Brussels, 8 June 1966
Secret
British Entry into the EEC
Mr Campbell said he had discussed with Mr McEwen whether it would be necessary for me to go to London during the Minister’s visit. Mr McEwen was however limiting his engagements owing to the state of his health and had suggested to Mr Campbell that he convey to me some considerations with regard to the Australian attitude towards British entry into the EEC.
2. Mr McEwen said that Ministers in Australia had deliberately decided not to attempt to reach an overall policy regarding British entry, but to take decisions as circumstances developed. Mr McEwen added however that the attitude of the Australian Government in the event of a British application for entry or opening of negotiations could be very different from the attitude adopted in 1962/63. There was not merely a possibility that Australia might go ‘soft’ but that Australia might be prepared to give Britain some trade benefits even if these were not requited. Because of the desirability of ensuring a continued British presence east of Suez, it might be necessary to help meet the cost of British defence policy.
3. Mr McEwen stressed that since the question of British entry and trade might be mixed up with defence and other considerations, it was terribly important that Australian representatives should not make statements predicting Australian future policy. There had been some concern over the statements made by Sir Alexander Downer in this connection.1 He was afraid that Australian representatives would have to live with not having a policy for the time being.
4. I told Mr Campbell that it was precisely because of Sir Alexander Downer’s statement, and reactions to it, that l had felt it desirable to have some guidance from the Government. The ‘line’ he had conveyed from Mr McEwen would be most helpful. l had of course never had any thought of seeking to predict policy but only to have a background against which I could make statements of fact about Australian trade, which I could hardly avoid making in the course of my diplomatic activities in Brussels.
5. Mr Campbell said that following our earlier talk on the question of a brief about Australia’s current interest in the British market he had written to his Department in Australia which had now prepared a re-statement of the facts of the trade situation. This showed in total that, despite diversification of Australian trade in the last three years, the total volume of exports at risk was actually greater than in 1963.
6. I thanked Mr Campbell for his action in expediting preparation of the factual statement which would help me, for example in maintaining contact with the British Delegation to the EEC […]
1 The High Commissioner, Alexander Downer, had made a number of public addresses during 1965–66 that had raised questions about Australia’s precise policy line. In a speech at the Royal Commonwealth Society in March 1965, he noted that ‘Whatever the merits of the economic argument for entry into the Common Market, this policy has left a deep bruise on Anglo-Australian relations’ and declared that ‘it would be one of the greatest tragedies in history if Britain were to become a European power at the sacrifice of four centuries of achievement of our ancestors’. This speech was criticised roundly in Parliament by Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell, who demanded to know whether ‘these statements represent Government policy’. Downer contacted Canberra for guidance, and a reply from Menzies was relayed advising him that ‘the Common Market is a good subject to keep off’—both publicly and privately (NAA: A463, 1965/2040, Bunting to Downer, 13 May 1965). Downer made further remarks in January 1966 about the ‘revival of the little England philosophy’ in the increasingly frequent calls for ‘a retreat from Asia and the Southern Hemisphere into Europe’, although this time without explicitly referring to the EEC (NAA: A1838, 67/1/3 part 3). In the above document, however, Harry was referring specifically to a speech by the High Commissioner on 12 May 1966 which was reported in the press as having ‘seriously embarrassed and angered the Government’. Downer had declared that if Britain entered the EEC ‘as a calculated act of self-interest’ then it could not expect to preserve its trade preferences in Australia: ‘In my mind I have no doubt at all they would go, and you would be exposed to the cold blast of competition from Japan and other countries’. Such an outcome, he said, would ‘make many Australians reappraise the value of the Commonwealth association’. According to the Sydney Morning Herald , ’Senior Ministers’ had ‘angrily claimed that all Sir Alec had achieved was to embarrass his own Government in its handling of a possible future situation in which it might be forced to “sell” Australian preferences to other countries in compensation for the loss of their British counterparts’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 13 May 1966).
[NAA:A1838, 727/4]