The Common Market — the Real Issue (1962)

Editorial from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Common Market has become front-page news. Papers that could hardly spare it a thought a few short months ago now give it headlines. Special features set out to explain things in simple terms for “the man in the street.” On radio and TV it is the same. Even ITV did a series and got criticised for slanting the programme too heavily in favour of Britain going in.

There is plenty of such criticism, of course. Dire warnings of what will happen to us if Britain goes into the Common Market are matched by equally dreadful ones about our fate if she stays out.

We are told of other possible consequences. Of how the Government is thinking of going over to decimal currency—after hesitation on the part of its predecessors for close on a hundred and fifty years. And of the way Mr. Marples is apparently making preparations just in case we have eventually to drive on the right hand side of the road! How much keener can British capitalism’s representatives show themselves than that?

But, more seriously, why this sudden about-turn? Why, after resolutely refusing to have anything to do with the Common Market for years, is the British Government desperately trying to get in? Even in 1958, when the writing was pretty plainly on the wall, they still preferred to set up the rival firm EFTA (the Seven) rather than come to terms with the Six. They had the chance of joining then and turned it down.

Even a few months ago prominent Tory leaders were loudly proclaiming that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the Common Market. Now they have eaten their words and are almost knocking the door down in Brussels trying to get in. Why should this be?

The reason is quite simple. The Common Market has become a threat to the interests of British capitalism, too blatant and dangerous to be ignored any longer.

The Common Market has a population as great as that of the United States. It is now not only the biggest importer of raw materials in the world, it has also become the largest exporter of manufactured goods equalled only by the Americans. And even American capitalism is beginning to be worried about its encroachments upon what it has always regarded as its unassailable position —witness the sudden haste to liberalise its trade laws and the recent statements by prominent leaders that the United States may itself be compelled to apply for membership of the Common Market in time.

The reason, then, for British capitalism’s change of front is the one we should always seek when we wish to discover the motive for the really important activities of capitalist nations and their political spokesmen-the motive of harsh, real, cold economic interest.

Plain and inescapable is the fact that if British capitalism does not go into the Common Market, it is going to be left isolated in a world increasingly under the sway of the economic power of the Six. This isolation will become more and more pronounced as the Market’s internal tariffs fall and its duties on imported products increase. Eventually, if the avowed aims of the Common Market were to be achieved. British capitalism would be left high and dry. The Tory Government has, belatedly, woken to the danger and is now fighting a desperate last-minute battle to avert it.

This is the real meaning of the Common Market for British capitalism, and we have thought it of sufficient importance to justify this special issue of the Socialist Standard. It still will not amount to much space compared with the vast resources of the capitalist Press. But it will be sufficient for us to present a really adequate Socialist analysis of yet another aspect of capitalism.