EUROPE AND UK PRIME MINISTERS
A fascinating study by member John Preston
Here we go again: yet another UK prime minister getting caught up in a series of dilemmas in the relationship with ‘Europe’. The starting point is the failure of the head of the government of the UK to acknowledge a simple fact: that they are already in Europe. Of the long list of UK PMs since 1940, only three have made a positive move: Macmillan, Heath and, ironically, Wilson. Others have tried: Chamberlain and John Major. Blair gave us the worst of all worlds by appearing to be positive while in reality scared of the task – as were Brown and Callaghan, who, rather like the Churchill of the 1950s, simply kept us semi-attached. Attlee and his ministries were deeply Eurosceptic. (Bevin his foreign minister was realistically pro-European.) Thatcher became deeply and emotionally hostile after a promising start in the 1970s. Cameron seems to be pushed about by a mix of highly sceptical promises prior to the election, newspaper headlines and pressure from his backbenchers.
Chamberlain tried. His policy of appeasement was a vigorous and well researched piece of foreign policy. It had strong popular support measured both by the cheering crowds and by success in by-elections – notably by Quintin Hogg in Oxford in 1938. The appeasement campaign involved well publicized trips to Germany – a novelty at the time – naval manoeuvres in the North Sea and the Baltic, and a forceful radio broadcast on 27th September 1938. At Heston aerodrome on his return from Munich on 30th September he was warmly greeted by the crowds; later that day he made his famous “Peace for our time” statement. Yet within six months Hitler had occupied Prague and a year later Warsaw. The policy of appeasement had been shattered and with it many political reputations. A good time for Euroscepticism.
The Oxford by-election certainly enabled open and frank debate on the issue of what to do about Hitler. A Conservative and appeasement victory sent an unfortunately clear message. Yet the turnout was up and the Conservative vote down. The Independent Progressive (an all-party alliance of those opposed to appeasement) increased the opposition vote compared to the result in the general election of 1935. It acted like a local referendum.
Yet there were a number of events that indicated that we were less close to the situation than, in retrospect, we might have been. Peter Ustinov reported in an interview with Cliff Michelmore back in the 1970s that his father, Jona, acted on behalf of a group of German army officers who came over in 1938. The foreign office refused to see them. In the 1930s Jona worked as a press officer at the German Embassy in London. In 1935 he started working for British Intelligence and thus obtained information on Hitler’s intentions. He also hosted secret meetings of senior British and German officials at his home.
For all of this, how could Chamberlain include in his radio broadcast of 27th September 1938 the notorious phrase, “A quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”? He cannot have been speaking of the Foreign Office and inner government departments. He cannot have been speaking of himself (Munich is but 50 miles/80 km from the Czech border), so he must have had MPs and the general populace in mind.
It is difficult to know how to interpret the result of the general election of 1945 from a European policy point of view. It is certain that Attlee was at least contemptuous of the western European countries and steered the UK domestic policy in a direction quite independently of that of the Continent - even more so after the follow up to the Marshall Plan of 1947. The talks on the formation of the Coal and Steel Community were led by Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium (in close working relationship with Monnet and Schuman of France – plus Benelux and Italy) and followed by Lord Plowden; but in 1951 the participation of the UK was terminated by Morrison, acting PM, while dining at the Ivy restaurant.
After 1951, Churchill and Eden were little better about matters European. Churchill, for all his sonorous tones in opposition, did little in practice. Duncan Sandys, his son-in-law, in 1953 told the Commons that the UK would sign up as an associate. Eden sent Russell Bretherton to Messina in 1955 as an observer to the negotiation of the ‘Six’ towards the basis of the Treaty of Rome. Eden scoffed at the idea: another far off country. Butler called the Messina Conference contemptuously “an archaeological dig”.
After the Suez episode and Eden’s ‘finest hour’ in 1956, Macmillan came in and, having mended our fences with USA President Eisenhower, won the general election in 1957 . The Suez debacle caused the French change of policy fully to support the concept and reality of the European Economic Community, with the Treaty of Rome coming into effect in 1958. Macmillan privately explored the role that the UK might play and formally on behalf of the UK applied to join in 1961. It is difficult to know whether in January 1963 Général de Gaulle vetoed the UK application because, as Couve de Murville reported, the talks were going badly (“Il y a une petite équivoque”), or, as Macmillan stated in his broadcast to the nation, that we were on the point of agreement. More to do with it was the timing of the Nassau talks with President Kennedy where the Skybolt agreement was signed on 22nd December 1962.
Remember Dean Acheson’s address to the West Point Academy on 5th December 1962: “… lost an empire and is yet to find a role …”
Harold Wilson won the elections of 1964 and 1966 but, in spite of blaming the ‘Tories’ for the state of the UK economy, he still encountered a run on sterling. Thus, realizing the low state of the UK economy compared to that of the countries of EFTA and, especially the EEC, Wilson followed the footsteps of his former rival Macmillan (whose policy he had opposed) and in May 1967 formally applied to join the EEC, six months later on 27th November - only again to be vetoed by ‘le Général’. De Gaulle retired in April 1969 and died in November 1970. Georges Pompidou succeeded him. Heath had become prime minister in May the same year.
Under the direction of Edward Heath the UK applied yet again to join the EEC and, after two years’ negotiation, the UK, accompanied by Ireland and Denmark, joined the EEC in January 1973. The House of Commons majority was won in spite of the opposition of a group of Conservative MPs but with sizeable support from pro-EEC Labour and Liberal MPs.
When Wilson (to his own surprise!) won the 1974 general election, he inherited a divided cabinet and parliamentary party over the EEC membership of the UK. This was resolved with a referendum in 1975 with a near 2:1 majority in its favour. But it was not a totally satisfactory outcome, in that individual ministers like John Silkin would not accept CAP grants to UK farmers. Nor was the will of the people respected “…by the men with staring eyes,” – a quote from Robert Worcester of MORI who claimed that it was their scare tactics that lost the poll. When Wilson, whose idea of abroad was the Scilly Isles, boarded an aircraft for Brussels he boldly declared that he was flying to Europe. Chamberlain would have been proud of him. To UK prime ministers, Belgium is a far off country etc.
In May 1976 Wilson retired and James Callaghan became prime minister. He was never formally elected as such at a general election. He appointed a cabinet that was partly Eurosceptic.. He is reported to have been asked how he got on at the European Council meeting where he had been representing the UK in Brussels. “Oh that is what it was!” he said.
He was succeeded by Margaret Thatcher who was not particularly popular either in the country or with many Tory MPs. She only had a majority of 59 seats. After the war in the South Atlantic she won the general election of 1983 (majority 66). To her, Washington was just off the end of the runway at Heathrow airport, while Bruges and Brussels were in “a far away country” etc. While on a visit to Germany she said what a beautiful part of France she was in. When back on the aircraft she slumped into her seat and exclaimed: “Oh that man Kohl is so German!”
For all that, she did achieve two positive things for the EC – the Single European Act and the Channel Tunnel. On re-reading her Bruges speech of September 1988 much of it is very positive, especially as an historical ‘tour d’horizon’. The formation of the Bruges Group is based on two lines about two-thirds of the way through, rejecting Jacques Delors speech to the TUC in Bournemouth, where he received a standing ovation, claiming workers’ rights could be protected by the European project. “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level,” said she! In many ways her speech is more positive than Tony Blair’s in Ghent some twelve years later in 2000. Clearly 1988 was a threshold. She had Delors espousing a more powerful EU, plus a single currency, and her cabinet began to feel that she was in turn becoming extreme. She said that Delors had been trespassing on her territory. When she lost the Eastbourne by-election, turning the Ian Gow majority of 24,000 to a LibDem majority of 14,000, her Euroscepticism and divided cabinet suddenly showed her to be an electoral liability. On the night of 22nd November 1990 she was, in effect, asked to resign.
John Major then became prime minister and thus inherited the first Iraq war and a negative situation looming up with the Maastricht Treaty to be negotiated. He had replaced Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary, so he too had to buy a map of Europe to discover the world beyond Margate. Nonetheless he fought a tough game with Margaret Thatcher’s majority until the general election of February 1992 when he won a majority 45 seats over Neil Kinnock. That gave his small but angry group of Eurosceptics much leverage, so opt-outs had to be negotiated.
As with Harold Wilson, so with John Major – he inherited another sterling crisis, this time triggered by having the UK economy shadow the D-Mark. The UK left the EMS and in effect again devalued. The consequence was defeat at the general election of May 1997. The Labour landslide (majority 207) was less due to the positive message of Labour – though they ran a good and modern campaign – but more due to the intervention of James Goldsmith who seemed to be passionately against the single currency in particular and the EU in general. He put ‘Referendum’ party candidates in against pro-EU MPs. With the arbitrary nature of the UK voting system this meant that all but the safest of Conservative seats were vulnerable. The AV system – rejected some years later – might have produced a Labour victory but with a reduced majority. Modernizers who win landslide victories under the old system are reluctant to advocate a change to the new.
So in May 1997 comes Blair, the man with the modernizer and pro-EU image. And the reality?
He set up the process for a Euro referendum in 1998 allied to the formation of a Britain in Europe organization – as had been for the 1975 referendum. The referendum simply never happened and the European Movement afterwards lost credibility and membership. He made pro-EU speeches in Warsaw, Ghent and places abroad, but was always silent in the UK, even for the EP elections. He then offered a referendum for the so-called Constitutional Treaty, signed in 2004, but rejected in the Netherlands, France and Ireland in 2005. So there was no point in holding one in the UK, said Blair.
He put all his energy into the Afghanistan war and then notoriously the Iraq war. He put energy into devolution for Scotland and Wales – successfully – but did nothing for England. He did complete the good work for Northern Ireland started by John Major. But why so little courage over the EU? Why the pretence?
In 2007 he resigned and in effect ran away from the position of both prime minister and as an MP. It did leave the succession of Gordon Brown a clear run, but on Europe? Word had it that Brown got on badly with his EU counterparts, avoiding meetings or arriving late. He avoided a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty by correctly making it a parliamentary matter: correct by the design such as it is of the UK constitution but politically it stokes again the fires of eurosceptic angst about a referendum.
So we come to the greatest Eurosceptic of them all – David Cameron. Like his predecessors he gets hung up by his promises to Murdoch, back benchers and the party hierarchy – and his promises all over the place to get elected as party leader. So his first step was to leave the EPP among fellow Conservative-type parties at the European Parliament and form up with nationalist inclined minority parties. Given the recent actions by the 81 ‘rebels’, the new intake MPs of the right, it may be a sad moment of honesty to form and join up with such extremists. Then we have the tinkering with the idea of a referendum through such a bill through Parliament. Even more, the ‘repatriation’ of ‘Brussels’ legislation – as already agreed by the European Council of 27 heads of government – and 27 commissioners appointed by the heads of government. The ghost of James Callaghan strides in again.
The original purpose of the referendum in 1975 had been to resolve political division within the Labour Party. In practice it gave the UK a membership of the then EEC convincing popular support. Two referenda have been promised since but denied. Now we have the idea of a referendum on Europe written into complicated legislation – and the uncertainty of when such a referendum would be held.
The fundamental issue is that successive prime ministers (with the exception of Edward Heath) have been given an Anglocentric, even imperial, education in world history. In that sense they reflect the mentality of a large proportion of particularly the English population. Furthermore, immigration has been largely from countries of the Commonwealth, so their view of the world is also imperial rather than European in outlook. Furthermore the media – principally the daily press and the BBC – partly reflect further this trend of Euroscepticism but also see a virtue in propagating it. The people are deliberately kept ignorant.
Conclusion
Here we go again: a phrase that looks as though it will still be used over and over again. No doubt it was used after the failure of Chamberlain’s attempts at peace when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938; no doubt it was used when Morrison denied the UK membership of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951; when Sandys boasted about our association with it in 1953; when Eden sent Bretherton to Messina in 1955 (and made a mess of Suez in 1956); when Macmillan did a deal with Kennedy in 1962 and seemed taken aback when de Gaulle vetoed the UK application to join the EEC. Having via Heath and Wilson joined the EEC in 1973 and ratified it with a 2:1 referendum in 1975, the same ‘here we go’ starts again.
Callaghan seemed not to know what he was doing in Brussels at a European Council meeting in 1979, and Thatcher very much did know what she was doing with her Bruges speech in 1988 and her infamous “No; no; no” screech of 1990. John Major tried hard to be moderate over matters EU but to appease his right wing he denied Jean-Luc Dehaen of Belgium the job in favour of Jacques Santer of Luxemburg. Blair appeared to be pro-EU but was in reality in the grips of the US who saw the Euro as a threat to dollar supremacy. Surely the fear was in 1998 that he might actually win the referendum? So he cancelled it. Likewise the British might have sought to confound the French by voting for the treaty of constitutional reform in 2005: hence again it was cancelled. Had we had the promised referenda we would be where we are now but with prime ministerial words meaning what they say, kept not broken. And much of the Euroskeptic angst assuaged.
With Cameron we are in even more of a mess: out of the EPP where the UK had a strong voice; into the world of mini-referenda with uncertainty as to how the device would be applied. We hear the daily lie that the economy of the UK is in a mess because of the Euro dithering. Surely the whole point of being outside the €-zone is that we can run an orderly and disciplined independent economy?
The EEC to EC to EU process was driven forward by a vision: yes to give us peace and prosperity, but also to enable us to work and develop in harmony together. With Russia doing deals with Belarus and with countries in the Caucasus, the EU states are surrounded. Outside the ‘north-western’ Euro-North American axis there is growth and prosperity. Deals will be done not just without Europe but to our disadvantage. Perhaps the problem rests with the low level of popular perception of the EU as an institution.
The Yougov Survey of 2011 shows a clear majority in favour in closer UK working with the EU on: counter-terrorism (78%); illegal migration (71%); defence and security (63%). Similar proportions apply to energy and climate change, and international trading agreements. In all this it would seem that the ruled have a clearer vision than those who purport to rule them.
John Preston
