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puts the future in a wholly false and misleading light. Federal and federalism are emotive words. To some people they suggest our being swallowed up in a system over which we British would have no control. No one wants that to happen and there is no question of it happening. We should judge the pros and cons of greater political integration in the same way as we judge the pros and cons of economic or technological integration: what we in Britain have to gain, what we have to lose, in terms of influence and control over the events which determine our security and prosperity.
There is no automatic obligation to any political federation or particular kind of political unity on adhering to the Treaty of Rome. But many of us feel that there is a case for developing institutions towards political unity in Europe. Such a development may well be needed to make the best of the tremendous opportunities for Britain and Europe as a whole, which lie ahead in the 'seventies and 'eighties. Most of all the opportunity to restore Europe's influence and standing in the world, on the basis of the enlarged European Community. We are talking now about what the position may be 10 or 20 years hence. I do not believe that we can legislate for institutional forms over this sort of period. We should rather begin working together on a practical basis and allow the institutional forms to develop to suit the work we shall want to do together. We can do a lot and go a long way together for a long time before we shall find ourselves called on to decide whether to work for institutions which could properly be called "federal". But there is, and I want to emphasise this, nothing here which would inhibit the present patterns of Commonwealth consultation.
Why should the Commonwealth relationship remain important to Britain? And why do I stress this fact, that there is no contradiction between a forward- looking European policy and strong support for the Commonwealth Association? I do that because the Commonwealth itself is responding to the challenge of change and is asserting its potential as a unique instrument of international co-operation. After last year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting the Commonwealth reached what M. Trudeau described as " a new plateau of maturity, a new sense of entity and practical interdependence based on mutual self-interest Let us look to see the evidence of this at the next meeting, when and wherever that may be, and I hope not too far ahead.
What are the factors that give us ground to believe that the Commonwealth relationship is not a fragile one? It is not necessary before this audience to embark on a long list of the attributes of the Commonwealth. You will know them all: English language, common institutions, judicial systems, habits of political and Parliamentary exchanges, trading links, a quarter of the world's people spread across the continents and, of course, of special importance at this stage in world history, a multi-racial organisation. International organisations can be smaller groupings of entirely like-minded nations. Such groupings can get on quite well because they are like-minded. Their influence in the world is bound to be limited because they are limited in size, or they can be, like the United Nations itself, well- nigh universal organisations, important because of their size, but having to proceed rather cumbrously and laboriously because of the many different ideologies and beliefs that divide them. The Commonwealth, I think, stands somewhere between these two. The nations that compose it, not entirely like-minded and a grouping large and varied enough to have influence in the world, are at least with sufficient in common to enable them to reach agreement and mutual understanding far more readily, for example, than can be done in New York at the United Nations. Express this for a moment in terms of people: take Britain's relationship with the Commonwealth countries alone, to say nothing of inter-relationships of other Commonwealth countries, and think of 42,000 Commonwealth students in this
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