London, 4 September 1962
Secret
Commonwealth Conference
The Commonwealth Secretary showed me an advance copy of his paper ‘Commonwealth and the Common Market’ which has been circulated to the Ministerial Committee. 1 I agree with his broad assessment of what has been achieved. The new Commonwealth countries are pretty well looked after and can have no economic grievances. If they choose to associate they can increase their potential markets. Moreover, to be frank, they carry little political weight in this country. Sentiment towards the Commonwealth is really centred upon the old Commonwealth countries, especially Australia and New Zealand.
Their Governments, if they wished, could make it almost impossible for a Conservative, or indeed any Government, to carry Britain into the Common Market. That would be, in my view, a tragedy of the first order. It follows, therefore, that our tactics must be somehow or other to get them acquiescent if not wholly satisfied. I have thought a lot about this during the last weeks and I feel that the particular point at which the Brussels Conference ended was really very fortunate. The critical temperate foodstuffs problem had been brought to a certain point, but not finalised. I think, therefore we ought to try to get the old Commonwealth to recognise that, as today’s Times says, the Lord Privy Seal and his team have done a good job in getting accepted the principles of price policy, etc. At the same time we could undertake to try to get these principles clothed with a little more flesh.
The Lord Privy Seal and his colleagues will no doubt be able to suggest the best method of achieving this. I hope that we can concentrate on this aspect at the meeting of the Committee on 5th September. If we can get the argument on to the above lines we shail have taken much heat out of the controversy.
1 Document 205.
[UKNA: CAB 133/262]