BRITISH ENTRY Wilson castigated; Jenkins seeks help

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32663, 20 July 1971, Page 13

BRITISH ENTRY Wilson castigated; Jenkins seeks help

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, July 19.

Mr Roy Jenkins, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer who is at the head of the pro-Common Market faction in Britain’s deeply-divided Opposition Labour Party, will make a further attempt tonight to rally support from other party leaders.

He will be speaking at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting called to discuss the Conservative Government’s negotiated terms for British entry into the Market.

Mr Jenkins, who is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, is at present totally isolated from other influential members of the party leadership.

Political observers are saying that he will have to consider resigning from his post if he goes against the party line in October, and votes with the Government in favour of British entry. So the many Labour M.P.S who are also opposed to British entry are eagerly awaiting the result of Mr Jenkins’s search for support at tonight’s private meeting. ‘Snivelling speech’ Meanwhile, the week-end Labour Party conference speech by the Leader of the

Opposition (Mr Harold Wilson), in which he declared his opposition to the entry terms, but declined to give an outright party veto, continues to receive a venomous roasting

in the British press. Peter Jenkins, one of Britain’s leading political commentators, wrote in the “Guardian”: “The Labour leader raised a few routine cheers for his attack on the Tories, but for the rest it was a snivelling little speech. “You could almost feel the conference squirming as Mr Wilson set about resolving his perfectly genuine dilemma in an utterly shameful fashion. “Mr Wilson was not sitting on a fence; he was impaled on a barbed hook. He indulged his passion for selfvindication with preposterous and selectively documented claims to consistency. He set about the terms with such indiscriminate destructiveness that the entire package was left in shreds on the floor of the conference hall, and, with it, what remained of Mr Wilson’s credibility as a statesman.” ‘Brazen effrontery’ The “Daily Telegraph,” in an editorial headlined, “Wilson’s Betrayal,” described the Opposition Leader’s line as “brazen effrontery.”

“By twisting and kowtow’ing. Mr Wilson is making party unity under these conditions an article not of faith, but of bad faith to the country as a whole,” the editorial said. “The Times” commented: “It did not matter all that much that Mr Wilson, hardening his position against entry, professed to find the terms wanting. His performance was designed as an exercise in self-justification for his changed position, and everybody present at the conference knew it. “If he had pronounced the terms satisfactory it would hardly have altered the balance of opinion in the party, whatever the gain for his personal consistency.” ‘Sacrificing himself The “Sunday Observer” said in an editorial: “More than most parties, Labour has always been a coalition, of Left and Right, of intellectuals and trade unionists. At 'the best of times, it is a dif-

• ficult horse to ride, and yes- ; terday’s conference showed , how genuinely divided the - party is on what is, after all, > one of the biggest departures ; in policy Britain has ever

made. “Mr Gaitskell, it is true, defied the party over unilateralism, but that was arguably an issue of pure principle in which expediency had no place. Mr Wilson (like his senior colleagues, Mr Denis Healey and Mr Anthony Crosland) has managed to remain in favour of joining the Community, in principle, while he manoeuvres to oppose the present terms and time of entry. What gain for the country would come from his sacrificing himself on the altar of consistency if the result was to split his party and render it unfit to govern.”

‘Sublimely impudent’ The “Sunday Times” said:

: “With an unfailing eye for • the lowest common denomin- , ator, Mr Wilson awaits only ■ the right moment to an- . nounce his outright opposition to entry. “This will probably occur in the same week as the publication of his book, in which 1 he records his sublimely im- . pudent efforts in 1967 to ex- • plain to President de Gaulle i how, together, the two of them could lead Europe. “To Mr Wilson himself, that ■ kind of contradiction is part of the game of politics. But Mr Wilson’s standards are , not everybody’s, and not every Labour leader’s. Mr Healey has a good deal of practice in flexibility, but Mr Crosland is not a natural turncoat. His apostasy has invoked party unity as its guiding principle. “This raises two questions. Is unity the real issue? And is giving primacy to unity the best way to maintain Labour’s strength?” The “Sunday Telegraph” said: “Mr Harold Wilson, although still formally reserving his position, yesterday came out more strongly against entry into Europe on the present terms than even the most deeply committed anti-Market speaker. “If this is what he says when still nominally sitting on the fence, the mind boggles at what extremities of criticism he will be able to utter when, at long last, he decides to make his opposition unequivocally clear. “In fact, of course, he is already off the fence in all but name, as is the Labour Party national executive, whose conference pretence of an open-minded executive listening to all the arguments before making its decision was as phoney as it was unconvincing. “The intention is plainly to assert that Mr Heath’s terms are too costly to be acceptable: better to take the strain of going it alone, of remaining outside any major bloc, than bear the burden which membership of E.E.C. would now impose. “This is the line which the Labour Party will shortly adopt and proclaim.”