The Economist Editorial Stance - The UK's Entry Into The Common Market

The UK's Entry Into The Common Market

The editorial stance of The Economist on the UK's entry into the Common Market, like the stance of the New Statesman, gradually developed over time. Although it consistently took the position of a cooperative approach to Europe rather than an integrative approach, its initial opposition to European institutions gradually changed to acceptance over time. Once this change occurred, the magazine supported a decentralized and cooperative model for European institutions, and democratic accountability.

In part, the Economist's own editorial stance was a simple reflection of attitudes within the UK in general, and of its two major political parties through the middle to late 20th century (Conservative and Labour), resisting the surrender of sovereignty to a supranational institution for as long as possible, and attempting to preserve the UK's self-image of a world power.

Initially, in the years immediately after World War II, contributors to the magazine dismissed and rejected proposals for European institutions such as the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Defence Community, the European Economic Community, and European Atomic Energy Community.1 Up to the late 1950s, the magazine was pro-American.

However, in the period from 1957 to the 1980s, the magazine's editorial opinion articles gradually came to accept the idea of the UK as a member in the various European communities. Medrano divides this period, and the transition of the magazine's editorial stance, into three periods, which he labels "Denial", "Grudging Acceptance", and "Embrace". The New Statesman went through all three of these phases as well, although unlike the Economist, the New Statesman had not completed the third phase at the point of the UK's entry into the Common Market in the 1970s. The Economist had, and was supportive of UK membership during the initial negotiations for entry in the 1960s.

However, the magazine, whilst supportive of entry, did not conceal its continued editorial dislike of European institutions and pro-American stance. It optimistically predicted that the UK's entry would be able to rectify what it saw as a drift away from the United States by Europe. This is exemplified by one July 1962 editorial:

Doubtless some people in Paris, and some elsewhere on the Continent, at present see Britain as an American Trojan horse. In a sense it is, and quite rightly

—"Europe or Atlantis?", The Economist, 1962-07-14

The veto of the UK's entry, by Charles de Gaulle, in 1963 provoked an outraged response from the Economist, which in its editorials predicted the unravelling of European institutions. It also recommended an idea that it had supported in earlier years, that of an Atlantic Community, both economic and military.

Soon after the veto, the Economist's stance on the status of the UK as a dominant world power began to change. One milestone in this is an editorial published in May 1963:

The six and a half years of the attempt to come to terms with the European common market, since the free trade area was proposed in 1956, are the Great Divide of modern British history. For the time being, the attempt has failed; and British opinion is still far from wholly won over to the idea that the European communities qualify as a "good thing". But the effort alone has dealt a mortal blow to the Festival of Britain spirit, the happy pursuit of parochial self-esteem that still dulled the country's awareness of facts in the nineteen-fifties. In the great debate on the common market, the British had seen through some of their own shibboleths; this is something.

The grandest victim of the common market's cold douche has been the illusion that Britain was still a world power, an illusion fostered by a heroic war record and by a touching faith in the welfare state—so half-hearted, so incomplete—as a model for others to emulate, much as British parliamentary institutions were taken as models for the nineteenth century.

—"Breaking out from the Past", The Economist, 1963-05-18

In subsequent years, the Economist continued to support the idea of UK membership in the common market, and began to suggest that it was an economic necessity. It published weekly evaluations of the cost of both entry and of the European institutions, argued that membership of the EC was not incompatible with the Commonwealth of Nations, and discussed industrial and technological advantages that could be obtained as a result of membership. One change, however, was that it no longer pursued the idea of radically transforming the Community from within once the UK was a member, but rather suggested that the UK accept the Community as it already was.

Its reaction to de Gaulle's second veto of UK membership, in 1967, thus differed from its reaction in 1964. Rather than responding with anger and outrage as it had done before, its reaction was introspective and resigned. The magazine no longer argued defiantly on the basis of the UK as a world power, but rather portrayed the UK as too small to stand alone, and thus encouraged resolve and perseverance with entry negotiations. This is exemplified by one October 1967 article:

The British have father to go, less on specific issues of policy than in attitudes. For most of this century it has been natural for Englishmen to think of themselves as part of the English-speaking world, of which the United States has become the visible leader. Only now are they beginning in any number to think of themselves as Europeans as well.

—"And Now", The Economist, 1967-10-14

The magazine took to minimalising the economic importance of the Commonwealth in its editorials, calling into question the interpretation of statistical data by those who had an emotional investment in the self-image of the UK as one-time head of an Empire:

Why is this sort of clamor set up whenever any new hope of entering the EEC dawns? The truth is that there are some people in Britain who are bitterly opposed to union with Europe on emotional grounds, or on the grounds of what they call the "bureaucratic monster" at Brussels and in that it interferes with Britons' independence to run their own affairs. Such people are to be found in the economics profession, politics, and the civil service; and this quite clearly does affect their sense of statistical balance.

—"Oh Moo", The Economist, 1969-07-12

It pointed to the civil service as one of the ways in which parliamentary sovereignty, something that the opponents of entry argued would be eroded by membership, had already been eroded. Whilst it no longer advocated radical transformation from within, it observed that the UK would have a significant voice within the EC, by virtue of its size. Medrano equates the magazine's change in editorial stance, immediately before and after the UK's final success in gaining membership, to a "religious conversion". It made economic arguments for membership, on the grounds of growing globalization of markets, political arguments based upon the idea of holding the government of West Germany (which was, at the time, the SPD with its then policy of Ostpolitik) in check, and emotional arguments that played on the British antipathy towards the French by presenting its own federalist view of European communities as an anti-French alternative to the French government's proposals of intergovernmental union.