1If defeat in war was etched into the consciousness of continental Europeans, it was victory in war that provided the backdrop for the British. Together with their Imperial and Commonwealth forces, as well as those of the United States and the Soviet Union, they had fought a global war, committing troops not only in Europe, but across the world. The British had, further, played a central role in the wartime conferences, sitting alongside and working with the Americans and the Soviets to discuss strategy and to plan for the postwar world. Britain’s wartime experience was one of the major factors that led to a lack of interest in an intimate involvement in the postwar process of European supra-national integration.

2It is possible to identify two key issues that will help to explain this phenomenon, often called, on the continent at least, the British «problem» of semi-detachment from continental Europe. These are sovereignty and Britain’s world role.

1. Sovereignty

3After the war, there was a widespread lack of general public interest in, or empathy to «Europe». Instinctive family and cultural ties towards continental Europeans and the European continent were not strong. As Philip Bell and Peter Morris point out in their paper, there were much stronger ties with the Empire/Commonwealth. The British constitution and British institutions had survived the war, in contrast to the collapse of democratie governments across the Channel. Thus the British were prepared to cooperate with their continental partners, but a deep-seated resistance to federation, or supra-national integration, dominated both elite and mass perception. The contrast was frequently made between British stability and constitutional instability on the continent. At the heart of this contrast were a set of constitutional values and conventions.

4British constitutional values were not embodied in one written constitution, but rested on the idea of the Monarch-in-Parliament; a legal System that defined, clarified and embodied legal principles; and an executive drawn from the Parliament. These three aspects of the British constitutional structure were, and still are, ail inter-related. The interconnections between these three parts were seen to be sharply in contrast to the separation of powers and to the idea of a written constitution that was closer to continental practice. It was generally held that the British constitutional System gave maximum freedom to democratically elected governments to act effectively, and that the rule of law, epitomised by Acts of Parliament, case law, and judicial interpretations, was supreme, well-established, and well-respected.

5There was therefore a constant, forceful and very widespread opposition to supra-national challenges to British sovereignty and freedom of action. This first became clear in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Organisation for European Economie Cooperation in 1948. Both the Americans and the French hoped to create an organisation that would embrace a measure of supra-national, majority decision-making. However, the British ensured that the structure of the ŒEC Council meant key decisions would be made by unanimity1. Likewise, in the Council of Europe, it was the British who insisted in the intergovernmental Committee of Ministers, which was designed to act as a sharp brake upon the federalist aspirations of the Consultative Assembly.

6In 1950, the first clear parting of the ways emerged when the British declined to participate in the Schuman Plan. In London, it was argued that Britain would have far more to give up in any abrogation of her sovereignty, than did the continental Europeans, who still suffered from a «well-known shakiness of morale». This was most clearly expressed on the conclusion of a fact-finding exercise conducted during 1951 by the Foreign Office’s Permanent Under Secretary’s Committee, into the character and direction of the integration movement. The Committee concluded thus:

7«The United Kingdom cannot seriously contemplate joining in European integration. Apart from geographical and strategic considerations, Commonwealth ties and the special position of the United Kingdom as the centre of the sterling area, we cannot consider submitting our political and economic system to supra-national institutions. Moreover, if these institutions did not prove workable, their dissolution would not be serious for the individual European countries which would go their separate ways again; it would be another matter for the United Kingdom which would have had to break its Commonwealth and sterling area connexions to join them. Nor is there, in fact, any evidence that there is real support in this country for any institutional connexion with the continent»2.

8By the time the British finally secured admission to the European Community, Prime Minister Edward Heath was still able to tell the House of Commons that «membership of the Community implied no erosion of national sovereignty, only the sharing and enlargement of the sovereignty of independent nation states in the general interest». The sense of this remark was unclear in 1971, and remains unclear today. Indeed, the British debate over the Maastricht treaty reveals exactly the same ambiguity and reluctance to admit that supra-national integration deliberately reduced national governmental autonomy. During the autumn of 1991, both Prime Minster John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd rejected inclusion of the word «federalism» in the treaty, in favour of the word «union». In the Commons debate on Maastricht, Major said, as Heath had done, that sovereignty was being pooled, not lost.

9Yet in 1990 the European Court of Justice ruled definitively that Community law took precedence over national law. Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls, commented that «the Treaty of Rome is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back3». The transition from national autonomy in 1945, to the present day has been a painful one, and the realities of the overriding competence of Community Law have largely been ignored4.

10Opposition to the loss of sovereignty was strong in both the Conservative and the Labour parties, and neither party can therefore be identified as the party of Europe. Rather, they have remained split on the European issue since the 1950s, and keeping the party together has been a high priority for both, as Macmillan’s cautious approach to the European community in 1961 and Harold Wilson’s referendum in 1975 show5 The British public appear not to have considered «Europe» as an appropriate party issue, not favouring general elections over «European» issues, either in 1961-2, or in 1974-56.

11A lack of public interest in «Europe» reflects the above comments, as Table 1 shows:

12Table 17. British Attitudes to the EEC

13If the British Government were to decide that Britain’s interest would best be served by joining the European Common Market, would you approve or disapprove?

14On the facts as you know them at present, are you for or against Britain joinng the Common Market?

15Which of these three – Europe, Commonwealth or America – is the most important to Britain?

16If you disagreed with your party on whether or not Britain should join the European Common Market, would you still vote for it or not?

17What do you see as the main argument in favour of Britain joining the European Common Market?

18If we look at the period of the early 50s, the British polling organisation, Gallup Polling did not even bother to poil the British about their attitudes to the proposed Schuman Plan. There were very high levels of ignorance about the EEC – and of the less than 50% who had heard of the EEC in 1958, half mistakenly thought Britain was already in the Community8.

19By the 1980s, there had been a shift in public attitudes, but there remained, and still remains, a lower level of enthusiasm for «Europe» in the UK, than in the Community generally:

20Table 29. In general are you for or against the efforts being made to unify West Europe?

21(For the 1985 and 1989 figures of 68% and 67%, less than half of the respondents were «very much» in favour)

22Is the Single European Market a good thing?

23Thus the British perception of the strengths of their own constitution, and the stability it brought, coupled with a suspicion of continental instability have made the essential transition of the past 45 years from global to regional status a slow and painful process.

2. Britain’s world role

24Victory in war brought with it a heightened sense of responsibility for the recasting of the postwar order. Despite her evident economie difficulties and the need for American help in the reconstruction process, Britain was still perceived as one of the Big Three. In 1955, Sir Oliver Franks remarked that the perception of Britain’s role as a major world actor was part of «the habit and furniture of our minds»10. This comfortable complacency was reflected, for example, in the early decision to acquire nuclear weapons, and was not broken until the dust settled after the Suez Crisis.

25After 1945, a new geo-strategic problem loomed even more menacing than the German threat, and that was the fear of Soviet power and of communism.The was perceived as not a purely European, but a global problem that required global responses, and which, in particular required the active support and backing of the United States11.

26The postwar perception of British power was best expressed by Winston Churchill at the Conservative Party conference in 1948. His speech, although he was out of office, was a reflection of actual existing realities as well as a policy statement. Churchill argued that it was possible to see Britain standing at the centre of three, interconnected circles of influence – the Empire/Commonwealth, the United States, and Europe:

27«three majestic circles are co-existent, and if they are linked together there is no force or combination which could overthrow them, or even challenge them effectively. Now if you think of the three interlinked circles you will see that we are the only country which has a great part in every one of them. We stand in fact at the very point of junction, we have the opportunity of joining them ail together»12.

28This concept of the three interlocking circles was an important part of the conscious and unconscious fabric of both British society and of British foreign policy makers. It represents what was called Britain’s unattached position, and was thought to give her maximum freedom of manœuvre and influence13.

29The United States Circle leads to a discussion of the importance for Britain of the so-called «Special Relationship». This remains one of the most enduring themes of the postwar era for Britain, and came to be perceived as the most important for Britain, not least because her twin aims of economie recovery and Western security could not be achieved without American support. The American connection was seen in part as a means of enhancing British power, and therefore had a much greater importance than the European circle14. However, the American connection was not a traditional one for Britain, and was a source of considerable anxiety and concern in the early postwar period, when it seemed as though there were aspects in American foreign policy thinking – isolationism and anti-imperialism in particular – which mitigated against a secure relationship across the Atlantic.

30Despite these early anxieties about American postwar intentions, it was the idea of the «West» that proved to be the most significant for British postwar policy, and was one that coloured her relations with Europe. This idea first appears at the end of 1947, when it had become clear that it would not be possible to construct any deal with the Russians over Germany that would maintain a favourable balance of power of the the western Europeans and Americans in Europe. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin began to speak of «a spiritual consolidation of Western civilisation (...) and an understanding backed by power, money and resolute action».He hoped to reconstruct the western German zones within the family of western European nations, by organising and consolidating the ethical and spiritual forces of which the British were the chief protagonists. American and Dominion backing was essential to create a Western System that would eventually include both Germany and Spain15.

31The notion that the «West» was more significant than «Europe» for British policy makers reached its apogee by 1950, with efforts to build an Atlantic Community that was at least as ambitious as the ideas about European unity that were popular, particularly from within the Council of Europe. There had been some discussion about the creation of a third world force under the combined leadership of Britain and France, but this idea was short lived.The Permanent Under Secretary’s Committee’s 1949, «A Third World Power or Western Consolidation» rehearses thoroughly the benefits to Britain and to the West of an Atlantic Community to stand against the communist onslaught, supported by the eventual membership of Germany.The Chiefs of Staff Global Strategy Paper of 1950, written even before the Korean War broke out, talks of the creation of a «Pax Atlantica», and that would embrace West Germany and such countries as Turkey because of their strategie importance in the stand against the Soviet Union16.

32Even as the idea of an Atlantic community was developing, however, the European dimension was also increasing in importance. Following the Schuman Plan initiative in 1950, the treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community was signed in 1951 and came into force in 1953. Despite the collapse of the ill-fated proposai for a supra-national European army in 1954, the Messina conference of 1955 led in 1957 to the signature of the Rome treaty, establishing a common market of the six members of the ECSC. While steadfastly refusing to join in any of these supra-national developments, the British government regarded them with growing concern. Apart from its possible harmful effects upon the British economy, ministers were worried that a division of western Europe between the European Economie Community and the rest would weaken the western alliance in its struggle against Soviet imperialism. As Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan tried to prevent this from happening by advocating a free trade area which would comprise the whole of western Europe, but this was vetœd by the French government at the end of 1958. Britain went ahead and formed a smaller free trade area of its own – the European Free Trade Association – in 1960, but it became clear almost immediately that it provided no solution to the problem.

33The decade in which these developments occurred witnessed a sharp relative decline in the international position of Britain. In 1950, Britain, although a long way behind the United States, was unquestionably the second most powerful country in the western world. Its GDP, for example, was more than twice that of West Germany and France combined, while its armed forces were larger than those of any other member of the North Atlantic alliance apart from the United States. Ten years later, however, things had changed. The West German «economie miracle» was well under way – its rate of economie growth was almost three times that of Britain’s in the 1950’s – and, following the allied decision to rearm West Germany in 1954, the first contingents of what would eventually become the largest military force in western Europe were recruited in 1957. France’s economy had also been growing at a faster rate than Britain’s and the strength of its armed forces had overtaken that of its cross-Channel neighbour in 1958. Admittedly this latter phenomenon was due to the war in Algeria, but it was likely to endure given Britain’s decision to abolish conscription, which was announced in 1957. In 1960, France became the world’s fourth nuclear power.

34At the same time, there was an erosion of the importance of the Commonwealth and Empire to Britain. The value of trade preferences with the Commonwealth was steadily declining. The process of decolonisation, which had begun with the independence of India, Pakistan and Burma in 1947, accelerated rapidly after Ghana became independent in 1957. The Suez fiasco of 1956 struck a mortal blow at Britain’s «informai empire» in the Middle East, while the «old [i.e. white] Commonwealth» suffered a major defection with the departure of South Africa in 1961.

35After the failure of the Paris «summit» in 1960, British leaders even began to wonder if they would be able to hang on to the «special relationship» with the United States. «Shall we be caught», Macmillan confided to his diary in July of that year, «between a hostile (or at least less and less friendly) America and a boastful, powerful «empire of Charlemagne» – now under French but later bound to corne under German control [?] Is this the real reason for «joining» the Common Market?17». Certainly, one of the main reasons why Britain finally took the plunge and applied to become a member of the E.E.C. in July 1961 was because, as Macmillan subsequently explained it to Commonwealth leaders, he thought it inevitable that, given the realities of power, the United States would attach growing importance to the views of the Community and that there would be a growing tendency for both of them to «concert policy on major issues without the same regard for our views and interests such as our present relationship with Washington affords18.

36Macmillan’s reference to France and Germany in his diary entry of July 1960 underlines the phenomenon referred to by Philip Bell and Peter Morris: viz. the constant importance of these two countries in Britain’s perception of Europe. Of the two, France is undoubtedly regarded as the more important. When the Foreign Office discussed the formation of a «Western bloc» in 1944, it was to be organised around an Anglo-French core, and when Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, told the House of Commons on 22 January 1948 that «the time is ripe for a consolidation of Western Europe», he immediately went on to say that «[f]irst in this context we think of the people of France19». And when Macmillan, Wilson and Heath sought to obtain Britain’s entry into the E.E.C., it was to Paris that they first repaired.

37Some of the reasons for this are obvious – geography, the perceived need to contain Germany, and the influence exerted by a powerful leader like General de Gaulle, for example – but there is more to it than that. It may well reflect the dominant position of the French language and culture in the British educational System. According to officiai figures, 249,000 English and Welsh school students took French in the basic leaving examination in 1990 compared with 78,000 who took German, 17,000 who took Spanish, and a mere thousand or so who took Italian20. Moreover, most of those who took German will also have taken French, since the former is usually taught as a second language to brighter children. Indeed, only about one fifth of ail schools offer German as a first language. In the absence of governmental intervention, this predominance of French is likely to remain self-perpetuating – if only because of the much smaller pool from which teachers of other languages can be recruited – but how can a state of affairs which implies that France is three times as important to Britain as Germany, fifteen times as important as Spain, and two hundred and fifty times as important as Italy possibly be defended?

38If not as important as France, Germany is nevertheless regarded as significant, and this too emerged very early on. Although personally unsympathetic towards the Germans as a people, Ernest Bevin was still aware of the importance of their country. In a minute to Prime Minister Clement Attlee on 1 March 1948 he wrote that British policy must be «to bring them [i.e. the Germans] into a united Europe on equal terms (...)», as they had a contribution to make to the world’s industrial recovery and social development. The only question was how this could be achieved21. Successive British governments have been just as mindful of the importance of Germany and of the need to integrate her into Europe, even though the split in the Labour Party over German rearmament in the early 1950’s and Mrs Thatcher’s coolness towards German reunification at the end of the 1980’s – to say nothing of the more outs-poken anti-German sentiments voiced by her close friend and political ally, Nicholas Ridley – show that there was and is a residual suspicion of and hostility towards Germany which cuts across party lines. After the experience of the two world wars, it is not difficult to understand why such suspicion and hostility should exist. What is perhaps more surprising is that there is so little of both, especially when compared to the visceral Francophobia of some British politicians in both major parties and of sections of the tabloid press, which sometimes tends to treat the European Community as a French plot deliberately designed to destroy the British way of life22.

39What strategists would call «the worst case scenario» in the context of Britain’s perceptions of Europe is a Franco-German alliance directed against her. His recently published memoirs23 show that Nicholas Ridley believes that this alliance already exists, and once again the fear of it is not a new one. The de Gaulle-Adenauer axis greatly preoccupied Macmillan in the early 1960’s, as his previously quoted diary entry demonstrates, and both his and Harold Wilson’s Labour government sought, equally in vain, to persuade the Germans to take a strong stand against de Gaulle’s successive vetœs of British membership of the Community.

40Of the remaining members of the original European Economie Community, Italy no doubt possesses the highest profile in the minds of British decision-makers. But while the cultural importance of Italy to Britain can hardly be under-estimated, its political importance is quite another matter. The experience of the second world war and the vagaries of its political System have between them ensured that, despite its considerable economie success, Italy is still regarded as a political light-weight. Indeed, only in 1948, when the country was briefly perceived as being in the front line of the developing Cold War between the Soviet Union and the west, was it anywhere near the centre of the British government’s preoccupations, even with regard to Europe. Belgium and the Netherlands are generally regarded as pro-British, although too small to wield much influence, while the British attitude towards Luxembourg is perhaps best summed up by the patronising comment which Anthony Nutting (a junior minister in the Foreign Office from 1951 to 1956) made in his memoirs concerning that country’s elder statesman, Joseph Bech: «(...) his jubilant rotundity [bore] happy witness to the delights of combining the not always arduous duties of Foreign Minister of Luxembourg with the ever pleasurable activities of the Minister for Winegrowing24».

41Beyond the boundaries of «the six», the postwar Labour government had rather special views concerning Scandinavia and Spain. The former was regarded with considerable sympathy, mainly because of the influence of social democratie parties in the Scandinavian countries. This was contrasted with the influence of Catholic/conservative parties inside «the six». It was often argued, notably in the Labour party’s famous «European Unity» pamphlet of 1950, which was published just after the launching of the Schuman Plan, that Britain could not possibly federate with countries which did not share its commitment to socialism, while the then No. 2 in the Foreign Office, Kenneth Younger, expressed the fear that the plan itself «may be just a step in the consolidation of the Catholic «black international» which I have always thought to be a driving force behind the Council of Europe25. As for Franco’s Spain, it was not its Catholicism, but its Fascism which effectively ruled it out of consideration as a desirable European partner in the eyes of the Labour government. While later Conservative administrations did not share the ideological prejudices of their predessor, links with Scandinavia were briefly reinforced when the E.F.T.A. was established in 1960, and Spain remained in a kind of purdah until its democratisation in the 1970’s.

42British perceptions of eastern Europe were quite different from those of western Europe both before and after the second world war. In other words, it was not simply a corollary of the Cold War division of Europe, but reflected a more long-term reality. This can be illustrated by means of a quotation from the introduction to Hugh Seton-Watson’s book, Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941, which was written during the war and first published in 1945. The author was not only involved in policymaking himself, as a member of S.O.E. and later of the Foreign Office, but his father, R.W. Seton-Watson, was one of the architects of the post-World War I territorial settlement in eastern Europe. He wrote:

43Between Germany and Russia live a hundred million people. A few hundred miles separate them from the shores of Britain, but to the British people, which is aware of the existence of Zulus and Malays, Maoris and Afridis, they are unknown. They have unpronouncable names, and live in plains and forests, on mountains and rivers which might be in another world. When Mr Chamberlain spoke [at the time of Munich] of the Czechoslovaks as «people of whom we know nothing», he was telling the truth and he was speaking for the British people26.

44Such perceptions go a long way towards explaining the willingness of British governments before and during the second world war to accord a sphere of influence in eastern Europe first to Germany and then to the Soviet Union, although they eventually quarrelled with both countries over the precise nature and extent of that sphere of influence. It also helps to explain why, in 1944, well before the crystallisation of the Cold War division of Europe, the Foreign Office was thinking only in terms of organising a western European bloc under the aegis of the United Kingdom as a means of both guaranteeing British security and strengthening Britain’s international position in the postwar world.

45The Soviet takeover of eastern Europe and the onset of the Cold War merely reinforced this tendency. When, in response to the perceived threat from the Soviet Union, Bevin spoke in a memorandum submitted to the Cabinet on 4 January 1948 of the need to «organise and consolidate the ethical and spiritual forces inherent in.Western civilization», he was thinking in terms of «some form of union in Western Europe», which would comprise Scandinavia, the Low Countries, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and, as soon as circumstances permit», Spain and Germany, i.e. the whole of non-Communist Europe apart from Austria and Switzerland27 Europe for British policymakers has therefore tended to be coterminous with western Europe for most of the twentieth century.

46This has not prevented British governments of different political persuasions from calling eastern Europe in aid when it was thought useful to do so in the interests of British policy. In a memorandum of November 1949, for example, Hugh Dalton (the nearest thing to a «Minister for Europe» in the postwar Labour government) reminded Guy Mollet, the French Socialist who was then Rapporteur of the General Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe, that «Western Europe, as defxned by the membership of the Council of Europe, is only a fraction of Europe (...)», and referred to the absence, among others, of the Communist countries of eastern Europe and even of the Soviet Union itself28. Dalton was not of course arguing that ail or any of these countries should actually be invited to join the Council of Europe; he was merely using the incompleteness of what he called «Strasbourg Europe» as one of several sticks with which to beat those who favoured a federalist approach to the unification of Europe.

47Almost forty years later, in her famous speech at Brugge on 20 September 1988, the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, reminded her audience that the European Community was only one manifestation of the European identity. «We must never forget», she went on, «that East of the Iron Curtain peoples who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and indentity have been eut off from their roots. We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities29» While Mrs Thatcher’s sympathy with those European countries then under the Communist yoke cannot be denied, it is equally true that their existence was a useful propaganda weapon in her struggle against federalism, since it could be argued that it would be a great mistake to set the existing twelve-nation Community in such a rigid mould that they would be forever excluded from it. Now that the political division of Europe has ended and some of the countries concerned have actually expressed a desire to join the Community, this factor has acquired much more importance and some British «Eurosceptics» do argue that broadening «Europe» to include the eastern states is a higher priority than deepening it along the lines agreed at Maastricht. It is hard to believe that their arguments owe more to their sense of a shared European destiny with Czechs, Poles and Hungarians than to their opposition to a supra-national Community and their hope that, even if the length and complexity of the negotiations involved dœs not postpone further centralisation until the Greek Kalends, the consequent enlargement of the Community will inevitably involve some dilution of its powers.

48We therefore revert to the two key issues which were raised at the beginning of this essay: sovereignty and Britain’s world role. The decline of the latter over the past two or three decades has been there for ail to see and most politicians now accept that Britain’s future is firmly anchored in Europe. The issue of sovereignty, however, remains as crucial in British perceptions as it was in 1945.

49Dr. Deighton wishes to thank the Nuffield Foundation, UK, for research funding.