The Labour Government, Commonwealth Policy, and the Second Application to Join the EEC, 1964–67

Abstract

In examining the issues which confronted members of the Labour government and their officials as they deliberated whether to join the European Economic Community in the 1960s, it is both useful and appropriate to employ lines of analysis similar to those of contemporaries themselves. Above all, their understanding of Commonwealth policy and of the EEC’s impact upon it derived from comparison with Britain’s first application under Macmillan. Decisions were thus reached in view of how far circumstances in the Commonwealth, in the EEC and in Britain itself had changed, and how far they had remained the same since the failure of Britain’s bid for membership in January 1963. This contrast is therefore the method I aim to use in exploring the interaction between the Commonwealth and European integration as dimensions of British policy from Wilson’s accession in 1964 up to the collapse of Britain’s second candidature in late 1967.