For the Market, More or Less

After five years of flip-flopping over whether or not he really favors British participation in the Common Market, Harold Wilson slid gingerly off the fence last week. In Parliament, the Prime Minister announced that "Her Majesty's government have decided to recommend to the British people that they should vote [in a June referendum] in favor of staying in the Community." Wilson's words were greeted with considerable cynicism. "Large numbers on this side always thought you would do it," sarcastically observed William Hamilton, a pro-Market Labor M.P. Added Liberal Party Chief Jeremy Thorpe with heavy irony: "The right honorable gentleman deserves to be congratulated on the consistency he has always shown on European matters."

In fact, Wilson's Labor government had given the EEC something less than a ringing endorsement. Seven of the 23 Cabinet members, including such influential left-wing radicals as Employment Secretary Michael Foot and Industry Secretary Anthony Wedgewood Benn, opposed the decision; estimates are that at least 139 of the 318 Labor M.P.s will vote against Wilson's recommendation when it is put to an initial vote in Commons next month. Moreover, 18 of the 30 members of Labor's National Executive said that they will reject the Cabinet recommendation when it is put up for approval at a special meeting of the party, probably in early May.

The government recommendation is virtually certain of parliamentary approval, if only because the Labor pro-Marketeers can count on the support of about 260 of the 276 Tories and eleven of the 13 Liberals. For the moment, at least, public opinion seems to be on the side of Europe. The most recent Harris poll indicated that 45% of the voters favor staying in the Community, with 33% opposed and 22% undecided. The poll was taken before this month's Dublin summit of Common Market government leaders who granted concessions to make Britain's continued participation more acceptable. They approved renegotiated terms that could give Britain an annual refund of up to $300 million on its contributions to the Community budget and allow it to import New Zealand butter at low duty rates.

Road to Damascus. In light of the strong opposition within the Labor Party to the Cabinet's position, no one was particularly surprised when Wilson indicated that he might not campaign actively for the referendum. "I believe that continued Community membership is the best course for Britain," he said in a television interview, "but I don't believe the British people would believe me if I said I had seen the road to Damascus somewhere between Dublin and London." Apparently, the Prime Minister had decided to adopt a shrewd and presumably fail-safe strategy. By not fighting strongly for the Market, he might be able to use his image as a cool, pragmatic Marketeer to win marginal voters who would be turned off by the passionate appeals of committed pro-Europe Laborites. If by chance the referendum fails, Wilson could then claim that all along he had doubts, which the electorate had confirmed.

One unanswered question is whether Wilson might not have totally outfoxed himself by agreeing to an EEC referendum. Back in 1970, he went on record as being opposed to such a device on the ground that it was unnecessary in a parliamentary democracy. He agreed to the referendum in 1972 only to avoid a split within the Labor Party--and to put the former Conservative government of Edward Heath on the defensive for refusing to let the people have their say about Market membership.

Now Britain faces a divisive three months before the vote during which pro-Market industry and antiMarket unions will line up on different sides. Laborites will fight Laborites, and many British families will be more politically divided than they have been since the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. In short, Wilson may have worked out a formula for saving his own political neck--at the cost of hopelessly dividing the party that elected him as its standardbearer.

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