“Common Market A Big Bogy”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 14

“Common Market A Big Bogy”

“I think the European Common Market is a great big bogy,” said the leader of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce Trade Mission (Mr F. R. Mason), in Christchurch last evening.

Mr Mason, who is the vice-chairman of Associated Electrical Industries International, Ltd., said the E.E.C. was really formed for political reasons—to prevent a third world war.

France, he said, had shown quite definitely that she was not prepared to surrender her sovereignty. “This makes it easier for Britain to ensure that New Zealand’s interests are not undermined,” he said. Mr Mason said that Britain was not in the E.E.C. yet and there were a lot of safeguards that Britain needed to look to. The safeguards were needed not only for New Zealand but for Britain’s agriculture. He said he thought that the seven European Free Trade Area nations and the six nations of the E.E.C. should go in together, provided all the necessary safeguards were taken, and in particular safeguards concerning New Zealand.

What few people seemed to realise, said Mr Mason, was that the E.F.T.A. was a big-

ger international trading area than the United States. Mr Mason said this seemed to have made no impact in thinking in Australia. The mission will be in Christchurch till Wednesday, when it will fly to Wellington.

The wage freeze in Great Britain, he thought was a very necessary discipline. Without it there would have been devaluation. This would have had an adverse effect on world trade, because sterling was one of the two recog-

nised international currencies.

The types of goods available to be sold through members of the mission included turbine generators, transformers, switchgear, power protection equipment, scientific apparatus, industrial motors, machine tools, threading machines, electric cables and accessories, plastics, tableware, automobile cables and accessories, wallpaper, specialist decorative paint products, and many others in the engineering fields.