Perfidious Albion revisited: Anglo-Australian trade relations and European economic integration

Abstract

...This paper explores the history of Anglo-Australian trade relations over the course of Britain’s uncertain and at times faltering path towards economic integration with Europe. Anxiety about being kept in the dark over British economic links with Europe dates back at least to the Chifley government. Despite new sources of tension in Anglo-Australian trade relations in the 1950s, Australia placed considerable faith in repeated British assurances that nothing would be done to diminish Commonwealth economic links. As such, John Crawford (1968: 268) would claim that Britain’s application to join the EEC in mid 1961 was a reversal of ‘all previous declarations of policy’ and that it came as ‘a major shock to the Australian public, even if ministers and officials had been less unaware of a possible change’. This reversal was seen as nothing less than an affront to Australian (and British) conceptions of fair play....