Abstract
The period between July 1961, when the Conservative government applied to open negotiations with the Six, and the collapse of negotiations in January 1963 has long been recognised as one of the most significant phases of postwar British foreign policy.1 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s bid to join the EEC was an admission that earlier policy had left the UK in an untenable position for both economic and political reasons.2 The UK had the attributes of a great power: a major industrialised economy; nuclear weaponry; a good relationship with the leader of the Western Alliance; Imperial and Commonwealth links and an active role in East-West relations. However, economic growth rates in the UK were lagging behind those of the EEC, and the creation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was not a viable permanent alternative to the EEC. There was, at the same time, a concern among senior decision-makers that if, as then seemed likely, the Fouchet process was going to lead to the emergence of a more politically coherent and united group of the Six, then Britain should urgently try to join for political reasons. Furthermore, by the spring of 1961, the Americans had bluntly informed the British that they should seek to join the EEC and help to create a united Western Europe.
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Notes and References
Eric Roll, Crowded Hours (London, 1985), rightly calls 1960–3 ‘one of the most crucial phases in modern British history’ (p. 103). British archival sources quoted are now available under the British Thirty Year Rule, and are housed in the Public Record Office, Kew, London (henceforth PRO). Thanks are due to M. Becker of the Archives of the EEC Council of Ministers for permission to use Council documents, and to David Phillips for research assistance.
The pressures that drove the British government to this decision, and its timing, are beyond the scope of this chapter. But see, for example, Robert J. Lieber, British Politics and European Unity, Parties, Elites, and Pressure Groups (Berkeley, Calif., 1970);
Wolfram Kaiser, ‘To join or not to join? the “appeasement” policy of Britain’s first application’, in Brian Brivati and Harriet Jones (eds) From Reconstruction to Integration: Britain and Europe since 1945 (Leicester, 1993).
Miriam Camps, Britain and the European Community, 1955–1963 (London, 1964), p. 358; Hansard, 31 July 1962, cols 928–31. Under the Treaty, enlargement has to be agreed by the unanimous consent of existing members.
The British application is an interesting example of the hypotheses put forward on the interface between domestic and foreign policy by recent foreign policy analysts, Andrew Moravcsik, Peter Evans and Robert Putnam: see Peter B. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson, Robert D. Putnam (eds), Double Edged Diplomacy. International Bargaining and Domestic Politics, (Berkeley, 1993).
See Piers Ludlow, ‘A Problem of Trust: British agriculture and the Brussels negotiations’, unpublished paper presented to the Cambridge University Centre for International Studies/EUI conference, 28 June 1993.
Quoted in David Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (London, 1965), p. 79.
R. Butt, ‘The Common Market and Conservative party politics, 1961–2’, Government and Opposition, vol. 2, no. 3 (1967).
Anne Deighton, The Impossible Peace: Britain, the Division of Germany and the Origins of the Cold War (Oxford, 1990/1993).
Macmillan, The End of the Day (London, 1973), pp. 334, 123. McNamara’s suggestion was repeated at Ann Arbor in June 1962.
PRO: FO 371/164835, 15 May 1962. This caused the resignation of the five MRP members of the French government. On Franco-American relations, see John Newhouse, De Gaulle and the Anglo-Saxons (London, 1970), pp. 165ff.
Piers Dixon, Double Diploma. The Life of Sir Pierson Dixon, Don and Diplomat (London, 1968), p. 300.
NSF 322, staff Memoranda; Richard Neustadt, ‘Skybolt and Nassau’, Report to the President (unedited), 15 November 1963. The report also confirms British sources that Macmillan was opposed within the delegation by Minister of Defence Peter Thorneycroft, who wanted to break nuclear relations with the USA and go for a British Gaullist nuclear option. Kennedy had in fact already authorised planning for a British Polaris force assigned to NATO. For a definitive account of Anglo-American relations during these months, see Ian Clark, Nuclear Diplomacy and the Special Relationship (Oxford, 1994), esp. chs. 10 and 11.
NSF 322, staff Memoranda; Richard Neustadt, ‘Skybolt and Nassau’, Report to the President (unedited), 15 November 1963.
Robert Marjolin, Memoirs, 1911–1986 (London, 1989), pp. 264, 340.
Anne Deighton, ‘La Grande-Bretagne et la communauté économique européenne’, Historie Economie et Société, 13/1, 1994.
See, for example, Paul-Henri Spaak, Combats Inachevés, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1969), p. 397.
Eric Roll, one of the chief negotiators, however, wonders whether their skills were not over-estimated: Eric Roll, Crowded Hours (London, 1985).
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Deighton, A., Ludlow, P. (1995). ‘A Conditional Application’: British Management of the First Attempt to Seek Membership of the EEC, 1961–3. In: Deighton, A. (eds) Building Postwar Europe. S. Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24052-4_7
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