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The Labour Party's Changing Relationship to Europe 125
A memorandum from the Trades Union Conference (TUC) articulated the overriding
question facing the Party: “Would going into the Community help this country
and the six already in the EEC to work together for their own economic expansion
and rising living standards”? 21 The answer to that question was not clear.
Barbara Castle, on the Left of the Labour Party and a member of the anti-EEC
Britain and the Common Market Committee, was certain that entering the Community
would not help Britain. In a 1962 article entitled, ‘Planning and the Common
Market: The Anti-Socialist Community’, she wrote:
“In the context of the economic philosophy which inspired the Community this means, in
effect, that [Britain] would be debarred from pursuing even the cautious and experimental
Socialist policy to which the whole of the Labour Party is committed”. 22
Richard Clements, the editor of the Left-wing paper, Tribune, outlined the paper’s
opinion of the EEC in 1961:
“The Common Market […] is a baited trap. If Macmillan and the Conservatives had
got Britain pinned down and immobilized into the capitalist-oriented EEC, then their
task in Britain would have been easier”. 23
Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Party, had indicated some lukewarm support for Europe,
caught as he was, between the anti-European left and the pro-European revisionist
right. However, he shied away from openly endorsing the idea, and at the 1962 Party Conference,
to the surprise of his revisionist friends, he effectively came down against Europe. 24
In an effort to unify the party, Gaitskell presented Five Conditions for entry but in 1962, it
was already clear that the Conservative negotiators would not succeed in attaining them. 25
Because Labour and the Six could not be reconciled, general opinion, and even opinion
within the Labour Party, recognised that Labour was thus 'against' entry to the EEC. 26
21. L.J. ROBINS, The Reluctant Party, op.cit., p.15.
22. B. CASTLE, Planning and the Common Market: The Anti-Socialist Community, in: New Statesman 13
March, 1962, as quoted in M. NEWMAN, Socialism and European Unity, op.cit., pp.170-171.
23. R. CLEMENTS, Editorial, Tribune June 1971, as quoted in T. NAIRN, The Left Against Europe?,
in: New Left Review, vol.75(Oct.1972), p.55.
24. Gaitskell was seen as something of a revisionist, as he had become a central figure in Friends of Socialist
Commentary, which promoted links between revisionist groups. (See T. JONES, Remaking the Labour
Party, Routledge, London, 1996, p.26.) One theory for his more negative stance towards Europe at the
1962 Conference is his experience meeting European and Commonwealth socialists in 1962. His meeting
with the Europeans at the Socialist International was marked by clashes and disagreements; in contrast,
when he met with the Commonwealth Socialist leaders in September 1962, the conference was pleasant,
harmonious and productive. L.J. Robins credits these experiences with reinforcing Gaitskell’s and the Labour
Party’s commitment to the Commonwealth, at the expense of European integration. (See L.J. ROB-
INS, The Reluctant Party, op.cit., p.28.)
25. Gaitskell outlined his major points of concern: 1) safeguarding the interests of the EFTA countries,
2) retaining the freedom to plan the British economy, 3) retaining the system of planned production
in agriculture (that Labour created after the war), 4) retaining the right to maintain an independent
foreign policy, and 5) providing for the interests of the Commonwealth countries.
26. George Brown, the Labour Foreign Secretary in the Wilson Government, wrote in his memoirs,
“In the years of opposition, when Mr. Macmillan was trying to negotiate British entry, Labour feeling,
on the whole, was hostile […] the bulk of the Party was Anti-Common Market”. G. BROWN,
In My Way, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1971, p.216.