Brexit and the Future of Britain with Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen I think I must begin by congratulating Gresham College on its questions in asking me one year ago to give a lecture on brexit and the day after a very crucial vote but I myself have to begin with two apologies the first is I won't be talking about yesterday's vote or what we should do next because I haven't the faintest idea and the second apology is for giving yet another lecture on brexit which is the eighth I've given at Gresham it's been rightly said that everything that could be said on brexit has already been said but it's not yet been said by everybody and I don't want to talk about whether brexit is a good thing or not but rather to consider the effects of brexit if it occurs on British government and the British constitution and then rather more briefly the effects of brexit on the European Union itself and the first half of my talk summarizes themes in my book published recently called Beyond brexit and you can buy the book if you want after the lecture and I'd be glad to sign it without extra charge the second half of my talk and the effects of breakfast on the European Union is a summary of themes which I am developing in lectures I'm giving me the Yale next month and which will be published shortly afterwards in a book by Yale University Press now the first obvious effect of brexit on British government was that Europe led to the introduction of the referendum our first national referendum was held in 1975 on the question of whether we ought to remain in the European community as the European Union was which we joined in 1973 and the referendum had hitherto been thought unconstitutional and for example a standard work on British government published in 1964 it was said it has occasionally been proposed that a referendum might be held on a particular issue but the proposals do not ever repeat have been taken seriously and the referendum was deeply controversial whether we should have won or not both in Britain and amongst officials of the European Union and mrs. Andre the ex-president of the European Commission declared in London in July 1974 that a referendum on this matter consists of consulting people who don't know the problems instead of consulting people who do know them he said I would deplore a situation in which the policy of this great country should be left to housewives it should be just it should be decided instead by trained and informed people now the third referendum we had the second one was on the alternative vote in 2011 the third one of course also in Europe in 2016 and at a seminar at my institution King's College London a recent seminar the professor of European law takest Joe Dimas declared that this referendum in 2016 was the most significant constitutional event in Britain since the Reformation of 1660 and he said this because the referendum showed or perhaps confirmed that on the issue of Europe the sovereignty of the people jumped for sovereignty of Parliament and brexit is coming about despite the fact that the vast majority of MPs supported remain a majority of the cabinet including the prime minister supported remain and a large majority in the House of Lords support remain so brexit is coming about not because government and Parliament want it but because the people want it government and Parliament feel themselves constrained to do something they do not wish to do and that's a situation quite without precedent in our long constitutional history in a conflict between a supposedly sovereign Parliament and a sovereign people the sovereign people triumphed and so Europe has been responsible for the introduction of a new principle in the British constitution the principle of the sovereignty of the people the referendum had become on the european issue in effect a third chamber of parliament issuing legislate instructions to the other two now the result of the referendum showed that the european union has forfeited the confidence of the british people but some members of the political elite and the european union took the opposite view that the people had forfeited the confidence of a european union and had to work much harder to regain it they might borne in mind a poem written by the German playwright Berthold Brecht after the 1953 rising in East Germany he wrote a poem called a solution which cited leaflets by the secretary of the Writers Union in East Germany stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could only win it back by redoubled efforts and breath said would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another now the second effect that Europe has had upon the British system of government and the Constitution is to abrogate the principle of the sovereignty of parliament and that's because when we joined the European community it was something quite different from any other international obligation we undertook like membership of NATO or the United Nations because the European community was a superior legal order to that of Westminster and it meant that supposedly sovereign Parliament could no longer do certain things which it might otherwise have wanted to do most obviously to restrict immigration from the European Union this is some which many people in Britain would like to see done and no doubt many MPs would like to see done Parliament why we are members of the European community European Union cannot do it now the principle of parliamentary sovereignty is often confused with the principle of national sovereignty they're actually quite different because every treaty or international commitment requires a sacrifice of national sovereignty and so a matter of political debate how much it's reasonable to share in the national interest it's a matter of degree a pragmatic concept a tradable asset and the general view is in Britain I think when we signed up to various treaty obligations at the end of the Second World War that these treaties would increase British security and therefore her capability and room for manoeuvre in an increasingly threatening world dominated by two superpowers America and the Soviet Union but parliamentary solvent is a quite different concept it proclaims that Parliament can enact any law that it wishes then that no authority can declare an Act of Parliament void it's not a tradable asset like national sovereignty a mere matter of degree it's an absolute like virginity and just you can't be a qualified virgin you can't be a qualified sovereign of Parliament's either sovereign or it is not and that is the resistance to Europe that many have felt and of course the brexit is slogan in 2016 was take back control and the concept of parliamentary sovereignty is peculiar to Britain and it's one of the reasons why we don't have a constitution because obviously and no point in having a constitution if anything could be overridden at any time by Parliament and until we joined the European community in 1973 you could sum up the British constitution in just eight words whatever the Queen in Parliament enacts is law but the European Community altered all that contrary I think to the expectation of most politicians who enacted it and there was a famous a landmark case in 1991 the so called factor tain case where judges said they would discipline urgent shipping Act because it discriminated against Spanish fishermen the discrimination was inadvertent I should say and the European Court of Justice said this went against European law a fair enough but many people surprised the House of Lords which was then these through preme court in Britain said that we were also bound by that and that Parliament could not have intended to go against European community law and therefore they would disappear elevant parts of it before 1991 the idea that the courts could question the validity of an act of parliament would have been unthinkable and this therefore was altered there was now a higher authority than an act Parliament namely the court the times commented on a later case that Britain now has for the first time in its history a Constitutional Court because we had judicial review of primary legislation a concept hitherto unknown to the British Constitution furthermore Europe had altered the balance of power and the British system of government away from Parliament and government to the courts because British courts were now in effect Constitutional Court's acting on behalf of the European community as the European Union then was now of course this was the case for all the Member States they also a shift of power to the courts but it was particularly important for Britain with her long tradition of parliamentary sovereignty so the effect of membership of the European Community was to entrench provisions of community law into our legal system most of us Margaret Thatcher who was a former barrister concluded in her memoirs written in 1995 after her retirement most of us including myself paid in sufficient regards to the issue of sovereignty in consideration of the case for joining Europe at the beginning of the 1970s there was a failure to grasp the true nature of the European Court and a relationship that would emerge between British law and community law now in the case relevant to our withdrawal in 2017 the Miller case the judges said rightly I think the European communities act of 1972 had provided a new constitutional process for making law in the United Kingdom it had therefore altered the rule of recognition in the United Kingdom because the European community was a higher legal order in with the doctrine of primacy of European law so it follows that the slogan of the brexit ears take back control is not merely taking control back from Europe but taking control back from the courts to Parliament and government and we can expect it brexit comes about a shift of power from the courts to pond and to government one commentator summed up the implications of the landmark factor team decision in 1991 for the first time since 1688 a court suspended the operation of an act of parliament it now appeared there was a body with power to set aside the legislation of parliament the interesting question arises as to whether if parliamentarians had appreciated the full consequence of the European communities act has Margaret Thatcher claimed she did not they would still have passed the relevant legislation now the view that Parliament abrogated its sovereignty in the case of the European communities act raises an awkward question if Parliament can voluntarily limited sovereignty in the case of that act why not in respect to other legislation the human rights act for example or the devolution legislation what is specific about Europe there had been when we joined the European Community a judicial revolution the Constitution if you like had become what the judges said it was and that involved a limitation of the power of parliament and one constitutional lawyer said this new doctrine made sovereignty a freely adjustable commodity whenever Parliament chooses to accept some limitation before we entered the European Community it was thought Parliament could not choose to accept some limitation Parliament could not bind itself it did bind itself and as the same commentator said if that is not a revolution constitutional lawyers are Dutchman now I've argued that judges altered the Constitution that they altered the rule of recognition of it could they do it on their own or did not did not settle to race in require wider acceptance perhaps some politicians did come to accept that British Member ship in the European Community entail the undermining of parliamentary sovereignty but it is doubtful if the people as a whole ever did although perhaps they might have done if we remain members for a longer period of time but in the 46 years in which we had been members I don't think the idea of the primacy of European law ever gained widespread popular acceptance and that no doubt is a further reason why membership of the European Union never took deep roots amongst the British public and that's a pointer to the outcome of the 2016 referendum now the transformation of British government and the Constitution was carried a stage further by the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights and this became part of European Union law under the Lisbon Treaty of 2008 this charter draws on the European Convention of Human Rights although it's quite separate from the convention and its 54 articles contain a number of Rights which are not in the convention at all and amongst these rights is a very broad article 21 right to non discrimination on grounds and I quote such as sex race color ethnic or social origin genetic features language religion or belief political or any other opinion member of a national minority property birth disability age or sexual orientation and this article unlike the European Convention provides explicit protection for members of the LGBT community was also an article 13 right to academic freedom which of course I think is very important now the Charter only applies when member states are implementing European Union law it's a part of European Union law and therefore the courts can dis apply legislation if it goes against the Charter so it gives a stronger protection on a human rights act because a human rights act only allows judges to issue a declaration of incompatibility if some provision is found to be incompatible with the act and that has no legal effect then relies on Parliament to put things right if it will do so now Britain did not incorporate the Charter into her domestic law and together with Poland secured what ministers believe was an opt-out and they said the Charter didn't apply to Britain and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Commons in 2007 it is absolutely clear that we have an opt-out from the Charter there in fact nothing is less clear but then Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the Commons in 2008 the treaty records existing rights rather than creating new ones a new legally binding protocol guarantees that nothing in the Charter extends the ability of any court to strike down UK law and much later in 2014 Theresa May who was then Home Secretary before moving on to higher things and told the Commons the Charter was declaratory only and we do not consider that it applies to the United Kingdom but in fact we did not have an opt-out from the Charter and it would have appeared very odd if what was seen as a fundamental constitutional document and giving fundamental rights were different in the various countries of the European Union and for example a member state might gain an unfair competitive advantage in economics by ignoring some of the rights and the Charter has been used by British judges to do what the Human Rights Act did not allow them to do and laman dis apply parts of westminster statutes because they conflict with human rights this is a revolutionary and little-noticed development in British government and the power was first used in a case Ben kaboosh versus Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 2017 and I think this case is as much of a landmark case as factor tame now miss think ha bouche who was a Moroccan national who was employed by the Sudanese embassy in London and she claimed against the embassy unfair dismissal failure to pay her the national minimum wage unpaid wages and holiday pay as well as breaches of the Working Time regulations the Sudanese embassy claimed immunity under the provisions of the 1978 state immunity act but Lord sumption speaking of unanimous Court ruled that sections of the Act conferring immunity were incompatible with article 6 of the European Convention providing for fair trial and therefore right of access to a court the remedy for this would be a declaration of incompatibility which as I've said is not a strictly legal remedy because it has no legal effect but article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights provides that anyone whose rights have been violated has and I quote the right to an effective remedy if the convention had been violated Lord sumption Hel's so also had the Charter and he concluded therefore that a conflict between EU law and English domestic law must be resolved in favor of the former and the latter must be disciplic a PSA's under this one of remarkably brought by two backbench MP or then backbench in peace Tom Watson now definitely needed a Labour Party and David Davis late to become Secretary of State for exiting the European Union and they brought proceedings to secure the disciplic ation of the data retention and investigative Powers Act of 2014 as contrary to the Charter this went through the courts but before a final decision could be given the legislation was in fact altered but you may think that ironic that a leading brexit tier David Davis brought proceedings to question the validity of an act of parliament on the grounds that had defended against European Union principles and the Charter therefore revolutionised the approach of British judges to protection of Rights now if we leave the European Union we will no longer be bound by the Charter because it's almost the only part of a you law which is not to be incorporated into domestic law the rest it's been cooperated so the Parliament can decide which it wishes to keep which it wishes to modify and which it wishes to repeal entirely but not the Charter and the reason for that given by the Solicitor General Robert Buckland was that allowing courts to overturn Acts of Parliament outside of the context of EU law would be alien to our legal system and would offend against parliamentary sovereignty so the Charter will no longer apply now what ministers have said is that nevertheless Parliament will observe those charter that the rights in the Charter but they will produce a list of the rights in the Charter and show that they're being secured in domestic law the list of Rights presented by a minister is hardly a substitute for a codification of rights protected by the judicial review of primary legislation such as is secured by the Charter and even more important the legal remedy provided by the charter of this application will be lost so the courts will no longer be able to rule a statute out of order because it's incompatible with charter rights so they're no longer a legal remedy the rights therefore will be at the mercy of a sovereign Parliament which can at any stage amend or delete them so even if they're part of our law their status will be radically different they will no longer be protected and you may say well what right what value the rights have if they are dependent upon the whim of a sovereign Parliament and there's no legal remedy for a breach the other 27 member states of the European Union will of course retain the Charter of Fundamental Rights and you might ask the question are our MPs so deeply sensitive to the protection of human rights that their loan can be entrusted with their protection when the other 27 member states think that these rights do need to be protected by something other than a legislature that they need to be protected by the courts you might ask that question now it would seem that we will revert them to the constitutional position before 1973 before we joined the European community when the sovereignty of pardon was again a dominant principle and we engage in a process that I think has never happened before in in the developed world a process not of intentions but of dis entrenchment and just as our entry into Europe strengthened the courts at the expense of Parliament and the executive so brexit could reverse the process by strengthening palms and in effect government would usually though not present that usually controls parliaments at the expense of the courts so breaks it is likely to increase the power of government after we leave the European Union if we do leave and of course restoring the sovereignty of parliament and which is really the Omni competence of government was one of the main aims of the brexit ears and will it therefore be will the British system again become what Lord Hailsham argued it was in 1976 an elective dictatorship well it once again become a paradise for the executive and this trend goes very much against that in most democracies where rights protection is gradually being enlarged or rather than abolished so brexit will leave a huge gap in the system of rights protection unless the judges become more creative and this could have momentous consequences on the third effect on British government that I want to talk about from brexit which is the effect on our devolution settlement now when the devolution legislation was enacted in 1998 it was as you Britain would remain in the European Union and some of the matters that are devolved to the NAM to the Divo bodies in the non-english parts of Britain are matters which in practice were decided by Brussels the devolution legislation worked by reserving certain subjects to Westminster and any subject not reserved therefore was devolved now Agriculture and Fisheries for example are not reserved subjects therefore there are devolved subjects but in practice policy on agriculture and Fisheries was decided in Brussels so it was really a bogus form of devolution it was illusory now brexit would open the problem of how the internal market within the United Kingdom is to be preserved when we leave the European Union now the internal market was preserved while we were in Europe by the EU itself under the regulations of the European Union when we leave it would be perfectly possible to have for example four very different systems of agricultural subsidies in the different parts of the United Kingdom and the government has decided not wholly unreasonably in my view that there needs to be some central control of this process particularly as agriculture could be an important part of trade negotiations agricultural subsidies could be a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with independent countries therefore the government says we must have a common framework and they say well we must keep there for some aspects of Agriculture and Fisheries back at Westminster although in theory it's been devolved we can't allow it all to be developed we'll keep some of it back so that is a tacit amendment of the devolution legislation and they try to secure the consent of the Divo bodies to that they did not secure the consent of the Scottish Parliament and government where of course Scotland is ruled by the Scottish National Party and it's fair to say the SNP has not been conformational difficult in refusing consent to Westminster legislation but on this they dug their heels in and they passed their own legislation in the form of a Scottish continuity bill which incidentally preserved parts of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights in in Scottish law and this went to the courts which in a decision at the end of last year said that this bills on the whole out with the powers of the Scottish Parliament but the Scots say wait a moment there's a convention that Parliament will not normally legislate on Scottish devolve matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament and that's convention was put into statute after the independence referendum in Scotland in 2014 now the judges said it's maybe in statute but it is not just issued but it's a convention it's a principle if you like of constitutional morality and I suppose the Westminster would say well we're protected by the word normally this is brexit is anything but a normal situation the in the Miller case the court said this was not merely a convention but an entrenched convention but nevertheless was not just disabled now what is an entrenched convention I've asked senior judges and haven't got a very good answer but what it is but with most conventions if they're broken political consequences follow because for example a most obvious example if the Queen broke the convention of giving assent to government legislation I suspect the convention would be put into statute that she couldn't in fact do it legally she can now but it hadn't been done since the beginning of the 18th century when in 1909 the House of Lords broke Convention by rejecting lloyd George's peoples budget an Act of Parliament was passed limiting their statutory powers so the convention the beach of a convention usually leads to political action now in this case we don't yet know now the Welsh government did achieve agreement with Westminster but they said this method of dealing with Divo matters is not satisfactory and they said that there ought to be a Council of the Isles established including the British government and the government of the Devo bodies and that when the British government wishes to alter the devolution settlement it should require the consent of at least one of the devolve bodies in other words if the 3d Volvo DS agreed together they could veto any change and the government rejected that because they said in trenches on the sovereignty of parliament but as it was seen this is a kind of quasi federal solution to this very difficult problem and as a further problem with with this suggestion by the Welsh of who would represent England which of course is the largest part of United Kingdom but has no Divo body now in practice UK ministers for devolve matters our English ministers for example the Secretary of State the health or education transport they deal with matters in primary in England because there's mattered evolve by the devolution legislation but how can the UK government both represent England but also be the arbiter in the whole system so that raises a further difficult problem one suggested answer which I put in my book I'm not wholly confident of it is that England could be represented by the Metro mayors the mayor of London and representatives of the local governments Association that is perhaps the nearest we can get with it but I think brexit is illuminated the fact that you may argue we have no constitution or you may argue that while we were in Europe we were bound by a constitution which was that as the European communities act but you can also say that in Britain there are four constitutions depending on whether you look at some London from Scotland from Cardiff or from Belfast if you look at it from Belfast or should I say installment and Irish nationalist would say the system of power sharing in the Belfast agreement together with the provisions for north-south cooperation and the consultative role for the government of the Republic amounts to a convention by which the government is required not to make constitutional changes such as they're involved in brexit without the agreement of both communities in Northern Ireland that obviously brexit will have consequences for north-south collaboration and to collab and for the border as we know between Northern Ireland and a republic a nationalist say that by convention the Belfast agreement established a system of shared sovereignty in Northern Ireland and shin Fane argued after the brexit referendum the Belfast agreements had yielded a system of shared sovereignty relating to north-south institutional and cross-border bodies the British government has the position the Belfast agreement confirms British sovereignty in Northern Ireland it does not provide for joint Authority and the Republic has no more than a consultative role in the affairs of the province Northern Ireland unionists also have a different view of the Constitution from Westminster because unionists say their loyalty to Westminster is contractual rather than unconditional it's a loyalty only on condition that there's no attempt by Westminster to exclude them from the rest of the United Kingdom and that is something the unionist claim they can decide for themselves as they are doing over the backstop and this is why unionists in in previous years resisted the laws of Westminster which they held threatened the Union and in the 1970s most recently it forced the British government to abandon power sharing institutions established by the Sunningdale agreement so both from the unionists as well as the nationalist perspective the view of the Constitution from Stormont is very different from what it is in Westminster now the view from Holyrood is also different from that of Minister because the British conception of devolution is that it's a delegation of power from Westminster's subjects of the continuing sovereignty of Parliament as is shown by the recent legislation the Scottish conception is that devolution was a response to the sovereign will of the Scottish people renewed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 which began with a claim of Rights that said we gathered together as the Scottish constitutional convention do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government suited to their needs now the sovereign right of the Scottish people clashes with the sovereignty of Parliament with Westminster and that was you may argue tacitly accepted by Westminster when it legislated for devolution because the Scots alone wanted it didn't ask the rest of the United Kingdom whether they wanted what amounted to a reinterpretation of the acts of Union a revaluation of the acts of Union it was for Scotland alone to decide now the view from Cardiff is also different from that of Westminster because as I've said the Welsh believe that devolution established a quasi federal state in Britain and that was a logic of devolution in which the rights of the various parts are protected so the Welsh government seeks a new constitutional settlement for the United Kingdom in which Parliament would explicitly abandon its claim to sovereignty was apparently an American saying to the effect that in politics where you stand depends upon where you sit and that may also be said of the British constitution following devolution and brexit because it reopens issues which appeared to be settled and the meaning of the British constitution seems to depend on where you live therefore profound difference of view now on the fundamental rule recognition of the Constitution and in particular whether a multinational state in which the rights and responsibilities of the various parts are defined in law is compatible with a situation of parliamentary sovereignty in which in practice government can at any time overrule the Divo bodies and that conflict cannot be good for the cohesion and unity of the state it's been reopened by brexit but in the 19th century Tocqueville famously said there was no British Constitution but as I've said it may be there a for British constitutions and even before brexit as a result of devolution Lord Bingham who's perhaps the greatest judge of his generation said constitutionally speaking we now find ourselves in a trackless desert without any map or compass and he advocated a constitution which would enable any citizen to ascertain the cardinal rules regulating the government of the state of which he or she is a member so brexit if it occurs will leave us with constitutional uncertainty and an unprotected constitutional while we've in the European Union we lived in effect under a constitution a protected constitutional system in which institutions enjoyed only the powers given to them by the various treaties and that included the Charter of Fundamental Rights so the European system is protected against the abuse of governmental power it is rare if not unprecedented for a democracy to exit from a major international human rights regime and no country as hitherto moved in evolutionary fashion as Britain is doing from a protected to an unprotected system and the process of doing so in my view raises found constitutional questions because almost every democracy has a protected Constitution the only exception being New Zealand and is although Israel is trying to develop a constitution and one may ask whether brexit might prove to be our own constitutional moment that the very nakedness of our unprotected Constitution may provoke people to think it is time we started develop one like almost every other democracy now just before we entered the European community in 1972 one writer published a book based on his reflections on Britain and Europe in which he called it he call it journey to an unknown destination and the destination of Europe is still unknown but whatever the destination we probably won't be travelling towards it the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann when he issued a Schumann plan in 1950 establishing the Coal and Steel community origin of the European community so that Europeans had a destiny shared in common Britain is deciding possibly that she's not part of that common destiny perhaps has never been part of it in a poll in 2016 the British came 28 out of the 28 member states in terms of identifying themselves as Europeans nearly two-thirds of British did not identify the Europeans as compared with an average of just 38% who did not so identify in the EU as a whole the only countries approaching Britain's low level of identification with Europe were Greece and Cyprus which had suffered serious financial crises in recent years her Europe has caused a deep conflict between the facts of economics which from any point to continued membership and the sentiments of nationhood which point to brexit may not be wholly surprising if the sentiment of nationhood triumphs but these issues have caused unparalleled turbulence in British politics turbulence that has by no means come to an end as we can see from yesterday's vote it's divided families and friends for longer than any issue since the conflict over foreign policy in the 1930s even so it has not shaken the foundations of the physical system and I think whatever the final outcome of the brexit negotiations Britain will still remain one of the most stable democracies in the world with a solid constitutional and political structure in 1777 after we lost the American colonies a young British aristocrat said to Adam Smith this will be the ruin of the nation and Adam Smith replied there was a great deal of ruin in the nation and I think those are wise words well worth remembering and it's the tumult caused by brexit I want to conclude by look at the effects of brexit if it occurs on the European Union and how the European Union will develop after brexit it is not easy to understand Europe and indeed Madeleine Albright who was a secretary of state in America under Clinton said to understand Europe you have to be a genius or French now I am neither but I will try to do my best to understand the departure of Britain is bound to put the European Union under strain Britain after all is one of the largest and most powerful states in Europe and so her departure is bound to weaken the European Union furthermore brexit threatens as it were the ethos of the European Union which is that it with the consent of its member states is on an irreversible path to greater integration in terms of the ideal of ever closer Union so brexit threatens what might be called the ideology of the European Union now the European Union was founded in my view and remains as essentially a peace project and indeed the history of Europe since 1914 Falls neatly into two contrasting periods between the wars politics on the was marked by turbulence and crisis but for nearly 75 years its western half has known political stability and higher rates of economic growth and that is in large part due to the recognition of collective security and interdependence in a continent which had suffered badly from the absence of it the European movement began as I said earlier with the European Coal and Steel community which is - whose aim was to turn the production of coal and steel into weapons of peace and so undermine the basis of franco-german antagonism as Edward Heath the prime minister who took Britain into the European community told the House of Commons in April 1975 the immediate purpose was political the European community was founded for a political purpose it was not a federal purpose but a political purpose the political purpose was to absorb the new Germany into the structure of the European family and economic means were adopted for this very political purpose the European Coal and Steel Community was devised during the period of the Cold War when Europe was divided but the movement to integrate Europe was not intended to ratify the division of the continent on the contrary the founding fathers saw it is a step towards the complete unification of Europe since the United Germany firmly anchored in Europe would be the best guarantee to the Russians that there would be no resurrection of German nationalism the whole purpose Churchill said at the Albert Hall in May 1948 of a united democratic Europe is to give definite guarantees against aggression the creation of a healthy and contented Europe is the first interest interest of the Soviet Union speaking at Brussels in 1949 Churchill said the Europe we seek to unite is all Europe and that of course was a dream not to be realized to the 21st century in his lauric speech Churchill said the fighting has stopped but the dangers have not stopped and then what Europe needed was a blessed act of oblivion in 1949 robert schumann speaking of strasbourg said we are carrying out a great experiment the fulfillment of the same recurrent dream that for 10 centuries has revisited the peoples of europe creating between them an organization putting an end to war and guaranteeing an eternal peace and this was to be achieved by locking the economies of france and germany together so the two countries could never go to war again that aim has long been achieved in 2018 France timmermans vice-president of the European Commission and a former Dutch foreign minister showed his 12-year old daughter the anti-tank defenses of the frontier with Germany where his grandparents had cheered the Allied bombing of Aachen during the war he said this is part of a border and his daughter looked at him and said daddy what is a border now of course even if the European Union were now to break up France and Germany would remain securely at peace but secure peace has not been achieved everywhere in Europe by any means in particular it has not been achieved in the Western Balkans where ancient hatreds hatreds threaten the stability of the region in that part of Europe most of all warring neighbors need a common home and membership of the European Union seemed the only way in which age-old conflicts can be overcome the conflict when Yugoslavia broke up offers a terrible warning of what could happen in a Europe that is once more broken up International States indeed one important factor perhaps the prime factor preventing open warfare between Muslims and Slavs between Kosovo and Serbia was the desire of both countries to join the European Union it was made clear to Serbia her prospects of member depended upon establishing a relationship with Kosovo in 2013 agreements were reached on such matters as bilateral trade Kosovo's participation in regional initiatives and the status of the Slav minority in Kosovo the enlargement strategy report of the European Commission said the historic agreement reached by Serbia and Kosovo in April his further proof of the power of the European Union perspective and his role in healing histories deep scars and the European Union has in the Balkans become a roof over warring nationalities as the austro-hungarian Empire in to attempted to be in the years before 1914 and stability of the Balkans is after all as important to Britain as to the continent because it was in the Balkans that the great catastrophe of the 20th century began in 1914 dragging Britain into war and those who helped found the post-war order had seen it destroyed not just once but twice by two ruinous world wars and the same perception animated those European leaders who sought a united Europe after 1945 men such as Winston Churchill Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann international order had broken down in 1914 when the First World War which the American diplomat George Kennan called a seminal catastrophe in the twentieth century occurred and before that Europe had known almost a hundred years of peace broken only by local walls which had not involved confrontation between the great powers people had taken peace for granted under estimating the fragility of the balance of power which sustained it Europe could so some believed in 1914 easily survived a short war which against a small recalcitrant state Serbia in the words of the great diplomatic historian AJP Taylor all thought that war could be fitted into the existing framework of civilization war was expected interrupts the even tenor of civilian life only while it lasted the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward grey expressed his outlook an extreme form when he said in the House of Commons on 3rd of August 1914 if we are engaged in war we shall suffer but little more than we shall suffer if we stand aside when in 1940 in the Austrian Socialist Viktor Adler told Oscars Foreign Minister that war would provoke revolution in Russia and perhaps even in the Habsburg Empire itself the Foreign Minister Leopold from birth Tolls laughed at him and said and who will lead this revolution perhaps mr. Bronstein sitting over there at the cafe central now mr. Bronstein turned out to be Leon Trotsky and he did indeed lead a revolution the chain of events which began with the murder of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo was to encompass almost the whole of the 20th century ending only with the collapse of communism of the Soviet Union in 1989 and from the ruins of the continent the founding fathers began the process of European integration it was as I have said constructed by a generation all too conscious of the dangers of a breakdown of international order but now the generation which either endure the Second World War or which understands it as part of its historical memory has disappeared so also there has disappeared that sense of the fragility of international order which the immediate post-war generation understood so well now as in the earth before 1914 there are siren voices saying that the international order would benefit from a shake up and that any disturbance to it could be kept well under control the view of the Austrian leadership and the German General Staff in 1914 they were certainly wrong within the aim of the founders of the European Union then was to transcend nationalism and I want to end with a remarkable valedictory speech made of the European Parliament in January 1995 by the French president Francois Mitra just over a year before his death he spoke of his childhood amid families torn apart by the first world war who were mourning their dead and nursing a hatred against their traditional enemies he spoke of his time in a German prison camp in the second world war war he declared is Europe's past but it could also be Europe's future it is up to us he went on to be henceforth the guardians of peace of security and of the future and he concluded by saying nationalism means war the nationalism c'est la guerre [Applause]

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: Gresham college, gresham, gresham lecture, free lecture, free public lecture, public lecture, lecture, education, Brexit, Vernon Bogdanor, politics, british politics, britain, EU, European Union, Law, EEC, European Community, government, british government, uk government, europe

Id: 0IIKQJmmI3o

Length: 52min 48sec (3168 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019