Losing out to Europe
It has not taken the enlarged Common Market long to run into difficulties. The Fanfare for Europe has fizzled out, and by the time its last quavering notes were blown, squabbling had started on the continent. The Prime Minister once more resorts to a 'Presidential-style press conference in the ornate vulgarity of Lancaster House, this time to exhort the nation to accept his prices and incomes policy. The previous occasion was to declare the ''triumph ' of his continental policy. The continental policy succeeded, in that the necessary legislation was enacted here and the necessary consent given in Brussels, as a result of a secret deal, or accord, between Mr Heath and M. Pompidou, who seemed to think along similar lines when they met and 'treated face to face, in Paris in May 1971. After that meeting the Prime Minister 'informed Parliament that "it was heartening to discover how close are the views of the French and British governments on the development of Europe and its role in the world," 'and that he and M. Pompidou "found an 'identity of view on the role which a United Europe can play." Immediately before that meeting M. Pompidou publicly declared the question he would put to the Prime Minister. The Six, he said, were moving towards an economic and monetary union: "Is Britain ready to go ahead?" The Prime Minister answered "Yes." The French President said " the basic thing is the intention, the will "; and it was the Prime Minister's intention, his will, which carried the day, then, and thus far. The Prime Minister's intention and will are now seen to clash with the French President's; and that "identity of view," of which Mr Heath boasted, has gone with their wind.
Thus, when the 'European finance ministers met to discuss their anti-inflation policies, Mr Barber gave his eight fellow ministers a potted economic history of the United Kingdom from 1970. via the 'miners' strike, to today — when the British Government determines upon a statutory prices and incomes policy it had utterly rejected back in 1970. After the Chancellor was done, up jumped 'the French Finance Minister, M. Giscard d'Estaing, to declare that France was not going to try any such policies: such heavy use 'had been made of them in the past, he said, that they had lost 'all credibility. Two years ago, Mr Heath and Mr Barber would have said "Hear, hear." The Finance Ministers met in Luxembourg. Over in Brussels the Council of Ministers was meeting. This is the community's senior body. Sir Alec Douglas-Home was soon involved in a verbal fracas with the French Foreign Minister, M. Schumann. The dispute was far from trivial, for it involved the crucial question of the running of the community. The Council of Ministers had gat themselves entangled in a detailed discussion about Norwegian frozen fish fillets and fingers and the difference between imported aluminium and alumina. After putting up with quite a bit of this sort of 'thing, Sir Alec declared, in effect, that they were wasting their time; that such matters would be more appropriately discussed at a much lower level. "We must free ourselves," said Sir Alec, understandably enough, "of the details 'in order to keep in mind the great strategic questions." Alt once, M. Schumann disputed this, arguing that it was necessary to go into details, because details were the concern of the man in the street, and if major problems were to be solved, then details had Ito be gone into. France then 'proceeded to beat Britain on the issue of Norwegian fish fingers and fillets. Britain wanted to import these duty free as hitherto, or, failing that, to secure the agreement of the Council to open negotiations. France thereupon argued that to open such negotiations would be 'to hearten the Norwegian antimarketeers. The effect, therefore, is that the British housewife will have to pay more for her frozen fish fillets and fingers in order to encourage the Norwegian marketeers. The counterargument, that for the British housewife to pay more would encourage the majority of British 'housewives in their vigorously anti-market view, was apparently not put.
This was not the end of the disagreements. In Strasbourg, Presidents and Speakers of the Parliaments and Assemblies of the Nine met in a kind of private conclave to discuss what has been called "'the interpenetration" of national parliaments and the European assembly. The European assembly would like to call 'itself a parliament, but since it is a body whose members are nominated by the various governments it clearly has no right whatsoever to so proud an arrogation. It is a talkingshop, no more; and it must not be allowed to become anything more until — should such a moment arrive — its members are directly elected and not nominated. Mr Peter Kirk and his merry men may play at constitution-making; he may make pompous addresses to his fellow nominees at Strasbourg to his and their hearts' content; but, politically, he and they are men of straw, or, to change the metaphor, floosies rather than harlots, possessing neither power nor responsibility. Mr Kirk's Strasbourg speech on Tuesday was thus, in essence as 'in substance, trivial. But on Monday, Mr Speaker Selwyn Lloyd man aged to make one valid point: the only material contribution thus far made by the various British contingents. At Strasbourg he embarrassed the speakers and presidents of the various European assemblies by telling 'them that he, for one, was the servant and not the master of the assembly over which he presided. At long last, a glimmer of the authority of the Commons was asserted.
Not only the fanfare is over. The fancy speeches are done with too. National interests are already entangling and grinding and jarring, clashing and not meshing. The judiciary is now realising, practically as well as theoretically, that the ultimate appellant court is on the continent. The legislature realises that it is threatened not only by the talking-shop in Strasbourg but also by the bureaucratic Commission and the irresponsible Council in Brussels. The executive, too, has already been beaten by the French in its first European sallies. Who can now say that we 'have not sacrificed sovereignty? And who can argue any longer with conviction that the instinct of the country against the Common Market was wrong and that the continental ambitions of the marketeers are not already being frustrated by the continentals?
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