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An Elusive Partnership: Europe, Economic Co-operation and British Policy 113
When the reluctance of in particular the Swedes and the Danes to embrace Britain's
proposals of deepening their economic relations dawned in early 1950, Cripps
still tried to instill more life into the Uniscan concept and continued to stress the
importance of developing such co-operation further. But the momentum was hard
to maintain not only because of the wider economic processes which undercut
Uniscan's potential. The Labour Government was heading towards a general election
and this was not the best of moments to break new ground in such a controversial
issue as policy towards Europe. But more ominously for the long term, Cripps
himself, his health ailing, had passed his peak as chancellor. Although he can be
considered as the “primus motor” behind the Scandinavian orientation of Britain's
European policy, his power was not enough to keep it running after the initial push.
A stronger political will was lacking and nobody, either in Britain nor in Scandinavia,
was ready to take on the initiative Cripps himself failed to take further.
Besides bilateral trade and financial issues between the British and the Scandinavians,
the feasibility of their economic co-operation depended on wider issues as well.
From the British point of view, there were three main themes running alongside its attempts
to deepen its economic and economic-political relationship with the Scandinavians.
First, on the liberalisation of trade, the main progress was being made in Paris at
the OEEC, and to a lesser extent under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). Measures agreed in these organisations influenced the participating
states' positions in bilateral trade negotiations as they limited the scope for granting
exclusive concessions. In other words, falling short of creating a discriminatory
Anglo-Scandinavian trade bloc, Britain could offer relatively little to the Scandinavian
countries that they did not already have. 32 Second, talks about ending financial restrictions
between Britain and Scandinavia took place at the same time as proposals for a
European Payments Union were being launched in Paris. 33 It was realised that any concessions
made within Uniscan might have less value if there was an effective arrangement
covering Western Europe as a whole, backed by Marshall aid dollars. Later during
1950, this process completely overtook the incremental and rather modest payments
liberalisation process attempted within Uniscan in early 1950.
But perhaps the main limiting factor allowing Uniscan to become a more wide
reaching economic arrangement during the 1950s was the question of the West German
economy. The re-emergence of West Germany in international markets challenged Britain's
position as a large-scale supplier of industrial goods throughout Europe from the
early 1950s onwards. 34 The Swedes and the Danes were keen to use their accumulated
sterling balances for West German goods, and were therefore very hesitant about joining
any discriminatory bloc in which West Germany was not a member. The West Ger-
32. 'Trade with Europe', The Financial Times, 23 January 1950.
33. For EPU see, A. S. MILWARD, The Reconstruction …, op.cit., pp.299-334; M. HOGAN, The
Marshall Plan …, pp.291-335, 349-359.
34. On Swedish- W.German trade, M. FRITZ, Turbulente Jahre. Schwedens Außenhandel und Wirtschaft
1945-1954, in: U. OLSSON (ed.), Neuanfang. Beziehungen zwischen Schweden und
Deutschland 1945-1954. Sieben Beiträge, Umeå Studies in Economic History, Umeå, 1990,
pp.143-164.