Macmillan, the Free Trade Area and the First Application, 1957–63

Abstract

‘What I chiefly fear…’ wrote Macmillan in April 1957 ‘is the Common Market coming into being and the Free Trade Area never following’.¹ From the start the British attempt to create a Free Trade Area (FTA), via talks in the Organisation of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), faced numerous difficulties. Once the Six had signed the Treaty of Rome they naturally wished to defend their hard-won creation, and they were already suspicious of Britain’s attempts to disrupt their cooperation. The British had no interest in political integration in Europe. Neither did the FTA offer the Six much in economic terms. Even Paul Gore-Booth, Deputy Under-Secretary at the FO, acknowledged in his memoirs that an FTA for industrial goods, combined with Commonwealth trade preferences, meant that ‘the Commonwealth could expose European goods coming into Britain to competition which British goods entering the Common Market would not suffer’. Thus, Britain would gain most. The government was also reluctant to make concessions on agricultural goods because of the strong anti-EEC views of the National Farmers Union, whose support was vital to many Conservative MPs.