The Flat-Earthers
By JULIAN CRITCHLEY, MP
THERE is to be a two-day debate on the Common Market in the week before Whit- sun, the first opportunity that the House will have had to discuss Europe since the end of last summer. It should be quite an occasion.
Differences of view as to the Common Market have made strange divisions within all three political parties, but without destroying the basic similarity between political attitudes in this country and in each of the 'Six.' In Europe the dividing line has not been drawn down the Centre, but on either side of it, leaving the Centre, whether it be of Left or Right, supporters of the Common Market. In the large this has been true of Britain, too, for the Tory anti-Marketeers are drawn exclusively from the romantic Right of the party, leaving the over- whelming majority of its Members, say 310 out of 360, prepared to accept whatever terms the Cabinet may recommend.
On the Left the picture is not nearly so simple. The Labour Party, one feels, would like to support our entry, but is chary of appearing to endorse what will • be after all a Govern- ment initiative. Nor is it simply a question of the Neutralists against the Rest. If it were, then Gaitskell's task would be a straight- forward one. The neutralists have succeeded in communicating their hostility to Europe to many of the Labour Party's trade union Members, the national socialists of the party. This is what Makes this question different, in its effect from issues such as defence and foreign policy. For On the Bomb or over German rearmament, or Korea, the nationalists have always lined up firmly against the neutralists. Over Europe many of the less sophisticated from amongst 'sound' Labour Members (a 'sound' Labour Member is one who, while believing fervently in Clause 4, remains a passionate anti-Communist) fear either for conditions of employment if Britain joins Europe or, more simply, just cannot abide foreigners. To them, both de Gaulle and Adenauer appear to be politicians of the extreme Right, which they are not. They are, in terms of Europe, of the Centre.
Then there are the sophisticated nationalists, People who are reputedly close to Gaitskell like Douglas Jay, Dennis Healey or Patrick Gordon Walker. Healey sees the Common Market as perpetuating the division of Germany and 'freezing the existing frontiers of Eastern Europe. It is strange that such a view is not shared by any West German political Party. While Labour neutralists see the Common Market either as a Cold War grouping or as an extension of the conflict between East and West, a struggle about which they 'profess in- difference as to the result, the national socialists tend to build their arguments against the Com- mon Market from the premise that the most im- portant problem that faces the world • is the contrast between the rich and the poor nations. But this is not so. The most important problem would appear to be the survival, not just of this island, but of the West as a whole. That the relationship between rich and poor is indeed important goes without saying, for a sensible plan to ameliorate such distinction is a means whereby we may the more easily survive, but it cannot be, of itself, the end of our policy. To imply, as many do, that the result of our entry will be for Europe to grow richer as the rest of the world grows poorer is but to repeat in a wider context a fundamental Marxist error.
Of the articulate anti-Common Marketeers, William Pickles is the most formidable, and the arguments used in his Fabian pamphlet Not with Europe will doubtless reappear in many of the speeches during the debate. Pickles, whom I believe, at root, feels about rich and poor nations in this way, uses two sets of arguments against Europe that may well be in contradic- tion to each other. To Pickles the Common Market is not just 'laissez-faire,' it is worse, it is 'planned' laissez-faire. Whilst he is careful not to define laissez-faire, he writes, 'all the inte- grationists are agreed that the road from the twentieth century to the twenty-first goes by way of the nineteenth or perhaps more ac- curately of the eighteenth.' Pickles is using 'laissez-faire' for its emotive effect to conjure up a picture of the rule of big business, freed from all restraint, and in unholy alliance with the federalists who are (paradoxically) 'protec- tionist, restrictive and inward-looking.' What Mr. Pickles really has in mind, and not without grounds, is that the acceptance of the Treaty of Rome would make it considerably more difficult for an extreme Left-wing government to act as it pleased. But since it would be unwise to be so blunt, he has based his presentation on characterising any less dirigiste economic system as laissez-faire.
Mr. Pickles does not cite a single example of criticism by Socialists in countries within the Common Market of the evils of 'laissez- faire' which he sees himself. He does allege in his pamphlet that the Treaty of Rome was rushed through by M. Spaak (a Socialist!) before the public knew what was happening, and that it was 'imposed from above on unwilling citizens.' He does not explain why such unwilling citizens have not complained, or why the SPD did not make an election issue last year of Dr. Adenauer's sponsorship of the 'alliance be- tween federalists and exponents of laissez-faire.'
Mr. Pickles's second major assertion, which is hardly consistent with his first, is that the 'nine bureaucrats' of the Commission are 'the real rulers of the Community.' He refers frequently
'I've never felt much confidence in this prayer- rug, somehow, since my wife threw it in the Bendix.'
to the virtues of pragmatism, but is unwilling to concede that new ventures of this kind re- quire new mechanisms to achieve practical results. The Treaty of Rome was designed to create a balance between the Commission, which would take a 'European view,' and the Council of Ministers, where most ultimate power on major issues will reside even in the Common Market stage, which would represent national viewpoints. Mr. Pickles does not follow through. He argues against the Common Market, but will not take a stand against any such experiment, for he concludes, rather lamely, that Britain should wait and see.
If the Left are unwilling to see the reality of Britain's position, for they are imprisoned by their fundamentalist beliefs, and are forever asking themselves of any subject 'Is this Socialism?' then the Right are quite unable to discern the reality of Britain's relative decline. It is difficult to take the Tory anti-Common Marketeers seriously, for they see the Common- wealth not as it is, but as they would like it to be. They have misunderstood all that has happened since the war. They have believed that the process of imperial withdrawal, disguised as it has been by royal tours and by much mis- leading publicity, has somehow resulted in a greater Empire. Even now, they still fail to understand. The fact that many people who ,did believe that the Commonwealth was but the simple magnification of Empire, now do not, is one of the welcome consequences of the whole debate. It is not surprising that Common- wealth countries, Canada in particular, should show a natural concern for the future of their trade. is one could take exception to that; what is more depressing is the tendency of some to enlist sentiment without hesitation in the aid of profit margins.
Mr. Peter Walker, the Member of Parliament for Worcester, whose name now appears in the Daily Express almost as often as that of the Duke of Windsor, has been the most prominent Tory opponent of Europe. He is publishing on Thursday of this week (Commonwealth Day) a collection of essays that will attempt to show that the Commonwealth is a preferred alterna- tive to the Common Market. But this is only a sighting shot, for a manifesto written by him (with the help of Sir Derek Walker-Smith) is to appear in a month's time. Once it is published, Mr. Walker is to journey across the world, visit- ing every Commonwealth country so as to inform them of the extent of the opposition to Europe within the Tory Party. If the picture he draws is an accurate one, it cannot fail to depress his hearers. The Tory anti-Common Marketeers have a hard core of about twenty or so, those who abstained last July and are presumably against Europe on any terms. It is they who will turn the Channel into a last ditch. In the twenty are to be found all that remains of the Suez Group. Beyond the hard core are thirty or so whose doubts about agriculture or sovereignty, or preferences, remain as yet unresolved. It is they who may abstain whilst the twenty vote against. Mr. Heath can hardly be alarmed by what he has seen of the Tory anti-Marketeers, and he has handled them skilfully both on the floor of the House and upstairs in Committee. They lack both numbers and quality.
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