Word: commonwealths
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...taken years of painful soul searching for Macmillan's Cabinet to reach the decision to join the vital new Europe, even if it meant the end of a relationship that has long ceased to be that of mother and daughters save in sentiment. If the Commonwealth does not agree, said the Economist last week, "Mother would then be well advised to switch off her deaf-aid and go on regardless with the course of action that is necessary...
...Harold Macmillan, there could be no question of switching off the hearing aid. The Commonwealth's sustained offensive significantly swelled anti-Europe sentiment in Britain at a time when Macmillan's government is already dangerously weak. The raucous debate strengthened the hand of the 4O-odd right-wing Tory rebels who would like nothing better than to retreat from Europe. And, after a year of cagey fence straddling, Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell vaulted into the debate to decry the Common Market's terms of admission as "too damaging to be acceptable." The Labor Party, he hinted...
Charm in the Evening. As the critical speeches sputtered on, the once unflappable Mac began a desperate buttonholing campaign to moderate the views of Commonwealth officials and avert a flatly hostile final communiqué. Recruiting Commonwealth Relations Minister Duncan Sandys and Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath to help with the lobbying, Macmillan exerted all his considerable charm at small meetings, between sessions, at the evening receptions, even at Queen Elizabeth's banquet for the Commonwealth leaders in Buckingham Palace...
...conference broke into study groups to examine each major problem separately, it was clear that the personal lobbying had done some good. "Our policy has taken a hammering," sighed a Cabinet minister, "but the worst is over." One reason for his optimism was that the Commonwealth ministers at the conference had aired their harshest warnings for consumption in Ottawa, Sydney, Christchurch, Kingston and Karachi rather than London. With that behind them, all seemed more willing to listen to Britain...
Massive Counterbalance. What last week's sorry squabble ignored is the undeniable, if unpalatable, fact that exclusion from Europe means certain economic and political decline for Britain, whose exports to the Commonwealth are dwindling as its sales to the Common Market soar. Physically, in the jet age, Britain is already a part of Europe; with formal economic and political ties to the Continent, Macmillan is convinced that the nation will not only provide an expanding market for Commonwealth goods but also, by the very nature of its Commonwealth ties, ensure that the new Europe will not develop into...