Macmillan Defends Entry

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29931, 19 September 1962, Page 15

Macmillan Defends Entry

Mr Macmillan yesterday defended his Government's efforts to get into Europe by telling the Commonwealth leaders that the old balance-of-power theories were now out of date.

Sources quoted him as saying that it was no longer true that Britain could by herself hold the balance of power, or form an effective counterweight, as perhaps she had been able to do in the centuries when America scarcely existed and Russia wag hardly developed. A policy which had been followed for 300 years was no longer appropriate, Mr Macmillan was reported to have said If Britain wanted to keep a balance she had to do it by new methods. He said he believed the future of th*' world might well depend upon the policies pursued by the countries of Europe in the next generation or more. Countries were abandoning their old internal and fratricidal disputes. Many of the younger generation especially were impatient of the old disputes and intolerant of what seemed to them obsolete conceptions They were anxious that Britain should take her place and give a lead in the

advance towards the frontiers of the future. On the economic side Mr Macmillan pointed to the major changes that had taken place in the pattern of Commonwealth trade since the time of the Ottawa Agreements (which in 1932 established the system of Imperial preferences among the Commonwealth countries). Raw materials were to be exchanged for processed goods. That was the broad concept then, but it was now out of date. All the Commonwealth countries were increasingly making their own manufactures —and seeking to export them.

Mr Macmillan said he could not see how Britain could maintain alone her free entry system when there was a structure of tariffs being built up against it in many parts of the Commonwealth with protection for home industries

It clearly could not be said that Britain “had not tried" in her duty to her Commonwealth partners, he said. He did not quarrel with the thought that developing countries were concentrating on manufacture of sophisticated goods, but these were precisely the manufactures that required a large industrial base.

Without such a base Britain would not be in a position to compete effectively in these fields either in Europe or in third markets.

Without such a base she would also be forced to operate her free markets with strict regard to her own self interest, and have to rely far more than at present on buying in the cheapest market. Mr Macmillan said.