Moses in Europe
Douglas Leyboume
'We have been examining,' says Mr Callaghan, in a letter to Ron Hayward, secretary-general of the Labour Party, 'we have been examining the workings of the Community, in order to form a long-term perspective on the areas where reform and Change are required.' Now he tells us! For ten years, successive British governments examined the Community intently from outside. At the third attempt, Britain got through the pearly gates, and has been a member of the Community for four years and nine months. The Labour Party has been in power for three of those years. Yet it is only. now that we learn that the government has been 'examining' the workings of the Community.
Mr Callaghan feels the need to coax the Labour Party out of any infantile temptation to demand Britain's withdrawal from the European Community. This is not an unworthy aim, and if Mr Callaghan can persuade the Party not merely that Britain should stay in but that it should focus on ways in which the Community should be made to work better — and his letter includes a six-point plan to make it work better (in What is so dispiriting about this missive is its vulgar ignorance — the work of an illit erate lay preacher who does not care whether the children in the back row spot the errcfrs of fact.
He does not want to provoke a row with the advocates of a siege economy, so he leaves out any reference to the economic problems that would face us if we left the Community, and concentrates instead on the political backlash. All very well. But he renders himself ridiculous by suggesting that, if we left the Community, the Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese would have sec ond thoughts about their recent venture into democracy.
The Prime Minister claims, rightly, that the 'renegotiation' of our membership terms by the Labour Government, in 1974-75, produced some improvements in the Community rules, and not just because they seemed likely to benefit Britain. But it is really very odd that he should have adduced, as an example of this 'renegotiation', the Lome Convention which associated a large number of Commonwealth countries to the Community, because that was negotiated in our original entry negotiations by the Heath government.
Mr Callaghan is equally wise in urging the Labour Party not to attribute to the Community all our economic problems, most of which, as he rightly points out, predate our membership of the Community. Yet the attentive reader can scarcely avoid a sense of panic, when he enumerates the examples of 'industrial strategy' which a vigilant British government has been able to push through against the will of the Brussels Commission, and intones, like an incantation, the names: 'British Leyland; Chrysler; Meriden; and Alfred Herbert.' Is it from this, the patriot will mutter to himself, that the Community might have saved us?
But the patriot will take heart from the fact that the prophet has set his face against any new powers being given to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, even though the British government is committed to legislating for direct elections. For Mr Callaghan has decreed that there shall be true democratic control of decisions in the European Community by the authority of the British Parliament. The only oddity about this is that the prophet and his ministers have, for the past three years, ensured very effectively that the British Parliament should not have any control over the votes cast in Brussels by British ministers. Can we now suppose that the Prime Minister's epistle is the harbinger of a series of fulldress debates on the price of wheat'?
It is all very astute, and may even help to prevent the worst happening. Perhaps Moses' letter will ensure that the question of British withdrawal from the Community will be postponed yet again, until it ceases to inflame the imagination even of the left wing of the Labour Party, But an inspiration for the trek to the promised land, it is not.
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