The Constellations and Campaign

5.1.1 Developments in the Parties and Storting 1970-1972

In 1961, the Labour party was re-elected to office, and the Gerhardsen government was therefore in charge of the first EEC membership application, which was submitted to Brussels on 2 May 1962. The 1965 election, however, produced the second non-socialist government since the war. This government, which consisted of the Conservatives, CDP, LP and CP and was led by Prime Minister (PM) Per Borten (from the CP), survived the 1967 application, the 1970 Storting vote and much of the

negotiating phase in the 1970s. As in the 1967 Storting vote on EEC negotiations (see Table 5.1 below), the majority of the governing parties’ MPs voted in favour of negotiations in June 1970. Among the 17 dissenters were only seven of the 20 Centre MPs¹⁰² and three of the 14 CDP MPs. The remaining seven were Labour MPs.

Despite increasing opposition to the EC in the party already in the early 1970s, the CP supported membership negotiations to keep the coalition together (Madsen 2001;

Archer and Sogner 1998), and presumably, loyalty to the coalition played a part also to Eurosceptic LP and CDP MPs when they cast their votes in 1970.

Table 5.1 Norwegian MPs against EC membership by party

Party

Source: Gleditsch and Hellevik (1977: 312-4). The 1970 and 1971 data are from parliamentary votes, the 1972 data are based on information gathered by Gleditsch and Hellevik from the mass media and other sources.

However, keeping the coalition together was to prove to be a real struggle. The membership negotiations with the EC were resumed on 30 June 1970 (Preston 1997:

11), but in March 1971, almost mid-way through the negotiations, the Borten government resigned because of internal disagreement on the issue. The catalyst for the resignation was a controversy about the PM’s disclosure of secret negotiation documents to Folkebevegelsen’s leader, Arne Haugestad.¹⁰⁶ A new minority Labour

Archer and Sogner (1998: 33) argue that the remaining 14 CP MPs, who were also opposed to membership, “hoped to achieve this end [non­membership] without destroying the coalition”.

103 The SPP lost Storting representation in the 1969 election, but regained representation when Labour MP Arne Kielland joined the SPP in 1972.

104 The 1972 figures include the MPs from the Liberal People’s Party (Det Nye Folkeparti), the splinter party from the LP.

105 132 MPs backed the decision to apply (Archer 2005: 46), i.e. one MP abstained.

106 Because of the divisions between the coalition partners on matters arising in Brussels, particularly between the progressively Eurosceptic/anti­market CP and the pro­EC Conservatives, the split was

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government, headed by Trygve Bratteli, assumed office and took over the negotiation reins in Brussels, as well as the main responsibility of convincing the public to vote “yes” in the referendum. Although the Labour government’s leadership and negotiating team managed to sell most of the outcomes in Brussels as victories or good compromises, in January 1972, the Norwegian Fisheries Minister, Knut Hoem, resigned and caused the government and “yes” camp considerable embarrassment and harm. He resigned because he could not accept the accession agreement on fisheries policy (Allen 1979).¹⁰⁷ The agreement was signed on 22 January 1972.

The Labour Party decided to refrain from taking a stand on membership until after the negotiations were completed,¹⁰⁸ and in effect, the “yes” campaign, conducted by the Labour government, the Conservatives, the business and industry organisations and the trade union leadership, did not commence until the membership negotiations were completed in January 1972. In contrast, the “no” campaign, consisting of the “no” parties from the 1961-1963 campaign, the ad hoc organizations (see below) and the primary industry’s main interest organizations, started in early 1970. In other words, the “no” campaign had got a head start.

5.1.2 Non-Parliamentary Opposition

In the 1960s, “no” movements like “Appeal against the Common Market – The 143”¹⁰⁹ and “the Information Committee” were founded.¹¹⁰ The “no” organizations

inevitable. By some of his coalition partners, Borten was accused of having planned to break the negotiation line from the start (Madsen 2001).

107 Norway was allowed to retain a 6 mile exclusive fishing belt for 10 years after accession.

Originally, “[t]he fishermen wanted to keep their exclusive fishing limit and their producer organisations’ considerable rights under Norwegian law, including compulsory membership, the handling of all sales of landed fish, and price and market regulating powers” (Allen 1979: 120).

108 This was part of Labour’s tactic of not disturbing the upward trend in support that the party experienced in 1970­1971 (Lie 1972).

109 “The 143” referred to the number of petitioners in the early stages of the founding of the organization. The newspaper appeal of this group was also included in the documentary analysis in Chapter Four.

110 Both of these were founded in 1962. In addition to these, there were a few regional ac hoc organizations, namely the “Oppland’s Committee”, which was founded in January 1963 and was more or less a regional wing of the Information Committee; “Bergen’s Committee”, which was a Bergen­

based independent “no” movement particularly active during the 1961­1963 debate; and the “West

made their mark on the debate in the early 1960s, but grassroots opposition was more anonymous in the 1967 debate. Archer and Sogner (1998: 32) put this down to security issues taking up centre stage in 1967, but it is also important to take the “De Gaulle effect” into account when considering the reasons why the 1967 debate could not match the ferocity of its predecessor or its successor. Frøland (1998: 6), for example, argues that the 1967 parliamentary vote is irrelevant because the Storting anticipated the French veto.

According to Bjørklund (1982), it was only after the 1969 summit in the Hague and the renewed British application that mobilization of non-parliamentary Norwegian opposition to the EC started for real. Unlike in the 1960s, the 1970s grassroots opposition to the EC was very well-organized. On 28 August 1970, “the Contact Committee”, an organization made up by all the anti-EC youth wings of the political parties,¹¹¹ and Folkebevegelsen were formed (Bjørklund 1982: 106). Other “no”

organizations founded in the early 1970s were Arbeiderbevegelsens informasjonskomité mot norsk medlemskap i EF (the Labour Party’s Information Committee against Norwegian membership of the EC, AIK for short), “the Youth Front against the EEC”, “the Women’s Movement against the EEC” and AKMED, the latter a left-wing anti-EC organization set up to counter Folkebevegelsen. The other three, however, were established to increase the appeal and impact of the “no” camp and drew most of their financial resources from Folkebevegelsen. Folkebevegelsen, led by Supreme Court advocate, Arne Haugestad, brought together representatives from the various anti-EC movements from the previous decade and opened up to cooperation with the six anti-EC political youth wings. The organization’s primary sources of funding were the agricultural interest organizations, especially the milk producers’

organizations. Conscious efforts were made by the EC opponents to establish a broad cross-political cooperation structure in the fight against the EC; by August 1970, the anti-EC activists managed to unite behind a policy preference of a joint

Country’s committee”, founded in the autumn of 1967 (just after the second application had been submitted to Brussels) by editor and pietist, Arthur Berg (Bjørklund 1982).

111 This constituted all the political parties’ youth wings, except the Young Conservatives, who, in 1970, were the only youth wings to support EC membership for Norway.

Nordic trade agreement with the EC,¹¹² and, as in 1962 and 1967, the main “no”

argument was that of sovereignty (Bjørklund 1982, 1997a), as it was easiest to unite behind.

5.1.3 A Note on the Differences between 1960s and 1970s Euroscepticism

Despite striking similarities in the constellations for and against membership, there are also significant differences between the 1960s and early 1970s periods of Euroscepticism. One of the most important differences is that, after 1970, the membership application was much more real; there was no longer a Charles de Gaulle in the EC who could come to the sceptics’ rescue and veto accession. In addition, the EC’s confirmation of its plans to move towards a genuine economic and monetary union at the 1969 Hague summit served to make the issue much more urgent in many people’s minds (e.g. Madsen 2001: 120). This was particularly the case in the CP and the CDP,¹¹³ where in 1967 many had expressed support for negotiations out of loyalty to the government they were part of, despite being generally sceptical about membership (Solhjell 2008; Madsen 2001). The more reticent opposition of the 1960s as a result of the French vetoes is further illustrated by Hanssen and Sandegren’s conclusions in 1969. They write:

“The Centre Party still has some reservations. In fact, one may say that the idea of European integration has gained full acceptance in the mind of the individual and the party. This has come somewhat belatedly, and could be open to criticism, since the idea no longer presents serious danger of being realized […]”. (p. 59)

After December 1969, it was to become very clear that this was indeed open to criticism. That “the idea of European integration” had “gained full acceptance”

within the CP in the 1970s could not be further from the truth. Nevertheless, the

112 However, the trade agreement preference was a conflict issue within the organization. At the annual conference in 1971, there was heated debate about leaving the trade agreement out of the organization’s mission statement.

113 and potentially also the LP, although the reviewed literature reveals little about the conflicts within the LP.

quote illustrates that when an issue does not “present serious danger of being realized”, opposition to it may appear deceptively modest. The non-socialist government managed to survive the 1967 debate, thanks to De Gaulle’s veto, but in 1970-71 it became increasingly difficult for the coalition parties to find compromises on EC issues. The affair which ended in the Borten government’s resignation on 2 March 1971 was an inevitable consequence of a crystallization of CP opposition to EC membership in the early 1970s.¹¹⁴

A second element that sets 1960s Euroscepticism apart from 1970s Euroscepticism is that in 1961, EC membership was a fresh issue, one that had never been discussed and examined in detail before. When the issue came up again in 1969/70, all the parties in the Storting had a history on the issue, and people and parties had had more time to process what membership would entail for Norway.¹¹⁵ The CDP’s Odd Jostein Sæter, explains¹¹⁶ that in principle, the CDP was positive towards international cooperation, and this attitude resulted in support for clarifications/negotiations. However,

“when this became more pressing and [something] concrete which one had to take a stand on… and one went into what the realities and the consequences were, then one started to tighten the conditions and criteria for being able to say that a negotiation solution would be satisfactory.”

Moreover, in the 1960s, the issue was primarily treated as a market issue. Frøland (1998: 14), for example, finds that government speeches and public papers from the first debate “reveal a tendency to reduce the political implications of membership.

Arguments state it was primarily a framework for economic co-operation and it would in practice work as an intergovernmental machinery”. But when the issue resurfaced at the turn of the decade, anti-EC commentators were, to a much greater

114 and, to a lesser extent, opposition in the CDP and LP.

115 For example, the cabinet committee set up to investigate Norway’s problems with entering the EEC produced reports on this, the first of which was published in February 1967 (Hanssen and Sandegren 1969).

116 Interview with the author, Oslo, 22 September 2010.

extent than before, arguing that EC membership would have far-reaching effects on other areas of integration outside the economic sphere. This shift is illustrated by a 1970 quote from the documentary analysis:

“There are still many people in Norway who walk around thinking that membership of the EEC is just a question of a kind of economic contract which Norway can benefit from. This misunderstanding is maintained by some who still talk about “the market issue”. [...] We now have a completely new situation seen in relation to the popular arguments which were brought up the last time the issue was up for discussion.”

(Professor Frisch 10/12/70) Additionally, in the early 60s, it was less clear in what direction the EEC would develop (Frøland 1998). In 1961, many sceptics, like the LP MP Gunnar Garbo, were in favour of negotiations, thinking that the cooperation would be limited to the economic sphere and/or “believing that Norway will obtain the understanding needed of those provisions which are of particular importance to us, so that we can get lasting security for our most important interests” (Garbo 05/02/72). Dag Seierstad’s recollection of the debate in the early 1960s also confirms that “there were no one then who knew how far-reaching membership would be”.¹¹⁷ But in the 1970s, with the EC having put the CAP¹¹⁸ and the CFP firmly in place and plans for a common currency announced, this “optimism” was set back. Frøland’s (1998) interpretation, that the Labour government’s 1962 and the non-socialist coalition’s 1967 positions on EEC membership were characterized by policy confusion, that is, a lack of clear preferences, supports this contention; in the 1970s, in contrast, positions on the EC quickly firmed up.

117 Interview with the author, Oslo, 18 September 2009.

Optimism about the Norwegian agricultural sector’s survival with full EEC membership was arguably thwarted as early as 14 January 1962, when the EEC agreed on the key principles for the CAP. After it became clear that farmers would face substantial income cuts under the CAP, agricultural interest organizations and the CP increasingly voiced opposition to EEC membership (Riste 1997, cited by Frøland 1998: 14).

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The increased mobilization of the general public in the debate in the 1970s is a third difference between the 1960s and 1970s – a corollary of the first and second points, is.

The intensity of the campaigning, the size/number of ad hoc organizations and the fierceness of the newspaper debates are all elements of the period which cannot be compared with the 1960s. Similarly, the massive drop in the number of undecided respondents in opinion polls from 1971 to 1972 is unparalleled by the numbers observed in the 1960s. In 1961-3, the average number of undecided respondents in polls was 38 percent (Hanssen and Sandegren 1969: 56), in 1971, it was 33, in the first half of 1972, it was 28, and in the second half, the average was only 14 percent (Hellevik and Gleditsch 1973: 227).¹¹⁹