ABSTRACT
There were a number of reasons why the United Kingdom refused to join the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, and why it also declined the invitation to be a founder member of the European Community in 1958. One of these, already mentioned in Chapter 1, was the refusal of the Labour government of 1945 to involve itself in an organisation which was seen as based on the essentially capitalist principle of private ownership as the means of production, distribution and exchange. Another, which is discussed in Chapter 4, was an awareness of the incompatibility between the traditional way British agriculture was organised and the ambitions inspiring the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) set up by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
