Tony Connelly: Britain’s tortured relationship with Europe – RTE.ie

Updated / Saturday, 25 Feb 2017 17:05

In the first of a three-part series, RT Europe Editor Tony Connelly examines Britain's complicated history with Europe.

"The British Empire was built by power, and sustained by power," the Daily Mail declared on 16 June 1961. But, the next lines are shocking in their frankness: "When that power was removed the edifice began to crumble."

The Mail continued its sobering analysis. Since World War II Britains empire had collapsed. It was dwarfed by America and Russia. It had been humiliated in the Suez Crisis. The only way for Britain to retrieve its greatness was to join "Europe".

"Britain is essentially a European country. She has derived her strength from Europe, and the Empire was built up through her assertion of power on the Continent."

How surreal to read those words today given the Mails chest-thumping nationalism.

As Britain brutally reverses the sentiment expressed all those years ago, the psycho-drama of her post-war attitude to Europe, as it played out over seven decades, seems bafflingly contrary to the current zeitgeist, yet at the same time all too familiar.

From 1945 until the late 1980s, it wasthe Conservatives who were the champions of Britain in Europe, not Labour. The great Tory statesmen who played their part in the drama Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath more or less saw Europe as Britains only hope of retaining influence in a rapidly changing world.

Anti-Europeans convinced themselves that Britain was the unbound, free-trading Titan, leading the world to a civilised future. She enjoyed a sacred bond with the US, and she presided over the Commonwealth.

A number of books have explored Britains tortured relationship with Europe. The standout has been This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, by the late Guardian political journalist Hugo Young.

But a new book explores in greater details the internal contradiction in Britains political class.

Continental Drift: Britain and Europe from the End of Empire to the Rise of Euroscepticism, is an exhaustive study by Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, a British-born historian and current American diplomat, of how the UK agonised its way into the EEC in 1973, and then tumbled out of the EU 43 years later.

Grob-Fitzgibbon, who has written works on Ireland during World War II and the Irish War of Independence, depicts a political class shocked into re-assessing its role at the end of the war, then finding itself frantically trying to weigh up its best course of action as, one by one, the certitudes of the nations storied majesty fell away: its empire was faltering, the six founding members of the European Community were beginning to forge a future that looked economically stronger, and the bipolar struggle of the Cold War was rapidly dwarfing Britains importance on the world stage.

One well worn trope, oft repeated since the Brexit referendum, is that whereas the rest of Europe has an emotional, romantic attachment to the EU, Britains has always been hard-headed and transactional.

Grob-Fitzgibbon has trawled a thicket of diaries, correspondence, primary and secondary sources in order to arrive at a perhaps more pungent conclusion: Britains attitude to Europe has been neither emotional, nor pragmatic, but neurotic.

Rather like an insecure lothario, Britain between 1945 and 1970, when its third and successful bid to join "Europe" got under way, was, having been spurned by the Prom Queen, fretfully casting about for a plain Jane terrified that it would be left on the shelf.

An imperial superpower at the turn of the 20th Century, Britain was victorious at the end of World War II, with a strong sense of its own defiance and heroism.

In This Blessed Plot Hugo Young portrays the unquestioning sense of Britains transcendent greatness.

This illusion permeated official and literary Britain; even a writer like George Orwell, who was viscerally critical of Britains class-ridden society, remained convinced that his country would claim a great role in the world.

"Victory," wrote Young, "confirmed a good many things that the country wanted to know about itself. The expression of it of the assurance it supplied to an idea of nation that long preceded it reached beyond economists, generals and politicians.

"If you look at what British writers were saying about England before and after the war, you read for the most part a seamless paean to the virtues of the nations strength and identity."

And yet Britains economy was in ruins and it was hopelessly in debt. It was only those at civil service level who recognised this and who dared speak a word of warning.

One was Sir Henry Tizard, chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence. In a memo he wrote: "We are not a Great Power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation."

Both the physical destruction of Britains cities, and the benighted European landscape had, in fact, weighed heavily on Winston Churchill.

To the East was emerging a baleful Soviet Union, and to the West the capitalist United States. Nevertheless, Churchill still saw Britain as the natural leader of Western Europe and had done so as far back as 1938, when he posited the notion of a "United States of Europe".

Churchill had intellectually conflated the traditions of empire and Christian heritage as giving Europe a world "civilising" role.

Remove the ancient irrational hatreds, and the "tangled growth and network of tariff barriers designed to restrict trade and production", he wrote, and a new Europe could be born.

Britains place in it was ambiguous, however.

Churchill saw Britons as of Europe, and apart from it. The country had an extra-European responsibility as the head of a huge empire.

The two werent mutually exclusive; indeed Britains colonies, and those of France, could provide the manpower, resources and genius to help Europe on its way, and to rival the US and USSR in the balance of power.

Britain had to lead both the Empireand Europe. Furthermore, with America threatening to taper off economic support to Europe, a united Europe led by Britain was the only way to counter the rising Soviet threat.

This was the message that Churchill as Tory leader carried into the general election in 1945, an election he promptly lost.

The Labour government, which won by a landslide, faced a world in flux.

Russian troops were brutally underpinning the Communist ascent to power in eastern Europe, no one knew what to do with a destroyed Germany, and in the Middle East the violent birth pangs of the state of Israel were threatening a key front of the British Empire.

This was a period of grand, panicky ideas. The replacement of one totalitarian system (fascism) with another (Soviet communism), the existential threat of atomic warfare, the destructive legacy of the war, all convinced desperate thinkers to conceive of organising humankind along a new concept of world cooperation.

For Churchill, now enjoying the dubious luxury of life in opposition, it was a period of florid policy explorations and speeches. In an address to the Belgian senate he talked of Britains "special associations". Europe, America and Russia had an "interlocking"character.

In Fulton, Missouri, he made his famous Iron Curtain speech. But he also spoke of Britain, America and the Commonwealth pooling their resources to provide over-arching security for the world.

In further speeches, most famously in Zurich in 1946, Churchill repeatedly fantasised about a United States of Europe, of a Europe rising again in "glory".

Warming to his theme he urged reconciliation between France and Germany, the equal treatment of small and large nations, spoke of a common defence and currency, and the creation of a Council of Europe.

For the first time Churchill located Britain at the centre of such arrangements, while at the same time being head of a world Empire.

"In Zurich, and in Colliers Weekly," writes Grob-Fitzgibbon, "Churchill firmly attached his flag to the mast of European unity."

The new Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin was galled by Churchills visions.

He was much more convinced of the pre-eminence of the British Empire than any new European arrangements, although he believed, like Churchill, that as colonial powers, France and Britain should act in concert.

In the following years British politicians, civil servants, diplomats and the press all warmed to European unity with Britain at its heart.

The Empire or Commonwealth would somehow be on board as a counterweight to American imperialism and Russian dominance. In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Churchill wrote: "Britain has special obligations and spiritual ties which link her with the other nations of the British Commonwealth. Nevertheless, Britain is an integral part of Europe and must be prepared to make her full contribution to European unity."

Such visions infused the embryonic British United Europe Committee, later the United Europe Movement. The public, desperate for a guiding light in the post-war darkness, was enthusiastic.

It received a massive boost when the American Secretary of State George Marshall announced his eponymous aid package for Europe on 5 June 1947.

With Marshall urging Europeans to come together to make the Marshall Plan work, Churchill seized the opportunity.

He encouraged similar European movements elsewhere, and they were springing up in Belgium, France, the Netherlands.

A Congress of Europe was held in The Hague in May 1948 attended by leading British parliamentarians, novelists, poets, philosophers, industrialists and religious leaders.

Europes hour appeared to have arrived. Out of the process led by Churchill was born the Council of Europe, whose federalist notions, such as an elected European Parliament and a European Court, were later crystallised into the European Union. (The Council of Europe remains a separate organisation to this day).

But the euphoria of The Hague was shortlived.

Churchills greatest opposition was to be found at home, in the Labour government.

Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, was hostile to a United States of Europe, as it precluded the Soviet Union and could even lead to war with Russia.

Labour was deeply suspicious of anything which eroded sovereignty, and wanted Germany out of any new European framework.

But Bevin had other problems to worry about. In February 1947 Britain was forced to hand Palestine over to the United Nations, and to announce that British rule would end in India just over a year later. The Empire was beginning to crumble.

The Soviet Union was also becoming more belligerent, flatly opposing the US Marshall Plan and tightening its grip on central and eastern Europe.

Bevin was not opposed to European integration as such, but he wanted a more modest approach. His response was a Western Union of countries which would become with the help and resources of the colonies a bloc to stand between Russia and America.

While Britain waxed and waned, France grabbed the initiative.

The Schuman Plan, named after the French foreign minister, would create a supranational authority in Western Europe to control all coal and steel production. Bevin was shocked: the French had kept London in the dark, and for the first time sought explicitly to draw West Germany into its embrace.

The British general election of 1950 deepened the disconnect.

Whereas every election campaign that year across Europe focussed on European integration, in Britain the parties were fixated on the crisis facing Empire.

A young Conservative candidate called Margaret Thatcher ran for the first time.

That disconnect would be decisive. Within six weeks the French cabinet formally endorsed the Schuman Plan with German, and, crucially, American support (Washington was simply desperate for some kind of European unity to get off the ground).

The new, much reduced Labour government had been kept entirely out of the loop and at a stroke the notion of an Anglo-French engine of leadership had been replaced by a Franco-German one.

The Tories pounced on Labours indecision, hailing, not for the first time, the idea of European unity and praising the Schuman Plan.

The future prime minister Macmillan described it as "an act of high courage and imaginative statesmanship".

The British press was largely in favour: the Daily Mail attacked the government for not supporting it, but the Daily Express called it a deliberate and concerted attempt to force Britain into a United Europe.

France held out the prospect of Britain joining what would become the European Coal and Steel Community, but the notion of pooling sovereignty, even in such a narrow field, was a bridge too far.

With Britain a major coal producer, sharing such a resource wouldnt fly either. In the famous words of the deputy prime minister Herbert Morrison, "the Durham miners would never wear it".

France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg forged ahead "to pursue a common action for peace and European solidarity".

Britain stayed out.

In October 1951, the Conservatives returned to power, and Churchill was once again prime minister.

It was a period of global instability with the Korean War and deepening revolt across the British Empire.

Churchill had still been, during the election campaign, a firm believer in European Unity, even canvassing the idea of a European Army.

But once in office his tone changed. Civil service briefing papers were peppered with terms such as "active part" and "leading role", but there was always the qualification that Britain could not accept any joint authority in Europe.

In a cabinet memorandum, Churchill acknowledged he had given the spark to European unity with his 1946 Zurich speech but he tutted that federalism was gathering strength, and that was never his intention.

Britains need to straddle multiple spheres of influence was also proving difficult.

Churchill had, during the campaign, wanted the Commonwealth to be somehow bound into any new European structures, but the notion was given a chilly response by both European and Commonwealth leaders.

Churchills foreign secretary Anthony Eden was even more hostile to any notion of Britain merging in a federative process.

He caused consternation among his own civil servants and the Council of Europe also alarming the future president and current Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe Dwight D Eisenhower when he appeared to slam the door on Britains participation in a European Defence Community, the entity Churchill himself had actually proposed a year before.

Churchill appeared torn, but left Eden in charge of a policy which would contradict much of his post-war idealism on Europe.

Britain would fully support the integration of Europe, but would always stop short of anything that smacked of federalism. "There was, however" writes Grob-Fitzgibbon, "no question of a full embrace of Europe".

In sentiments which appear astoundingly similar to Theresa May's today, Churchill was claiming to support European integration as much as possible, but not fully embracing it because Britain would always prioritise the United States and the Commonwealth.

Britains slow detachment from the ideals and aims of European unity, which Churchill had done so much to foster, was becoming clear.

Eden repeated to the new US Secretary of State John Dulles that Britain would have a "leadership" role in Western Europe, but could never pool sovereignty precisely because of its leadership of the Commonwealth and its special relationship with America.

Compare this to May's Davos speech in which she claimed that leaving the EU would allow Britain to become even more global.

But in the early 1950s Washington was growing impatient with French and British posturing, especially over the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC).

Squabbles over Britains lack of involvement, and West Germanys post-war rehabilitation, were holding up the kind of European integration the US believed was vital in resisting the Soviet threat.

The EDC had been regarded as an alternative to West Germany joining NATO, but the French were alarmed at any prospect of the German rearmament.

When the EDC collapsed (Britain was never going to be a member), Macmillan, then housing minister, proposed the establishment of the Western European Union (WEU) that would build upon the aims of the Treaty of Brussels, a mutual defence pact signed by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1948.

With the WEU also promoting economic and social recovery in Western Europe, Italy and West Germany were effectively brought into the fold (West Germany would enter NATO through the back door of the WEU the following year).

France reluctantly ratified the WEU in March 1955. One week later Churchill, aged 80, resigned as prime minister.

As a vehicle that would reconcile Britains conflicting interests, Americas craving for European unity, and West Germanys entry into NATO, the WEU as a high point in post-war integration was short lived.

Almost immediately the six founders of the European Coal and Steel Community felt that the WEU was not strong enough to facilitate deeper European integration.

The Six, as they became known, (France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg) met in Messina in Sicily in June 1955 to discuss, among other things, the idea of a European Common Market.

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Tony Connelly: Britain's tortured relationship with Europe - RTE.ie