E.E.C. a shambles, says Wilson

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33655, 3 October 1974, Page 13

E.E.C. a shambles, says Wilson

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, October 2. Speaking on the eve of today’s crucial talks in Luxemburg on the Common Market farm prices crisis, the British Prime Minister (Mr Wilson) said that the European Economic Community had become a shambles.

The Labour leader, who accused Mr Edward Heath’s Conservative Government of having taken Britain into the Community on humiliating and crippling terms, said: “The country may. be divided about the benefits of the Common Market, but it is united in its support for the Labour Government’s determination to renegotiate those terms.”

Speaking at an election campaign meeting in Linthwaite, Yorkshire, Mr Wilson referred to the E.E.C.’s beef and butter “mountains,” and added: “The Market has proved itself capable of operating to the disadvantage of the British people for years to come. The question is whether renegotiation can change all this.” One of the main issues in the General Election, Mr Wilson said, was: “Are the British people to be given the right, through the ballot box, to decide their future in Europe, in or out?” Under a Labour Government, he said, they would have that right — and the chance to exercise it within 12 months of polling day, October 10; but under any other party, or any other combination of parties, that right would be denied to them. Mr Wilson’s structures on the Community did not prevent him from quoting figures just released by the European Economic Commission which showed that Britain was the only one of the nine members of the Common Market whose rate of inflation was actually falling. The Foreign Secretary (Mr

James Callaghan) who will take part in today’s Luxemburg talks, told a meeting in Cardiff that it was time the Community’s Common Agricultural Policy “broke loose from ideology and based itself on the realities of agricultural production.” Mr Callaghan said that in due course, he had no doubt, the C.A.P. would be drastically revised, for it was neither efficient nor fair. The Home Secretary (Mr Roy Jenkins), however, repeated last night that he would leave the Government if Britain withdrew from the Common Market. He added that he would not leave the Labour Party. He told a television interviewer: “I believe in the social democratic moderate position within the Labour Party, and I believe in fighting for it within the party.” Membership backed The British motor industry last night put its weight behind Britain’s membership of the Common Market with a claim that the future of any European motor-manufactur-ing country depended on a strong and effective European Community. The deputy-president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mr Gilbert Hunt, said that the E.E.C. represented one of the greatest acts of political imagination for many centuries. “The countries of Europe

are now moving towards a substantial tariff-free home base from which to build the large mianufacturing resources necessary to compete against the rest of the world, including the rapidlyexpanding motor industries of the Eastern bloc nations,” he said. “Whatever the short-term problems, there can be no real future for any of the European motor-manufactur-ing countries unless the E.E.C. remains in being and becomes stronger and more effective. “The British motor industry, alang with virtually all British industry, has in no way changed its position in relation to the Community. We want to remain in the E.E.C.; we want to see a stronger E.E.C., with Britain playing its fullest possible role; we want the British Government and people to know that we believe the E.E.C. to lie essential to the future strength of the British motor industry. Mr Hunt;, who is also chairman of the Chrysler Corporation in Britain, produced statistics showing that the sales of motor products between Britain and other European countries were growing at a rapid rate, with a narrowing of the trade balance, whichi had been running heavily in favour of the other countries.

Chalfont’s warning At an -election campaign meeting irt Bath, a former Labour Cabinet Minister (Lord Chalfont) gave a warning that tliere was a small, but extremely active group, within the: Labour Party whose aim was to destroy Britain’s political and economic system, and to replace it by State monopoly.

Lord Chalfont, who left the Labour Party last week, said that in his six years of office he had visited manv Communist countries, including the Soviet Union, Poland, and China.

“I do not wish to see their way of life ,and their systems of government imported into this country,” Lord Chalfont declared. He said that the Labour Party was becoming more and more anti-European. “The part/’s proposed binding referendum on the issue is no more than a device to postpone until after the election the inevitable, definitive split between the pro and anti-European factions in the leadership of the party,” he said.