A Strangled Cry
TIUNGS are now reaching the point at which the best hope for the opponents of the Common Market may be to keep their mouths shut. Heaven knows how much damage has been done to their cause by those staunch anti- Europeans Who rely on obviously doubtful or puerile arguments. But even more damage may be done by the recent tract* of Sir Derek Walker-Smith and Mr. Peter Walker for the opposite reasons. They have always been regarded as a formidable threat because they have pretensions to intellectual respectability and because they are eloquent and sincere. When in -their public speeches they have implied that mem- bership of the Common Market and continuance of the Commonwealth are mutually exclusive their followers have always assumed that they had a master plan to prove that the Common- wealth could be a genuine 'alternative' to the Common Market. The final appearance of this plan will be- a shattering blow for, if these two gentlemen cannot prove the case, who can?
The tract is neatly divided between truism and fantasy. The reader may object to its grandilo- quent fustian-- the quotations from Burke, the references to the 'toil of our forefathers and so * A Call to tlw Commonwealth. on; but who will object to the basic proposition that the Commonwealth is a valuable institution Which is based (in theory at least) upon respect for certain political ideals and which should be fostered and improved? Many of the suggestions for improvement—a Commonwealth university, a Commonwealth Technical Training Scheme, a Commonwealth Marketing Board—are admir- able and in no way inconsistent with membership of the Common Market.
But as an 'alternative' to the Common Market, the pamphlet stands or falls by the tariff and trade proposals—which are certainly inconsistent With membership of the EEC. These are (a) that GATT should be amended to remove a 'distor- tion of Commonwealth trade' (i.e., to allow Britain to reintroduce as much imperial prefer- ence as she likes); (b) that a new Commonwealth conference should be called to rewrite all imperial trade agreements; (c) that bilateral trade agree- ments should be signed with third countries, par- ticularly the United States.
The lack of realism of these proposals is breath-taking. The GATT was negotiated under heavy American pressure largely in order to undermine imperial preference. There is no reason to suppose that the Americans are any less implacable on this score now than they were fifteen years ago, and to imagine that they can be bought off with bilateral agreements is ludi- crous. As to a new Ottawa conference the objec- tions are well known—that Britain no longer has the size of market or strength of economy to bear the weight of a full preferential system that would satisfy the Commonwealth. This objection is never met by the authors of A Call to the Commonwealth and until it is their call will remain a strangled cry.
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