The Commonwealth: Passage to Europe

Britain, which has already lost an empire, was warned last week that it may also lose the Commonwealth. The threat was coldly and emphatically repeated by leaders of the Commonwealth nations as they gathered in a chandeliered room at Marlborough House to review Britain’s bid for membership in the European Common Market. One after another, Britain’s Commonwealth partners declared that, by joining Europe, Britain will gravely strain their economic ties to the mother country and may finally sunder the enduring links of sentiment and mutual self-interest that bind together one-quarter of the world’s people (see box).

Pale and glum, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan listened in silence as leaders of the Old Dominions and the new nations of Africa and Asia challenged their onetime imperial ruler’s right to decide her own future. Cried Jamaica’s ebullient Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante: “The Treaty of Rome is like a surgeon’s knife thrust into the body of the Commonwealth, cutting off one member from another, dividing one friend from another.” One of the angriest tirades of all came from Canada’s Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who warned: “We have spent 100 years resisting the magnetic pull of the United States. This will put us in danger of being sucked into their orbit. The whole position of Commonwealth relations will be changed.”

Solitary Prosperity. Australia’s Prime Minister Robert Menzies drove home the attack with the argument that loss of the tariff-free British market for their exports would mean that Commonwealth nations would have to finance Britain’s Common Market membership. Said he: “Clearly part of the initial price, and perhaps the final price, is to be paid by us!” Added India’s Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru: “I do not see how the Commonwealth will survive unless a radical change is made in the present proposals.”

Other Commonwealth leaders declared that Britain’s realignment with Europe and away from her Afro-Asian partners will only deepen the chasm that divides the underdeveloped southern nations and the affluent Northern Hemisphere. Said Pakistan’s President Mohammed Ayub Khan: “You cannot expect friendly coexistence between those countries that are deliberately kept backward and the ones that are bulging with wealth.” Black Africa’s “uncommitted” Commonwealth members, notably Tanganyika and Nigeria, stoutly rejected Europe’s offer of “associate membership” in the Common Market on the theory that this would tie their policies to Western Europe, NATO and “economic imperialism.”

Advice for Mother. Yet, for all their protestations, most of the Commonwealthleaders know tht there can be no alternative for Britain. Shrugged Jamaica’sBustamante: “Britain is going in, no matter what we say, and no matter whomit hurts.”

It had taken years of painful soul searching for Macmillan’s Cabinet to reach the decision to join the vital new Europe, even if it meant the end of a relationship that has long ceased to be that of mother and daughters save in sentiment. If the Commonwealth does not agree, said the Economist last week, “Mother would then be well advised to switch off her deaf-aid and go on regardless with the course of action that is necessary.”

For Harold Macmillan, there could be no question of switching off the hearing aid. The Commonwealth’s sustained offensive significantly swelled anti-Europe sentiment in Britain at a time when Macmillan’s government is already dangerously weak. The raucous debate strengthened the hand of the 4O-odd right-wing Tory rebels who would like nothing better than to retreat from Europe. And, after a year of cagey fence straddling, Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell vaulted into the debate to decry the Common Market’s terms of admission as “too damaging to be acceptable.” The Labor Party, he hinted, may soon call for a general election to bring down Macmillan’s government.

Charm in the Evening. As the critical speeches sputtered on, the once unflappable Mac began a desperate buttonholing campaign to moderate the views of Commonwealth officials and avert a flatly hostile final communiqué. Recruiting Commonwealth Relations Minister Duncan Sandys and Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath to help with the lobbying, Macmillan exerted all his considerable charm at small meetings, between sessions, at the evening receptions, even at Queen Elizabeth’s banquet for the Commonwealth leaders in Buckingham Palace.

As the conference broke into study groups to examine each major problem separately, it was clear that the personal lobbying had done some good. “Our policy has taken a hammering,” sighed a Cabinet minister, “but the worst is over.” One reason for his optimism was that the Commonwealth ministers at the conference had aired their harshest warnings for consumption in Ottawa, Sydney, Christchurch, Kingston and Karachi rather than London. With that behind them, all seemed more willing to listen to Britain.

Massive Counterbalance. What last week’s sorry squabble ignored is the undeniable, if unpalatable, fact that exclusion from Europe means certain economic and political decline for Britain, whose exports to the Commonwealth are dwindling as its sales to the Common Market soar. Physically, in the jet age, Britain is already a part of Europe; with formal economic and political ties to the Continent, Macmillan is convinced that the nation will not only provide an expanding market for Commonwealth goods but also, by the very nature of its Commonwealth ties, ensure that the new Europe will not develop into the illiberal, inward-looking community that many of the critics fear.

Macmillan’s “grand design” is more clearly recognized in Europe than in Britain itself. Two of Britain’s most ardent European backers, Belgium’s Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak and his Netherlands opposite number, Joseph Luns, were due in London this week to reassure Macmillan of their support, which is based largely on the expectation that British membership in the community will serve as a massive counterbalance to a Franco-German axis in Europe.

The danger is that pressure from the Commonwealth may force Britain to demand unacceptably high terms when Common Market negotiations resume in Brussels next month. On the other hand, the government’s stand has finally convinced skeptical Europeans that Britain is determined to join Europe. On that score, Harold Macmillan left no room for doubt. His government, he declared, will continue to seek membership in the Common Market. Thus, for once in its history, the future of the Commonwealth lay not with Britain but with the Commonwealth itself.