On 31 July 1961, Harold Macmillan stood in a rapt House of Commons finally to announce that the British government hoped to open enlargement negotiations with the EEC. The prime minister started on a positive note, describing the Community as a promoter of ‘unity and stability in Europe’ and ‘a factor in the struggle for freedom and progress throughout the world’. But in a portent of the highly conditional approach that the government would adopt in its discussions with the Six, Macmillan quickly turned his attention to three difficulties that British negotiators would encounter: accommodating Britain's EFTA partners in an enlarged Community, protecting British agriculture and, perhaps most significant, safeguarding Britain's historical and economic links with the Commonwealth. The negotiations, as the prime minister himself freely admitted, were thus likely to be ‘protracted’, would ‘inevitably be of a detailed and technical character’ and would necessarily cover ‘delicate and difficult matters’. Even then there was ‘no guarantee of success’. Only once the government had deemed the negotiations successfully to have been completed, and the Commonwealth had in turn been consulted on the adequacy of the terms offered, would the House then convene to decide whether Britain should indeed join the Community. Analysing the development of Labour and SD policy in the months prior to and following Macmillan's announcement, including the decision by the SD government to launch its own simultaneous bid, is the job of the first half of this chapter.

The hesitancy of Britain's approach was more than matched by the incertitude with which the Community itself responded to the application. It indeed took until September for Brussels even officially to acknowledge the British request. And another month would pass before talks between London and the Six got under way. Once consultations had begun, moreover, they were soon bogged down by a series of disagreements and controversies relating to relatively minor procedural issues, all of which seemed to indicate that little substantive progress would be made any time soon. While admittedly hopes of an agreement were raised during the spring and summer of 1962 when the Conservative government showed greater flexibility than it had previously on the possible terms of British membership, this proved to be no more than a false dawn.