IN BRITAIN TODAY Link with European confederation urged

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32588, 23 April 1971, Page 17

IN BRITAIN TODAY Link with European confederation urged

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter copyright. Cable News Digest)

LONDON. If Britain were to take up the idea of a European confederation, it might help towards bringing her Common Market entry negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion. “The Times” says in a leading article.

In a policy speech to the French National Assembly—three weeks before the crucial British entry talks in Brussels the French Prime Minister (Mr Jacques Chaban-Delmas) had said that France hoped to be able to welcome Britain into “a resolutely European community” which would move progressively towards becoming a confederation of States. The Prime Minister had insisted on the need to maintain the fundamental principles of the Market. Abandoning these principles, even in a disguised form, would lead the Community to its destruction, he said. Mr Chaban-Delmas noted that talks on enlarging the Community were approaching a decisive stage, and, he said, France was approaching this phase in a positive spirit. “To build Europe is not to renounce France. On the contrary, we must develop France in order to strengthen Europe,” the Prime Minister said. Both Mr Chaban-Delmas and President Pompidou have kept closely to the late General de Gaulle’s insistence on building West European co-operation through States, and not through international bodies which would replace national sovereignty. Mr Chaban-Delmas defended France’s decision to raise difficult issues in the negotiations over British entry. France did not want to put obstacles in the way of Britain’s membership, he said, but to clear away all ambiguities at a time when Europe’s political and economic map was being redrawn. “DESERVING HINT”

In its leading article, “The Times” says: “Mr ChabanDelmas said that the Community is more than a customs zone, it is an economic union whose political character will emerge over the years. “The Prime Minister merely hinted that it was time that the six members of the E.E.C. and the four applicants should examine the question in the context of the Busseis negotiations. “A hint of this order deserves the closest investigation. President Pompidou has launched an idea; he has made precise proposals. If the idea were taken up by the British Government, this might help to put into persoective the secondary questions which are slowing down the Brussels negotiations. It might also help towards bringing them ,to a satisfactory conclusion.” British dfficials have declined to comment on the French Prime Minister’s soeech, pending a study of its full text, but informed sources in London say that Britain has already made it clear that she would be prepared to move as far and fast as the rest of the Common Market along the path of closer political union.

Problems of immigration Second-generation coloured 1 immigrants in Britain may! find it impossible to escape ! from the coloured quarters, developing there, according to a British report to the United Nations. Submitted by the British Government to the Committee on the Elimination of

Racial Discrimination, the report says that British society has not only to learn how to deal with the immediate difficulties created by immigration as such, but to learn that it cannot afford to ci eate further, and more serious, difficulties by rejecting (he children of immigrants who have nd other homes.

“If this were to happen,” the report says "the present concentration of coloured people in certain heavilypopulated areas of the country will become the coloured quarters of a limited number of towns and boroughs from which the second generation is unable to escape.”

The report goes on to say that every effort has to be made to ensure that all those who, at present, live in these concentrations are able to develop their abilities to the full; to acquire the economic and social status to which their skills entitle them; to choose their homes and jobs in the same ways as other members of the community, and to play a full part in social and political life. The report has been distributed to members of the United Nations committee, but it has not been generally published. 2 p.c. COLOURED Reviewing the various moves in the battle against racial discrimination in Britain, the report notes that since the passing of the race relations act in 1968, few employers have imposed discriminatory restrictions on vacancies.

The number of unemployed adults who were Commonwealth immigrants fell from 2.4 per cent of the total number of unemployed adults in Britain in October, 1968, to 1.7 per cent in February, 1970.

The report estimates that immigrants in Britain and their families number about 1,250,000, about 2 per cent of the over-all population. “Most of these immigrants will stay in Britain, where they make an important contribution to the economy and bring up their children in their new home,” the report goes on. “Britain has, therefore, become a multi-racial society with a permanent minority who can be readily identified by the colour of their skin. UNDER STRAIN

“While the areas where coloured immigrants have settled in Britain are areas of high demand for labour, there are also parts of the country where social services are already under strain from the pressures on housing, schools and hospitals.

“In settling in these areas, coloured immigrants from the Commonwealth have faced many of the problems which were encountered by immigrants from Europe at various times in the past “These problems have, however, been further complicated for recent immigrants to Britain because many are unskilled workers from rural environments who find natural difficulty in adapting themselves to a sophisticated, industrial society. “Furthermore they are easily distinguishable by their colour and arouse the instinctive fear of the stranger in the host community, which expresses itself in manifestations of colour prejudice and acts of discrimination. “The existence of these problems has to be recognised and faced, so that the evil of racial strife is given no opportunity to flourish, and harmonious relationships ■between the different races which now form the British community can be firmly established,” the report adds. RB2II engine still at issue

P l 6. British Government will insist on guarantees

about the future of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation before it is prepared to authorise a resumption of the production of the RB2II engine for the American TriStar airbus, the Prime Minister (Mr Heath), has told Parliament.

He had been asked by Mr Robert Sheldon (Lab., Ashton-under-Lyne) if he would seek an official meeting with President Nixon to discuss the future of the Rolls-Royce engine; and he replied that at present he had no plans for such a meeting. Mr Sheldon then asked whether the Government was prepared to continue with the RB2II contract in the absence of guarantees about the future of the Lockheed corporation. Mr Heath replied: “No, we consider it essential to have guarantees about the future of the aircraft in order to implement the future of the engine.” •The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Harold Wilson) said that he did not wish to press the Government while difficult negotiations were in progress, but he did want to know whether the Government'would be able to continue to finance the RB2II programme until its future had been decided. If newspaper reports were correct, he said, the negotiations over guarantees could take some weeks because of the possible need to obtain Congressional approval. Mr Heath said that the Government was pressing on with the negotiations as hard as possible, and in the meantime the work being done on the project was continuing. He added that a team from Rolls-Royce and the Ministry of Aviation Supply was going to Burbank, Lockheed’s California headquarters, this week.

Earlier, the Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (Mr John Davies) had told American businessmen in London that the newly-constituted, Govern-ment-supported Rolls-Royce (1971) Company was fully capable of completing the RB2II project if a new contract was negotiated. TALKS IN U.S.,

While Mr Heath was making his remarks in the Commons, the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington (Mr John Connally) was having talks with Lockheed’s chairman (Mr Daniel Haughton), senior officials of potential airline purchasers of the TriStar, and bank executives. “Progress is slower than I hoped it would would be, but progress is being made,” Mr Connally said later. “Things are holding together amazingly well.” He refused to say whether he would recommend to Mr Nixon that Congress be asked to approve a Government guarantee for loans to Lockheed.

The Congressional mood towards this idea is believed to be unfavourable. The Democratic Leader in the Senate (Senator Mike Mansfield) said that he opposed it. “There has been too much in the way of overcost, bad management, mismanagement ana the like by Lockheed,” he said.

Lockheed has been under consistent fire in Congress over cost increases on its giant Csa Galaxy military transport aircraft. Turbine order from Denmark The Royal Danish Navy has ordered 16 Rolls-Royce Proteus gas turbines, with an option for 12 more, to power a new class of fast patrol boats.

The £2.5m export order is the first to be announced since the formation of RollsRoyce (1971) Ltd. The Royal Danish Navy already has a squadron of six Proteus-powered boats in service.

Altogether, 11 of the world’s navies have ordered

more than 200 of these units for use in patrol boats, torpedo and gunboats, hovercraft, hydrofoils and frigates. . The engines were developed at the company's industrial and marine engine division, near Coventry, where operational experience with engines already in use amounts to more than 150,000 hours. The Proteus has a maximum output of 4250 brakehorsepower and full power is achieved within a minute of starting. It can be readily adapted to fully automatic control—meaning complete control from the bridge of a vessel. Industrial versions of Rolls-Royce Proteus, Avon and Olympus engines are also being used to produce electricity at plants with from 2.7 to 80 megawatts output Similar units are also playing a leading part in gas and oil pumping.

Naval launch blown up

The outlawed Irish Republican Army has claimed responsibility for the destruction of a Royal Navy launch being towed from a harbour in the republic. No-one was hurt when an explosion ripped a huge gash in the side of H.M;S. Stork, the crew of which were ashore when it was towed from its moorings in Baltimore Harbour; but the vessel, costing about £20,000 is thought to have been damaged beyond repair. Her hulk was washed ashore a few miles from Baltimore. In a stateemnt, the I.R.A. said that the boat had been detonated to show the organisation’s disgust at co-oper-ation between the Government of the Irish Republic and the British Government, “whose military forces wreak havoc on the Irish people in Belfast, Deny gnd other parts of the six counties (of Northern Ireland).” The statement added that the I.R.A. planned to resist with all the means at its disposal the forthcoming arrival of H.M.S. Hecate at Baltimore.

Two Royal Navy launches are employed at present on a hydrographic survey off the republic’s southern coastline.

In recent months, ships of the Royal Navy have been intercepting and searching fishing-boats and other craft off the coast of Ulster in an attempt to prevent guns from being smuggled into the province. Weapons haul in Ulster

In Belfast, the Ulster Prime Minister (Mr Brian Faulkner) said that his Government’s campaign against the terrorists was making it so hot for the gunmen that they were dumping their weapons. “The terrorists are beginning to realise that in the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army they have taken on implacable foes,” Mr Faulkner told the Belfast Chamber of Commerce.

Intensive searches, pursuits and checks were beginning to close in on some of the gunmen, and to yield considerable hauls of weapons. In the last four weeks, more than 150 occupied houses, almost 600 empty ones, and 85,000 vehicles had been checked. One machinegun, 11 rifles, 28 revolvers, a substantial quantity of explosives, and almost 4000 rounds of ammunition had been seized. Seven British soldiers in a Bangor hotel bar escaped unhurt when a bomb blast rocked the building on Wednesday, The hotel, 11 miles from

the capital, is often used by soldiers on short-term leave from their peace-keeping duties in Belfast.

Back on the beat in Leeds

Policemen in Leeds have been told to forget their patr-'l cars for the most part, and to take to foot or bicycle, the “Daily Sketch” reports.

The decision was taken by the Leeds Watch Committee because it felt that the cars had not proved successful either in checking crime or giving the public greater confidence in the Force.

“They flash by too quickly —the criminal watches them go, and then does what he intends to do,” the chairman of the committee, Aiderman Harold Jowitt, is quoted as saying. “Since foot patrols were resumed there has been a decrease in petty crimes.” The Assistant Chief Constable, Mr Brian Malloy, said: “Patrol cars have been successful up to the point of detachment from the public. The man on a bike or on foot can give the personal touch."