Accession, Renegotiation, Referendum, 1973–1975

The first year of Britain’s EEC membership did not run smoothly. The Americans unilaterally declared it ‘the Year of Europe’. Heath was accused by Kissinger of destroying the special relationship. The Arab–Israeli war caused an oil crisis in which the UK, relatively unscathed, did not help her partners. Early in 1974, Heath lost a General Election and was replaced by Wilson. Wilson and Foreign Secretary Callaghan faced a divided Cabinet and Labour Party as they set about renegotiating the terms of Britain’s EEC membership. The improvements they secured, after a second General Election in October 1974, were slight but enough to get the deal through the Cabinet. Labour Ministers campaigned in the referendum on opposite sides, but support for remaining from all the main Party leaders and the Press helped secure a significant majority for staying.

Good Result or Bad Deal?

Poised to begin negotiations for EEC accession, Prime Minister Wilson called a snap general election and lost to Edward Heath’s Conservative Party. Heath was a life-long pro-European but there were opponents of EEC entry, led by the disgraced rebel, Enoch Powell, within Tory ranks. The Conservatives adopted the Labour government’s accession strategy. But, out of government, the Labour Party turned against membership. Pro-EEC Labour rebels, led by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins, voted with Heath to secure parliamentary approval for accession. To prevent the Labour Party voting to take the UK out of the EEC, Wilson promised that he would renegotiate the terms agreed by Heath and put them to the electorate. The EEC countries, especially France, struck a hard deal with the UK and Heath was obliged to accept disadvantageous terms for UK accession.

Brave New World?

This chapter analyses the implications of Brexit for the UK and the issues facing the EU without the UK. It assesses the costs to the UK in terms of economics and loss of influence on decisions affecting key UK interests. It concludes that the UK is bound to be diminished, but that the EU will also feel the loss of UK influence on economic liberalization, in overseas aid and in foreign policy. The Eurozone will survive but its difficulty in making progress towards a fiscal union will also make it harder for a core grouping to emerge. In seeking to set a common vision for the EU, President Macron of France is so far a lonely voice. For the author, the EU offers a means of managing the relations between potentially querulous neighbours and of entrenching and sharing democratic values. There will be tangible, and less immediately obvious, losses to the UK.

The Years of the Tiger, 1975–1984

Labour Party divisions over Europe soon reappeared. The first British EEC Presidency in 1976 was marked by the sudden death of Foreign Secretary, Tony Crosland (succeeded by the rising star of Labour, David Owen) and the resignation of Wilson. The Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) had to be reined in by Prime Minister Callaghan when they came close to recommending that the UK should leave the EU. Labour’s defeat in the 1979 General Election did not lead to an improvement. Prime Minister Thatcher embarked on a battle with her EEC partners to secure a large and lasting cut in Britain’s contribution to the EEC budget. Tensions ran high and relations between the UK and her partners were at an all-time low. A deal was done in 1984 under the French Presidency of Mitterrand.

Second Thoughts, 1961–1969

Future Prime Minister Edward Heath headed the British team that negotiated for British accession to the EEC. Reconciling UK Commonwealth interests with the established EEC rules, especially on agriculture, was problematic. Successive meetings between Prime Minister Macmillan and President de Gaulle made little headway in overcoming de Gaulle’s resistance to UK membership. In January 1963, de Gaulle vetoed the UK application. When the Conservatives lost office in the 1964 General Election, Prime Minister Wilson gradually came to the same view as Macmillan. The Labour government renewed the British application but, once again, in 1967, de Gaulle vetoed it. Only with de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969 was the prospect of membership reopened.

The Price of Victory

Post-war Labour and Conservative governments saw the UK’s global interests as lying primarily with the United States and the Commonwealth. They took no part in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community or in the proposed European Defence Community, though, when the EDC idea foundered, Prime Minister Anthony Eden played a prominent role in promoting European defence, just as Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had done in fostering the establishment of NATO. The British sent only an observer to the Messina Conference (1956) that negotiated the terms of the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community (EEC). The UK set up its own trading bloc (EFTA) but it could not compete politically or economically with the EEC and, in 1961, the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan applied for EEC membership, despite the opposition of France’s President de Gaulle.

A Thousand Years of History

Joining the European Community would, in the words of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, be ‘the end of a thousand years of history’. Britain, as an island, was set apart from continental Europe both geographically, politically, and psychologically. It had fought off invasion and fought continental wars to prevent the formation of too-dominant continental alliances. But Britain’s economic and political life was inextricably bound up with that of the continent and its own monarchical dynasties were sometimes more foreign than domestic in origin. The English Reformation was a key definer of national identity and resistance to continental encroachment. The Second World War entrenched British confidence in the UK’s national institutions, which had stood against tyranny, by comparison with those on the continent that had been disgraced or destroyed. After the Second World War, Winston Churchill played a key role in the vision that became the European Community but he wanted to be ‘with’ it, not ‘of’ it.

Introduction

I stand in the Frick gallery in New York, staring at the two sixteenth-century Holbein portraits on the wall in front of me. On the left is Thomas More, on the right, Thomas Cromwell. They look as they must have been. Both lost their heads to the tyrant Henry VIII, whom they both served. But their portraits are timeless, modern in their precision, acute in their revelation of character. No way can the piggy-eyed, clever thug that Holbein saw in Cromwell be reconciled with the sympathetic version created by Hilary Mantel in ...

One Foot In and One Foot Out, 1990–1997

John Major had none of Thatcher’s reservations about German reunification and wanted to put Britain at the heart of Europe. But he faced growing Euroscepticism inside the Conservative Party. At Maastricht, Major secured for the UK the right to opt out or, later to opt in, to the proposed European single currency. The significance of this opt out for the longer term British sense of detachment from the rest of the EU was not then obvious. The ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in the UK, and the Major government, both nearly foundered, when the UK was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1991. Europe became a toxic issue in the Conservative Party. Mad Cow Disease triggered a policy of non-cooperation by the UK with the rest of the EU. Major championed the enlargement of the EU to include the newly freed countries of eastern and central Europe.

Brown and Cameron

As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown practised a form of muscular inter-governmentalism, often creating largely invented conflicts with EU partners to demonstrate toughness. He played a positive role in the EU in the 2008 financial crisis. His successor, David Cameron, had hoped to stop the Conservative Party from ‘banging on about Europe’, but the issue of Europe rose in prominence as immigration from the EU became a part of the UKIP threat. The Cameron-led coalition changed the law to provide for referendums on major treaty transfers of powers to the EU. By 2012, Cameron had become convinced of the need for an ‘in’ or ‘out’ referendum. He was caught between insisting that the EU needed to reform and his simultaneous argument that the UK had a vital national interest in remaining a member. His renegotiation was discounted in the Press and by the public.