The Conservative Party and Europe

Contents

• Origins of the EEC

• Conservatives reject membership

• Macmillan's U–Turn

• Substitute Empire?

• Economic panacea?

• Barrier to Socialism?

• Why de Gaulle's veto was ignored

• Beyond Maastricht: the Conservative Choice

• References

The Origins of the EEC

It is axiomatic to regard the Conservative Party as split from top to bottom on the issue of British membership of the European Union. During the passage of the Maastricht Treaty through the House of Commons a year ago, open divisions created what was little short of a civil war within the party. Indeed it was one of those rare constitutional occasions when the government had to table a motion of confidence to ensure that the legislation to ratify the Treaty was passed; had the Conservative rebels not backed down, a general election would have ensued. In the end, the rebels did toe the party line, the Maastricht Treaty was ratified by the House of Commons, and only one rebel refused to vote in the Conservative Lobby, Mr Rupert Allason, who was subsequently deprived of the whip. But the issue has not gone away as Norman Lamont's 1994 party conference plea to contemplate withdrawal from the EU starkly demonstrated. Even federalists on the left recognised the validity of the question he posed. Peter Kellner writing in The Sunday Times admitted that:

'Before the end of this decade, Britain may have to decide whether to join a federal Europe (my choice) or become a distant spectator (Lamonts). One does not need to admire his record as chancellor, or his behaviour since, to acknowledge that Lamont has a powerful case when he argues that the choice is stark: there is no middle way.' ¹

To understand how the Conservative Party has got itself into this situation of near permanent civil war on the issue of membership of the European Union, it is necessary to examine the history of this issue.

In 1957 the continental powers set up the European Economic Community with three essential objectives, none of which were shared by Conservatives at the time. Firstly, the Continentals had concluded that the cause of war, particularly between France and Germany (1870, 1914 and 1939), had been the nation state. They wanted to create a united federal Europe which would permanently preserve peace. From the start, the founding fathers of the European Community, Monnet, Schumann, Adenauer and de Gasperi, envisaged a form of federal political integration as a parallel development to economic integration. As a way of providing Germany with a political rehabilitation after the horrors of Hitler this project was particularly strongly supported by Chancellor Adenauer and, of course, it was personified in the close relationship between Adenauer and de Gaulle after de Gaulle's return to power in 1958. ²

Secondly were the economic origins of the EEC which dearly followed the Continental mercantilist tradition. Thus from the start the EEC was not a free trade area but a customs union in which there would be a reduction in internal tariffs between the member states, but where external tariffs would be imposed against non–members. Initially, those external tariffs were somewhat modest, except in the areas that were not covered by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), for example, agriculture The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was an exemplification of a customs union mentality, with notoriously high tariffs imposed on products from outside. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was incorporated into the European Economic Community, was essentially a European protectionist cartel involving a customs union approach.

Thirdly the Continentals in the 1950s hoped that its political growth would enable the European Economic Community to become an alternative to a world dominated by two non–European super–powers—the Americans and the Soviets. The European Economic Community was not a Cold War organisation. President Kennedy, Henry Kissinger and many other Americans were fundamentally wrong to regard the EEC as a Cold War organisation which one day would become the economic arm of NATO. The Europeans never intended that to be the case. All along the EEC was an alternative to the Cold War. In 1951 Jean Monnet had bemoaned that Europe was a pawn in the Soviet–American power struggle, a sentiment widely shared on the Continent. The global ideological struggle of the superpowers contrasted with the insular Euro–centrism of the EEC. Many Europeans resented the fact that, for the first time in 2,000 years, world affairs were not being decided in Europe. Indeed, on the contrary, they felt acutely the division of their continent, the great fault line of the Cold War, running through Europe. A popular belief, especially on the left, argued that the superpowers had much in common by sharing out the world between themselves in a cosy arrangement to allocate each other spheres of influence. As far as Europe was concerned, the Europeans were not in control of their own political agenda, not least because security policy was devised by the Americans through NATO. By 1957 the EEC aimed to secure peace in Europe between France and Germany ultimately through political union; it constructed a customs union based on mercantilist economic thinking essentially out of keeping with the spirit of GATT; and it envisaged an alternative to USSR/USA domination with a European voice equal to that of the superpowers.

Conservatives Reject Membership

Conservatives in the 1950s kept out of these arrangements because they did not share the continental analysis. Firstly British leaders, particularly Churchill and Eden, did not accept that World War II had been caused by nation states. If there was a lesson the British had learned from World War II, it was the vital importance of the strength and sinews of British patriotism which during the dark days of 1940 and beyond had kept fascist Europe at bay. World War II had been caused by fascism particularly its German manifestation, Nazism.

In contrast to the Continentals, a second lesson was to maintain the United Seates as a strong and close ally. The Conservatives in the 1950s were determined to keep the United States playing a dominant role in NATO, because they knew that peace would be imperiled if there was any return to American isolationism. One of Churchill's indictments of Chamberlain was that he had not taken seriously a secure treaty of friendship with the United States in the crucial years in which the Nazis were on the march leading up to the events in September 1939.

Thirdly the economic lessons which the British had learned from the 1930s and 1940s were quite different from those of the Continentals. At Bretton Woods the British negotiators strongly supported the removal of tariff barriers. Indeed both Labour and Conservative governments did not want to repeat the unhappy experience of the Ottawa conference of 1932, whereby Britain had imposed retaliatory tariffs around the British Empire in response to the Americans' own 1930 protectionist Smoot Hawley Act. In the discussions of the post– war international economy at Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes had agreed with Cordell Hull and Harry Dexter White who argued that if goods cannot cross borders, armies will. The British liked the post–war international economic settlement, which concentrated on keeping world trade moving. GATT was based on multilateral world trade, which suited Britain's global pattern of trade and world-wide economic interests in contrast to the continental preference for regional integration based on customs union theory. Indeed, the whole customs union regional bloc approach was exactly what the British and the Americans wanted to get away from in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Fourthly, again in contrast to the continentals, the British defence consensus, shared as much by Bevin as by Churchill, viewed the Cold War as a reality in which Britain had to be the leading European defender of the values espoused by the West. Governments of this period, particularly the Conservatives 195164, strongly supported a partisan approach in the Cold War, involving the possession of nuclear weapons, and fully supporting NATO strategy of locating American nuclear weapons in Britain. This pro–American policy represented deterrence against the Soviet Union which had then, as it did throughout the Cold War, a preponderant domination in terms of conventional forces. The British rejected the ambivalent Euro–centric view of the Cold War nor—outside the Labour left and CND—were they resentful of dependence on the United States when the Soviet Union was so obviously a formidable military threat. All Conservative statesmen approved of NATO membership and accepted with fortitude and no little pride the role of senior European partner of the Americans.

However while disagreeing with the Continentals, the Conservatives did not oppose or seek to prevent the process of integration on the Continent. European union was all well and good but Britain would not partake in it. Churchill had effectively argued this in his famous Zurich speech in 1946, and in May 1953 he stated:

'We are with Europe hut not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. We do not intend to be merged in a European federal system.'

Churchill thus provided the authentic voice of British conservatism in the mid 1950s as the Continentals were openly discussing the moves towards greater integration which bore fruit with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Anthony Eden, who succeeded Churchill in 1955, took an even more robust line, being quite clearly opposed to British participation. With brilliant prescience Eden predicted that:

'... the experiment of the six cannot succeed {without} federation and I think it most probable that if we join the six we shall be faced with that decision in a few years time... I am sure that it must be federation in the sense of one Parliament one foreign policy, one currency etc.. So far as I can judge events on the Continent of Europe, I do not want to become part of such a federation.' ³

Macmillan's U–Turn

So why then, by the early 1960s, did Macmillan, and his generation of Conservatives, change their minds? Why did a Conservative government make the application to join in 1961, which was rejected by de Gaulle in 1963? ⁴ There are three aspects which explain Macmillan's approach to the whole question of European integration. First Macmillan personified a generation of Conservatives who accepted the inevitability of the end of Empire and realised that Britain could no longer afford an imperial role. They accepted what Paul Kennedy later described as "imperial overstretch". With a few exceptions in the Monday Club they accepted what Macmillan himself called "the winds of change blowing through the continent of Africa". But many Conservatives were deeply traumatised by the loss of British global power as the process of decolonisation accelerated. Macmillan resented the fact that the British had been humiliated at Suez in 1956, which demonstrated both Britain's economic impotence and loss of diplomatic influence when the Americans and the Soviets voted together at the United Nations to condemn the British, French and Israeli action. Macmillan was acutely aware of the decline of British power which he did not accept as a corollary of decolonisation. He and his generation of Conservatives wanted to find a way in which British power could be rekindled, a way in which our influence could continue to spread beneficially beyond Britain's borders.

Substitute Empire?

Essentially the European Community was to that generation of Conservatives an ideal substitute Empire.

Why not join the European Community? Why not provide it with leadership? If Britain could join Europe, then surely our diplomatic experience, our skills in negotiation, our special relationship with the United States and with the successful transformation of Empire to Commonwealth as a model of peaceful evolution, we could provide the Europeans with political leadership? The Conservatives essentially saw the European Community as a fledgling, young organisation which British leadership could shape and mould. In the process British power would be revived and the trauma of the end of Empire and the Suez humiliation surmounted.

Economic Panacea?

Secondly, Macmillan and his generation of Conservatives saw in the European Community an economic panacea. Here was a way in which the British economy could overcome so many of its problems without resorting to a radical and painful domestic economic overhaul. In 1958 the Society of Conservative Lawyers argued for a radical change to Britain's industrial relations structure if the economy's performance was to be improved. The culture of management spending half the day on the golf course and the trade unions who would strike as a first resort, not a last resort, was already firmly embodied in the national consciousness not least because of Peter Sellers' brilliantly satirical film "I'm all right Jack". But the industrial relations jungle which was clearly visible in the fifties was too much of a tough challenge for Macmillan. Nor did the Conservative governments, with the exception of steel in 1953, tackle the vexed question of nationalised industries whose performance was already lamentable. Privatisation was not on the agenda. Macmillan and his ministers were not prepared, as Margaret Thatcher was a generation later to take on the forces of British socialism in a head–on clash. But what better way could there be of solving these economic problems painlessly than by joining a fast–growing continental customs union, in which Germany—with its Wirtshaftswunder created by Ludwig Erhard—was clearly the engine of economic growth; The European Community became a painless, easy panacea to a Conservative government frightened of confronting difficult problems of structural economic decline.

Barrier to Socialism?

The third of the reasons why the Conservatives changed their minds over EEC entry relates to the way the political wind in the early 1960s wind was blowing from the left. Conservatives feared that the return to power of the Labour Party would push British society further to the left, threatening the consumer–led affluence and social stability of the post–1951 era. The solid achievements of thirteen years of unbroken office were threatened by Harold Wilson's talk of the white heat of technological revolution and a modern, egalitarian, socialist Britain. The fear of Socialism was very important in pushing many Conservatives, not only in the early sixties but also in the early seventies, towards a European destination. They saw in the Treaty of Rome a capitalist club; they saw in membership of the European Economic Community a barrier to Socialism. That this view was expressed primarily in private makes it no less significant

It was not of course a barrier which would prevent Socialism completely, especially if the British people were to keep voting Labour, but at least it would slow down the process. The rules and regulations of the Treaty of Rome, for example on subsidies and nationalisation, would make it more difficult for Labour governments. Indeed, Labour's own doubts about the European Economic Community hastened Conservative enthusiasm. In 1962 Hugh Gaitskell, in his famous conference speech, opposed EEC entry castigated the CAP and spoke of the threat to parliamentary sovereignty so graphically that he feared the end of 1000 years of British history. The British parliament, he declared, would have no more power in relation to a federal Europe than California had in relation to a federal United States of America. ⁵ Those to the left of Gaitskell objected to the EEC as a "capitalist club" thus confirming the view among Conservatives that it must be a good thing. Many Conservatives from Macmillan to Heath, from Howe to Heseltine, were to link Labour's opposition to the EEC with Labour's ideological predilection for state control, nationalisation and planning. And when the Soviet Union attacked the EEC what more proof was required that Britain would be safer and more prosperous within it?

For these three reasons the Macmillan generation sought membership of the European Economic Community. In seeking to join for these reasons it is necessary to stress that the Continentals were not to blame. Macmillan deluded himself without any assistance from the original six. No–one can argue that the Continentals ever said to the British, 'Come and join us, because we lack leadership.' Indeed the European community, from the very start, was a mature organisation which had a clear focus of leadership in the Franco German friendship. The whole idea of the European Community was that a bed– rock of Franco–German friendship should make impossible the antagonism which had produced three wars in the previous seventy years. De Gaulle and Adenauer were colossal figures in European political history. No–one looking at the process of European integration, or at the way the Community developed between 1957 and 1962, could seriously have claimed that it lacked leadership. Leadership was already there, solidified in the Franco–German friendship and buttressed by the new political institutions, notably the EEC commission, of a supranational organisation. Nor did the Continentals ever at any stage offer to bail out the British economy. Nor, of course, did the Continentals ever claim that the European Economic Community would be a barrier to Socialism. On the contrary, the EEC was always based on a close consensus between Christian Democrats on the one hand and Social Democrats on the other. The fusion of Christian Democracy and Social Democracy produced a consensus which has lasted throughout the entire experience of European integration. Continental Socialists never saw the European Economic Community as an exclusively capitalist club, which would restrict social democracy, restrict the powers of the trade unions, and restrict interventionist governments in terms of welfare and public provision. From the start the Conservatives deluded themselves into believing that the European Economic Community would be a solution to the domestic problems which they faced.

Why De Gaulle's Veto Was Ignored

But the Macmillan government was unsuccessful in its quest for membership. De Gaulle in January 1963 vetoed Macmillan's application to join. It is instructive to look at exactly what de Gaulle said. So often de Gaulle is presented in federalist history books as some kind of nationalistic bigot, an unhinged, xenophobic, anti–British, anti–American ranter who had personal reasons of pure spite and vindictiveness in vetoing the British application. Indeed, sometimes just to mention de Gaulle in this context will draw a roar of hearty guffaws and laughter from a supposedly informed audience. In reality de Gaulle's veto was explained in a highly rational, intellectual and historically valid manner. He argued that:

'England, in effect is insular. She is maritime. She is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most distant countries. She pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities and only slightly agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions. In short England's nature, England's structure, England s very situation differs profoundly from those of the Continentals.'

What de Gaulle argued was not too dissimilar from what Churchill, Eden and the British Conservatives had said originally in the 1950s, that the continental tradition and the British tradition, both in politics and economics, are different and cannot be reconciled within the European Economic Community. In many ways de Gaulle's statement can be interpreted as a pro British back–handed compliment by highlighting those differences in trade, commerce and foreign policy which had traditionally been the source of British strength not weakness. Macmillan, however, ignored what de Gaulle said. In the House of Commons, just a few weeks later Macmillan feigned not to know the reasons why de Gaulle issued his veto. The Conservatives did not look carefully enough at the arguments de Gaulle used, which consequently led them over the next decade to the belief that the original reasons for membership were valid and that it was only a matter of time—until de Gaulle retired—before Britain could become the leading member of the European Economic Community.

Thus after de Gaulle's veto Macmillan was supremely confident enough to tell the Commons:

'As Europe's revival began to succeed the European outlook began to widen. There were some who have kept the narrow view, who still seem to regard a united Europe as a restricted or autarchic community on a protectionist basis; in other words they would like a community which would retain all the errors of high protectionism which had often been the policy of some of the constituent nations... One of the main reasons why there was such universal support for our entry was the belief of our friends, as well as many of our critics, that Britain, added to this company, would give as well as take, that she would contribute to the tradition of outward looking development.' ⁶

Instead of taking de Gaulle's arguments seriously, Macmillan persisted in his belief that Britain could change the EEC's essential character. Thus from 1961 onwards the reasons for membership which Conservatives advanced were always fatally flawed. Firstly, the belief that Britain could be a leader in Europe was always an unattainable aspiration. For the last thirty–two years every Conservative leader has argued that Britain needs to be in there to lead Europe; we need to be there at the conference table so that our case can be put; that if only the continentals will listen to the majesty of our argument, they will see that the British case is valid. The Cabinet Papers which are now available under the thirty year rule, clearly indicate how the British believed they could change the EEC from within.
In August 1961 the Cabinet suggested that:

'The United Kingdom can transform the EEC into an outward looking group of nations mindful of its responsibilities to the world as a whole.' ⁷

In essence this was the substitute Empire, with Britain leading, transforming, and changing the EEC as if the Community were not already a mature organisation with its own aims and objectives. For over 30 years Conservatives have cavalierly projected their own vision of Europe on to the EEC in an overeager anticipation that British leadership will prevail. Sir Richard Nugent, MP for Guildford, told the Commons in 1962 that:

'if Britain went in we should give a lead to those influences which are looking outwards and we should make them the dominating force within the Community...' ⁸

In June 1993, echoing the language and optimism of the 1960s, the then Employment Secretary Michael Howard predicted that:

'Over the next few years we have a chance to create a Europe in Britain's image. The flexibility, the competitiveness, the resistance to regulation which we prize so highly will he increasingly attractive to our European partners. The strait–jacket of uniformity will he recognised as intolerable. Common sense is on our side.' ⁹

Although the original aims of the EEC remain unchanged, Conservative leaders from 19G 1 onwards have argued that Europe is soon to go our way, that we should be at the "heart of Europe" to influence events not "standing on the sidelines" and that past failures to convince our European "partners" were bad luck not bad judgement. Essentially what Conservatives have done is to look at a Europe they would like to create, rather than at the European Economic Community as it really is. Virtually every John Major speech on Europe is a classic example of this genre. In October 1991 he told the Conservative conference that '. . . being at the centre of Europe means we are in a better position to influence the way in which it goes.' Similarly in September 1994 in the Netherlands he brimmed with optimism. Outlining his vision for Europe in the 1990s, he argued that the 1950s vision is no longer relevant. He urged a 1990s vision of Europe in which the nation state is the primary political unit. The Continentals, however, are not listening and were never amenable to that type of argument. Chancellor Kohl and M. Mitterrand have absolutely no intention of changing their agenda of European Federal Union on the Maastricht model to suit the agenda John Major outlined in his Netherlands speech. As Denis Greenhill, permanent under–secretary at the Foreign Office at the time of EEC entry has commented:

'Those British who were interested misjudged the extent to which they were able to shape the development of the Community, whilst the 'Founding Fathers' were careful not to disclose their ultimate federal objectives. History will record how we were steadily outsmarted between 1972 and 1992." ¹⁰

There are profound consequences for British policy as a result of this approach. Each failure to reverse the Federal trend has its own ratchet effect by which the powers of the British parliament are constantly being transferred to Brussels, albeit in a series of seemingly trivial incidents. But when taken together the loss of power is so extensive that a loss of sovereignty itself is now threatened by the full implementation of the Maastricht Treaty.

As well as seeking the "substitute Empire" Conservatives have always exaggerated the economic gains of EC membership and consistently failed to predict the drawbacks. We have laboured under the Common Agricultural Policy which is universally scorned and derided in Britain. It imposes a cost of £28 per week or £1,500 per year extra on the food bills of the average household. We found that the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System was a device which deepened and prolonged the recession, caused a massive number of bankruptcies, a sharp rise in unemployment, and destroyed the rates of economic growth successfully built up in the 1980s. In 1991 at the height of the ERM experiment Britain had –2.5% economic growth. In 1992 we still had –1% growth and the economy has only recovered since the £ was mercifully forced out of the ERM on "White Wednesday", 16th of September 1992. ¹¹ Similarly the argument about trade has worked out to Britain's disadvantage. Britain requires global free–trade. ¹² We need to be at the heart of GATT and the new World Trade Organisation. According to figures published in February 1994, 58% of our total exports are to the rest of the world compared to 42% to the EU. The European Community, because it is a Customs Union, is much too insular, mercantilist and protectionist to suit Britain's pattern of global trade. And the scandal of the budgetary contributions has plagued virtually every government since Britain joined in 1973. The threat to revoke the 1984 Rebate Agreement on budgetary contribution still hangs over British policy. Even with the rebate our projected net contribution to the EU in 1996/7 will be £3.6 billion or £G9 million each week, the equivalent of an extra 2p on income tax at the standard rate. Macmillan, Heath and their supporters were wrong to argue that EEC membership would be the great panacea for our economy. Far from it, our economy would have prospered far more outside the European Economic Community than it has done inside.' ¹³

But what of Macmillan's third argument that EC membership would be a barrier to socialism? One of the myths which Margaret Thatcher dispelled was that is was not politically possible for Conservatives to fight a head–on battle against Socialism. Previous generations of Conservatives had tried to take the rough edges off Socialism by conducting a series of compromises with it. The nationalised industries would be better managed than under Labour, for example. What Mrs Thatcher proved was that it was possible to defeat Socialism and to roll back those areas of the Socialist state, such as nationalisation and regulation, while maintaining electoral credibility and a broad appeal. The arguments before 1979 had been that a Conservative government, if it fought Socialism head–on, would forfeit electoral support in an age of consensus when voters tended to favour the centre ground. Mrs Thatcher proved that it was possible to win three consecutive elections on a right–wing platform aimed at dismantling the Socialist state—in her own words "banishing Socialism to the periphery of British public life". Yet the irony now is that European Union membership implies Socialist projects which threaten the Thatcher legacy. Under intense pressure from within the Party, John Major was forced to opt out of the Social Chapter of the Maastricht treaty. But social and labour market regulations by the back door of the Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) system have been a repeated feature of the EU's attempt to circumvent the Social Chapter opt–out. There appears precious little that can be done about this while Britain remains an EU member. Viewed in the 1990s, when British Socialism has been domestically defeated, and when Tony Blair's Labour Party has adjusted itself to many of the changes Mrs Thatcher introduced, it is ironic that the greatest threat of renewed Socialism emerges from the European Union itself. This outcome is the very opposite of that predicted by Conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s.

Beyond Maastricht: The Conservative Choice

What then of the future? How can we assess the Conservative Party's VV European experience? It is clear that Conservatives, in the next couple of years, have to make some fundamental choices. It is no longer sufficient for a Conservative leader simply to paint a picture of the type of Europe that Britain would like to lead. This approach has been tested to destruction and the Continentals are mightily unimpressed by it. The Maastricht Treaty has been ratified but it has not yet been fully implemented. In 1996 the intergovernmental conferences will decide on the full implementation of that Treaty. This provides a golden opportunity, an heroic pretext, for John Major and the Conservative Party to look afresh at the whole relationship with the European Union.' ¹⁴ In 1996 John Major should renegotiate a free–trade deal with the European Community to safeguard Britain's economic interests and to ensure that we have a full and functioning single market with the European Union countries. But he also needs to remove any possibility of political union, a single currency and the moves towards integration that are the very essence of the Community, as pursued by the federalist troika of the Commission, the French and the Germans. If John Major can renegotiate a deal to this effect he will solve the 30–year–old problem of the Conservative Party and EEC membership. But if such a deal is not forthcoming John Major should cast aside the failures of those 30 years by leading his party and his country out of the federal superstate which the Continentals are determined to create. Britain should withdraw from the EU rather than acquiesce in a federal state which few in the Conservative Party welcome and which the vast majority fears. If the Conservative Party is not to tear itself apart—and possibly to split in two—over the issue of Europe, John Major has until 1996 to work out a strategy whereby Britain can be extricated from those parts of the European Union that we can never change and which do not suit us. The Prime Minister has two years to effect this diplomatic negotiation. If he can do it, then his leadership of his party will be transformed. He will become not only a successful politician, but also one of the great Conservative statesmen. What is clear is that the grim federalist future predicted in 1970 by Conservative MP Neil Marten is almost upon us:

'Where does it end up? It ends up quite clearly with a European Parliament—there is one now of course—but it will be strengthened . . . it will go on. It will get budgetary power and so on, it will he directly elected and in the end it will vote on a majority vote. It will have a common foreign policy, a common defence policy, common social, money and even now they're talking about a common education policy. So in the end this is what will rule this country and the British Parliament will be reduced, and I do not say that this is exaggeration, it will be reduced to the status of a County Council as we know it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is forever." ¹⁵

For John Major, the Conservative party, and the people of Britain time is running out.

References

1. Sunday Times 16/10/94

2. For an astute view of French participation see Alexander Werth, De Gulle, Pelican 1965, ch. 10

3. Quoted in David Dutton, Anticipating Maastricht: The Conservative party and Britain's first application to join the EC, Contemporary Record, Winter 1993, Vol. 7, No. 3

4. For an excellent account of Macmillan's negotiations with De Gaulle see Alan Sked, Time for Principle, Bruges Group publication, 1992

5. Like Anthony Eden, Gaitskell accurately predicted the federalist destination of the EEC. He told the Commons on November 7th 1962, Hansard Vol. 666, colt 1018:

6. Hansard Vol. 671, colt 957–8

7. Quoted in Contemporary Record May–August 1961 Cabinet review, Winter 1992, Vol. 6, No. 3

8. Hansard Vol. 666, colt 1029

9. Quoted in The Times 9/6/93

10. Quoted by Andrew Roberts, The European Journal, May 1994

11. For an accurate prediction of the outcome of ERM membership see Martin Holmes, Times Higher Education Supplement, 26/10/90

12. See Bill Jamieson's Britain Beyond Europe, Duckworth 1994, for an excellent discussion of Britain's global trade and export opportunities

13. See Christopher Booker and Bill Jamieson's article, Sunday Telegraph, 9/ 10/94, estimating a total cost of £235 billion since 1973

14. For further discussion of this theme see Martin Holmes, Beyond Europe: Selected Essays 1989–93, Nelson & Pollard Publishing, 1993

15. Neil Marten, speaking on the Thames Television programme, Europe the Great Debate, 11/8/70