Commonwealth & Common Market
The coincidence between the undoubted success of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference in Ottawa and the reaching of a peak of discontent with Britain's EEC membership in this country — symbolised by the conversion of Mr Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times from his hitherto pro-EEC position — is remarkably felicitous. Stripped of much of the sentimentality and hysteria which Marked its proceedings as recently as the last conference at Singapore, the Commonwealth of Nations has emerged, not merely as a practical and useful instrument of international relations, but as one with a very real potential, whereas the Potential of the EEC has never been more difficult to see. As Mr Brittart observed, not on the basis of any secret or leaked reports, but through the use of" obvious economic facts," " The first seven months of membership have been a pretty well unmitigated loss from this country's point of view." Nobody would, of course, pretend that the Commonwealth could ever serve the purpose of increasing this country's Wealth and power as well as could the EEC, if the hopes of its supporters in this country could be fulfilled. But it aPpears increasingly certain that those hopes can never be fulfilled; and just as certain that, even though Britain has lost her preponderant position in the Commonwealth, Membership of that organisation is a real, and could be a growing, asset.
What happened at Ottawa has, in addition, ramifications beyond the interests of any one country. Before the conference M. Trudeau, who has shown himself to be a diplomatist of remarkable skill, set out to make certain that the interMinable and pointless wrangling of Singapore would not be repeated; and he was assisted in this task by the determination of other leaders who have no particularly strong instinctive feelings for the Commonwealth — Mr Whitlam, General Gowon and Mr Heath among them — to turn this conference into a businesslike affair. As a result of their success M. Trudeau was able to point to the effectiveness of the Commonwealth as a grouping of medium sized powers of varying wealth, especially when compared to the United Nations; Mr Whitlam was able to say that the CornMonvvealth was "the most significant and natural grouping for Australia to belong to "; and General Gowon felt able to Moderate his hitherto harsh stand on Britain's Rhodesian Policy, and move towards a position of supporting the plea of Mr Heath and Sir Alec Douglas-Horne that black Rhodesian leaders should do the best they can to negotiate with Mr Smith. None of this is insignificant, and even if some of it is as yet impalpable, all the indications are that Ottawa Will provide the foundations for more such developments.
The Commonwealth's greatest asset is its character as a Multiracial forum of equals. Multiracialism, as practised by that body, could mean far more than the simple recognition Of the quality of men with different coloured skins. It could mean, and M. Trudeau has said he intends to make it mean, all kinds of practical co-operation between states mostly of a similar political and economic potential, right across the world. In any such effort the geo-political character of the Commonwealth states each in its own area could be of enormous and inter-linked importance. Nigeria is rapidly becoming the most powerful and stable state in black Africa. Canada herself is becoming increasingly active in Africa; and is also a Pacific power, reaching across that ocean towards Australasia — and the Prime Ministers of both Australia and New Zealand recognised at Ottawa the importance of Canada as a Pacific power. Mr Whitlam and Mr Kirk, in their turn, are becoming increasingly conscious of the importance to them of their Asian neighbours, of which India is the most important, even if Singapore is the most active. What has happened to all these links is that they have passed through a period of pure sentimentality, survived a period of serious inter-state bickering, and reached a point where almost all the leaders involved accept their significance. Only Britain, it seems, stands outside this process, and offers to it less than whole-hearted enthusiasm.
Britain, of course, was to some extent seen by the other Commonwealth powers as their agent within the EEC; and Mr Heath was not unwilling to take on that role. But it is a role that can be effective only in so far as Britain is herself effective within the Community. Several things are now happening which greatly weaken this country in that respect. The first of them is the recent decision of the Community to impose a levy to prevent beef prices falling much below their present level: this forecloses on the ability of Britain ever again to take advantage of cheap food (of which the Commonwealth is the greatest producer) when world prices fall, which they are certain to do. Second, it now appears that our net budgetary contribution to the EEC — once supposed to be £100 million rising to £300 million by the end of the transitional period — will be at least several times greater than this. Thirdly, it is now quite certain that the other EEC countries will not join in a regional policy such as would help Britain — Mr Heath's hopes in this regard are clearly pipe dreams. And fifthly, while all these developments produce a substantial net disadvantage to Britain, there are no compensating advantages, and our export boom is taking place in countries outside Europe, and particularly in the Commonwealth. It would be a very blinkered sentimentalist indeed who would nowadays be wholly certain that the great historical turn Mr Heath made by joining the EEC was a turn in the right direction.
In truth, of course, there are very few arithmetically correct courses in international policy. The success of any policy is to some extent dependent on the will with which it is pursued. To the extent that that is true, all policy decisions have an element of the instinctive about them. All a statesman can hope to do is to get the general direction of his efforts right; but any road, even the correct one, will be fraught with difficulty. In pointing Britain down the road to Europe Mr Heath was supported by the instinctive consensus of a large part of the British elite, and much the greater part of the press. That is the importance of Mr Brittan's conversion: it represents the first major switch back to reality on the part of a very distinguished and respected economic analyst, one who was once, indeed, the commentator held in highest regard by the Prime Minister himself. What people like Mr Brittan will increasingly grasp, in the wake of Ottawa, is that the tremendous outpouring of wealth from this country to Europe — increased, in cidentally, by the cost of such projects as Concorde, the Chunnel and Maplin, which make little sense outside a European context — constitutes a drain of resources that could have been much more effectively employed outside Europe altogether. It is to be hoped that such realisation will become sufficiently widespread before the European entanglement becomes irrevocable: the first step towards repairing the damage done by a mistake is to realise that one has made one.
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