisfactory...

...And the white Commonwealth knows that it cannot permanently override the political influence of high-cost European farmers...

...Living-standards are rising faster on the Continent than in Britain (car-ownership is already more widespread in France...

...Admittedly, the presence of Chancellor Adenauer and General de Gaulle at the head of the EEC's most influential states gives the Community a gratuitously "reactionary" aura...

...The sooner the British join, the sooner they will be able to have a say in how the Community should evolve...

...And whereas "class" consciousness and status mania are more rife than ever in Britain, and the gap between overprivileged and underprivileged Britons is widening, the Common Market nations are evolving toward a mobile casteless society...

...Professional emoluments are generally higher...

...This would not necessarily follow, however, and in any event the EEC norm is higher than Britain's in many respects...

...Under Secretary of State George Ball has already proposed global arrangements for tropical foodstuffs and Asian manufactures...

...Overreliance in the past on "easy" export markets in underdeveloped Commonwealth territories is one reason why many British industries are now flabby, inefficient and desperately in need of the stimulus of competition with EEC firms...

...Past experience of international commodity agreements is not encouraging...

...To Nigeria's current two-billiondollar, six-year development program, for example, Britain proposes to contribute the magnificent sum of $14 million (the U.S...

...De Gaulle would like to obtain access to British—and ultimately American—nuclear know-how in exchange for concessions on the terms of Britain's admission...

...Denis Healy, Labor Member of Parliament, is his party's spokesman for Commonwealth and Colonial Affairs...

...For enterprising British industrialists are determined to have at least a foothold in the European Economic Community (EEC), and are investing heavily in its member-states to insure that—whatever Whitehall may ultimately decide—their products are manufactured on the right side of the EEC's tariff barrier...

...In taking the lead, the British Labor party could have guided the movement—in cooperation with Continental Socialist parties—along congenial lines...

...The first instance of such a transitional arrangement was the agreement between Britain and the Inner Six (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) to replace Commonwealth preference with European preference by 1970 on manufactured goods from Canada, Australia and New Zealand...

...When Nigerians complain, not unreasonably, that their former colonial rulers should give more, visiting Tory and Labor personalities advise them (off the record, of course) to put out feelers to the European Economic Community...

...The problem of the link or "hinge" between transitional arrangements and global agreements has therefore come to be seen as the crux of the negotiations for Britain's entry...

...that if Britain joins, Europe alone cannot in the long run offer the Commonwealth those "comparable outlets" for its present trade with Britain which Macmillan made a condition of Britain's entry a year ago...

...There is a tendency in some sectors of the Labor party to blame Bevin's advisers and officials for this monumental error of judgement...

...But one must make a start somewhere...

...If our admission to Europe should involve the disruption of the Commonwealth, that is an entrance fee we are not prepared to pay...

...Nor do Right-wing or Laborite neo-imperialists show any serious enthusiasm when one suggests that Britain ought to double its present parsimonious aid to the new nations of Africa and bring it more nearly in line with France's...

...Many other Socialists are embarrassed by their memory of the 1945 Labor government's disastrous foreign policy...

...Workers in the EEC countries have longer paid vacations, greater job security and higher severance pay than British workers...

...It is equally illogical to advocate staying out of EEC—as some British Laborites do—because it is too small, because one would like to see it incorporate East Germany or Scandinavia or the whole Atlantic Alliance...

...When one makes this point the mask of enlightenment drops: "The electorate would never buy that...

...and to condemn the whole Community merely because of them is as silly as condemning the whole Commonwealth because one disapproves of Nkrumah or Sir Roy Welensky...

...Similarly, the last Trades Union Congress produced a majority in favor of a constructive approach to Britain's entry into the EEC...

...A few months ago, a leading English liberal journal only halfhumorously asked: "Who will want to work in Middlesborough and Preston when he can obtain suitable employment and enjoy adequate social services in Milan and Pau...

...He was thinking primarily of the political impact Britain's entry would have on Europe's cohesion as an instrument of the Bonn-Paris axis: In the same speech he suggested that Norway and Denmark should be excluded from the political aspects of the Common Market even if they became full members...

...This is one of the most exciting discoveries incredulous young Britons make when they go to study or work on the Continent...

...The tiny Liberal party, whose influence is greater than its Parliamentary strength suggests, is overwhelmingly "European...

...Below two of our regular contributors discuss several of the critical issues in this debate...

...One of the nastier techniques of the alliance of ultra-Tories and infra-Laborites has been its resort to chauvinistic, even xenophobic propaganda of a type rarely employed in British politics in the last 40 years...

...Hundreds of young British graduates apply every year for teaching posts and other appointments in the EEC countries (especially France...

...is providing $224 million...

...Family allowances are much higher in France—and the EEC aim is to raise standards throughout the Community to the highest level...

...Rather more plausibly, the Laborites argue that since past British neglect is largely responsible for the West Indians' plight, "the least we can do is let them come here...

...The Continent argues, on the other hand, that if the transitional arrangements are to last until satisfactory global agreements are reached, countries which benefit by transitional arrangements may have no incentive to reach global agreements...

...But surely, rather than jam-pack shivering West Indians in English slum areas, it would be more humane for Britain, even at this late hour, to finance an adequate development program to provide them with jobs, schools and social services in their own country...

...If this alliance succeeds in attracting a majority of Labor MPs and a sufficient number of Tory diehards, it could veto British membership in the Common Market...

...On a pettier level of prejudice-mongering, Barbara Castle, a Labor MP, has urged the Government to demand vaccination certificates of EEC citizens visiting Britain (although, as Mrs...

...It is, of course, the duty of an Opposition to oppose, and for many Laborites the fact that Prime Minister Macmillan has belatedly come to approve of EEC is ample justification for denigrating it...

...The Federal government," he said, "will do everything in its power to facilitate Britain's entry within the framework of the treaties...

...In economic affairs, a majority of British Laborites equate "progressiveness" with national planning and public ownership of key industries...

...The row which followed inside Britain has compelled the Government to make a far more categorical statement of its position than hitherto...

...But it is now clear that, whatever the British government might privately accept, the British Parliament will not commit itself to ending Commonwealth preferences without knowing what these global arrangements are to be, and whether they are acceptable to the Commonwealth...

...All French moderate parties are now pro-EEC, and if de Gaulle were responsible for wrecking it his domestic position would become almost untenable...

...But rather than take responsibility for vetoing Britain, he is likely simply to prolong negotiations and let Britain's Conservative and Labor chauvinists do his work for him...

...But a curious alliance has sprung up between propagandists of the nostalgically imperialist Tory Right and Labor publicists who appear to have renounced Socialist internationalism for near-Poujadist jingoism...

...The insincerity of many Rightwing neo-imperialists who invoke Commonwealth ties and Britain's "special interest" in the underdeveloped countries as reasons for staying out of EEC betrays itself whenever one mentions India, Ghana or Kenya...

...The Asian countries know that Britain alone cannot possibly absorb the rising tide of their cheap manufactured goods, particularly their textiles...

...and the consequences for Western unity would be grave...

...Yet it is important to remember that, as Guy Mollet recently pointed out, while 85 per cent of France is against de Gaulle, 80 per cent is also for him...

...The British climate and caste-system being what they are, as Europe's frontiers fall a trend is more likely to develop in the opposite direction...

...By staying out they can embarrass only themselves...

...A writer in the London Economist seemed to share this view when he recently wrote: "Anyone in Government service today who advocated that we turn our backs on Europe, cock a snook at liberal opinion in America, and stake our claim to power status on our ability to influence the Arab League, would be given appropriate treatment under the Mental Health Act...

...Yet the U.S...

...Right-wing as well as Leftwing opponents of the Common Market make great play with the "neo-imperialist" argument that Britain has a "special role" awaiting it in the underdeveloped countries...

...Even if, as is increasingly likely, they run into the sand, they have raised issues which the rest of the free world can no longer avoid...

...Of course, every Socialist hopes one day to see a world-wide political union or federation, or at least a democratic United Europe (just as every Socialist must regret that British Labor, when it was in power, adopted a less enlightened attitude to this question than the alleged "reactionaries" who founded EEC...

...When West German Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder attempted to correct Adenauer's statement, for example, his formulation was far more discouraging than appeared at first sight...

...THE COMMON MARKET-TWO ARTICLES Since the early months of this year, when the European Economic Community successfully entered its second stage, the debate over Britain's entry into the Common Market has not only been growing in intensity but has revealed some latent fissures in the Atlantic Alliance...

...Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and most of his Cabinet now favor British membership in the EEC, and they should be able to drag a majority of Conservative MPs unsteadily in their wake...

...True, the British National Health Service is "cheaper" than corresponding Continental services, and socially more equitable in that it is financed out of general taxation rather than by workers and employers' contributions...

...Nevertheless, Bevin's error has afflicted many Laborites with a complex which impels them—even against their better judgement—to justify "Ernie" by sneering at "Little Europe" and exaggerating the political and economic opportunities awaiting Britain in the underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia and, of course, the Middle East...

...Transitional solutions for the Commonwealth will, in its opinion, be found...

...It is alleged that Britain will be overrun with foreign workers if it joins the Common Market, with dire consequences to its social and moral standards...

...Of course, it could mean a long delay in completing the negotiations for Britain's entry to the Common Market, especially if the problems of tropical foodstuffs and Asian manufactures are dealt with similarly...

...In 1945-48 the leadership of the European movement could have been Britain's for the asking...

...But their argument is unrealistic and, all too often, insincere...

...The Six have proposed immediate negotiations for world-wide commodity arrangements...

...Everything will now depend on how far the United States, which has so far been pressing both for Britain's entry into Europe and for the abolition of Commonwealth preference, is really ready to join in the sort of global agreements which are prerequisites for achieving its aims...

...Tory and Laborite Blimps alike affect to believe that if Britain joins the EEC, Continental Europeans will "flood the country" and compete with native Britons for semi-skilled and skilled employment...

...Ray Alan is a veteran correspondent who covers Europe, Africa and the Middle East...