Britain's Common Market Politics

...The guarantees he demanded at Brighton, it is said, are unobtainable-and this means that the Labor party is, in practice, committed to opposing the final terms whether it wants to or not...

...Their conduct throughout has been guided by expediency, not by idealism or any broad conception of the drift of history...

...And he had to do all this in a speech to a passionate audience of party militants -every nuance of which would later be analyzed all over the world...

...He had to offer the electorate a distinctive alternative to the Government's policy, and exploit as far as he could the evasions and inconsistencies in its record...

...It is arguable that a more forthright approach to Europe would have been electorally unpopular, but the assumptions behind such an argument are fundamentally undemocratic...

...In the first place, it became clear that the Government intended to join the Common Market almost irrespective of the terms, and that it planned to fight the next election on its success in doing so...

...In opposing the terms without opposing the Common Market on principle, Gaitskell has taken the only course consistent with the interests of this country and the wider interests of the West...

...He had to attack the terms which the Government appeared to be accepting, without closing the door to the possibility of negotiations between a future Labor government and the European Community...

...This is the background against which Gaitskell's own stand on the Common Market must be judged...

...During the past year, the Government's domestic image has been savagely mauled...

...Both claims, of course, are false...

...On the other hand, it seems equally clear that a number of figures in the party leadership, such as Denis Healey, are even more skeptical than Gaitskell is, while one or two of Gaitskell's lieutenants (Douglas Jay is the obvious example) are as hostile to the principle of European unity as the extreme Left...

...David Marquand covers British politics for the Manchester Guardian...

...If this is really so, then it is perfectly true that Gaitskell has destroyed his own freedom of maneuver...

...The other two criticisms can only be accepted if one also believes that British membership in the Common Market is so overriding a necessity the terms do not matter...

...Moreover, it is said, his speech was so anti-European in tone that he has bitterly offended the proMarketeers in the Labor movement, thus deepening the divisions among his followers, not bridging them...

...For this reason, it is essential that the Government find some other issue on which to fight-and it has found one in the EEC...

...The truth of what happened is a good deal more complicated, and far more interesting...

...and would prefer to stay out if they were not...

...The last of these criticisms may have something in it...

...However undignified it might seem to the outside world, he knew that his only possible strategy was to sit on the fence...

...It is certainly true that Gaitskell's speech caused deep distress to a number of loyal Gaitskellites who disagree with him over the Common Market...

...and he also knew that a premature commitment would destroy his freedom of maneuver later on...

...Thirdly, it became clear that powerful sections of the Labor partv did not share Gaitskell's reluctance to commit himself...

...If he gave no lead to the party, it might get hopelessly divided between the two groups of extremists on its flanks and face the next election in a state of total disarray...

...There can be no doubt that Gaitskell's handling of the situation was triumphantly successful...

...His speech has been bitterly criticized for "dishonesty," on the grounds that though most of it consisted of a bitter attack on the Government's conduct of the negotiations and its case for going into the Common Market, he still insisted that he did not oppose membership on principle...

...Partly because of the divisions among his own followers, and partly because he himself was genuinely uncertain of the shape of the package likely to emerge from the Brussels talks, Gaitskell did his best to remain uncommitted for as long as possible...

...It must be admitted that no one in this group has actually gone so far as to say that he would be prepared to join on any terms...

...He knew that any positive statement on his part would dismay someone in the Labor party...

...The difficulty, as might be expected, is that different members of this third group have different views as to what the "right terms" would be...

...But this, as we have seen, is exactly what he had to do...

...It is preposterous to maintain that either of these consequences is in the interests of the West as a whole...

...The present Government is committed, up to the hilt, to taking Britain into Europe on almost any terms...

...and it is an abuse of language to pretend that this country can at one and the same time belong to a united Europe, and retain all its sovereignty, and continue to act as the head of a Commonwealth of sovereign states...

...At the same time, Gaitskell had to retain the maximum possible freedom of maneuver...

...The larger group, which feels vaguely sympathetic to the ideal of a united Europe but which dislikes the present terms, could be won over by sympathetic handling in the months ahead...

...but the group as a whole has been distinctly coy about spelling out in detail where their sticking-point comes...

...This does not mean that the Government and the Conservative party have committed themselves to European unity of the kind dreamed of by the federalists in Brussels...

...If the Labor party said nothing, it would be left when the election campaign started without a distinctive attitude on the momentous issue of recent British history...

...it is reasonably clear that if the next election is fought on purely domestic issues, the Government will lose...

...In the Right and Center of the Labor party there is a small group of intellectuals (Roy Jenkins is the leading figure), and a rather more powerful group of trade-union leaders, who would probably be prepared to join the Common Market on something like the Government's terms...

...A more serious criticism of Gaitskell's speech is that his arguments against the Government's case for joining the Common Market were so powerfully put that he has, in fact, deprived himself of freedom of maneuver without intending to do so...

...The main purpose of the Common Market is to pave the way for a union of Europe...

...In public, at least, Conservative ministers continue to insist that membership in the Common Market would not involve any sacrifice of British sovereignty, or any damage to the Commonwealth...

...The position of the Conservative party, it must be admitted, is almost as clear-cut as it has been portrayed, though in a rather different way...

...He had to criticize the Government's handling of the negotiations without suggesting that membership in the Common Market would be undesirable on principle...

...A legitimate inference, then, is that the extreme pro-Marketeers in the Labor party would almost certainly want to accept whatever terms the Government was prepared to accept...

...They wish to join the Common Market, not because they genuinely wish to lead the movement to European unity, but because all other options open to them have failed...

...Tt is an open secret that George Brown-deputy leader of the party and one of the leading figures in the trade-union faction in the House of Commons-is significantly more favorable to the Common Market than the leader of the party, Hugh Gaitskell...

...The position of the Labor party is even more complicated than that of the Government...

...On the far Left, opposition to joining the Common Market is seen as a matter of Socialist principle: The EEC is the creature of "monopoly capitalism," and in a political union of Western Europe, Britain would be subject to reactionaries like Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle...

...To read the press one would imagine that at their annual conferences earlier this month, the Conservative party had boldly committed itself to thoroughgoing European unity, while the Labor party had committed itself to a sullen and factious opposition to the entire conception...

...He had to give a lead to the party, and achieve the greatest possible degree of party unity...

...But this was a tactical error which must be repaired in the months ahead...

...The Conservatives' position on the Common Market is, in fact, a typical example of British pragmatism-otherwise known as British hypocrisy...

...But there is no good reason for believing that this is so...

...The present terms are likely to cause severe damage to the economies of the undeveloped parts of the Commonwealth, and deep distress to the white Dominions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand...

...Britain's Common Market Politics By David Marquand London Few subjects in recent British history have been as oversimplified as the domestic political repercussions of Prime Minister Macmillan's application to join the Common Market...

...The party leadership, most of the Parliamentary party, and probably a majority of the rankand-file as well, would be prepared to join the Common Market if the terms were right...

...Secondly, it became clear that the Government was unlikely to secure the terms which it had itself set out at the beginning of the negotiations: and that India and Pakistan, in particular, might suffer serious damage to their trade with this country-at least in the short run...

...Thus, when the Labor party conference assembled at Brighton, Gaitskell faced one of the most delicate tasks of his career...

...because they cannot think of anything else to do...

...Roughly speaking, it is divided three ways...

...Most of the Labor party, however, belongs to neither of these groups...

...The really passionate proMarketeers, who will be willing to join the EEC on any terms acceptable to the Government, are a small minority of the party...

...But as time went on, this strategy became harder and harder to maintain...