Job Name:2101754 Date:14-12-23 PDF Page:2101754pbc.p1.pdf Color: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, established in 1943, is a publicly supported, nonpartisan research and educational organization. Its purpose is to assist policy makers, scholars, businessmen, the press and the public by providing objective analysis of national and international issues. Views expressed in the institute's publi~ations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers or trustees of AEI. Institute publications take fo~r major forms: 1. Studies-in-depth studies and monographs about government programs and major national and international problems written by independent scholars. 2. Legislative Analyses-balanced analyses of current proposals before the Con­ gress, prepared with the help of specialists in the fields of law, economics, and government. 3. 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Warren Nutter, Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor of Economics, University of Virginia Marina v. N. Whitman, Distinguished Public Service Professor of Economics, Uni­ versity of Pittsburgh James Q. Wilson, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Harvard University EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Herman J. Schmidt, Chairman of the Board Richard J. Farrell William J. Baroody, President Richard B. Madden Charles T. Fisher III, Treasurer Richard D. Wood William J. Baroody, Jr., Executive Vice President Gary L. Jones, Assistant to the President Edward Styles, Director of for Administration Publications PROGRAM DIRECTORS Russell Chapin, Marvin H. Kosters, Government Legislative Analyses Regulation Studies Robert A. Goldwin, Seminar Programs W. S. Moore, Legal Policy Studies Robert J. Pranger, Foreign and Robert B. Helms, Health Policy Studies Defense Policy Studies Thomas F. Johnson, Economic Policy David G. Tuerck, Research on Studies Advertising BRITAIN SAYS YES BRITAIN SAYS S The 1975 Referendum on the Common Market Anthony King American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D.C. Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214. To order call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact the AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 1-800-862-5801. ISBN 0-8447-3260-5 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 77-83257 AEI Studies 160 © 1977 by American .Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. Permission to quote from or reproduce materials in this publication is granted when due acknowledgment is made. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS PREFACE 1 BRITAIN AND EUROPE 1945-1973 1 2 THE STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION 1961-1973 19 3 THE LABOUR PARTY AND EUROPE 33 4 THE DECISION TO HOLD A REFERENDUM 55 5 THE SO-CALLED RENEGOTIATIONS 71 6 CONSULTING THE PEOPLE 89 7 THE DENOUEMENT 129 APPENDIX Results of the Referendum on the Common Market, June 5, 1975 145 INDEX 149 FOR SHIRLEY For to bear all naked truths And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty. Keats, Hyperion PREFACE A great deal of ink has already been spilt on the subject of Britain's 1975 Common Market referendum. In addition to the numerous books and articles arguing in general terms the pros and cons of hold­ ing national referenda in the United Kingdom, there already exist two substantial studies of the referendum: The 1975 Referendum by David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, and Philip Goodhart's Full-Hearted Consent. Both of these books are well researched and are full of invaluable information. The present writer has drawn on them freely. How freely emerges from the footnotes to the pages that follow. If this book differs from the others, it is in two main respects. First, it is addressed to an American as well as to a British audience. Second, this book is concerned not so much with describing events as with trying to explain them-in large part, with trying to make sense of the actions of the chief protagonists. The author is grateful for the help of a large number of people, in addition to the authors of the two studies just mentioned. Howard R. Penniman of the American Enterprise Institute first suggested that the present study be undertaken. John Bateman could not have been a more thorough or conscientious research assistant. Parts of the manuscript were read by David Robertson and Bo Sarlvik. The whole of it was read, with great care and attention to detail, by Heather Bliss, Ivor Crewe, Jan Vergo, Peter Vergo, and Shirley Williams. I am grateful to all of them for the trouble they took, while of course absolving them of any responsibility for the errors of fact and interpretation that, despite their best efforts, the book still undoubt­ edly contains. One personal word. I have tried in what follows to be accurate in my reporting of facts and fair in my judgments. But I have not hesitated to make judgments, about both people and events, and the reader is entitled to know where I stood on the Common Market issue. On June 5, 1975, I voted "yes." That seemed to me the right thing to do at the time. It still does. ANTHONY KING The Mill House Wakes CoIne, Essex February 17, 1977 1 BRITAIN AND EUROPE 1945-1973 This short book seeks to explain why a referendum was held in June 1975 on whether or not Britain should remain a member of the European Community and why it resulted in an overwhelming ma­ jority in favor of Britain's staying in. The subject is of interest from several points of view. The political scientist will want to know how a country as conservative as Britain came to adopt a constitutional innovation as radical as the referendum. The student of public opinion will want to know why the British public, which for several years had seemed to be opposed to Britain's Common Market membership, in the end voted in favor of it. The student of European affairs will want to know what the referendum and its outcome reveal about the depth of Britain's commitment to European integration.1 The Labour party committed itself to holding a referendum or general election on the Common Market in the aftermath of its defeat in the June 1970 general election, and in many ways it would be convenient to begin our story at that point. But to understand why the Labour party committed itself in this way, and why British attitudes towards Europe evolved as they did, we need to go back a good deal further in time, to the years immediately following the Second World War. In 1945 the economic and political leadership of Europe seemed on the face of it to be Britain's for the asking. Britain alone of the 1 Here and throughout this book, the terms European Community, European Economic Community (EEC), and Common Market are used interchangeably. Pro-Europeans in Britain tended to use the phrase European Community, pre­ sumably because it sounded comforting and vaguely idealistic. Anti-Europeans preferred "Common Market," which sounded strictly commercial at the best of times and could be made to sound slightly sordid. But it did not matter which phrase was used; everyone knew what was meant. 1 major European powers had not been invaded or defeated. The prestige of its leaders and institutions was enormous. Its economy, though battered, was far stronger than that of its continental neigh­ bors.2 And at first Britain seemed willing to play a leadership role. Churchill had made his historic offer of joint Franco-British citizen­ ship in 1940; in 1946, in a dramatic speech in Zurich, he called for the creation of a new UUnited States of Europe." Churchill was out of power by now, but the postwar Labour Government of Clement Attlee played a leading part in the Marshall Plan negotiations, in the setting up of the Brussels Treaty organization and later of NATO, and in creating the Council of Europe at Strasbourg.3 It gradually became clear, however, that Britain's ideas about the future of Europe differed fundamentally from those of its neighbors. They wanted to build a united Europe; Britain wanted to be Uwith" Europe but not uof" it.4 When the Organization for European Eco­ nomic Cooperation was set up in 1948 to administer American Marshall Plan aid, the British insisted that the new body should function strictly intergovernmentally and should not have autonomous decision-making powers of its own. In 1949 the British likewise blocked efforts to have a limited range of autonomous decision­ making powers vested in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The real breach came a year later, in 1950, when the Attlee Government refused to place Britain's coal and steel industries under a supranational authority. As a result, Britain did not take part in the Schuman Plan negotiations in the summer of 1950 and did not become a founder member of the new European Coal and Steel Community.