Common Market Challenge

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32233, 27 February 1970, Page 13

Common Market Challenge

(N Z.P A -Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, February 26. The House rtf Commons has ended its two-day debate on the Common Market with leaders of both main parties in clear agreement that Britain should join.

But the Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) and the Conservative Leader of the Opposition (Mr Heath) were clearly in disagreement on each other’s intentions. In fact, Mr Heath issued Mr Wilson with a challenge on the issue.

Mr Heath angrily declared that there was only one question the country, and the world, wanted to ask about Mr Wilson': “Is he, or he is not, going to rat?” Political observers regard Mr Heath’s question as an allegation that Mr Wilson is not serious about British entry, and that he may sabotage the forthcoming negotiations with the Six. In a' speech which wound up the debate, however, the Prime Minister said that Britain must pursue her bid to enter. “At the very moment when, after years of disappointment, the Six are ready to sit down with us, to spurn them now would be to add a very large and significant page to history’s lost opportunities,” he declared. The debate, which ended without a vote, was marked

by statements from prominent members of both parties that Britain was eager to join if the conditions for entry were favourable. However, the Conservatives were also out to challenge Mr Wilson’s claim, last Saturday, that it was their policy “to pay the entrance fee in any case without any qualification whatsoever.” Mr Heath declared that the

Prime Minister’s statement was “a characteristic election ’frolic,” and he challenged Mr Wilson to fight the next General Election on who should negotiate for Britain. Mr Wilson ignored this, saying that Britain was ready to begin negotiations as soon as the Common Market was ready. Mr Heath was the chief British negotiator in the former Conservative Government when the then President de Gaulle imposed the first French veto on Britain’s bid to join the Community, in January, 1963. He told the House: “I make my own position quite clear. I want to bring about a wider European unity, and I have worked .consistently for it. I believe in it because I believe tn closer international co-

operation. I am an internationalist. “There is a young generation, not only in this country, but right across - Europe, North America and othet countries, who look to responsible men to break down the barriers.

“These barriers hive to come down, not only in Europe, but in parts of the world like Africa and Asia and the West Indies, where many ot the barriers have been created by Europeans. “But Britain would not be justified in accepting arrange ments—and we in the Conservative Party would not accept arrangements—which meant, over all, that Ave could not benefit together , wi|h. the other members of the’ en-

larged Community. That, surely, must be fundamental.” Neither did he believe, be said, that the present six Common Market members— France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg—would agree to I any penal arrangements where Britain was concerned.