「政策の空白」は存在したのか

―保守党から労働党への政権交代とイギリスのEEC政策，1963年１月―66年３月

抄録

This article aims to analyse changes in Britain's policy towards the EEC between January 1963, when the first British application for EEC membership was turned down, and March 1966, when Harold Wilson's Labour government won the general election for the second term and began seriously to contemplate the possibility of second application.
There have been a number of studies on the failure of the first UK application, and in recent years, several studies have been published on the Labour government's decision for the second application. However, no substantial historical account has been published yet on the attitudes of the Conservative governments of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home towards the EEC between January 1963 and October 1964, the period between General de Gaulle's veto and the British general election. It seems as if there were a vacuum of policy towards the EEC within the British government in this period. We do not know precisely how the British government reacted to the failure of the first application, how they reformulated their policy towards the EEC, and how this process of policy re-examination under the Conservative governments affected the Labour government's policy towards the EEC in their first term in the office.
In this article, the following points will be shown by examining archival materials in the National Archives, UK;
Soon after the breakdown of the negotiation for EEC membership, the Macmillan government came to the conclusion that in the long term there was no alternative other than seeking eventual EEC membership. They also concluded that there was no hope of a second try in the short term as long as General de Gaulle remained in power. The immediate objective for Britain became establishing and maintaining a link between the EEC through such existing devices as ministerial meetings of the WEU. After October 1963 when Douglas-Home became the Prime Minister, this policy remained largely unchanged and a serious study began at an official level of the long-term implication of EEC membership for Britain's future. This study was completed shortly before October 1964, reaffirming the desirability and inevitability of EEC membership.
Policy re-examination carried out under the Conservative governments thus set the tone of opinion among key officials in key departments of the Whitehall in favour of EEC membership. This official attitude was part at least of the reason why the Wilson government, after an initial period of hesitation over the issue of EEC membership when they toyed with ideas like reinvigorating the Commonwealth or a bridge-building between the EFTA and the EEC, came to the same conclusion as the previous governments and began serious consideration about how to achieve the long-term objective of EEC membership.