The Anti–Marketeers
Mmustutts, presumably calculating that whoops of enthusiasm would weaken our bargaining power in Brussels, have maintained a furtive silence, only now breaking, for several months. The anti-Marketeers, by contrast, have been going about their work with a gusto which is all the more dangerous because it is new-found. 'the reason for this enthusiasm appears to be that a new orthodoxy has been discovered. The original argument drawn up against the EEC was that to join it would mean economic ruin. This objection fell hopelessly flat because the more the business and industrial community looked into the matter the more prospects most of them saw of gaining in the European markets. Trade unionists have been more cautious, but on the whole the economic argument has been tamed for them too by their researches and the assurances of their continen- tal colleagues tha,t real wages and fringe benefits are unlikely to drop. Even the farmers, once so militant, are keeping significantly quiet.
The battle has been shifted, therefore, to the far vaguer 'political' arguments and here the oppo- nents of the Common! Market appear to have struck a rich vein with three, now well-established slogans. The Community[ we are told, is a tyrant which demands 'loss of sovereignty' as the price of .membership; it is 'undemocratic% and it is 'inward-looking.'
'There are two outstanding advantages about these formulae. They are very hard to disprove without much theoretical argument; and they are capable of endless adaptation to particular politi- cal viewpoints. Being 'anti-democratic' can mean anything, from 'having too many damned bureau- crats around' to 'being anti-Soviet'; being 'inward- looking,' to one group, entails 'not being pre- pared to look indefinitely after the interests of the white Commonwealth,' to another it is 'being a rich man's club."Loss of sovereignty' suits all fac- tions because to the politician it means being pre- vented from stewing in .one's own brand of juice. while to the man in the street it conjures up all the old fears about being messed about by foreigners. The most elaborate development of these slogans yet to appear is the recently published Fabian pamphlet* by Mr. William Pickles, who has become the cynosure of the anti-Marketeers from the violence of his convictions and because his status as lecturer at the London School of Economics lends an air of academic respect- ability to the cause.
Mr. Pickles, as a Socialist and a theoretician, finds himself in a characteristic dilemma. He is in favour of planning, dirigisme and all that. He is even something of an 'internationalist.' But he can never bring himself to the point of saying that a radical supranationalism might in some circumstances advance his aims. Never mind. He is able to turn this difficulty to good effect by concocting a 'heads-l-win-tails-you-lose' argu- ment. If one says to him, 'Britain in the EEC would certainly be able to veto anything totally objectionable in the Council of Ministers,' he replies, 'that would be undemocratic.' If one adds, 'but in the long run the EEC may perhaps move towards a more democratic form of federalism,' * NOT WITH EUROPE. (Fabian International Bureau, 3.s. 6d.) t UK, COMMONWEALTH AND COMMON MARKET.
(Institute of Economic Affairs, 5s.) he can throw up his hands in horror at the terrible things we should then be forced to do. The two legs of this argument are very characteristic of this controversy and Mr. Pickles shifts from one to another with the skill of a performing bear. But the whole thesis stands or falls by two pro- positions. The first is that 'sovereignty' is supremely important; the second is that the EEC, even with Britain in it, cannot be persuaded to evolve in an acceptable way./ Both these are demonstrably false. We are preparing to join the EEC primarily because'we believe that our influ- ence in the world—in industry, trade, aid and diplomacy---will be enhanced by joining and that if we do not join it will continue to decline. One might perhaps maintain that neither of these premises is true, but it is simply irrelevant to argue that only in an independent Britain could the powers of Parliament, the Courts, the Labour Party or the Milk Marketing Board remain the same. No one disputes that it would be perfectly feasible to go .on .crowing ,unconcernedly on an ever-decreasing dunghill, but we must not in that case expect to influence the farmyard.
The second proposition is more serious be- cause if it were true there would be much more significance about the undoubted deficiencies of the Rome Treaty. Mr. Pickles argues that it is naïve to suppose British pragmatism will cut much ice on the Continent. The treaty, is rigid and unchangeable (though these subtle foreigners will be able to find ways, of getting round it to our disadvantage--another dancing bear argu- ment). This line of reasoning shows an astonish- ing lack of insight into the way institutions func- tion—they either work or, if they do not, they either evolve or disintegrate whatever the rules. say. To take one of the defects Mr. Pickles finds most objectionable-7-the lack of any but rather vague provisions about, unemployment. Bad un- employment in the Ccnnoomity might arise either if a serious recession engulfed the free world or if a single member of the Community became a hopeless lame dog. In the first case it cannot be seriously doubted that the EEC as a whole would take steps to safeguard itself. In the second. the Community would either assist the lame dog country and allow it to take precautiOnary measures or (far less likely) it would secede.
The argument against evolution also fails to take into account the pressure of the outside world. The common external tariff of the Com- munity simply cannot survive in a world where k/f)iv you ( an' 1 please everyone, Selwyn, but i'ou.niti!z,i fry and pien.se .s(nncone: tariffs are on the way out. The fears about 'inward-lookingness' which are fairly set out in Professor Meade's recent Hobart Papert are groundless because the new American trade legislation and the forces it will unleash cannot in the long run be resisted any more than the logic of power politics which will force Europe to aid the underdeveloped countries. But the full poverty of the Pickles case is re- vealed when he comes to his own recipe for action. He proposes that we should rely on the Commonwealth (which he considers 'the most effective international grouping in the world today') and should procrastinate until the EEC has evolved so that we can see 'just what kind of a pig is in the poke.' In fact, Mr. Pickles wants the status quo. We are apparently to drift along on an uncompetitive economic basis, taking a decreasing amount of Commonwealth trade, un- able to give adequate aid where it is needed, but secure in , the, knowledge that our admirable moral qualities and our 'sentimental and tradi- tional' tics with the Empire Will gain us a place in the world.
Mr. Pickles believes that on this platform the Labour Party could sweep the country. If the country is as invincibly blind and chauvinistic as that it 'Will deserve all that would befall it.
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