London, 30 July 1971
Confidential
Australia and the EEC
Sir Morrice James’ letter of 9 July described his discussion with Mr Anthony. 1 Mr Rippon has seen Sir C O’Neill’s minute upon this letter, dated 16 July,2 (which has reached me only today) and has commented that he does not think that lengthy post-mortems and preparation of documents can do much good.
2. However South West Pacific Department have suggested that Sir Morrice James may be in a dangerously exposed position with Mr Anthony if he does not understand that we are vulnerable on some of the Australian criticisms and have suggested that, if a reply to Sir M. James is likely to take some time to prepare—as would be the case given the fact that it would need clearance with MAFF—we should telegraph to him to explain that there is a problem here.
3. I am not sure that Sir M. James should be under a misapprehension about this given the fact that he received codel Brussels telegram No 267 of 22 April setting out what the Australians were told on that day.3 Nevertheless I submit a draft telegram, based partly on Sir C O’Neill’s minute of 16 July and partly on my own submission of 19 July. Mr Rippon has asked to see any reply to Sir M. James and would presumably wish to see this telegram in draft.
DRAFT TELEGRAM:
Thank you for your letter of 9 July in which you set out so fully your talk with Anthony. It has been read here with great interest. I hope to let you have a fuller reply before very long.
2. Meanwhile, you should know that we are vulnerable to a degree to Australia’s accusations. We had hoped to get more precise and more advantageous arrangements for the phasing out of third country agricultural supplies over the transitional period (as was made clear in Codel 267 to the FCO). It was however clear, given the Community’s position, that we had no hope at all of getting continuing degressive quota arrangements for, e.g., Australian sugar after 1974 or Australian butter after 1972. We therefore judged it essential, in accepting the full application of Community preference from the outset, to abandon the idea of an ‘orderly phasing out of supplies’ and to replace it by the provisions for dealing with substantial disruption of significant volumes of trade. The fact is that had we continued to insist on our previous concept it would have been impossible to reach agreement with the Six on the question which the French had most at heart in proving our Europeanness in advance of the Prime Minister’s visit to Paris.
3. It remains our position that the safeguard provisions that we have negotiated with the Community—which cover not only the 4 commodities in which the Community originally admitted that there might be difficulty (sugar, butter, bacon and canned fruit and vegetables) but all agricultural commodities subject to levy—will be speedy and effective and will constitute a perfectly adequate safeguard. In other words consultation was complete up to and including 22 April, and the only change made in the position thereafter affecting Australia was the replacement of one type of safeguard by another and fully adequate for in of protection. We would in fact continue to regard this protection as the equivalent of an orderly phasing out.[…]
4. If we are at fault, things were of course made worse in Mr Anthony’s eyes by the fact that he seems to have been told by representatives of the Six that we had made virtually no effort to secure better arrangements for third country suppliers. This is unjust; but it is not altogether uncharacteristic that representatives of the Six should have given Mr Anthony this impression. It would have been fairer for them to have told Mr Anthony that the community had made it absolutely clear to us that the acceptance of Community preference from the start was a sine qua non for agreement on agricultural transitional arrangements.
5. Your discussion with Anthony has clearly been to the good […] Incidentally in view of what you say we shall not be referring to Anthony’s performance in Brussels when we tell Australia House about the present state of the game on Papua and New Guinea.
1 Document 297.
2 Document 298.
3 Document 277.
[UKNA: FCO 24/1055]