British High Commission, Canberra, 7 July 1971
Confidential
Australia, the EEC and Mr Anthony
The successful outcome of the Luxembourg negotiations on the morning of 23 June brought sharply before Australians the prospect of British membership of the European Economic Community. It had long been realised that this was likely, but even so, the news came as something of a shock. They had been sailing through fog. When it lifted, the coast-line was visible, just as the charts showed it. But somehow the cliffs looked unnaturally large and clear—and very close.
2. The moment of realisation was an important one for Australia’s relationship with Britain. Other critical moments are yet to come. Government attitudes have to be formalised, policies worked out and negotiations undertaken. But a snapshot of the immediate reaction may record an impression which will later become clear. It is such an impression that I have the honour to offer in this despatch.
3. Since I became British High Commissioner here on 10 May last, I have talked to some hundreds of Australians in four of the country’s chief cities. Their overwhelming reaction, and that of virtually the whole Australian Press, is that joining Europe was something we simply had to do. 1 have heard virtually no suggestion from anyone that we were wrong to seek membership of the Community; and there is evidence to show that this more robust attitude is not limited to the city-dwellers, but is shared by many farming leaders too. The need for us to find a larger trading base and the overriding political importance of Europe have been emphasised to me by so many Australians that I am beginning to wish these twin, basic arguments were as widely accepted in Britain as they seem to be here. Yet with this, there is also a strong feeling of regret. The world seems chillier and more lonely than it did a fortnight ago. Speeches are being made and editorials written, drawing the inference that in a world where Britain seeks her future as a part of Europe, Australia must henceforth base her relationships on the Pacific and on Asia. Trade with Japan thrives. An offer of military training facilities is made to Singapore. But it is all done somewhat against the grain. This is not yet an Asia-oriented country, but a displaced European one, and in a deep sense still British. The moment when Britain seems, to Australians, to be turning away from them is also the moment when many of them realise how close are their links with our country and how much they owe to us. ‘We’ve been at the breast too long’, they admit—but the sense of loss is real.
4. It was unfortunate that, at this time, with the Australian Parliament in recess, Australia’s first public reaction should have come from Mr Anthony, the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Trade and Industry and Leader of the Country Party, who was on a tour of Europe. If ever there was a moment which called for statesmanship this was it. Despite all the Commonwealth briefing Mr Anthony had, I think, not quite realised that the impact of the Community system could exclude certain Australian exports at the very outset of the transitional period. His European trip brought it home to him. He reacted hastily, unwisely and a little out of character. The result was that he reduced both his own standing and that of Australia by what looked like a poor display of small-town party politics. His allegation that Australia had been given promises that had not been implemented could not be sustained, and I am happy to report that, as an exercise in party politics it has had the reception it deserved. ‘We’re whingeing, 1 aren’t we?’ asked the Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly when I went to call on him recently. I said that, regrettably, I thought they were. Many other people have said openly to me and to members of my staff that they have found Mr Anthony’s an unworthy and indeed humiliating performance. There has been a general welcome for the corrective material which I have been including in my speeches, and have supplied to the press. On 30 June the Australian Prime Minister, Mr McMahon (whose style of Government seems to consist of chasing panting after events without ever quite catching up with them), issued a statement on the whole subject. This document, though cast in generally restrained terms (there was no suggestion that we had broken our pledged word to Australia) and recognising that the decision to join the Community was one for Britain herself, commended Mr Anthony for his strenuous presentation of Australia’s case and expressed regret that Britain had not pressed that case with the Six to an outcome satisfactory to Australia. Mr McMahon’s statement—following upon his message of 15 June to Mr Heath—probably represented the least he could decently do in support of his Deputy.2 His own political future is dependent on bringing the coalition safely through next year’s elections and its already shaky prospects could scarcely survive a major rift with the Country Party.
5. Sir John Bunting, Mr McMahon’s principal official adviser and general homme de confiance , said to me on 2 July that there were two Doug Anthonys: the one, a sincere genuine man and a promising Minister. The other, someone who felt from time to time that his own domestic political gallery was the one he must play to at all costs. This assessment must be very close to Mr McMahon’s own, and it is certainly shared by the great majority of the Australian public.
6. However, although one can only regret Mr Anthony’s line, the fact remains that our membership will have serious effects for some Australians, particularly the dairy farmers. We have heard their laments throughout the past decade, and have hardened ourselves to them, but nevertheless their future will present a quite significant economic and social problem at a time when Australia’s rural economy is in a generally depressed state.
7. When the Australian Parliament reassembles in August next the Opposition may well take the line that the Government is now trying to put upon Britain the responsibility for its own neglect of the rural economy. It was no doubt in anticipation of this that Mr McMahon ended his own statement by saying that although some time would elapse before the full impact of our decision was felt in Australia, the Government would be giving urgent and close attention to the problems which would be posed and to the ways and means of meeting them. Thus the political debate may now turn largely on the measures which Australia will take, not only in relation to the support, or more probably the reconstruction of, rural industries, but to the general reorientation of Australia’s trading pattern and the means by which the dismantlement of our preferences can be used to secure trading advantages from other countries, particularly Japan and the United States. With this there will inevitably be attacks from the Government benches upon the terms of British accession, and an undertaking to press to the full with us and the Six the opportunity offered by the fallback guarantee against severe disruption of trade during the transitional period.
8. There will therefore be some difficult passages ahead. But I believe that in this first Australian reaction to the terms of entry we have, despite Mr Anthony, come off fairly well. We have secured, thanks in part to a careful cultivation of the leading Australian editors and journalists in recent years, a surprisingly sympathetic press. And we have a wide measure of understanding among the public at large—much more than would be supposed from Australian official pronouncements. I hope that in the period leading up to our entry and following immediately upon it we shall seek to reassure Australia that, as Mr Rippon said in Canberra last year, ‘Britain sees the European option not as a rejection of other ties and loyalties, but as an opportunity for European countries to increase their capacity for doing more for old and new friends elsewhere’.3 One tie, that of preferential trading arrangements, we shall be cutting if Parliament approves. But if one can judge by their immediate reaction so far, Australians will remain receptive to any efforts we make to retain and strengthen our other ties.
9. Is there any special action which we can take to this end? One major such step suggests itself to me already; a visit here in due course by the Prime Minister, or by you, Sir, is—I am sure—both the best way that can be devised of recreating a wholly harmonious atmosphere between the two Governments, and also well worth undertaking because Australia will go on being important to us whatever happens. The most advantageous moment for such a visit would be after the British Parliament has approved the terms which have been secured from the Six for British entry. (Not before, for that would give the Anthonys here a first-class opportunity for axe-grinding of which they would not be slow to take advantage.) I shall enlarge on this proposal in subsequent correspondence with the Department.
[…]
1 Footnote in original: ‘To whinge is a pejorative Australianism meaning to complain unjustifiably; presumably derived by blending “ whine” and “ cringe”’
2 McMahon’s statement is in NAA: Al838, 727/4/2 part l5.
3 Document 270.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1055]