T3 International Flashcards
1
Q
Why was Britain more likely to be accepted into the EEC by 1973?
A
- Heath much more pro-Europe in comparison to the uncommitted Wilson who’s main concern was
avoiding Labour being split apart by the issue. - Charles de Gaulle had been replaced by Georges Pompidou as President of France. Whilst de
Gaulle was very suspicious of the Special Relationship and the indirect influence of the US,
Pompidou was convinced the EEC needed the UK as much as the UK needed the EEC. - A lot of the detailed negotiations had already taken place in the two rejected applications in 1963
and 1968.
2
Q
Gaining Parliamentary approval for UK entry into the EEC
A
- The Conservative Party contained Euro-sceptics like Enoch Powell, who voted against the
European bill at every opportunity. - Powell criticised Heath for signing the Treaty to join the EEC before Parliamentary debate, and
refused to stand as a Conservative MP in the 1974 election, even calling on his supporters to vote
Labour. - Powell disapproved of Britain ‘surrendering her sovereignty’ by joining.
- The Labour Party were even more divided – with a significant pro-European minority including
Jenkins, while the left-wing of the party were extremely hostile. - Wilson remained obsessed with trying to maintain unity.
- Wilson tried to maintain unity by arguing that the Labour Party opposed Heath’s European
legislation because the terms of entry were not good enough, and promising a re-negotiation and
a referendum on the issue as and when Labour returned to power. - 69 pro-European Labour MPs helped the Conservative Party win the vital vote, and Britain joined
the EEC in January 1973.
3
Q
Britain’s Entry into the EEC (1973)
A
- Following French President, Charles De Gaulle’s retirement in 1969, the EEC had invited Britain to
reapply. - Britain duly did so in 1972, it signed the treaty of accession and became a full member of the EEC
on New Year’s Day in 1973. - There is little doubt that in his own judgement Edward Heath regarded this as his greatest
achievement in his four years in office as Prime Minister. - Since the late 1950s when Macmillan had asked him to be the UK’s special negotiator with Europe,
Heath had committed himself to achieving Britain’s entry. - It became the defining characteristic of his career and he had staked his political reputation on it.
- This is why Heath was willing for Britain to pay any price to ensure British entry into the EEC.
- Having been invited by ‘the six’, Heath rushed to comply with their conditions of entry.
- Although, he tried to give the impression that Britain was negotiating from strength and would
strike a hard bargain, it is now known that Heath told his officials to accept any terms. - Heath assured them they could always sort it out after Britain had joined.
- This was a fateful decision that shaped Britain’s relations with Europe ever after.
4
Q
The Weakness of Britain’s Bargaining Position
A
- The hard fact in 1972 was that Britain’s economic difficulties made it not so much as welcome
guest but a beggar at the European feast. - ‘The Six’ knew that, notwithstanding Heath’s personal ambitions, Britain had requested
membership because it judged it could not survive economically on its own. - There are those that now argue that membership of the EEC, far from helping Britain, has been a
brake on its progress. - But at the same time the majority prevailing view in government circles, though not in the
Conservative or Labour parties, was that Britain could not afford to remain outside. - Britain, however, could not negotiate from strength in 1972.
- The EEC’s terms and structures had already been set by the six founding states.
- Britain had no say in the setting up of the EEC and the existing members were not going to allow
Britain as ‘Johnny-come-lately’ to redefine the character and workings of the system they had
created. - One of the most significant EEC demands was that Commonwealth food and goods would no
longer enter Britain on preferential terms. - Produce, for example, from Australia and New Zealand now had a European tariff placed on it
that made it no longer profitable for those countries to sell to Britain or beneficial for Britain to
buy from them. - It was true the EEC did permit a transition stage so that Britain and the Commonwealth countries
could adjust to these changes, but the position was now clear. - Britain had to sacrifice its economic relationship with the Commonwealth.
- Joining the EEC meant that it turned its back on its old allies and partners.
- With that decision there disappeared the last chance that the Commonwealth could be turned
into the world’s first truly multiracial, global economic block. - The decision was made in a strange atmosphere of post-imperial apathy and fear.
- Britain seemed resigned to the fact it was a declining economic force whose only chance of
survival was as a member of a protectionist European Union.
5
Q
Advantages to Britain of joining the EEC
A
- It gained access to European markets.
- As part of a European block, Britain stood a better chance of attracting foreign business and
investment. - British regions were entitled to European regional development grants.
- British workers had the right to work and live in other EEC countries.
6
Q
Disadvantages to Britain of joining the EEC
A
- Britain was no longer able to buy cheap food from the Commonwealth.
- At the tie of entry, Britain was classified as an advanced industrial economy. This meant that it
had to make higher contributions to the EEC budget that it received in grants from Europe. - By the early 1980s Britain was paying 20% of the revenue raised by the EEC but was receiving only
8% of the EEC expenditure. - An illuminating contrast was the position of Ireland, which joined the EEC at the same time as
Britain. - Classed as an agricultural economy, Ireland was a net receiver of European funds; this largely
explains why Ireland experienced an economic boom in the last quarter of the twentieth century. - A victim of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) food policy, British consumers found themselves
paying inflated food prices, reckoned in 1980 to be an average of £1000 per family per annum. - The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) severely restricted Britain’s right to fish in its own customary
fishing grounds and led to the virtual destruction of the UK’s fishing industry. - As a condition of entry, Britain had to impose Value Added Tax (VAT) on most commodities which
British consumers bought; VAT began in 1973 at 8% and later doubled to 17.5%. - In entering the EEC Britain had joined a protectionist organisation that was already beginning to
look dated now that the world was entering the era of global markets.
7
Q
The 1973 OPEC Energy Crisis
A
- Prime Minister Heath hoped that by joining Europe his government would be able to claw back
some of the economic ground Britain had lost since 1970. - But he was mistaken, Europe did not hold the key to Britain’s recovery.
- By cruel twist of fate, the UK’s entry into the EEC coincided with the onset of an international
crisis as demonstrated by the 1973 OPEC Energy Crisis.
8
Q
The 1975 Referendum on Britain’s EEC Membership
A
- It was to improve his relations with the trade unions that Harold Wilson, in one of the major moves
of his years in office between 1974 and 1976, opted to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s
membership of the EEC. - The left-wing of the Labour Party and the trade unions remained deeply suspicious of the
Common Market. - The left-wing regarded the EEC as a capitalist club necessarily hostile to socialism. ‘The Durham
miners don’t like it’ was the essence of their argument. - In 1974, to quieten the Left, Wilson began renegotiations regarding agriculture, budget payments
and the special provisions for Commonwealth imports. - Jim Callaghan took the role of the government’s chief representative in this.
9
Q
The 1975 Referendum
A
- The whole exercise was largely a gesture since it produced no major changes.
- But able to now claim that he was offering the people a real voice in the shaping of their destiny.
- Wilson called a national referendum in 1975.
- This was the first consultation of its kind in British political history.
- In the campaign that preceded the referendum, the politicians showed more enthusiasm than the
ordinary British public. - With the MPs under no instruction from their parties on how they should vote or which side to
take, there was an interesting cross-party divide. - The bulk of the Labour members were for coming out, the majority of the Conservatives and
Liberals were for staying in. - Prominent Labour Pro-Europeans or Europhiles were Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams who shared
a platform with Edward Heath and other leading Conservatives. - The more prominent Labour Eurosceptics were Tony Benn, Michael Foot, and Barbara Castle.
10
Q
Continued Euroscepticism
A
- Opponents of the ‘Yes’ campaign claimed that the whole affair had been a betrayal of democracy.
- They argued that the referendum should have preceded Britain’s 1973 EEC Entry, not followed it;
Britain was voting on a fait accompli [an already accomplished fact] and not making a free
democratic choice. - They also pointed out that, funded by the EEC, the ‘Yes’ campaign had been able to spend twice
as much on the ‘No’ campaign proportions which exactly matched the vote distribution. - In the referendum campaign little mention was made by the pro-Europeans of the [political]
implications of EEC membership. - The fear of an ever-closer political union leading to ultimately a ‘European Federal Super-State’
or a ‘United States of Europe’. - Stress was laid on the economic advantages that Britain would gain, but these proved illusionary.
- The international oil price rise that began with 1973 OPEC Energy Crisis had such a restrictive
effect on the British economy that whatever gains might have been made from being a member
of the EEC were far outweighed by the economic downturn, high inflation and unemployment
(stagflation) of the 1970s. - It was also the case that in the period 1958 and 1973, the year in which Britain formally joined the
EEC, British exports to the EEC countries had more than doubled as a share of national income.
Ironically, British exports declined after 1973. Thus, having joined Europe in the hope of improving its economic status, Britain found that the net effect of its membership was greatly increased
financial costs with no real trade benefits. - It must be stressed that the deception was not Europe’s fault. The members of the EEC made no
attempt to hide the truth. They never denied that to join a federal union necessarily involved the
loss of freedom. Jean Monnet had spelt that out clearly as early as 1948: ‘Only the establishment
of a federation of the West, including Britain, will enable us to solve our problems quickly enough,
and finally prevent war’. Robert Schuman [of the Schuman Plan] re-emphasised this point in 1950:
‘Europe must be reorganised on a federal basis’.
11
Q
The 1970s State of the ‘Special Relationship’ with the USA
A
The 1970s State of the ‘Special Relationship’ with the USA
* Both the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1970s continued the close relationship
with the United States during the 1970s, but it was not as close as it had been during the 1950s
and early 1960s.
12
Q
Conservatives [Heath] & The Special Relationship (1970 - 1974)
A
- Edward Heath was far more interested in Britain’s relationship with Europe than with the USA.
- He was more committed to Britain’s entry into the EEC than with the ‘special relationship’ with
the United States. - The French had previously vetoed British membership to the European Economic Community
(EEC) on the grounds that Britain was too close to the US and not serious in its commitment to a
European identity. - Heath as a committed European was less inclined than previous British prime ministers to the
importance of the Special Relationship with the United States. - He rejected attempts by the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to use Britain as a link with
Europe and insisted that the United States should negotiate with the European Community as a
whole, rather than trying to use Britain as a go-between between the US and Europe. - Henry Kissinger commentated that Heath ‘dealt with us with an unsentimentally totally at
variance with “the special relationship”.’ - Heath, however, personally got on well with the US Republican President Richard Nixon, and he
was more publicly forthright in supporting for the United States’ policy in Vietnam than had
Harold Wilson been. - But relations between Britain and the United States worsened in October 1973 during the Arab
Israeli War (called the 1973 October War by the Arabs and the 1973 Yom Kippur War by the
Israelis). - The US wanted to use NATO bases in Europe to airlift military supplies in support of Israel.
- Most European states, including Britain under Heath, refused permission.
- This was because they feared that supplies of oil from the Middle East would be put at risk.
- This put Anglo-American relations under great strain.
13
Q
Labour [Wilson & Callaghan] & The Special Relationship (1974 - 1979)
A
- Both Wilson (1974 - 1976) and Callaghan (1976 - 1979) were both keen on the special relationship
embodied by the Atlantic Alliance between the US and UK. - Callaghan forged a special relationship with Henry Kissinger and negotiated the replacement of
Britain’s Polaris nuclear weapons with the newer American Trident nuclear missiles in 1979. - Nevertheless, Labour completed the British military withdrawal from East of Suez which it had
started in the 1960s despite US disquiet.
14
Q
Britain & The 1970s Cold War
A
- One of the reasons Britain and the United States continued to work together during the 1970s,
despite disagreements, is that they continue to share the foreign policy objective of holding back
Communism during the Cold War. - The USSR and China were the most powerful Communist nations in the world.
- The context of the ongoing Cold War meant that relations between Britain and these countries
had been based on suspicion, bordering on hostility. During the 1970s, however, the United States
relationship with both the USSR and China improved – and in both cases Britain followed the
United States’ lead.
15
Q
Attitudes towards the USSR during the 1970s
A
- During the 1970s there was what was called a détente (an easing of tensions between nations).
- After the tensions of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, successive presidents of the US and USSR tried
to prevent such a situation recurring by establishing direct contact. - This led to the creation of a ‘hot-line’, regular meetings called summits and eventually an
agreement to limit the Cold War nuclear arms race. - Nevertheless, an underlying tension remained as there were still fears about the USSR’s influence
and control over Eastern Europe. - This was demonstrated by the Georgi Markov affair. Markov was a Bulgarian who defected to the
West in 1969 and was outspoken in his criticism of the Bulgarian Communist regime. - Georgi Markov was assassinated in London in 1978; supposedly by a poisonous pellet fired from
an umbrella; the Soviet secret service, the KGB, were suspected of being behind the assassination
though this was never proven.
16
Q
Attitudes towards China during the 1970s
A
Attitudes towards China during the 1970s
* Up to the early 1970s relationships between China and Britain, the United States and Western
Europe were strained.
* China had a communist revolution in 1949. It had supported Communism in the wars in both
Korea and Vietnam which caused tension between China and the western world.
* This suddenly changed in 1971 when US President Nixon surprised the world by announcing a
thawing of relations following a visit to China in February 1972 where he held meetings with the
Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
* Mao had led China from the Communist takeover of China in 1949 until his death in 1976.
* By the late 1960s there was growing friction between China and the Soviet Union over leadership
of the Communist world which led Mao to look for reproachment [return to friendly relations]
with the United States to counterbalance the Soviet Union on its northern and western borders.
* In March 1972, Britain followed the US lead, agreeing to an exchange of ambassadors with China.
* Edward Heath made many visits to China from 1974 onwards and was awarded the title ‘People’s
Friendship Envoy’, the highest honour given by the Chinese government to a foreigner.
* By the end of the decade, improved relations meant that in October 1979, the Chinese Premier
Hua Guofeng visited Britain as part of a European tour; this was the first visit to Britain by a
Chinese leader since their communist revolution.
