With regard to the broad question of policy on which the Committee of Secretaries will, presumably, be expected to advise – that is, whether we should take a favourable or an unfavourable attitude towards the idea of a European Free Trade Area – there are some general considerations which will need to be borne in mind.

If a free trade area is established in Western Europe with Britain participating and if we remain outside, we will be taking a further step towards enclosing ourselves within the confines of twenty-six counties of this island and towards shuttering all the windows that should open on the western world to which, by race, culture, history and tradition we belong. In that event, the political and economic atmosphere here would tend to become so stifling as to produce an epidemic of claustrophobia, with the immediate consequence of an increase in emigration to dimensions not known since the post-Famine years. We could, perhaps, close and bar the exits and lock our young people in, but can anyone seriously contemplate such action or expect it to succeed if it were attempted?