ABSTRACT
Well before our Ministerial meeting on 21-23 June with the Community, we had realised that we were getting into a dangerous position on fisheries and would have to change course. The Irish had advanced a completely different proposal, namely the maintenance of the status quo. The Norwegians had rejected the Commission's move towards 6-mile limits. We had not made it sufficiently clear in our proposals of 1 June that we would not be ready to allow the other candidates to achieve significantly better settlements on fisheries than we; yet this was the case. We were in danger of allowing the impression to grow up in the Community that they could reach an early and final settlement with us on relatively easy terms and then, later on, give the others more. The Community had been given, by our insistence on settling if possible in June, the impression that we were up against an imperative political deadline imposed by our own Parliamentary requirements. Even though our unconcern at failure to agree in June disproved this, they were still strongly inclined to believe that we should be forced, by the need for Parliament to take a 'decision of principle' at the end of October, to settle fisheries before then. And it was perfectly clear that the Norwegians, the Danes and the Irish would be only too happy to let us do so and themselves postpone their fisheries arrangements until much later. Our awareness, already in June, of our dilemma is shown by the fact that though at the Ministerial meeting of 21-23 June we stuck to our 6-mile proposal, we already clearly indicated our feeling that perhaps a status quo solution might prove the better plan.
