COMMON MARKET
(See Cover)
For nine centuries, since William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, the English Channel has stood as the "moat defensive'' between Britain and her foes, between the "blessed plot" and the "envy of less happier lands." Today, Paris-London jets pass over the Channel tides in three minutes; nuclear missiles would blast across in as many seconds. The balance of envy has changed. Increasingly prosperous Britons, who swarm across to the Continent by the thousands each summer, return with European notions of comfort, elegance and efficiency that have breached England's insularity more surely than any invader.
But if the Channel is no longer a moat, it is more than a memory. In the missile age, as in the Middle Ages, it is still the demarcation line of British sovereignty, the symbol of differences in law and language, attitudes and institutions that have historically separated Englishmen from Europeans—and mingled their blood on countless European battlefields. "The English," it is said, "are always willing to die for foreigners—but not to live with them."
This month, some 400 years since Britain was driven from her last French possession, the island nation approaches the climax of a historic effort to vault the Channel and bind her fortunes indissolubly to those of the new, united, booming Western Europe. This decision will deeply affect Britain's relations with 724 million Commonwealth citizens. Britons who want to remember the sails of Drake and Raleigh, and the balance sheets that once followed the flag around the world, are being asked to turn their backs on what little remains of the Empire and to abandon (or so many believe) yesterday's wide horizons for a nearby, still suspect coast. And yet, to an extent unforeseeable only a few years ago, the decision to join Europe's Common Market may also be a new adventure for Britain and restore British prestige and power. The outcome will influence the future of Europe and of the entire free world.
Unite or Perish. Britain's passage to Europe began in earnest on a grey October day in Paris last year. Behind the closed doors of a high-ceilinged conference room in the Quai d'Orsay, Britain's Lord Privy Seal, Edward Richard George Heath, formally notified ministers of the six Common Market nations that his government had reached "a great decision, a turning point in our history." In a deep, resonant voice, Heath declared: "We desire to become full, wholehearted and active members of the European Community in its widest sense, and to go forward with you in the building of a new Europe." Gravely, he added: "Europe must unite or perish. We are convinced that our destiny is intimately linked with yours."
Never before had a British government committed itself so emphatically to economic and political union with Europe. For centuries, Britain had practiced what Disraeli elegantly called "abstention" from Europe, except when a drastic upset in the Continental balance of power made it necessary to intervene. This policy remained in force virtually until yesterday. For a dozen years, Labor and Conservative governments consistently cold-shouldered the supranational institutions that paved the way for the Common Market. To many European statesmen, Ted