ABSTRACT
The authors of the Report on the Brussels Negotiations of 1961-63 spent much time examining what mistakes we had made in those negotiations; and they concluded that there had been several. This was obviously prudent; and it had the conscious purpose of helping any future British negotiators who might have the good fortune to embark once again on the attempt to enter the Community. This time (while of course we are not quite in yet) so directly pragmatic a purpose can perhaps be disregarded. Nevertheless, it is I think right, in reflecting on the negotiations, to see if there were cases in which we made mistakes and, if so, how much it mattered. I am satisfied that we did not make many. I do not think that we tripped up seriously, if at all, over transitional periods and mechanisms (the acceptance of Community preference in full from the start was absolutely unavoidable); over sterling, tariff quotas, the European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom, or over sugar—though I will have something to say about the sugar settlement in the next chapter. We made a change of course in approaching a solution on the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, but I will not classify our first approach as a mistake. On the contrary, making it and then changing it helped things forward to an excellent result. This, of the major issues, leaves only New Zealand, Fisheries and Community finance on which I have some doubts.
