By Alexander Borg
Few in history have had as influential a mark on the bond between the British Isles and the European Continent as the illustrious Winston Churchill;
“If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and glory which its three or four hundred million people would enjoy […] We must build a kind of United States of Europe.”
These words sealed Churchill’s symbolic role in founding the European family of nations. This being very different from the powerful forty-two years on when another wartime Conservative premier once again contributed towards a paradigm shift in the European political landscape:
“We have not successfully rolled back on the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”
Margret Thatcher’s notorious Bruges Speech of 1988 arguably set the U.K. on the road to Brexit. By establishing Euroscepticism as a serious movement in British and European politics, a movement that ultimately culminated in the monumental referendum of 2016.
Today, Britain has yet another Conservative premier in a tug-of-war with the European question; Boris Johnson, a relatively recent convert to Euroscepticism. This government’s actions with regards to Europe will undoubtedly be under scrutiny for years to come. One comes to understand the present, and even the future of Anglo-European relations, by analysing its past.
Decline of the Age of Imperialism
In 1957, the colonial empires of Britain and France were quelled with a single, bloody strike by an emboldened Egypt. Egypt was being led by the Pan-Arab Nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser. The defeat of Paris and London at the hands of Nasser’s Egypt uprooted decades of Franco-British control over North Africa and the Middle East. It effectively terminated the imperial powers’ era of colonial hegemony over the region.
Between 1958 and 1969, the French Republic was effectively governed by one man: Charles de Gaulle. The wartime leader of Free France turned the first President of the Fifth Republic. He is who controversially wielded emergency powers in Paris as a consequence of the Algerian War, while concurrently taking advantage of his newfound strength to assert French leadership in Europe.
French Leadership and British Stagnation
De Gaulle employed France’s effective leadership of the European Economic Community (EEC) to explicitly block British accession requests from the Labour government under Harold Wilson on two grounds. Firstly, that Britain would not be as committed to European unity and integration as France or any of the other EEC members at that stage. Secondly, that Britain would serve as a lobby for US influence over Western Europe. For these reasons, de Gaulle was passionate about his opposition to British accession.
In 1969, de Gaulle was succeeded by his former Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, who finally lifted the French veto to allow Britain. It is now under Edward Heath’s pro-European Conservative government, to accede to the EEC in 1973. In the following years, the Elysée was inherited by Giscard-d’Estaing and Mitterrand. They are both loyal pro-European presidents who worked to ally the French political consensus with European integration and close cooperation with the West. They later also re-unified, Germany.
On the other side of the English Channel, Britain’s relationship with Europe was still undecided and would face countless bumps on the road to the present. The 1975 referendum being one example. Wilson’s second premiership in 1974 and succession by James Callaghan in 1976 saw a period of stagnation in the British economy, infamously epitomised by the ‘Winter of Discontent’.
From Neo-Liberal Thatcherism to New Labour to Now
In 1979, came what was meant to be the Tory Spring to Labour’s Winter as Margaret Thatcher was swept to power with a landslide victory for the Conservatives. Thatcher’s optimistic views towards Europe soured as economic and political integration hastened, standing in direct contrast to Thatcher’s laissez-faire capitalist views at home. The usurpation of Thatcher by John Major in 1990 as Conservative leader and Prime Minister signalled a significant change in the Conservative government’s view of Europe; in 1992, Major avidly signed the Treaty of Maastricht which established the EU as the more politically integrated successor to the EEC.
In 1997, the Conservatives were replaced by Tony Blair, who led the Labour Party to its first ever major landslide in recent years, having re-branded the socialist movement into ‘New Labour’, a socially progressive and broadly pro-European party that went as far as to even adopt a lot of the Conservatives’ economic policies.
With the onset of deepening public disapproval of New Labour, Tony Blair resigned in 2007, handing over the Labour leadership to Gordon Brown. In spite of his efforts in grappling with the fallout of crises inherited under Blair, Brown was voted out after just 3 years, being replaced by another Conservative premier, the fence-straddling David Cameron. During this time, one can properly evaluate why and how things came to a grinding halt after 2016, leading to the current turbulence of trade negotiations.
Getting to Grips with it all
The idea of splendid isolation stuck for as long as Westminster politicians were preoccupied with an empire upon which the Sun never set. Following the unparalleled political upheaval of the World Wars in the 20th century, the British Empire declined and faded into the annals of history. While France, following Suez, did face significant internal upheaval, leaders in the Elysée have always found confidence in consolidating the strength and influence of France in Europe. Britain, on the other hand, simply never found its own place in the World after 1957. Instead, British leaders have been desperate to wear an American leash in international affairs, as a junior partner beholden to a former colony.
Of course, the UK could always look to Europe, making use of its closest European partners as a means for British leadership to shadow Germany’s. To act as a leader in, or of, Europe however, would certainly mean concessions, just as other nations have conceded for the sake of integration, something the UK has never intended to do. It is for that reason that one may come to the saddening conclusion that maybe General de Gaulle was right after all, in that Britain never deserved to form part of a united Europe on account of Britons’ refusal to do so.
Perhaps, a glimmer of hope for the UK, one that is both near Europe, yet far from the Union. However, this does not mean that Britain ought to be antagonized by today’s European Union.
Europe must acknowledge Britain as a separate state. A separate state which while alongside a greater, more powerful and united European family of nations, will never serve as a father, mother, uncle or aunt, but as a neighbour upon whom Europe can always rely on as an ally and friend. Bound by the common and unbreakable virtues of democracy, freedom, the entrepreneurial spirit, international peace and security, opposition to terrorism, hatred and tyranny. Britain and the EU, both with the common goal of preserving peace, security and stability both on the European continent, as well as on the international stage as a whole.
