Common Market: What If Britain Says No?

IN Luxembourg's Kirchberg European Center this week, a meeting is taking place that may well mark a watershed in Europe's torn and often tragic history. For the fifth time in six months, the foreign ministers of the six members of the European Economic Community are meeting with Chief British Negotiator Geoffrey Rippon to clear the last hurdles on the terms for Britain's entry into the Common Market.

Only two major issues remain unresolved: a guarantee for sales of New Zealand's dairy products to the Common Market, and the amount of Britain's initial contribution to the $4 billion EEC budget. No one expects either issue to block British progress. In 1963 and again in 1967, British hopes of joining Europe foundered on Charles de Gaulle's imperious no. This time the French mood is different, as was obvious during last month's summit meeting between President Georges Pompidou and Prime Minister Edward Heath. "They are bantering and joking with us," reports a delighted British negotiator. "Their orders clearly are 'Get it through.' "

Barring an unforeseen snag, the British are almost certain to leave Luxembourg by the middle of this week with an attractive set of terms, including probably an initial British payment of just under 10% of the EEC budget. With Norway, Denmark and Ireland poised to join Britain in entering the Market, the Six may thus become the Ten by 1973 (the target date for formal British entry), giving Europe its greatest unity since the beginning of the breakup of Charlemagne's empire in 814.

The irony is that this time it is the British who may keep themselves out of the Common Market. British sentiment has turned sharply against a linkup. Aware of the strong antiMarket tide, Heath said last week that he would not submit the entry issue to Parliament until after the summer recess and the annual party conferences in early October. By that time he hopes that an extensive government publicity campaign will have rallied grass-roots support for EEC membership, but it is just as possible that the opposition will have become more deeply entrenched. Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson has accused Heath of "trying to bounce Britain into Europe," and he may very well lead the Labor Party into an antiMarket position.

Negative Results. What would happen if Britain did not join the Common Market? Many Continentals find the prospect so depressing that they dislike even thinking about it. When they do, they use words like disaster, tragedy and unthinkable. The Market, of course, has endured for 14 years without British participation, but it has gone about as far as it can without enlargement and greater political integration. If Britain does not join, neither will Denmark, Ireland and Norway, since their own trade patterns are dependent on London. Such developments as the creation of a common currency and a joint foreign policy might not materialize, since they require a political will that the Six alone, due to their old rivalries and animosities, are unable to muster.

For example, France wants Britain as a counterweight to West Germany's ever-growing economic and political strength. If London opts to stay out, the French would be tempted to play up to Moscow, and perhaps also to Britain, as a hedge against West German hegemony in Western Europe. Another bad effect would be the undermining of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. Brandt cannot hope to establish a sound and peaceful basis for relations with the Communist nations unless he is backed by a strong, united Western Europe. An isolated Germany, moreover, has undertaken irrational and tragic actions in the past. In the U.S., Western Europe's failure to unite would intensify a budding mood of isolationism and heighten demands for a reduction of American defense commitments.

Economic Effects. Britain would experience the severest jolts of all. Most ranking British politicians feel that Ted Heath would have to step down as Prime Minister if Britain failed to get in. The Labor Party would also face an internal feud, since Deputy Party Leader Roy Jenkins and Shadow Foreign Minister Denis Healey are both publicly committed to Britain's joining Europe.

The economic effects would be similarly far-reaching. Anti-Market Britons like Professor Nicholas Kaldor, who was an economic advisor to the Wilson government, argue that Britain needs to remain outside EEC regulations in order to reform and revitalize its economy. Pro-Marketeers argue, however, that Britain urgently needs both tariff-free access to the larger Continental market and increased competition at home to snap its industries and stodgy unions out of their lethargy.

With Britain outside the Common Market, its economic growth, which has been the slowest among major industrial countries, would be further stunted. One official British study estimates that British per capita income would rise by $500 less during the next nine years if Britain fails to join the EEC.

What concerns many ordinary Britons most is that British entry will mean greatly increased food prices as the country moves behind the EEC's high agricultural-levy system. Almost equally important is a premonition that many of the best things about Britain--the peaceful villages, easygoing work habits, the uncommon civility that graces British life--will be endangered by EEC membership. There is a positive dread that chattering Frenchmen would monopolize London's sidewalks, that garlic-eating Italians in careering Alfa Romeos would shatter the tranquillity of the rustic British countryside, and that those too-efficient Germans would brusquely alter the cozy tea-break routine of British workers.

This bulldog nationalism and Dover Cliffs insularity interact with a suspicion that the Common Market is Catholic and capitalist and would corrupt Protestant and socialist Britain. In a recent issue of the New Statesman, British Journalist Paul Johnson divided Britons into insularists (King Arthur, Queen Elizabeth I, Cromwell, Anthony Eden) and Continentalists (Thomas a Becket. Charles I, Harold Macmillan). "Britain has always chosen the adventure of sovereignty in preference to the presumed security of a Continental system," wrote Johnson. "And history shows that in the end she has always chosen rightly."

No Place to Turn. Heath's efforts to overcome such objections will be greatly handicapped by the country's growing economic difficulties, which most Britons attribute to his austere policies. The latest Gallup poll showed Heath's popularity to be at its lowest point since he took office one year ago; only 31% of those questioned approved of his performance. In addition, the Tories trail Labor by 18 points in voter preference, a reading that has been substantiated in Labor victories in recent by-elections for Commons seats. There are presently 800,000 unemployed British workers, the highest number in 30 years, and only last week Scotland's famed Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, who constructed the luxurious Queens, went into bankruptcy.

Heath's strongest argument may well be that Britain has no place else to turn. As Britain has already learned, the Commonwealth is too far-flung and economically disparate to be a workable trading community. The dreams of a North Atlantic Free Trade Area, which would have initially embraced Britain, Canada and the U.S., and eventually Australia and New Zealand, have died for lack of interest among the potential partners. EFTA, the nine-nation trading bloc that Britain organized as a counterpart to the Common Market, has for all its economic success, failed to develop sufficient cohesion to compete with the more prosperous EEC. Despite misgivings, a majority of Britons are convinced that Britain will join Europe. But if the British, in a fit of bloody-mindedness, shut themselves out this time, they may not get another opportunity.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.