Again, I would not commend what I have announced to the House if this meant in any way weakening our transatlantic relationships. Relations with the United States are closer and better than they have ever been at any time, certainly in this generation, and in some contrast to what they have been in very recent times. Nothing in today's decision will in any way weaken that relationship.
Her Majesty's Government have decided to recommend to the British people that they should vote in favour of staying in the Community on the terms which I have described. I have given the Cabinet's view. I have only this to say before I sit down.
First, while perhaps some of these things might have been improved even if the Government had not entered into these tough negotiations-I say might have been-the renegotiations have themselves been more than a catalyst of change, they have been an initiator of change.
The second thing is this: Many of us, including myself, have at various times been half terrified by reading the legal jargon, the apparently fussy legalism and theology, not to mention some speeches and statements of enthusiastic supporters, and not to mention interference in things, such as beer, milk, hops and un-eviscerated chickens. Much of this nonsense has now stopped-certainly those fussy Commission initiatives to which I have referred on those items. The Foreign Secretary and I have found the Market much more flexible than I think either of us expected, both in individual questions and in what we have noted as a substantial shift of power over these past 12 months. It is remarkable how flexible it can be when there is a British Government who are prepared to stand up for British interests, and not the kind of people who negotiated in 1971. They never even gave the Market a chance to be flexible.
Renegotiations, agricultural and financial crises, whatever the causes may have been, all have played their part in putting more power into the hands of national Ministers meeting in the Council of Ministers. I believe that few would have thought, even a year ago, that we would have got agreement, through what the Minister of Agriculture negotiated on beef, to what in practice is freedom to return to the principles of Tom Williams' Agriculture Act of 1947 in the matter of deficiency payments, which had been specifically excluded as a means of farm price guarantees as a result of the 1971 negotiation package. We got that changed, and no one would have thought that likely a year ago.
A fundamental change not in the Treaty but in the practice has been brought about by the new system of Heads of Government summits of a regular, routine character, started with that convened by President Giscard d'Estaing in Paris last September, and continued by the December meeting, and now the Dublin meeting. This system has, already, de facto reasserted a degree of political power at top level, not only over the month-by-month decisions but over the general method of operation of the Market. This does not mean it has become a Europe des patries. It is a Community. But, as compared with even a year ago, vital interests of individual nations are now getting much more of a fair hearing, and the political power in assert- ing those interests has certainly increased more than appeared possible in the battles of 1971, 1972 and 1973: more, in my view, than even a year ago, when the result of the February election made the manifesto objectives
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