The Price of Aloofness

Reluctantly but realistically, Britain is beginning to accept the fact that the six-nation European Common Market is here to stay, and that Britain will have to live with it.

For over two years, British hostility to the Common Market has troubled relations between the NATO nations. That hostility has sometimes been less than candid. The British argued that by erecting a unified tariff wall against outside nations, the Common Market Six would throw a spanner into intra-European trade. What they really meant was that Britain's exports to the Six would be hurt. Even when they formalized the economic division of Western Europe by organizing the rival but looser seven-nation European Free Trade Association, Britain's leaders insisted that all they were trying to do was "build a bridge" between the Common Market and the rest of Europe.

If the British felt threatened by the Common Market, they had themselves largely to blame. Though Britain was invited to take part in the 1955 Messina conference that drew up plans for the Common Market, the British government did not even bother to send a minister--apparently in the happy conviction that the Common Market would never get started. When it became clear that the Common Market could work, charged the Common Marketeers, Britain deliberately set out to destroy or dilute it.

A Time for Realism. Because the Common Market will certainly be dominated by West Germany, the rivalry between Britain and the Six helped to fuel the resurgence of anti-German feeling (TIME, April 20, 1959 et seq.) amongst ordinary Britons--though not in the British government. So bitter was the deepening conflict between the Six and the Seven that some good Europeans like NATO Secretary-General (and Common Market Treaty Negotiator) Paul-Henri Spaak began to fear that it would induce a political split which could turn NATO into an empty shell.

But last week there were signs that Britain was having second thoughts. British economists pointed to a U.N. report that showed that increased trade between the Common Market nations accounted for 60% of the total rise in trade amongst European nations last year. From British officialdom came frank admissions that Britain had sorely misjudged Europe's political eagerness for unity, and the U.S.'s consistent effort to provide aid. and comfort to that drive.

More and more editorial voices urged that Britain should forthwith seek membership in the Common Market, arguing in effect, "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em." British businessmen, skeptical of the government's dreams of a compromise bridge between the Six and the Seven, are making a separate peace by opening factories within the Common Market or linking up with Common Market firms.

The Pursuit of Wisdom. So far, there was no visible evidence that the Macmillan government was ready to abandon its insistence that Britain's preferential tariff agreements with the other Commonwealth nations ruled out Common Market membership. Many other Britons balked at the idea of yielding some part of Britain's economic sovereignty to the decision of the six other nations. In the House of Commons last week, a government spokesman insisted: "We really must keep a sense of proportion ... the government has to consider if it would be wise to surrender Britain's worldwide commercial policy to decisions of the European group."

But for all the government's obstinacy, the murmurs, doubts and nudges had produced a national debate over the risk that continued aloofness from Europe's drive toward economic union might one day reduce Britain to little more than Europe's offshore island.

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