Britain passed peacefully into Europe at midnight last night without any special celebration. It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred, and a date which will be entered in the history books as long as histories of Britain are written, was taken by most people as a matter of course.
The principal party political figures maintained their familiar postures of hope and optimism or head-shaking despair. Mr Heath was starting back from Ottawa, where he had gone for the funeral of Mr Lester Pearson, at about the time that Britain, along with Denmark and Ireland, officially became members of the European Community.
In a spate of pre-recorded interviews, he expressed his own hope and satisfaction at the successful outcome of the long march towards Europe with which he had himself been so closely associated for so long.
Yesterday the latest opinion poll on the Market, by Opinion Research Centre for the BBC, suggested that 38 per cent were happy about embarking on what Mr Heath depicted as an exciting adventure, while 39 per cent would prefer to get off. Twenty three per cent had no opinion at all.
But the worry of the effect on prices continues. The Consumer╒s Union announced it will hold a regular weekly check on food prices, and the Farmers╒ Union said that during the last five years while the price review procedure lasts, the major preoccupation of farmers would be commercial organisation.
Pragmatism
Mr Heath believed that enthusiasm for the Market existed predominantly among the young. Elsewhere he detected no more than good old British pragmatism. He had been impressed by people he had met who did not expect immediate benefit for themselves but looked forward to a better life for their children and grandchildren.
╥I think in their phlegmatic and pragmatic way the British are now waiting for action and as we in the Community together take action, then I think more and more they will respond to it.
╥Of course whenever there is change, people have fears and it may be particularly characteristic of the British that they are conservative by nature which has stood us very well in many difficult times, and so they fear change particularly. But they are also very practical and when they see the need for it they face up to it.
╥If you allow yourself to be bedevilled by your fears, you are paralysed by them. The only future lies in energetically seizing opportunities.╙
Mr Wilson, however, saw nothing to celebrate when we were going in without that fullhearted consent of the British people, which Mr Heath had made a condition of entry and when the price of admission was ╥utterly crippling.╙ He defended the Labour decision not to attend the European Assembly. The real power lay not there but with the Council of Ministers and the only place to try to exert influence on them was through the British Parliament.
The Market would be an issue in the next election, but only one of several others would be prices, housing, jobs, ╥and very conceivably big aspects of foreign policy, like Vietnam, if this tragedy continues.╙ Labour would be pledged to renegotiation and this would be followed by consultation with the people, either through a referendum or a further election.
Labour╒s most notable dissenter, Mr Roy Jenkins, wanted to see Britain pressing for greater changes in the Community, especially changes to improve the distribution of wealth, the amenities of life, Community aid to the Third World and the democratisation of European institutions. Mr Enoch Powell, the Conservative╒s best known rebel, said: ╥The new year merely marks the commencement of a further and more vigorous phase of the campaign to ensure that in the matter of Britain and the European Community, the preponderant wish of the British people that Britain should not be a member on present terms is heeded.╙ The TUC, long dubious about entry, said that ╥the one conspicuous omission from the celebrations was any real attempt to answer the serious questions raised about British entry. The safeguards they had called for had not been obtained. The official pageantry was not launched in time for the hour of destiny. The Government╒s Fanfare for Europe, in which among other attractions, an Irish folk group will perform in Lincoln╒s Inn and Lord Montagu╒s motor cars go to Brussels, does not begin until Wednesday.
Fulsome
But praise from friends of the Market reached new heights of fulsomeness. Mr George Thomson, one of Britain╒s two Common Market Commissioners, said:
╥This is a unique new year. What dictators have failed to do by force, democracies are undertaking by peaceful consent. Twenty-five years from now, if we build the right foundations in 1973, our children will enjoy a richer quality of life than could have been conceivable had we remained separate. And the voice of European civilisation, so muted since the Second World War, will be able to speak in a united way that can contribute decisively to a more peaceful and prosperous world.╙ The other Commissioner, Sir Christopher Soames, added to this Gladstonian note by talking of ╥a great adventure╙ and a European union which, with its own ╥personality, strength, and sense of purpose╙, would have a major impact on world affairs. On the other side,
Mr Richard Briginshaw, general secretary of NATSOPA, the print worker╒s union, was
confident that the British people would long remember January 1, 1973 as ╥the blackest day in the calendar of their history.╙ Wars and international conflict had at least left us with our basic national sovereignty and independence, but that had now gone. The Campaign For British Freedom said in a pamphlet that it was all a ╥shameful betrayal╙ and (in heavy type) that the British were not going to accept it. The Union Movement, child of Sir Oswald Mosley and supporter of European unity discovered in a statement that the terms were the wrong ones. The European movement staged a torchlight procession through London to Mr George Thomson in Whitehall Place, who was handed a new year╒s message to take to Brussels. Civic leaders of nine capital cities of the EEC began girding their loins for their conference in London in the new year on the problems of urban government. Westminster Abbey prepared itself for a Day of Prayer to the New Europe today, and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden an estimated 10 million flowers were being put up in the auditorium for the Fanfare for Europe programme. Mr Henry Plumb, president of the National Farmers╒ Union, said that British farmers would be welcomed into Europe because they would take with them experience in how to look after their interests. The procedure of the price review would last another five years and the ╥major preoccupation╙ of farmers during that time would be commercial organisation, and the development of production and marketing potential. Tactfully, he did not mention horticulture. Fishermen were not so much celebrating the new year as drowning their sorrows. South Coast fishermen took the opportunity of sending telegrams to their MPs asking for restriction on the size and numbers of Continental boats ╤ especially French ones ╤ because overfishing by Continental boats, especially the French, had already led to a shortage. Today thousands of balloons will be set off in Snowdonia by young people, and there will certainly be special postage stamps with the interlocking hands motif on sale later in the week. Girls from each of the Nine will compete for the Miss TV Europe title on Thursday. But it will take perhaps rather more than this to tip the British public into making up its mind decisively on whether the EEC is really a rising sun or only an amalgam of extinct volcanoes. As the Opinion Research Centre poll shows, opinion is well in line with the ambiguity of the whole proceedings so far ╤ almost exactly fifty-fifty.
