Fighting to live: Rita Ricketts takes issue with a recent interpretation of New Zealand's economic strategy in response to the United Kingdom's entry to the EEC in 1973.

• Author: Ricketts, Rita

New Zealand's legendary 'fight for survival' during Britain's attempts to join the European Economic Community's common market cropped up during its recent trade negotiations with the United Kingdom. British High Commissioner Laura Clarke cautioned that it was time to put to rest any thought that New Zealand had ever been abandoned by Britain. Recent scholarship has suggested that New Zealand played on this idea to gain the sympathy of the British public. But in 1961, during the United Kingdom's first attempt to join, rather than in the later period when its accession actually occurred (1973-77), the sense of abandonment in New Zealand had been very real. The Economist had warned that New Zealand might be made the sacrificial lamb.

In his recent doctoral thesis, Hamish McDougall examined the Anglo-New Zealand political relationship during this period. (1) He concluded, among other things, that the decision was neither a shock to New Zealand nor a betrayal. Does this interpretation match accounts given at the time? Heeding the advice the former head of New Zealand's foreign service Alister McIntosh gave to diplomatic trainees that 'it always pays to go back over the files', I take a look at a representative sample of notes made from official and unofficial papers of the time, and from oral interviews with key actors. The situation in 1961, when the United Kingdom first gave notice of its intention to apply for EEC membership, appears markedly different from those of Britain's second and third bids--in 1967 and 1970-73--when New Zealand had found sufficient alternative markets to cushion the blow. In 1961, New Zealand faced the prospect of losing unrestricted duty-free access for 89 per cent of its butter and 94 per cent of both its cheese and lamb/mutton. Fearing a loss of livelihood, New Zealanders felt shocked and betrayed.

Those in the know, however, had been forewarned. Even before the end of the Second World War, intelligence gathered by New Zealand, Australian and Canadian officials had led to speculation that the United Kingdom might seek some sort of post-war association with continental Europe. Later, they picked up first-hand indications during meetings of the Commonwealth liaison group. (2) By 1960 a British application to join the EEC seemed imminent. (3) Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd dropped broad hints in a speech in Parliament. Soon after, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was warmly received by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer on a visit to West Germany, where the subject of Commonwealth preferences was raised. Deputy foreign secretary Edward Heath's address to the Commonwealth Economic Committee and his talks with French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville and European commissioner Robert Marjolin were a give-away. In May 1961 Macmillan announced that the United Kingdom would join if there was a willingness on both sides. (4) George Laking, New Zealand's outgoing acting high commissioner in London, advised Prime Minister Keith Holyoake that the United Kingdom would do so for political reasons, and that 'neither Commonwealth nor United Kingdom agriculture will restrain her'. (5)

Laking had informed the British that New Zealand wanted to be consulted before any final decision was made. (6) Yet the New Zealand Cabinet agreed to support any move that cemented economic and political unity in Europe, provided there were safeguards for New Zealand. (7) The Guardian reported to its British readership that the New Zealand Federation of Labour was seeking such assurances, as was the leader of the Opposition, Walter Nash. But it knocked back the FOL's Fintan Patrick Walsh for saying that the United Kingdom was sacrificing New Zealand trade: 'Mr Walsh should not believe all that he reads in the Beaverbrook press'; the Daily Express had laid it down: it is 'Empire or Europe'. John Ormond, chairman of the Meat Producers' Board and a wealthy farmer, writing in the Dominion, urged the government to stand firm and oppose British entry if there were no terms for New Zealand. What he, and everyone else, wanted was a continuation of the status quo --unrestricted and duty-free access for New Zealand's exports into Britain. Yet officials had long warned that Britain was not an ever-lasting seller's market. (8) When the British wartime commandeer of New Zealand produce finally ended in 1954, imposing the need for New Zealand to compete on the British market, Frank Corner, deputy high commissioner in London, warned that that market was already 'being destroyed due agricultural subsidies, too much milk, too much butter and cheese and bang go New Zealand's prices'. (9)

Irrespective of its concern for the future, the New Zealand government had backed earlier moves by Britain to work with Europe--its (eventually aborted) collaboration with the Schuman Plan for a European Coal and Steel Community (1950) had...