ABSTRACT
Harold Wilson commented regularly on the subject of Europe before he became leader of the Labour Party. When discussions on the free trade area were under way in the late 1950s, he asked, ‘Can we afford to stay out?’ The answer was ‘I am sure the answer is that we cannot’, but he followed it later with ‘There is no suggestion that Britain should join the Common Market.’ These comments suggest that Wilson was not doctrinaire, but weighed up the costs and benefits and made his decisions accordingly. This pattern would continue over the following years. In the House of Commons debate on the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) in 1959, he noted the distinction between the ‘original dreamers and idealists’ who had thought up the Community and the ‘highly realistic ideas’ that they had produced to implement the dreams. Whilst he still resisted entry into the Community, he acknowledged that there was ‘a strong desire for a really effective and intimate basis of association between Great Britain and Scandinavian countries on the other hand, and the community of Common Market countries on the other’. He was also worried that Western Europe would attract investment and that Britain would become a scientific backwater. The technological potential of European integration interested Wilson for years as a rationale for membership and as a tool to assist entry.
