The systems of proportional representation which so many of these countries have adopted have allowed these tactics to succeed all the more, leading to weak governments and a bewildering multiplicity of parties. All this risks bringing democracy into discredit. If Eastern European countries which retain some links with a pre-communist past, and have some sort of middle class on which to draw, falter on the path to reform, how will the leaders of the countries of the former Soviet Union dare to proceed further upon it?
We can help by allowing them free access to our markets. I am delighted that Association agreements have been signed between the European Community and several of these countries. I would like speedy action to include the others in similar arrangements. But ten years is too long to wait before the restrictions on trade are removed. And I would like to see these countries offered full membership of the European Community rapidly.
Above all we must offer these countries greater security. Russian troops are still stationed on Polish territory. Moreover, it is understandable that the Central and Eastern European countries are alarmed at what conflict in the old USSR and the old Yugoslavia may portend. Although I recognize that the North Atlantic Cooperation Council has been formed with a view to this, I still feel that the European ex-communist countries are entitled to that greater degree of reassurance which a separate closer relationship with NATO would bring.
But, Mr Chairman, most of the threats to Europe’s and the West’s interests no longer come from this continent. I believe — and I have been urging this on NATO members since 1990 — that the Americans and Europeans ought to be able to deploy our forces under NATO outside the area for which the present North Atlantic Treaty allows. It is impossible to know where the danger may next come. But two considerations should make us alive to real risks to our security.
First, the break-up of the Soviet Union has led to large numbers of advanced weapons becoming available to would-be purchasers at knockdown prices: it would be foolish to imagine that these will not, some of them, fall into the worst possible hands.
Second, Europe cannot ignore its dependence for oil on the Middle East. Saddam Hussein is still in power. Fundamentalism is as strong as ever. Old scores are still unsettled. We must beware. And we must widen our ability to defend our interests and be prepared to act when necessary.
Finally, the European Community must come to recognize its place in what is called the New World Order.
The ending of the Cold War has meant that the international institutions created in the post-war years — the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT — can work much more effectively. This means that the role for the Community is inevitably circumscribed. Within Europe, a wider role for NATO and the CSCE should also be reflected in more modest ambitions for the Community’s diplomacy. In Yugoslavia, the Community has shown itself incapable of dealing effectively with security questions. Outside Europe, GATT with its mandate to reduce trade barriers should be the body that establishes the rules of the game in trade. The Community must learn to live within those rules. All in all, the Community must be prepared to fit in with the new internationalism, not supplant it.
Mr Chairman, I end as I began — with architecture. The Hague is a splendid capital, and how much we should admire the Dutch for keeping it together so well, as they have done with so many other of their towns. The Mauritshuis is a testimony to the genius which they showed. It was here, and in Amsterdam, that so much of the modern world was invented in the long Dutch fight for freedom.
Dutch architecture has its own unmistakable elegance and durability — it was copied all around the north European world, from Wick in northern Scotland to Tallinn in Estonia. Some architecture does last. Other architecture does not. Let us make sure that we build a Europe as splendid and lasting as the Mauritshuis, rather than one as shabby and ephemeral as the Berlaymont.
APPENDIX II
Political Chronology 1955–1979
1955
5 Apriclass="underline" Churchill resigned as Prime Minister; succeeded by Eden
26 May: General election: Conservative majority sixty
1956
26 July: Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal
20 October: Israel invaded Sinai
30 October: Joint Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt and Israel; Soviet troops invaded Hungary
5 November: British and French landings at Port Said; intervention aborted two days later under US pressure
1957
9 January: Eden resigned as Prime Minister; Macmillan succeeded him
25 March: Treaty of Rome signed, establishing EEC
25 July: Macmillan: ‘Most of our people have never had it so good’
19 September: Thorneycroft increased Bank Rate from 5 to 7 per cent
1958
6 January: Treasury Ministers (Thorneycroft, Powell and Birch) resigned from the Government over public expenditure plans; Macmillan left the following day for a Commonwealth tour, describing the resignations as ‘little local difficulties’
3 July: Credit squeeze relaxed
31 August: Notting Hill and Nottingham riots
1959
7 Apriclass="underline" Budget: 9d reduction in income tax
8 October: General election: Conservative majority 100; MT first elected MP for Finchley
28 November: Gaitskell called for reform of Clause IV of Labour’s constitution — forced to retreat the following year
1960
3 February: Macmillan in South Africa: ‘a wind of change is blowing through the continent’
5 February: MT’s maiden speech February-October Parliamentary passage of MT’s Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill
25 July: Deflationary emergency Budget; ‘Pay Pause’ for Government employees
31 July: Macmillan announced beginning of negotiations for Britain to join EEC
13 August: East Germany sealed the border with West Berlin; Berlin Wall begun
9 October: Reshuffle: MT appointed to her first Government post — Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance
1962
14 March: Orpington by-election: Liberals took Conservative seat, overturning a majority of 14,760
13 July: ‘Night of the Long Knives’ — seven of twenty-one Cabinet ministers fired by Macmillan
October: Cuban missile crisis
November: Vassall affair
21 December: US agreement to sell Britain Polaris
1963
14 January: De Gaulle rejected first British application to join the EEC
14 February: Harold Wilson elected Labour Leader following death of Hugh Gaitskell
4 June: Profumo resigned
1 July: Philby named as ‘the third man’
10 October: Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister during Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool