Editing Harold Macmillan (section)

====Europe====
Macmillan worked with states outside the [[European Communities]] (EC) to form the [[European Free Trade Association]] (EFTA), which from 3 May 1960 established a free-trade area. As the EC proved to be an economic success, membership of the EC started to look more attractive compared to the EFTA.<ref name="Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178">Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178</ref> A report from Sir Frank Lee of the Treasury in April 1960 predicated that the three major power blocs in the decades to come would be those headed by the United States, the Soviet Union and the EC, and argued to avoid isolation Britain would to have decisively associate itself with one of the power blocs.<ref name="Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178"/> Macmillan wrote in his diary about his decision to apply to join the EC: "Shall we be caught between a hostile (or at least less and less friendly) America and a boastful, powerful '[[Carolingian Empire|Empire of Charlemagne]]'-now under French, but later bound to come under German control?...It's a grim choice".<ref name="Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178"/>

Through Macmillan had decided upon joining the EC in 1960, he waited until July 1961 to formally make the application, for he feared the reaction of the Conservative Party backbenchers, the farmers' lobby and the populist newspaper chain owned by the right-wing Canadian millionaire [[Lord Beaverbrook]], who saw Britain joining the EC as a betrayal of the British empire.<ref name="Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178"/> As expected, the Beaverbrook newspapers whose readers tended to vote Conservative offered up ferocious criticism of Macmillan's application to join the EC, accusing him of betrayal. Negotiations to join the EC were complicated by Macmillan's desire to allow Britain to continue its traditional policy of importing food from the Commonwealth nations of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, which led the EC nations, especially France, to accuse Britain of negotiating in bad faith.<ref name="Goodlad & Pearce, 2013 p.178"/>

Macmillan also saw the value of rapprochement with the EC, to which his government sought belated entry, but Britain's application was vetoed by French president [[Charles de Gaulle]] on 29 January 1963. De Gaulle was always strongly opposed to British entry for many reasons. He sensed the British were inevitably closely linked to the Americans. He saw the European Communities as a continental arrangement primarily between France and Germany, and felt that if Britain joined, France's role would diminish.<ref>George Wilkes, ''Britain's failure to enter the European community 1961–63: the enlargement negotiations and crises in European, Atlantic and Commonwealth relations'' (1997) [https://books.google.com/books?id=5JRGARSWO9EC&dq=macmillan+degaulle+nuclear+%22european+community%22&pg=PA63] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160526233039/https://books.google.com/books?id=5JRGARSWO9EC&pg=PA63&dq=macmillan+degaulle+nuclear+%22european+community%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cW0sT8akLovSiALO8-TECg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA|date=26 May 2016}} p. 63 online</ref>{{sfn|Lamb|1995|pp=164–65, Chapters 14 and 15}}