Common Market: Crossing the Channel

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House of Lords. Heath remembers the source of his power, and even in the midst of his present fateful negotiations, he manages frequent visits to his constituency. On a recent Saturday, Heath flew back to London from Brussels at noon and drove his seven-year-old black sedan down the Old Kent Road to Bexley. After a 15-minute huddle with his local party agent, Heath headed for a flower show held by the Horticultural Society, whose most coveted award (for fruit and vegetables) is the Edward Heath Challenge Cup. There he shook hands with the prizewinners, assiduously sniffed sweet peas ("Used to grow them myself when I was a boy").

After a quick visit to the Bexley Heath and District Rose Society show (patron: Edward Heath), the Lord Privy Seal stopped at his favorite pub, the King's Head, where the regulars greeted him as "Squire." There he downed three half-pints of bitter from a silver tankard and bustled off to present prizes at the North Kent Budgerigar and Foreign Bird Society annual show (patron: Edward Heath). Having made the rounds of Alario finches. Napoleon weavers and their fanciers, Heath headed cheerily back to London for dinner at the Savoy Grill.

Heath's attention to local politics is far from irrelevant. As he drove up Bexley's main street, he could see the gay new travel agency advertising the "sunshine and sands of Italy," while grocers displayed Dutch strawberries and French asparagus, alongside New Zealand apples —all vivid reminders of Heath's Common Market problems.

End of a Reverie. The discussion of those problems is growing ever more heated. A national opinion poll reported that those who favored admission to the Common Market had slumped from 47.1% of those polled in mid-April to 28.2% at the end of June. Taken at face value, the swing may well be due to real concern over the future of British sovereignty and independence; watching the tough French attitude at Brussels, many Britons have come to fear that, in the Market, Britain would be outnumbered, would not so much lead as be led. But to a large extent, the poll only reflected the fact that the government, as a bargaining maneuver, has calculatedly downplayed its high hopes in Britain so as not to raise the price of membership in Brussels.

Whatever else it accomplished, the great debate has wrought a refreshing change in the pulse and temper of Britain. Compared with bustling Europe, where far crueler wartime devastation forced its peoples to build and plan for the future, Britain at war's end sank back into a grandiose reverie in which—despite rising prosperity—the island was almost visibly turning into a museum of its own past glories. In the last year, Englishmen have been forced to re-examine their society and decide on its future. Those under 40, in particular, have been stimulated by a tide of change that most believe to be inevitable.

"The British are not working any harder than they were a few years ago," reports TIME'S London Bureau Chief Robert Elson, "and the philosophy of 'I'm all right, Jack,' lingers on, and yet a change has taken place. It has still to be acknowledged by a majority of Englishmen. But individually and collectively, they have concluded that they had better get moving in the big outside world once more.

Perhaps unconsciously they have decided