PERSONAL COLUMN

Not such a super market

JOHN TERRAINE

To begin with, a personal statement : I would not like it to be thought that my long-stand- ing opposition to Britain joining the Com- mon Market is mere raw anti-Europeanism. I came to consciousness in a Common Mar- ket country—Belgium—where my father worked; I have no earlier memories than those of my childhood in Brussels, and they are happy ones. Then, I wouldn't dare to say that I know France, but I can and will say that across the last quarter-century France has been my magnet. To be on French soil fills me with the same sense of awakening and intensified feeling that our Belgian journeys gave me as a boy. I haven't been any less European in sympathy while the Great Argu- ment has been going on; and yet I believe that France has never been a better ally of ours than in her opposition to our jOining the Six.

My dislike of the whole exercise has al- ways been, I suppose, historical : historical at two levels. There is what I take to be the immediate history bf our approach to the EEC, and there is the longer-term historical analysis (on which General de Gaulle had much to say). I always felt that the initial British approach was semi-hysterical, with all the look of a brainstorm in the small hours which it would have been better to sleep off. I am afraid I also regarded it, and still do, as a dismal part of the post-Suez trauma.

The Suez debacle occurred at the end of 1956. It is a platitude that it exposed the de- gree of collapse of British power. Certainly the previous eleven years had• brought home to us the ambiguities of `victory', but at least until Suez it was possible to believe that Bri- tain retained power in relation to a poor coun- try like Egypt, even if it had to be admitted that she cotild no longer compete with the super-powers (us and ussR). But there was the `special relationship' with America, dat- ing from the Grand Alliance of 1941. And there was the Commonwealth—that, at any rate, seemed to be not just a status symbol, but an element of power-potential, entitling Britain to a considerable voice in world affairs.

Suez spoilt it all. The two fundamental fac- tors of British post-war policy crumbled as soon as they were put to the touch. The 'special relationship' vanished in a puff of smoke. The Commonwealth split acrimoni- ously : Canada and India strongly opposed British action. That was enough : it did not matter that other Commonwealth countries lent support. What mattered was the split, and Canada's firm stand was the eye-opener. The props of British policy were abruptly knocked away; hence the trauma.

All that was left—and not much of that by the time the recriminations had run their course—was the French alliance. At least we had been able to do business—dirty business, possibly; unsuccessful business, certainly; but business—with the French. The European link had survived when others which we had cherished much more had failed. What was more, in March 1957, while Britain was still reeling, looking in all directions for comfort and finding none, France put her hand to the Treaty of Rome along with the other Five, and a new European institution was born. I know from personal observation during the next three years—years of continuing econo- mic crisis in Britain—how ebullient France appeared, how thriving by comparison, al- though she had shared our defeat. Nor was this just on the surface; 1 realised that when I first saw the Rhone Valley hydro-electric works. Big things were : happening. The French economy was on the move.

Harold Macmillan, whom I have been known -to describe as the most disastrous Prime Minister in British history (compari- sons with Lord North are unfair; unkind to North, I mean), now entered upon a period of perpetual motion. There was the Bermuda conference with President Eisenhower in March 1957, while the Six were busy with their treaty; there was a visit to Washington and Ottawa that October; Commonwealth tours in 1958 and 1959; another trip to Wash- ington in June 1958; a visit to the Soviet

Union in February 1959; visits to France, Germany and the us the next month; the famous African journey in 1960, culminating in the `wind of change' speech on 3 Febru- ary; the meeting with President Kennedy in March 1961 : altogether, a whole lot of movement. And then, on 10 August 1961, Britain applied for membership of the EEC.

I have never been able to think of all this activity as other than a continuous thread: the direct line from the Suez withdrawal to the Brussels negotiations which Mr Heath began in November 1961 seems to me unmistakable. The EEC application is therefore to be seen as the consequence of humiliating defeat, which is the first reason why I have never liked it.

It would be untrue and unfair to suggest that the Conservatives never made real at- tempts to repair the relationship with the United States; but it would be self-deception to pretend that it ever again possessed the warmth of the early NATO days. I am sure that Macmillan did his best to win back American sympathy; but I am equally sure that he did not succeed. The extent to which he received American encouragement to ap- proach Europe seems to be the measure of American loss of interest in the 'special rela- tionship'. But I believe in that relationship, because I believe that Britain and America share certain fundamental interests (eg. oppo- sition to the spread of communism). I dislike the Common Market policy because I con- sider it, as an alternative to close accord with America, a distinctly second best.

But the breaking of the Commonwealth is the worst mischief of all (and the point at which short and long-term history come to- gether). With all its faults and weaknesses, the Commonwealth was a fact; a fact of econo- mics and a fact of power. It was never, in- deed, the power factor that sentimentalists supposed. I simply don't believe, for exam- ple, that the British Commonwealth by itself could have defeated the Axis during the second world war, fine though the 'finest hour' was. On the other hand, manpower fig- ures alone reveal an invaluable overseas con- tribution: total recruitment for the armed forces in the United Kingdom, 1939-45, was 5,896,000 men; for the whole Common- wealth it was over 101 million. Four-and-a- half million men do make a difference in war. And it is merely silly to pretend that, only

fifteen years later, the Commonwealth no longer signified. If that had been true in 1956, why—why on earth—continue with the cha- rade now, when untold damage has unques- tionably been done? But if a charade was worth continuing, surely the reality was worth preserving?

The truth is that the Commonwealth, in 1956, was perceptibly approaching a cross- roads. On the one hand a `new Common- wealth' was emerging, headed by India, Pakistan and Ceylon, who achieved self- government in 1947 and 1948; on the other hand was an `old Commonwealth' whose most intractable element was to be seen in the Nationalist victory in South Africa; also in 1948. Careful guidance was needed to steer the curious vessel through these dangerous tides. instead, the British government decided to enter the Common Market—which was, in effect, a decision to abandon the Common- wealth to its various devices. Many strenu- ous denials of this have been proclaimed, but it is a simple fact whose cynicism still takes one's breath away.

So the 'wind of change' built up to Force 8, or even 9: South Africa departed alto- gether- two months before Britain's formal application to the Six, unmourned except by a few who saw a missed opportunity for humanity; the scuttle from Africa, whose dismal results provide our daily reading, then proceeded apace. It is said that Gen- eral de Gaulle, when he returned to power in 1958 and entered into the inheritance of the Algerian war, summed up his views in the memorable sentence : `L'Afrique est foutue, et l'Algerie avec.' Harold Macmillan must have thought something very similar. Both acted accordingly, but the French more clev- erly; and when Britain had stripped herself of her most reliable support, the General quietly put the boot in. Which would have been very funny, if it had not also been a huge tragedy.

The depth of the tragedy is to be estimated chiefly in the long-term. Nothing has been more outrageous than the steady propaganda of Marketeers to the effect that joining the Six, 'joining Europe', was in some sense a 'new' idea, that it was 'forward-looking', while Commonwealth and trans-Atlantic links 'belonged to the past'. The truth is, of course, that Britain has never, in recorded history, /rot been involved with Europe; she is an off-shore island and, short of towing her away, she always will be part of the Euro- pean scene. In every century Britain has been involved in Europe's politics and Europe's quarrels; it could not have been otherwise. The only new question arising is that of the degree of formal association with particular European countries that is desirable.

This question can only be answered in the light of other roles, which may conflict with the European association, though they can never dispel it. Britain's chief other role in history has, without doubt, been her out- ward expansion as a coloniser, and thus an exporter of Europeanism to distant parts of the world. To the extent that she has created, or helped to create, what are, in effect, Euro- pean nations in other continents, she has fulfilled a unique function. Her modern role, with the demise of European imperialism, is that of a permanent link between the close and the distant parts of the European world.

consider that profoundly important, the horizons much vaster, the future possibilities much greater than what would be, after all, only the revival of a medieval situation in modern, dress.