journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

The Hague Conference of 1969 and the United Kingdom’s Accession 119more expensive food imports on the cost-of-living was more predictable. Someestimates foresaw it to be between 12 and 15 per cent over the first two to threeyears of membership. That something of this order of magnitude would occur waslargely expected by the public and the inflationary impulse which it would give tothe economy was an undisguiseable political problem when inflationary trendswere once again becoming a matter of domestic political concern.The Common Agricultural Policy thus posed a two-pronged threat. One prongwas the ammunition which its inflationary consequences would give to LabourParty opponents of entry. The other, which disturbed Harold Wilson and hisministers more, was its consequences for the balance of payments. From themoment early in 1966 that serious thought was given to making a secondapplication for Community membership officials were adamant that it could notsucceed if Britain questioned in any fundamental way the principle of the methodby which the Community’s ‘own resources’ were to be provided, for that would beto question also the principle of the CAP itself. The question the government had toanswer therefore was not whether it was ready to pay the excessive share of theCommunity’s running-costs which would be demanded, but the more realistic onein the circumstances of whether it could do so. This may seem paradoxical in viewof the elimination of alternative possible international frameworks by ministerialcommittees between 1963 and 1966. Persisting with EFTA; enlarging EFTA;developing the Commonwealth trade preferences into a programme morespecifically aimed at stimulating an improvement in the overall export performanceof British manufacturing; a North American Free Trade Area (which mighteventually embrace EFTA); all these were ruled out as substitutes for EECmembership or even for persevering with the status quo after de Gaulle’s veto.But the conclusion that Britain had to try to join had no validity if joining wouldmake its economic situation still weaker. The decision to apply a second time inMay 1967 for membership, followed logically by the decision not to withdraw thatapplication in the event of its rejection, has to be seen in the context that thestrength, thought to be declining, of the economy could only be restored byincreases in sales and an improvement in total factor productivity by themanufacturing sector and that this in turn could only be achieved by an increase inexports from that sector. The ultimate purpose was to reverse what the governmentsof the 1960s saw as a decline in British political influence in Europe, largelyattributable to exclusion from the Community, whose consequence would surely bealso a decline in British influence in Washington. But the restoration of Britishinfluence was very closely linked in the collective mind of the Labour Party, whichgoverned for most of the decade, with restoring the fortunes of the manufacturingsector. It was from that sector that their main source of political support was drawn.They had before their eyes the clear evidence of the way in which the commonmarket was promoting the growth of manufactured exports from all of itsmember-states through the mechanism of the European preference system andbelieved that it would exercise a similarly dynamic effect on British industries. Itwas, already, the most rapidly growing market for them.