ABSTRACT
Whatever their views of the European common market — from Eden's benign approval of an arrangement that was only for others, through Butler's disinvolved distaste for the idea, through Thorneycroft's hostility to a concept which he saw as a step away from his free trade hopes for Britain and Europe, to Macmillan's conviction that the arrangement was so inimical to Britain's position in Europe that it should be resisted — not one minister was in favour of British membership in a European common market. Membership appeared to each of them as the death of the global strategy which they all, with considerable differences of emphasis, supported. They had been advised that exclusion from the common market would weaken Britain's economic position. Some of them believed that the political outcome of not joining would be a future German domination of Europe. But these dangers seemed outweighed by the harmful impact which they believed that membership would have on the one-world policy and particularly by positive discrimination against Commonwealth exports.
