THE TABLET July 20th, 1957. VOL. 210, No. 6113

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JULY 20th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Faith in Africa: The South African Bishops’ Pastoral The Anglo-American Inheritance : a Christian System of Law The Church in Nigeria: Catholic Life Among, the Ibos. By J. S. Smith Elections in the Saar : Uniting the Christian Vote. By Reginald Colby Communist Jargon : The Vocabulary of Assertion. By Christopher Hollis Apartheid : The Full Text of the South African Bishops’ Statement Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

A WIDER COMMON MARKET

A S the Continental countries discuss the British proposal for a Free Trade area in which agriculture will be protected by local tariffs, allowing Britain to retain the Commonwealth preferences but manufactures will circulate freely, they are not enthusiastic about it. All the countries participating in the Common market devote a much larger share of their energies to agriculture than do the people of Great Britain. The French, in particular, want a free market for foodstuffs. The countries which are making a common market also want it to give a real protection to the manufacturers and growers inside it, something parallel to that certainty American growers and manufacturers enjoy. Otherwise what is the point of saying that there is a market of a hundred and eighty million people? Since the market is there already for anyone who can surmount its diversified tariff structure. The Continentals are right to aim at something broad and simple, and we must understand that while they would like Britain to enter the market, since the British home market is the richest of the lot, most of the attraction goes if it is only a market for manufactured goods, to which large purchase tax is added, while as a market for foodstuffs it is protected in the interests of the Commonwealth.

The question must present itself whether a much larger common market could not be created, to include not only the Belgian Congo and French Equatorial Africa, but the British territories, and whether British economic statesmanship should not try to resolve the dilemma of “ the Commonwealth or Europe,” by combining the two, and foregoing a privileged position as far as tariffs are concerned in Australia and New Zealand. There are a great many other reasons besides tariffs which make British manufactures popular in those countries and these reasons would still operate. Much that these Dominions send, like the wool and the meat, would not encounter European competition, and these countries, if they lost something in the British home market, would gain free acress on equal terms to the much bigger European Market. If the same result were achieved, either by the natural growth of wealth and population inside the Commonwealth, or by one or more of these foreign nations voluntarily adhering to it, everyone would understand that there had been a great increase of economic advantage and opportunity. We can imagine the headlines in the Beaverbrook press. Why should not the same result be achieved by treaty, if the six-country common market is a good idea, is it not an even better idea if there are twelve or twenty countries making a common market together instead of only six ? What Australian or New Zealander would in fact be sorry if Great Britain was a country, not of fifty million, but of two hundred and fifty million people ? But if Europe takes the place of Britain, it is as though Britain had suddenly become five or six times the size.

It is along these lines that Whitehall should be thinking, not how to preserve a preferential tariff position in certain Commonwealth countries, and as a result playing such a cautious game of partial association with Europe as will not in fact secure to us any of the certainty of a mass market.

It would need no doubt some large concessions from the European countries towards the Commonwealth countries who could advance the “ infant industry ” argument for a measure of protection for their nascent industries in their own home markets. But nothing less would be practical politics. But it would be better for Britain to see how much of the Commonwealth would come with her into Europe than to lose the advantages of full participation for the sake of preferences which will mean less and less, and of trade with Commonwealth countries which will also, as witness the Australian-Japanese trade agreement, be all the time developing their own all round trading. The Psychological Difficulty

The prospects for British exports are good, always provided internal costs do not rise too fast and too high. Inflation is not confined to this country, but there are special psychological difficulties in coping with it here.

Insistence on a progressive standard of living goes, oddly enough, with a static conception of the individual’s place in society. This distinguishes this country from America and the Dominions. Americans may be said to be rich while they are poor; their imaginations have gone ahead of their circumstances, and they have identified themselves