The British Choice

...There are powerful objective arguments for his approach...

...But, in fact, it was not the Federalists of Brussels who kept Britain out last time...

...and if one wants them to drink, it is often unwise to tell them that they are being taken toward the water...

...This declaration was followed by what the Official Report chastely calls Interruption...

...One or two stentorian voices were raised on the Left wing of the Labor party, denouncing the monopolies and cartels of the Continent, and descanting on the virtues of cheap food from the Commonwealth...

...The British are notoriously averse to general theories...

...It is on this basic commitment that the complex structure of the common external tariff, the harmonization of social policies, the common agricultural policy, and the rest, has been built...

...Today, it is doubtful whether the opponents of British entry would command more than a third of the party, and the true proportion may be far lower than that...

...And the kind of declaration of faith which would warm the hearts of European Federalists would have no effect whatever on de Gaulle-except perhaps to reassure him of the wisdom of his original veto...

...Even if de Gaulle refrains from such tactlessness, the same choice seems certain to be put implicitly, in a whole host of ways, once negotiations really begin...

...British membership of the EEC would, after all, have immense and far-reaching consequences, not only for Britain itself, but for the whole Western world...

...The Common Market may be the incarnation of a great ideal, but it is not exactly a philanthropic organization...

...EUROPE OR THE UNITED STATES The British Choice By David Mar quand London The British House of Commons is a perfect setting for political drama, and it has indeed witnessed many of the most dramatic events in this country's history- the most recent being the clash between Conservatives and Labor over Rhodesian policy two weeks ago...

...One or two rather fainter voices were raised on the Right wing of the Conservative party, warning of the dire threat which membership of the Common Market would pose to the sovereignty of Parliament and the sanctity of Anglo-Saxon law...

...So far as the stuff of any future negotiations is concerned, moreover-and above all, so far as the hard and crucial questions of food prices, transitional arrangements for agricultural policy, Britain's balance of payments and the future of sterling are concerned-the least said in public in advance of actual negotiations, the better...

...Having said all this, however, one cannot help feeling that there may be an additional explanation for the cautious tone which ministerial pronouncements on the Common Market have adopted to date...

...What I do believe, however, is that if Britain does become a member of the European Community, it will inevitably have to accept not only the formal rules of membership, but the much subtler informal assumptions on which they are based...

...This is that the government may not yet have realized quite how far-reaching the implications of British membership in the Common Market really are for British foreign policy and especially for Britain's relationship with the United States...

...The polls suggest that the same is overwhelmingly true of the population at large...

...and, in rather smaller measure, to the high cost of maintaining Britain's military role in the Near and Far East...

...For most people in this country, in fact, support for the principle of British entry into the EEC has become almost a clich...

...Yet it is hard to believe that the government can avoid taking this decision much longer...

...At the crudest level, it is conceivable that de Gaulle will force it quite explicitly to choose between the United States and Europe, either in defense terms or in some other way, in the fairly near future...

...and in any case, the debate as a whole was astonishingly good-tempered and even placid...

...it was Charles de Gaulle...

...Actually, the interruption consisted of a loud shout from a Left-wing Labor MP who happens to be a supporter of British membership in the Common Market, and who called out: "In that case, you'll never get in...

...If the British government has not yet realized that these informal assumptions are necessarily incompatible with a "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, this does not mean that its professions are insincere or skin-deep...

...At a more mundane level, negotiations between the Labor government and the Six (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) would deprive the Conservative Opposition of the most appealing rallying cry it now possesses...

...Britain's balance of payments problem, though, is not an act of God...

...All it means is that it has behaved in characteristically British fashion, in leaping before it has looked...

...It also means that the government, having failed to realize what the implications of belonging to the Common Market really are, must a fortiori have failed to decide how it would behave if these implications were brought home to it...

...It is due, among other things, to the constraints on Britain's domestic rate of growth which result from trying to run a world currency on insufficient reserves...

...Yet in spite of all this, the Prime Minister's announcement created very little excitement...

...The main obstacle to British membership in the Common Market, after all, is Britain's economic weakness, and particularly the weakness of the British balance of payments...

...Only thus, it is argued, can it convince the Federalists in Brussels of its faith, and win their support in any negotiations...

...The tone and phrasing of the Prime Minister's announcement, and of the speech in which he amplified it the following week, were as flat and unemotional as his North Country accent...

...I do not believe that it is necessary for the government to accept this premise before joining the Community, either in public or in the privacy of its own collective subconscious...

...Decisions have to be taken, not in purely economic terms, but in terms of Anglo-American relations as well...

...If his statements of intent toward the Common Market have been flat and unemotional, it is because he has deliberately chosen to make them so...

...Part of the reason is simply that a good deal of water has flown under a good many bridges since the passion and controversy which accompanied this same debate in 1962 and 1963...

...Remove that premise, and the indispensable element of mutual goodwill-without which the Community would have fallen apart a dozen times already-would disappear...

...It is quite conceivable that Britain might become a member of the European Community, even if George Brown meant what he said, and even if the rest of the government agrees with him...

...During the House of Commons debate on the Prime Minister's statement the Foreign Secretary, George Brown, declared forthrightly that the government was "resolutely opposed" to the suggestion that "if Britain is to join the European Economic Community we must change our relationship with the United States, particularly in defense, and abandon the role which we play in the outside world...

...and the debate in the House of Commons which followed a week later created even less...

...The basic premise of the Common Market, it must be recognized, is that each member of it has more in common with its fellow members than any member has with anyone in the outside world...

...For the fact is that Britain's present relationship with the United States is based on the assumption- on Britain's side, at least-that the ties between London and Washington are not only stronger, but different in kind, from those between Washington and any other European capital...

...none of the elevated language and historic vision which a Kennedy-or for that matter a de Gaulle-would have displayed in similar circumstances...

...and it is at least arguable that, as a result, the decisions which would have been best for Britain's balance of payments have had to be ruled out...

...If formal negotiations between Britain and the Six do eventually take place, the bargaining can be expected to be hard...

...That may have been an exaggeration...

...So long as the British government regards good relations with the United States as its primary aim in foreign policy, its freedom of action in both these fields is narrowly circumscribed...

...During his two years as Prime Minister, Wilson has shown himself perfectly capable of elevated language and a historic vision when he thinks that circumstances call for them...

...But if Britain is to join the EEC-and still more important, if it is to be a loyal member once it has joined-this assumption, and all the deeply-cherished attitudes based on it, will have to be abandoned forever...

...Another reason for the calm tone of the recent Commons debate is the careful way in which the government is playing its cards...

...In these circumstances it might be chivalrous to expose one's hand before the game begins, but it would hardly be wise...

...But not quite all...

...David Marquand, a frequent contributor to the NL, was recently elected a Labor member of Parliament...

...This was not an accident...

...What is not conceivable is that British membership in the Common Market could, in the long run, turn out to be compatible with the attitude toward Europe and the world implied in George Brown's declaration...

...Both these policies are linked with the Anglo-American special relationship...

...There were no Macmillanesque histrionics...

...Four years ago, a free vote in the Parliamentary Labor party would probably have recorded a majority against entry into the Common Market-at least on any terms which could conceivably have been obtained...

...For all these reasons, the government could not reasonably be expected to be more forthcoming in substance or more highfalutin in style than it has in fact been...

...It is clear that the United States Administration sees the pound sterling as the first line of defense for the dollar, and a British presence East of Suez as a valuable political asset...

...It is sometimes suggested that if Britain is to enter the Common Market on reasonable terms, it must, above all, make a resounding declaration of faith in the European ideal...

...But these manifestations had about them a curious air of d?©j...

...One might have expected, then, that an appropriately dramatic atmosphere would have been created by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's announcement in the House of Commons on November 10 that the United Kingdom was once again hoping to enter the European Economic Community, provided the terms were right...

...In this respect, also, the distance between Washington and Brussels may turn out to be greater than anyone in London yet realizes...

...Whether the negotiations succeeded or failed, Edward Heath -who has recently been behaving as though a desire to join the Common Market were the political equivalent of Aladdin's lamp- would have no political clothes left...