London

AFTER eleven years of uninterrupted power, the longest spell of continuous party government for some fifty years, the Tories in Britain find themselves faced with probably the most difficult and certainly the most fateful political decision since the time of Lord North. Throughout Europe, behind the facade of words and hopes, the real question is this: Are Britain’s need for Europe and Europe’s for Britain now so imperative that the United Kingdom ought to join the Common Market on the best terms it can get, however stiff they prove to be, and as soon as possible?

During the winter it became clear that Macmillan himself had become convinced that the right answer is yes. The Cuban crisis reinforced the strength of that conviction. Economic arguments apart, for reasons of power alone Macmillan found the case for British entry into Europe overwhelming. But is entry now politically possible?

The power argument, as Macmillan sees it, is the familiar one: the most significant thing about the Cuban situation was not that Kennedy ignored Europe but that Khrushchev did. The Russians are realists. Europe divided has no power. United, Europe could be as powerful in most ways as either the Soviet Union or the United States. It would not represent a third force but, relatively, the tripling of the free world’s strength.

The shock of Cuba

The Cuban affair shocked Great Britain, and to good effect. The first response was one of fear mingled with dismay, as if Britain were threatened with annihilation without consultation. Second thoughts produced the usual doubts about American maturity. But the final result has been to increase in British thought the stature of President Kennedy and his Washington advisers, and then to turn Britain itself to an extremely agonizing reappraisal of Western Europe’s role in the world and Britain’s role in Western Europe.

There may be a residue of uneasiness about America’s intentions regarding Cuba, and this is the product of British experiences in hostile foreign parts where it once had vital interests and even military bases; but regarding the question of Soviet missile bases in the western hemisphere, there now is no doubt. Instead, there is a united appreciation for the President’s combination of moderation and firmness. Britain is greatly reassured.

A secondary effect has been the reduction in prestige of official unilateralists and nuclear disarmed in Britain. They are now branded as sympathizers, first of all, with Communism, and only secondly with peace. They saw nothing wrong in the secret Russian arming of Cuba with nuclear missiles, but they regarded the Kennedy quarantine as an “act of war.”

The third effect of the Cuban affair has been the reconsideration of the meaning and future of Europe. In this newly powerful Europe, Britain could expect to exert the predominant influence. Inside the Six, it already has the sympathy and support of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, and of at least the economic section of the West German administration; it would also bring in with it Denmark, Norway, and the Republic of Ireland; it would be the patron of the neutrals (who are linked to Britain in the European Free Trade Association); and Britain would add to Europe a currency that, while not the strongest in the world, is the second most useful.

The talks at Brussels

This argument of power is so convincing that as soon as Edward Heath returned to Brussels to take up the negotiations for Britain’s entry into the Common Market, France moved fast to defend its own “leadership of Europe.” France opened the talks by asking the total surrender of the British position on agriculture. It followed up by demanding an almost total surrender of the British position on reasonable access to Europe for the farmers of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — who, whatever happens, are to lose their free, and in many cases protected, market in Britain.

At the same time, the Common Market Commission, under Dr. Hallstein, sought to strengthen its own position too. It announced a plan to speed up the completion of the Common Market and then to merge the monetary sovereignty of all the members by 1970, thus underlining its power not only to administer policy but to initiate it. It was also made plain in Brussels that Britain will have to decide on its own case without prior assurance that its EFTA partners will get equal treatment. None of this has made British entry impossible. It remains true that Britain just has to say yes and it is in. However, to say yes at these prices might be political suicide.

Facing the dilemma

For the Conservatives, the dilemma is excruciating. They believe entry is imperative. They have stressed that the alternative is an inevitable decline for Britain in power, influence, and wealth. They cannot now say no to Europe and then triumphantly choose that alternative. Nor can they join the rest of Europe in triumph, trailing broken promises.

More light is shed on this dilemma by the apparently contradictory results of two polls. One has shown a popular majority in favor of joining Europe. The other has pointed out that if there were an election today, the majority would probably vote for Gaitskell and the Labor Party. Labor’s left wing is, of course, opposed to entry on any terms at all, probably because the popular democratic socialism of Europe’s parties is nothing like the British idea of socialism. and so England’s Labor Party can see that, after entry, its own influence in Europe, and in Britain, would be minimal. Gaitskell, however, is not against entry in principle. He opposes terms that he believes would immediately lower the real wages of British and Commonwealth wage earners through higher prices in Britain and lower sales in the Commonwealth, and could at the same time produce a deflationary payments crisis in Britain.

If the Conservatives were to bring Britain into Europe and there were later a public outcry of almost revolutionary proportions, followed by an election that put Labor into office, Gaitskell would consider repudiating membership. But such a serious and dangerous step could only be taken in response to overwhelming pressure. Were public opinion, on the other hand, still fairly evenly divided, and not particularly aroused, Gaitskell would certainly let things be.

The knowledge of this by anyone with as strong a sense of historic duty and such a feeling for power as Macmillan has provided another incentive toward reaching agreement at Brussels, come what may. The public is not excited. It is calmly perplexed.

The Liberal revival

The riddle of British public opinion at this moment cannot be read with certainty by any of the party political managers. The Liberal Party, under Jo Grimond, was swept off-balance by its great successes at by-elections earlier in the year. It saw itself taking over from Labor as the second party and presenting the electors, in another five years, with a new alternative government to the perennial Tories. In a fervor of radicalism, it turned decisively left at what was certainly its most lively party conference for thirty years, at Llandudno in September. It was a party on the march, it declared.

But to the public the Liberals now seem to stand for high taxes, greatly extended welfare services, centralized planning, a form of partnership in industry that is close to guild socialism, and the ending of Britain’s nuclear independence. On the last day of their conference, an emergency resolution had to be proposed and passed categorically stating that the party “is not in favor of the nationalisation of the land,” because the tenor of the debate on the subject the previous day led most news commentators to conclude that it was.

This new kind of liberal socialism has a great appeal for young intellectuals and science graduates. The Liberal Party today presents a picture of youthful vigor. But it was not for this that the middle-class suburban voters, mainly young themselves, were deserting the Conservatives earlier in the year. Perhaps it was simply because they wished to protest against a government grown complacent. Or it may have been to protest against a society of privilege from which they derive no benefit. The owners of property and industry, on the one hand, are privileged to live richly on tax-free capital profits and speculative gains, while a large part of the working class, on the other hand, is privileged to live a life of subsidized comfort and convenience.

Labor’s chances

Insofar as it has had any permanent effect, the Liberal revival has mainly restored the relative power of the Laborites, as reflected in the November by-elections when the Tories lost two seats to the Labor Party. The division of electoral opinion in Britain probably goes like this: 18 percent Liberal, 40 percent Tory, and 42 percent Labor. It is even possible that Hugh Gaitskell now looks to the middleclass floating voter to be a safer man than Jo Grimond.

Some right-wing commentators came to the conclusion that Gaitskell had made himself the prisoner of the Marxist left when he came out “against" the Common Market. But by declaring against the terms proposed for entry rather than against the principle of entry, he assured himself, for a little while, of left-wing support. He also brought in many waverers from the right, some of whom perhaps felt it more respectable to oppose membership in this way than to appear antiEuropean.

The Labor Party remains essentially a class party, with its roots in socialist trade unionism. This is why it finds such difficulty in becoming a popular majority party. But with Gaitskell in command and with Harold Wilson coming up, it is no longer so frightening as it was. It has an air of solid common sense, and though, if it came to power, it would renationalize steel and road transport and perhaps nationalize land, it might be able to break through the trade union barrier that now holding back British productivity.

Full employment, rising wages, steady prices, lower taxes, better houses, better education, a modern roads system, and manifest economic justice between man and man and family and family appear to comprise the public’s idea of a popular political program. The Conservatives’ loss of support may be attributed to a failure to achieve the promised combination of these necessities.

New government programs

The new government of younger men that Macmillan put into office last summer has promised to “double or treble” the rate of slum clearance. (There are probably three million houses and tenements nearly a century old due for demolition. The biggest cities, at the present rate, could not possibly clear away their slums before the year 2000.) It has promised the biggest-ever housing drive and the release of more agricultural land for building, to put a brake on runaway building costs. It has a new schools program and a new roads program. But its major work has received little public attention yet.

This work is a reconsideration of the financial problem of private affluence and public squalor. The basic conclusion of it might be put this way: there is a limit to taxation beyond which a popular government cannot go. Within that limit, whenever the government runs enterprises that could be profitable but are not, it thereby impoverishes other public services.

Britain’s nationalized railways, for instance, have been losing up to $450 million a year. This means not only that railway men have to accept almost the lowest wages in the country, but, indirectly, that teachers and nurses are also underpaid, and perhaps that the British Army of the Rhine is seriously understrength. Railways, then, must pay or vanish.

The present national tax income is almost $20 billion. The standard rate of income tax is 38 percent of income. Sales tax on a car, though recently cut almost in half, still stands at 25 percent. Thirty-five percent of the tax income goes to social and community services. But even that does not represent all the tax money put to those services, for local taxes provide a great deal more. In the case of education, local taxes provide five times as much as the national revenue. The National Health Service costs $2.5 billion a year, half as much as national defense and overseas aid combined, and yet it is in danger of running down through lack of adequate funds.

Support of industry and transport, including railway subsidies, costs more than $1 billion. Price supports for farmers cost another $1 billion. Housing subsidies and town planning cost the country about $400 million.

The idea that those enterprises that can pay ought to pay, and that people who can afford to do so ought to pay the economic cost of the goods and services they enjoy, stretches now to include food. Up until now, Britain has run a system providing low prices in the shops but high prices to British farmers, the state making up the difference through taxation. The system has become so costly that it has to be changed, with the consumer paying the higher prices in the shop. Entry into the Common Market could provide a most convenient reason for making the change. So it has not been the European system that Britain has balked at but the proposal that the switch should be sharp and sudden, and with the consumer paying not just the economic price for food but supporting Europe’s farmers by paying a more than economic price.

There is also one further economic consideration. Reginald Maudling, who as President of the Board of Trade did not believe that signing the Treaty of Rome was possible, now as Chancellor of the Exchequer has cause to think that Britain must join Europe. From a monetary angle, it is clear that what has been holding back British economic growth has been the effort of running the world’s second great reserve currency from too narrow a base of reserves.

The Common Market Commission’s plan for a common reserve in Europe and virtually common currency thus has great attractions for Britain. Without a larger reserve, British growth will continue to be inhibited. And the public greatly cares about growth.