Mr Macmillan, a weary-looking father figure, at last held out his hand yesterday and offered to try to lead the Commons and the country into Europe, if he can find the way. There was a good deal of kicking and screaming ╤ the phrase was Mr Gilbert Longden╒s from the Conservative side of the packed and excited House ╤ and this was to be expected.
The cries of ╥shame╙ stabbing through the cheers when the Prime Minister announced that we are making formal application to join the European Economic Community came from both sides. So did the portentously eager applause when he insisted that we shall not take the final step unless our Commonwealth and other obligations can be reconciled, for otherwise the ╥loss would be greater than the gain.╙
Mr Macmillan made it clear that now, after his long contemplation, he wants to go in. He also made it clear why. It might have been a European political community he was talking about. He spoke of the struggle for freedom, and said it was both our duty and our interest to add to Europe╒s strength in that struggle.
He spoke sombrely, to Labour and Tory questioners alike, of what might happen if we find that we cannot go in after all. As for his own idea of the chances of success, he told Mr Grimond that he was ╥not confident, but hopeful.╙
It was a memorable day in the Commons all right, bursting with history and drama as vehement, untidy, and sensational as anyone could hope to avoid. Yet how could it have been avoided? There was Europe, economic or political or however you chose to see it. Here were a lot of people who, in spite of the Liberals and Mr Longden, and many others who had been converted long before Mr Macmillan saw the light, were not at all sure that they wanted to go.
Some were sure they did not want to go. There were the kickers and screamers, and none kicked and screamed more violently than Mr Anthony Fell, the Conservative member for Yarmouth, who called Mr Macmillan all sorts of names, including a disaster, and told him in the name of Mr Fell to go.
╥Shocking Statement╙
Tory back-benchers have attacked Tory Prime Ministers before, but never in such terms as these. A quite shocking statement, Mr Fell called it, full of political double-talk, and its effect on one former supporter ╤ obviously Mr Fell himself ╤ was to convince him that Mr Macmillan was a national disaster.
This whipped the House from a state of excitement into sheer uproar, punctuated by sharp, shocked Tory protests. The Prime Minister surged to his feet and moved to the dispatch box, but Mr Fell had not finished, not by a long way. He would sit down for Mr Speaker, he roared, but not for Mr Macmillan. He had the floor and he kept it.
╥His decision to gamble with British sovereignty,╙ Mr Fell went on, his furious voice rising above the tumult, ╥and with 650 million people in the British Commonwealth, is the most disastrous thing any Prime Minister has done for many generations past.╙
Was there anything more to shout, except a demand that Mr Macmillan should resign? Mr Fell duly made that demand, but not before he had protested against what he saw as Mr Macmillan╒s ╥laughs and smirks.╙ If Mr Macmillan had indeed anything to smile about ╤ and he was studiously mild in his reply to the ferocious member for Yarmouth ╤ it was over the obvious embarrassment that Mr Fell╒s outburst had caused to the more temperate opponents of the Common Market policy in the Conservative Party.
It was easy to be more temperate than Mr Fell, and still tough enough to show how much they worried. There was the ever-persistent Mr Turton, for instance, who wanted to know why we were not proceeding on that article in the Treaty of Rome which allows for a looser association. Mr Macmillan handled him by saying that this would give us all the economic difficulties without giving us any influence in Europe.
