The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1962. After The London Conference

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29931, 19 September 1962, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1962. After The London Conference

The London conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers appears to have ended fairly well. Mr Macmillan has reaffirmed his Government’s resolve to press forward with the plan to associate Britain with the European Common Market; but (if authoritative reports are accurate) the Commonwealth’s primary producers may expect at least some additional concessions to be sought for them at the resumed negotiations with the Six next month. Till then, however, the consequences of the London meetings may remain almost as obscure as they now are. Such conferences traditionally are advisory and consultative, rather than mandatory; the Prime Ministers were powerless to dictate to Britain. During recent days the United Kingdom Government has given itself the opportunity to redeem its pledge of full consultation on its application to join the Common Market; and the other independent Commonwealth countries have expressed at length their fears for the future.

All this has been very much as expected. By now the arguments for and against Britain’s decision, as it will affect the British people themselves and the structure of the Commonwealth. have become almost painfully repetitive. Essentially the issue is narrow, yet extraordinarily confused by emotional as well as technical complexities. Mr Macmillan and his colleagues are caught between responsibility for Britain’s welfare and what they have accepted as their duty to secure in any future association with Western Europe the best possible protection for Commonwealth trade. Their plight is made the more uncomfortable by political pressures within the United Kingdom. At the present stage, it would plainly be an oversimplification for other Commonwealth Governments to revive the war-time slogan, “ Where “ Britain goes, we go too equally, it would be wrong to suppose that an economically debilitated Britain,

excluded from the E.E.C. in compliance with Commonwealth desires, would continue to be an effective core of Commonwealth prosperity and loyalty. The London conference has played a key role in the Macmillan Government’s campaign to convince the free world that, if it is to prosper, Britain has no reasonable alternative to joining this great new European grouping, and that without prosperity Britain can never foster the Commonwealth’s best interests. A measure of the success of the Government’s tactics may well have been the failure of any delegate at the conference to suggest a useful substitute for the British policy. Among the older Dominions, New Zealand, whose special problems had already been recognised specifically, revealed the most moderate and rational attitude. Wisely, Mr Holyoake insisted upon better guarantees for New Zealand’s exports of dairy produce and meat; his views are the likelier to be heeded because they were temperately expressed. Canada continued its rather unreasoning opposition to Britain’s choice. Australia maintained a position roughly midway between Canada and New Zealand. But the most strident criticisms have come from the Asian and African countries, where national thought is coloured by anticolonial hysteria. To some extent, therefore, the conference has left tragic overtones in the sharpening of divisions within the Commonwealth, and in the realisation that the consequences of E.E.C. membership for Britain must ultimately be felt even more keenly in political relationships than in the emerging pattern of free-world trade. All these facts, however unpalatable, require to be faced with the fortitude characteristic of the Commonwealth’s founders. Their digesting will become no easier through attempts to ignore the economic reality of the new Europe, and the desirability of British leadership within it