10 Local News
Leaving Mother: Reflecting on NZ's own Brexit-style breakup
A
midst the
continuing
brouhaha
concerning the
exact nature of Britain's
ongoing relationship with
the European Union, it's
easy to forget that to have a
Brexit, there first must be a
Brentrance.
Anyone who thinks
recent events have been
rowdy obviously wasn't
there for the hand-wringing
and panty-bunching that
went on in these parts
when Britain announced in
1961 that it planned to join
the European Economic
Community, the first step
on the highway to hell in
the form of European Union
membership. What could
possibly go wrong? Nothing,
as far as Britain was
concerned. It was an obvious
and economically sensible
move for our northern
cousins. Not so good for
us. EEC policy excluded
The Auckland Times | Issue 185| October 15, 2019
imports from primary
producers outside the
Continent: ie, us. Our Prime
Minister, Keith Holyoake,
told his British counterpart,
Harold Macmillan,
somewhat histrionically,
that if the UK went with
Europe, New Zealand
"would be ruined". He had
a point. In 1960, 53 per
cent of our exports went to
Britain, mainly in the form
of primary products: meat,
wool, dairy and timber.
To put things in context,
Macmillan told French
President Charles de Gaulle
in 1962 that New Zealand
was "an English farm in the
Pacific". And he was on our
side.
Whatever he thought
about the advisability
of having your larder a
hemisphere away, de Gaulle
vetoed British entry to the
Common Market, stalling
it for nearly 10 years. This
went down so well here that,
according to Paul Moon in
his book Turning Points,
toasts to de Gaulle were
drunk at the New Zealand
Association of Economists'
annual conferences for some
years. It took a decade, but
British wooing paid off
and the country became a
member of the EEC on 1
January 1973.
There had been much
negotiating over continuing
to allow trade with its former
colonies. New Zealand won
export quotas, which were
reduced gradually over
several years.
(Whether residual
rancour over this
concessionary shilly-
shallying lay behind
Europe's intransigence in
Brexit dealings nearly half a
century later may never be
known.)
At the time the first
announcement was made,
New Zealand had known
for some years that we were
overly reliant on exports to
Britain to keep our economy
afloat. But did we panic?
You bet we did.
The chairman of the
Meat Producers Board,
John Ormond, said it was
"difficult to understand those
people in Britain who want
to abandon the substance
of Commonwealth for
theoretical gain in Europe".
Not so hard to
understand many years later.
But eventually the
smelling salts worked and
we pulled ourselves together.
Accepting the inevitable,
we rose to the occasion
and, in the words of Te
Ara Encyclopedia of New
Zealand, "the next 10 years
was a trade policy coup.
A country of less
than three million people
negotiated concessions (in
the form of access quota
rights to the British and
European markets) from a
powerful group of countries
with a population of over
200 million."
We also sought out
other markets, diversified
our exports and did some
growing-up as a nation, not
having much choice about it.
It was a landmark in
the process of disengaging
ourselves from Britain.
The Mother Country was
spurning her offspring. This
adolescent country wouldn't
leave home, so Home left us.
Now, ironically, as the
Economist noted in 2017, a
post-Brexit Britain without
a guaranteed European
market would be in much
the same position as New
Zealand found itself back
in 1973. This article was
first published in the
September 2019 issue of
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