WI: UK never joins the EEC/EU?

So here's a PoD: Powell never makes his Rivers of Blood speech. As a result he is able to build up a more significant presence in the Conservative Party without being shunted away by the leadership. The Tories win the 1970 election, and Powell leads party opposition to joining Europe and succeeds in rallying them and the Labour left to the common cause. Harold Wilson eventually becomes PM again much like in our time and avoids antagonising the left by also avoiding membership. Thatcher choose not to join either. From that point onwards it's all butterflies, but generally speaking how might this chain of events have impacted Britain over the following years (including immediately post-1972)?
 
So here's a PoD: Powell never makes his Rivers of Blood speech. As a result he is able to build up a more significant presence in the Conservative Party without being shunted away by the leadership. The Tories win the 1970 election, and Powell leads party opposition to joining Europe and succeeds in rallying them and the Labour left to the common cause. Harold Wilson eventually becomes PM again much like in our time and avoids antagonising the left by also avoiding membership. Thatcher choose not to join either. From that point onwards it's all butterflies, but generally speaking how might this chain of events have impacted Britain over the following years (including immediately post-1972)?
The issue would not go to bed quite so easily as that. Unless there was a referendum that was decisively lost, then eventually one party would come round to the idea of European membership in response to the other becoming firmly against it. If everything went to a similar schedule, then a referendum would probably find its way into the Labour manifesto by the nineties, or failing that, a pledge just to go in without a vote, seeing as 1975 was what set the precedent in UK politics for referenda.
 
Perhaps an easier POD is that Maudling, rather than arch-Europhile Heath, becomes Tory leader in the mid-1960s.

The UK not joining the EEC has interesting butterflies on New Zealand and Australia, since in OTL they lost a major export market at the same time as the oil shock. You might well see New Zealand Labour getting re-elected in 1975.
 
No UK in the EEC probably means Ireland will have to stay out too. At the time the Irish economy was simply too dependent on the British to go on a solo run application.
 
Given that British GDP/capita in 1973 was $12,025 1990 US and those of Greece and Spain were $7655 and $7661 respectively, that is one heck of a fall to flippantly postulate and also the wrong mix. Spain did grow quite handily over time, but only reached ~80% of Britain by 2003. If everything went pearshaped for Britain and right for Spain then the lines of both could meet at some stage, but Greece is out of any realms of realism.

As to the original question, there might have been some rougher patches during the 1970s, but the big forces and patterns in European economics and trade may not be so easily altered; the baseline ideas for Thatcherism was around prior to entry into the EEC. Politically, it would mean a very different history of the modern Conservative Party.
 
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No UK in the EEC probably means Ireland will have to stay out too. At the time the Irish economy was simply too dependent on the British to go on a solo run application.

Which means no Structural investment, no CAP, no Social change "encouraged" by Europe, likely a significant reduction in FDI and remaining a relatively small ancillary economy of the UK.
 
Which means no Structural investment, no CAP, no Social change "encouraged" by Europe, likely a significant reduction in FDI and remaining a relatively small ancillary economy of the UK.

I actually think the social change was probably inevitable with the introduction of widespread television services but it will probably be much more fraught than in OTL where our politicians often tended to drift along passively. Here they'll be forced to act, whether trying to oppose social change or embrace it.
 
I actually think the social change was probably inevitable with the introduction of widespread television services but it will probably be much more fraught than in OTL where our politicians often tended to drift along passively. Here they'll be forced to act, whether trying to oppose social change or embrace it.

You could be right, though leaving aside the "big ticket" issues like SSM (though without the ECHR how long would that process have taken given that Norris lost his '83 challenge?) but areas like Employment Equality, Environmental laws etc where at times the EU directives have been the driving force.
 

samcster94

Banned
No UK in the EEC probably means Ireland will have to stay out too. At the time the Irish economy was simply too dependent on the British to go on a solo run application.
Quite true. Their currency was tied to the British pound iirc at the time.
 
Does this mean that the Scandinavian countries also stay out of the EEC ITTL also?

Denmark wouldn't probably join the EEC if the UK didn't. IOTL they even reversed their decision to join the EEC after de Gaulle had denied the UK's membership in the Community in 1961. Finnish integration to the EEC would also probably slow down somewhat as there wouldn't be pressure to sign a free trade agreement with the Community in 1973. I would also assume that the EFTA would become more prominent ITTL.
 
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