Great Britain: Even If You Win, You'll Lose

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Back from the Wilderness. This was poppycock. Gaitskell's "conditions" were either impossible or meaningless. He professed to want better entry terms for Britain, but he knows well that the terms so far agreed to by the government add up to the best possible deal that could be obtained from the Six. Next, Gaitskell said he wanted a more precise spelling-out of certain agreements, but he knows that they cannot be detailed as yet because they involve complex policies, notably on farm prices, which the European Community itself has not finally formulated. Sighed a Labor frontbencher: "Hugh has already rolled up the map of Europe."

To many, Gaitskell's move seemed like unalloyed opportunism, even though his friends—until last week at least—have always maintained that "Gaiters" is a man of incorruptible integrity. Opportunist or not, Gaitskell is now convinced that after eleven years in the wilderness, the Labor Party can ride back into power on a tide of opposition to the Common Market. Though a Daily Telegraph Gallup poll reported last week that 46% of Britons will support Britain's Common Market membership if it is in the nation's best interest—a gain of 2% since the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference last month—Labor believes that the anti-Marketeers will ultimately include the 24% don't-know vote.

Comfort for Communists. The outcome of Gaitskell's gamble is largely up to the government, which can wait as long as two years before calling a general election. Harold Macmillan's present aim is to wrap up Britain's membership terms around the New Year and open the package for debate in Parliament early next spring. If the Tories and the Market-minded Liberal Party solidly favor admission on these terms, the government will put through a bill passing them into law and call an election in late 1963 or early 1964, while the nation is still buoyed up by Macmillan's "great adventure." Alternatively, if the price of admission threatens to disrupt the Tory Party and stirs a loud enough outcry from country and Commonwealth. Macmillan is prepared to take the issue to the nation rather than invite later repudiation of its agreements by a Labor government.

The battle was joined. Gaitskell's words had hardly fluttered into print when Macmillan. setting a prime-ministerial precedent, issued a 5,000-word pamphlet stating his own arguments for joining Europe. Dismissing Gaitskell's plaint that Britain will be a mere province of Europe, the Prime Minister retorted that joining the Continent will "not alter the position of the Crown, nor rob our Parliament of its essential powers, nor deprive our law courts of their authority in our domestic life." The government, meanwhile, may actually benefit from Gaitskell's retreat from Europe. It should push many Tory waverers back into line at the Conservative conference this week, and will cost Labor much of its hard-won support from younger voters: no issue in modern times has so clearly ranged the sedate and the mediocre against the able and mettlesome.