ABSTRACT
Britain’s second application for membership of the EEC in 1967 has been widely regarded as a failure: ‘another Wilsonian initiative had bitten the dust.’1
In 1961, when Harold Macmillan applied to join the European Community, the Foreign Office, press and public opinion had contemplated the possibility that the French President General de Gaulle would prevent British entry, but did not consider his veto to be inevitable. Britain’s membership application was launched ‘amid considerable (and fully justifiable) optimism’.2 The fact that it had taken de Gaulle eighteen months to deliver his negative verdict, and that negotiations between Britain and the Six had made considerable headway, gave succour to this judgement. Indeed, Edward Heath insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that de Gaulle vetoed in part because the negotiations were on the verge of success.3
