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THE TABLET, July 18th, 1959. VOL. 213, No 621T.

TH E TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

FOUNDED IN 1840

P ro Ecclesia Dei, P ro Regina e t Palria

JULY 18th 1959

NINEPENCE

African Constitutions : The Capricorn Society’s Suggestion.

The Cliurcll and the Africans : The Mind and the Mass. By Paul Foster, O.P. Under President de Valera: A Letter from Dublin. By Geoffrey Hand. Trills and Frills : At the Eisteddfod. By Madeau Stewart. Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews

JUSTIFIED DANEGELD

Progress has been made among the countries which are sometimes called the Outer Seven tyid sometimes the Stockholm Group, who meet on July 20th to see if they can carry their free trade policies among themselves. They have the encouragement of the Anglo-Danish Agreement, which Mr. Heathcote Amory explained to the House on Thursday of last week—not without sustained, and, it would seem, justified, complaint that the terms of the agreement had already been communicated to Conservative Members at a party meeting upstairs, so that the Government should not be assailed from its own benches. The Danes are to receive important concessions on bacon, pork, luncheon-meat, canned cream, and blue veined cheese, all commodities of great interest to the Danish farmers, of little interest to Commonwealth exporters, and of considerable interest to the home farmer in this country. The home farmer is promised that he shall not suffer, and the Chancellor approved when Sir John Duncan remarked that for the last three years there has been a gentleman’s agreement between the two countries to limit the amount of Danish bacon imports, and that he hoped this voluntary limitation would continue. The consuming public should get the advantage of cheaper Danish bacon, but will pay for it as tax-payers, because the Government will have to find more to maintain the guaranteed price to home farmers.

The agreement is important because hitherto the Government has been very sticky about concessions for European agricultural products, and has stone-walled behind the home farmer and the Commonwealth producer, whenever the French or the Dutch have tried to press for concessions. Much of the unpopularity on the mainland of the original British proposal for a Free Trade Area was because we wanted it to be free trade in manufactures, leaving agriculture out of account. It is as a market for foods of various kinds that Great Britain is unique. Fifty million people, spending pounds a week per household on food and importing nearly half what they consume, is an immense market, to make the eyes of European farmers glisten. These concessions have been made to the Danes to keep the Outer Seven in being, for the Danish trade with Germany is so important that sustained Danish adhesion to the Seven could not be taken for granted. The concession may not sound very much. The bacon duty that is being removed is only ten per cent, and it is being removed half in a year’s time and half in two years’ time. The ten per cent tariff on Danish blue cheese will be abolished altogether next July. The Exchequer will lose £6£m. in duty, as well as having to bridge a wider gap between market prices and guaranteed prices for the home farmer. But, after many months of frustration, Mr. Maudling can say he has brought the Outer Seven on to the map. and this can be useful to British manufacturers in competition with the Germans in Scandinavian markets.

But the real prize in view is much bigger. It is a progressive Free Trade Area, to be formed out of both the Six and Seven. If this happens, everything will have turned out for the best, for the Common Market Six will retain the political possibilities which would never have been included in the Rome Treaties if Britain had been an original member. The Common Market can move forward towards political union, while the whole of Europe moves forward towards a Customs Union: for it must be recognised that the participating countries will have to keep the same tariffs towards the non-European world. In the end this will mean the disappearance of imperial preferences, but gradually, and accompanied by increasing Commonwealth trade with what will become the greatest market in the world for numbers, and, at the least, the second richest in purchasing power. Resuming at Geneva

Mr. Herter went to Geneva a day early in order to meet the Italian Foreign Minister (and ex-Premier) Signor Pella. This is instead of a more formal meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers such as had been suggested during General de Gaulle’s Italian visit, when the French expressed the desire to bring the Italians at least partially into-the talks. I t is-easy jto understand why this t