From the European Coal & Steel Community to the Common Market - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the second of a series of lectures on Britain's relationship with the continent and in the first I sketched the reasons why we have found it so difficult to discover a satisfactory relationship with Europe and today I want to talk about the early stages of European integration in the 1950s and why Britain remained aloof from the American Secretary of State from 1949 to 53 on my microphone speaking let me try again the American Secretary of State from 1949 to 53 Dean Acheson called his memoirs for the period present at the creation and that's a good title since these years were a formative period in world politics particularly in Europe in which new relationships were being formed which survived for many years now in the immediate post-war years the countries including Britain had a great deal of freedom of maneuver and Britain bads had the most own to the great prestige which he enjoyed after the war but after the 1950s relationships became frozen and it proved very difficult to alter them so I think the pattern of modern Europe was really set in these years now one has to bear in mind Britain's position at the end of the war which was quite different from what it is today first Britain alone among the European powers except for Russia which was a part of European power was a victor in the war second Britain was the only one of the European competence which had neither been ruled by a fascist or Nazi government nor been occupied by Germany or Italy and as a result Britain was the only one of the European powers whose institutions had remained intact during the war the other countries had to start again most of them had to adopt new constitutions and they also had to come to terms with the experience of fascism Nazism and collaboration to put the point more crudely during the post-war years young people on the continent had to ask whether they had reason to be ashamed of what their parents or grandparents had done during the war and no one in Britain had to ask that question and thirdly Britain was seen together with America and the Soviet Union as one of the three great powers in the world superpowers and in that role had taken part in the great wartime conferences at Techtron the Alta and pop stand so Britain saw herself as being in a quite different position from the countries on the continent was i couldent quite different and you can sum it up by saying in Europe people were profoundly aware of their weakness and of the need to avoid any further confrontation between France and Germany another European civil war if you like but the atmosphere in Britain was quite different and there was tremendous optimism and self-confidence and optimism and self-confidence that were gradually decline in the post-war period now the left-wing Labour MP Tony Benn called his volume of memoirs dealing with the 1950s years of hope and I once asked him why he'd given them that title because after labour had been in opposition during that period and his reply was that one had to remember the atmosphere of confidence then he said Britain had won the war secured full employment after it a National Health Service and a welfare state she had insured collected security through the NATO alliance and from supporting America in career Ben said they're seen almost nothing that Britain couldn't achieve if she set her mind to it and that sense of confidence began to decline after the failed Sooey expedition in 1956 and then decline further under the impact of economic difficulty but the psychology of self-confidence was well expressed by athlete who was prime minister in the post-war labour government in a speech he gave many years later his last public speech in fact in 1967 to the Labor Party it was typically laconic short at least Beach about the Common Market he said the Common Market the so-called Common Market of Six Nations know them all well very recently this country spent a great deal of blood and treasure rescuing forum on the other two and then he sat down now you could put the point in another way by a critic of British policy was ROM mone one of the architects of the European community who always regretted that Britain hadn't been more involved he said Britain had not been conquered or invaded she felt no need to exercise history I think that is very true and differentiates Britain from the countries of the concert however those who were in favor of European unity could draw comfort from the fact that they seem to enjoy the support of the person many regarded as the greatest living Englishman Winston Churchill the leader of the Conservative Party who of course in 1945 became leader of the Opposition because it was Churchill who led the call for a united Europe and indeed some regard him as one of the founders of movement for European unity now it's first I think worth remembering that in June 1940 in order to forestall a French surrender Churchill had often offered France indissoluble union with Britain both become one country in what he called their common defense of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves Britain France would become permanently United and Britain would share with France the full cost of the war but that was generous given the fact that obviously the damage in France was much greater than in Britain and the French prime minister at the time they know who was an Anglophile later said this might have marked the beginning of the United States of Europe but Renault was soon overthrown by marshal Petter and the French sued for an armistice before the proposal really got off the ground but rather remarkably in the middle of the war Churchill reverted to the idea of the united Europe and a few days after the Battle of El Alamein in 1942 he wrote to his foreign secretary Anthony Eden with his views on the post-war world he said I must admit that thoughts rest primarily in Europe the revival of the glory of Europe the parent condition of the modern nations and of civilization and he then went on to say harder that is to say now I look forward to the United States of Europe in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimized and will be possible a remarkable vision in the middle of the war with Germany then after the war he reverts to that theme in a speech in Zurich in 1946 speaking as leader of the Opposition he said when the Nazi power was broken I asked myself what was the best advice I could give my fellow citizens in our ravaged and exhausted continent my counsel to Europe can be given in a single word unite he said there was a remedy which if it were generally and spontaneously adopted would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene and would in a few years make all Europe or the greater part of it as free and happiest Switzerland was today and this remedy he said was to recreate the European family or as much of it as we can and provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace in safety and in freedom he said we must build a kind of the United States of Europe and he then went on I am going to say something that will astonish you in 1946 the first step in the recreation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany there can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany and that was remarkable just over a year after the end of the war now that wasn't the first time that Churchill had advocated a united Europe he'd first advocated it before well before the war in 1930 when he'd said the conception of the United States of Europe is right every step taken to that end which appeases the obsolete hatreds and vanished oppressions which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe which encourages nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply is good in itself but then in words that prefigured his post-war policies he added but we have our own dream and our own task we are with Europe but not of it we are linked but not compromised but towards the end of the 1940s he made speeches which seem to suggest that Britain was in fact part of Europe and Britain should be prepared to sacrifice her sovereignty in the European movement in the speech at the Albert Hall in May 1947 just a few months after Zurich speech he spoke of the idea of the United Europe in which our country will play a decisive path and he argued that Britain and France should be the founder partners in this movement he said if Europe United is to be a living force Britain will have to play her full part as a member of the European family and two years later he said the French Foreign Minister mr. Schumann declared in the French Parliament this week that without Britain there can be no Europe this is entirely true but our friends on the continent need had no misgivings Britain is an integral part of Europe and we mean to play our part in the revival of her prosperity and greatness he said no time must be lost in discussing this question with the dominions and seeking to convince them though their interests as well as ours lie in a united Europe now I think all that would get Church and expelled from the conservative parties if people knew what he'd said perhaps we'll be post posthumously expelled from the Conservative Party not what most modern conservatives believe so a people who favor the United Europe in the late 1940s good luck to Churchill in opposition for inspiration but of course the Labour Party was in power and as you gathered from the attic rotation they were not very sympathetic this government saw its task as that of helping the continent to rediscover democracy to recover economically and the Labour government also said it will assist Western European defense and from this point of view Britain was the most cooperative partner in Europe in 1948 she signed a treaty of alliance with France and Benelux the Treaty of Brussels which we'd refused to do before both World War II not had a formal alliance with France's common defense and this was expanded in the NATO alliance of 1949 which was an explicit commitment to collective security so that an attack on any one member of the Alliance which included most of the Western European powers was to be understood as an attack on all and every member was under the obligation to go to the aid of any country that was attacked and this again was a great contrast between the policy before the wars when Britain had refused to enter into any continental commitment also in 1949 Britain played a leading part in the establishment of the Council of Europe which was an intergovernmental organization composed of members of national governments and national parliaments and which produced the European Convention of Human Rights which is now in our Human Rights Act and it's also fed out there had nothing to do with the European Union the European Convention of Human Rights was drawn up in large part by conservative lawyers like David Maxwell Fyfe and strongly supported by Churchill who favored unifying Europe in terms of the rule of law so again Churchill's a good candidate for expulsion from the modern Conservative Party but all of these organizations were intergovernmental none of them involved power sharing or merging sovereignty and of course at that time Britain saw herself as much more than a European power she was at the center of three circles it was said one of them was Europe but the other were the others were head of the Empire which was being transformed by the Atty governed into a multiracial Commonwealth and the third was a special relationship with the United States and the key to British power and influence it was bought Ben was to hold these three relationships in balance to remain the center of all three and not cut loose from any of them and any tilts in one of these directions might put the other relationship it's at risk and so we can British power and in particular merging sovereignty with Europe would compromise at the thought of British position as head of the Commonwealth so Britain could not easily emerge with a European orientation now at home the active governments were building what it saw as a British road to socialism at home this involved construction of a welfare state and the National ization of Basic Industries abroad it meant the multinational Commonwealth are symbolized by the independence of India in 1947 and her admission to the Commonwealth as a republic and labour I think had a tremendous emotion involvement with India whose independence it had long supported and also with the older dominions such as Canada on Australia based on their support in two world wars and of course many British people had and still have relatives living in those countries and that feeling of the Labour Party was well expressed by active successor as Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell in a speech to the Labour Party conference in 1962 in which he opposed British entry into the common market and he said in that speech we at least shall not forget Gallipoli and Vimy Ridge and what he meant was there's tremendous emotional resonance of the Commonwealth joining Europe men jettisoning that it should be resisted now on the continent attitudes were quite different of course and the leadership of the European movement in the early years lay with France which was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the post First World War period by treating Germany as a pariah state instead the French decided the better policy would be to integrate Germany into Europe so preventing her from going to war again now if I were to say that the 9th of May 1950 is the most important date in the post-war history of Western Europe and also the most important date in Brittany's relationship with Western Europe I suspect that most of people in the audience would not have the faintest idea of what I meant but I think it is so 9th of May 1950 was the date of the Schumann declaration which gave rise to the first movement toward the European unity the European Coal and Steel community that gave rise for the European community or common market and that gave rise to the European Union to which we now belong perhaps as unwilling members now Schumann was Robert Schumann who was a foreign minister of France but he had an unusual a background he was born in Luxembourg but spent much of his early life in Lorraine which before 1914 him born in 1883 so 1886 before the First World War Lorraine was part of Germany it's been annexed by Bismarck after the franco-prussian war 1871 so Schumann grew up as a German citizen and was conscripted into the German army in 1914 but rejected on health grounds now after the First World War Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France so he became a French citizen and he played an honourable role in the French Resistance in the Second World War and then became a leading figure in French politics but I think always saw himself as a franco-german and the basis of the Schumann plan was a mixture of fear and of hope the fear was that German industrial might and particularly her strength in the production of coal and steel would lead to further German rearmament and aggression because coal and steel were both the keys for economic power but also the raw materials for a possible renew policy of German aggression but Schumann believed it had been a mistake to punish Germany so severely after World War one and the hope was that peace was more likely to be secured by reconciliation but how to achieve it and here I quote from the Schumann declaration of 9th of May he said that coming together of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany any action taken must in the first place concern these two countries not Britain notice these two countries with this aim in view the French government proposes that action be taken immediately on one limited the decisive point it proposes a French and German production of coal and steel be placed under a common high authority whose decisions would be binding within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe so see the aim was to turn the production of coal and steel into weapons of peace and so alter the whole context of franco-german antagonism but there was a further aim than that and this the whole continental conception of the European movement which we in Britain have found difficult to accommodate ourselves to the first thing was economic but the ultimate aim was political no less than the unity of Europe Schumann said this Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan it will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity the pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of a common foundation for economic development as a first step in the Federation of Europe with the ultimate aim was a federation of Europe and economics was a means to that ultimate aim now Germany immediate accepted the Shuman plan that was not surprising because it had been discussed with Germany before it was announced and Schumer had consulted the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer now Germany was then West Germany it was not reunified to last the berlin wall collapsed in 1989 in the eastern part of Germany within under communist rule but the new western part of Germany did become the Federal Republic in 1949 and its first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was like Schumann a Christian Democrat and his aim was to anchor West Germany's firmly into the Western alliance and so naturally he grabbed the opportunity offered by the Schumann plan now what Schumann proposed as I said is that the coal and steel production of France and Germany be placed under a common Authority called the high authority now the high authority was a transnational body its members were to be appointed by the Member States but they were not to represent the Member States they were to represent the common European interest it's rather like the European Commission today its members are appointed by the Member States but they don't represent the Member States they represent the interests of the European Union now if as human hoped a European Federation irrelevantly to be achieved the plan must be open to all European democracies and in the event for other countries join the three Benelux countries Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg and also Italy but Britain did not join now one journalist asked Schumann at the press conference launching his plan was this not a leap into the unknown and shoot man replied yes it is a leap into the unknown just 10 years since the Germans had conquered Paris and five years almost to the day since the defeat of Nazi Germany but the Schumann plan would in his own words make war between France and Germany not only unthinkable but materially impossible because they would be in an embrace so close but neither could draw back far enough to hit the other and that marked the Shubin plan marks the birth of the European unity the high authority as I've said came to be transformed into the European Commission of the European community in 1957 and now the European Union the Coal and Steel community like the European Union had a Council of Ministers and a court of justice to arbitrate and a common assembly which is now the European Parliament that the common assembly was not originally directly elected but selected by members of the various national parliaments and it had any supervisory powers today of course the European partners who directly elected will be voting or not voting as the case may Phoenix may in elections for that and of course got much wider powers now the 9th of May is now known on the continent so I don't think much celebrated here is known as Europe day and sometimes as Shuman day as the pranky moved by the catholic church to beatify Shuman but apparently the catholic church demands evidence of a miracle before this can occur but you may you may think the creation of the cold and steel communion the common mark is a miracle or not I don't know just a few years after the war now what does Britain's attitude to this momentous development the first thing to say is came as a bolt from a blue a surprise because the British unlike the Germans had not been consulted and this indicates something important I think that France the relationship with Germany was coming to be more important than the relationship with Britain and when the French asked for agreement in principle to the establishment of a supranational Authority the high authority they said we're not prepared for Britain or any other country for that matter to haggle over the principle of the high authority that has to be accepted before you enter into discussions this of course caused great difficulties for the British government because if you look at the high authority if you look at the Commission for that matter so it's a supranational body is it democratic is it properly accountable here you have appointed members members appointed by national governments making important political decisions about the coal and steel industries could include decisions which put people out of work the high the high authority would be sovereign over those matters walls are not a danger are ruled by technocrats in this fear was when expressed by someone who broadly pro-european Harold Macmillan the future conservative Prime Minister then in opposition he said to the Council of Europe in 1950 fearing the weakness of democracy men have often sought safety in technocrats there is nothing new in this but we have not overthrown the Divine Right of Kings to fall down before the Divine Right of experts in other words these were people who would not be democratically accountable so worried many people have I think about the European Union now that you look at the figures like Van Rompuy or burrows Oh or and Daly Ashton or others are they they're not elected who are they accountable to are they accountable can they be removed if you don't like their policies that was a British worry about the high authority now that what other worries felt by the Labour government after all they just nationalized the coal industry and we're in the process of nationalizing the steel industry how could these nationalized industries be integrated with a European authority will tap on the basis of private ownership it seemed a contradiction after you've nationalized industries then to merge them with those of other countries then there was the post-war belief in Keynes in economics which it was argued required national control of your economy to prevent unemployment you needed a counter cyclical policy on the part of your government spending in a recession to avoid unemployment but if you ceded control to the high authority it could insist on the closure of British mines or steel work and this fear was expressed by Labour's Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison rather piffle II he said it's no good the Durham miners were where it handled McMillan remembering the unemployment in his constituency Stockton between the wars put that view forward in a selectively person he said one thing is certain and we may as well face it our people are not going to hand over to any supranational Authority the right to close down our pits or steel works we will allow no supranational Authority to put large masses of our people out of work in dadan in the Midlands in South Wales or in Scotland then there was the fear of what the cold and Steel community would lead to as Schumann said a European Federation and one diplomat said British participation he advised the government is likely to involve us in Europe beyond the point of no return whether the plan involves some form of immediate Federation in Europe or whether it is the first step in the Federation of Europe as the French statement puts it another diplomat advised the foreign minister we shall have tipped the balance against the other two elements in our world situation the Atlantic community and the Commonwealth it is not for nothing that mr. Schue man's original memorandum said in terms and repeatedly that his plan would be a step towards a Federation of Europe to contemplate even in principle an agreement to pull the British coal and steel industries with those of other West European countries and make their operations subject to the decisions of an independent European Authority which are binding on Her Majesty's Government would imply a readiness to accept a surrender of sovereignty in a matter of vital national interest which could carry us well beyond that point then there was some skepticism about whether the scheme would actually get off the ground and another diplomat advised the Foreign Secretary we should not get committed the franco-german talks would inevitably break down sooner or later and we would then have the chance of coming in as deus ex machina with a solution of our own and that view was again summed up Italy by the defense secretary Emmanuel shin hwal who said don't buy this pig while it's still in the poker now this may sound in retrospect absurd but you have to remember that French politics at that time was highly volatile and unstable with governments changing on average every nine months and indeed just two weeks after Schumann made his speech the French Minister of Finance told the British Chancellor that he was rather sceptical of the whole plan and two former he also said two former foreign ministers were also sceptical and the main opposition parties in France the Communists and the go lists were bitterly opposed for different reasons moreover you couldn't be sure that democracy in Germany so soon after the war was yet secured and perhaps it was natural for the government of think these are highly unstable countries should we associate ourselves with them and as I said there's a tremendous fear of the unknown of what it was going to lead to and Ernest Bevin the Foreign Secretary sums up by saying if you open up that Pandora's box you never know what Trojan horses will jump out now on 2nd of June 1950 the cabinet declared that it rejected the Schumann plan for Britain it said mr. Schue man's original memorandum said in terms that his plan would be a step towards the Federation of Europe it is be now settled policy hitherto that in view of our world position and interests we should not commit ourselves irrevocably to Europe either in the political or in the economic sphere unless we could measure the extent and effect of the commitment this is in effect what we are now being asked to do we get to participation now in 1951 oppositions back-bencher making his maiden speech said that this was a grave mistake and that Britain should join in the discussions his name was Edward Heath so they laugh pass on all these matters later on though he had little importance at the time what about Winston Churchill leader of the Opposition he too opposed the Labour government's decision not to take part in the discussions he spoke in the House of Commons in June 1950 and said the conservative and liberal party's say without hesitation that we are prepared to consider and if convinced to accept the abrogation of national sovereignty provided we are satisfied with the conditions and the safeguards the conservative and liberal parties declare that national sovereignty is not inviolable and that it may be resolutely diminished for the sake of all the men in all the lands finding their way home together now Churchill was returned to office in October 1951 he became prime minister for the second time but his government found exactly same policy as labour in refusing to join with Coal and Steel community and critics of Churchill said that his commitment to European unity was largely rhetorical designed primarily to embarrass the Labour government and that he had no more intention than the Labour government of sacrificing British sovereignty in Europe and by the end of Churchill's Premiership in 1955 Britain was in the position which it was so long to occupies from does occupy no doubt being outside the mainstream of European development indeed for the years of the better or worse determined the British stance toward Europe now one has to ask was Charles opposition in government to a European orientation an opposition of principal or an opposition of circumstance now Edward Heath who knew Churchill well but one of course highly biased he said it was of circumstance and says Churchill would have supported Britain in Europe when he realized that the Commonwealth could not be a real replacement to Empire and the special relationship with the United States was really one of a subordinate to a superior and in 1961 Churchill certainly supported Harold Macmillan's application to join the European community though with the reservation that Commonwealth interests must be safeguarded but I think the clue to Churchill's position is this that although he favored a united Europe he didn't favor an integrationist or federal Europe but a Europe of intergovernmental cooperation and that was the same sort of Europe that Labour favoured and indeed the conservative throw Europeans so-called like Churchill and Harold Macmillan said that Britain ought to participate in the discussions on the Schumann clan not to accept it but to transform it into something intergovernmental which would suit Britain's interests better and the difference between Churchill and the Labour government lay not in the question of supranational zero both opposed to that the difference was that Churchill said if only he participated in the discussions we could transform the plans so they would meet British interests now it's fair to say by the time the Conservatives return to office in 1951 the treaty setting up the Coal and Steel community had already been ratified and there was by then no real possibility of transforming it but the interesting but unanswerable question is this if Labour had joined in the discussions earlier in 1950 could the plan have been transformed into something that Britain could upset now my own view for what it's worth is a rather skeptical one for this reason that I think it was much more important for the French to bring the German coal and steel industries under supranational control than to reach an agreement with Britain but the point is arguable and it seems to me that nothing would have been lost by Britain entering the discussions we could have withdrawn if we found we couldn't transform it to suit our own interests now the Conservative foreign secretary in 1951 Anthony Eden who had in my view a great instinctive flair for foreign policy matters did not share the view of Churchill Macmillan that the shoe man tan could be transformed suit British interests he did not believe that the French would unravel the Iranian instead made just a suit British convenience and indeed the continental powers and the French in particular were worried that Britain might war try and water down the plan that was why they demanded acceptance in principle in the discussion in his speech Sherman had spoken of the European powers as sharing a common destiny and the question to be asked at that time and indeed now is whether Britain feels that she shares that destiny that's the key question about Britain Europeans old but what seems to me clear and on Aarn answerable is that no British government could in the circumstances of time have accepted the Schumann plan as it stood but the commitment to a federal Europe was a step much too far and no doubt it is now what we did in the end was to negotiate an association agreement with the Coal and Steel community in December 1954 those who belong to London clubs will know there's a category called country membership where you're associated but don't pay the full subscription and you don't have all the obligations of the regular members and that's that that was our position with the Coal and Steel community that's also our position outside the euro zone tactics a position British governments would like us to have with the European Union have always want us to have some of the benefits of country membership but not full the full obligation and the association agreements were the first of many tends to secure a special position without sacrificing too much a free trade area rather than the common market then special terms when we joined the European community then various negotiations of the terms then Margaret Thatcher's battle to secure a rebate on the British budget contribution then there's opt outs from the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties and now of course another renegotiation if the Conservatives win the election led by David Cameron and all that is prefigured in the association agreement with the Coal and Steel community or who like in Churchill's words we are in Europe but not all of Europe now Britain's refusal to join the Coal and Steel community had in my view very very profound consequences because it proved that Europe could integrate without British leadership previously British prestige was so great it was unthinkable to take any steps without that and you may remember my quotation of Schumann in 1949 but without Britain there can be no Europe words quoted by Churchill and this seemed to give Britain a veto on developments towards European unity but after the rejection of the Schumann plan that was no longer the case the other countries could move ahead on their own if Britain wants to join she could but she has to accept the rules if she did not want to join so be it others would move ahead without her and Rama Mae told the chumps of the Exchequer in May 1950 I hope with all my heart that you will join in this from the start but if you don't which will go ahead without you and I'm sure that because while realists you will adjust to the facts when you see that we have succeeded so France and Germany would be the motors of European cooperation they are not Britain would be the dominant powers in the new Europe Britain would be outside that would eventually seek to join but seek to join as a supplicant asking for special favors and that was a position that de Gaulle britain's great opponent always rejected for France never get your country into the position of asking or being at what equal to demand there that was asking something now you can reach to alternative conclusions about this first conclusion is there's a mistake for Britain to have lost the leadership of Europe and the American Secretary of State Dean Ashton I've already quoted said it was the greatest mistake of the post-war period or you can say this was the right decision because if we joined we would have faced the same problems we actually faced when we joined the European community in 1973 and you may take the view the whole European adventure was a mistake for Britain I once heard the historian AJP Taylor say that Churchill twice saved Britain once by strenuous action in 1940 and once by inaction in 1951 when he refused to join the Coal and Steel community if you take this view you then have to explain why both parties in the 1960s the Conservatives under Harold Macmillan and labour under Harold Wilson took the view that despite having earlier opposed the common market that Britain had to join and even to accept terms which might might not have been as faithful as those we could have negotiated had we been there at the outset now after the Coal and Steel community there was a second but failed stage of European integration the idea of the European Army a joint European Army the so-called European defense community or EDC sometimes known as the plovar plan after another French leader Prime Minister Lynette Clara and the probe on plan was response to American pressure because after the outbreak of the Korean War the Americans said we need to strengthen our defenses particularly in Western Europe and the Germans need to make some contribution in other words we need to accept German rearmament the French naturally rather worried about this and they said that German rearmament would be more acceptable within a European context than the national context and so they proposed that a European army replaced national armies and the European defense confirmed community treaty was signed in May 1952 and it provided for German rearmament within the framework of European cooperation the German government wouldn't have control of the German army but it would be responsible to the defense community as a whole now the Labour government when the plan was first produced said it would not join but would help others to achieve it if that was what they wanted and acne said he was totally opposed but could not see why they should not make the attempt what about the Conservatives the idea of the European army had first been suggested not by Clara but by Winston Churchill in a speech in August 1952 the council's of Europe he said we should make a gesture of practical and constructive guidance by declaring ourselves in favour of the immediate creation of a European army under a unified command and which we should all bear a worthy and honorable part he said all now did he mean Britain as part of the all in government he rejected a European army orderlies British participation he said it was a sludgy amalgam when he said his proposal has been meant for them not for us they used the word all he said we help we dedicate we play a part but we are not merged and do not forfeit our insular or Commonwealth wide character I should resist any American pressure to treat Britain on the same footing as the European states none of whom had the advantages of the channel and who were consequently conquered now even the so-called conservative Pro Europeans were opposed halibut milind says in his memoirs the idea was nonsense he said those who had any knowledge of military problems of organization and supply as well as strategic and tactical control realized that quite apart from the difficulties of language the morale of such a force would be low and it would be of little military value but unlike Atlee Macmillan said he hoped the EDC treaty would fail for this reason that it would if it worked it would lead in fact to a very strong Germany on the continent he said this I frankly all you wrote this rather than his memoirs I frankly hoped and believed that they would break down if they were successful it might be a short-term advantage especially if it facilitated immediate German rearmament but the long-term future would be grim indeed there would be a European community from which we would be excluded and which would effectively controlled Europe and that of course of the dilemma he faced when he became prime minister this was a historic struggle in which we had been engaged first against louis xiv then against napoleon and twice in our lifetime against germany germany was weak now in the long run she would be stronger than france and so we might be bringing about in 20 years time that domination of Europe by Germany to prevent which we had made such terrible sacrifice twice within a single generation it should therefore be our hope that the Schumann plan and more important the EDC should fail and in March 1953 Macmillan asked the cabinet are we really sure we want to see a sixth power federal Europe with a common army of common iron and steel industry Schumann plan ending in a common currency and monetary policies already being thought about if such a federal state comes into being will it in the long run be in our interest whether is an island or an imperial power will not Germany ultimately control this state and maybe not have created the very situation in Europe to prevent which in every century since the Elizabethan age the important long and bitter walls and that was the dilemma middle of us to face as Prime Minister perhaps also the dilemma David Cameron faces in regard to the eurozone bloc which if it's successful in creating some sort of federal union will create a powerful economic and political bloc from which Britain is excluded now that millons answer in relation to the European defense community was rather like his answer to the Schumann plan try and transform it into something intergovernmental he said the whole of Europe was waiting for a lead and they could not understand why it did not come from a new administration led by Churchill and this seems to me wishful thinking the Conservatives saw the world with Britain at the very center of it and everyone waiting for a lead from Britain I think by the 1950s that was no longer true but again Anthony Eden the foreign sector did not share that view he said there was a powerful move towards integration in Europe and Britain although she could not join it should not seek to obstruct it but it's encouraging and that is David Cameron's you about the eurozone and greater Federal Union in the eurozone that's needed to keep the eurozone bloc's table then it's in our interest but this of course is a fundamental change in British foreign policy because previously as Macmillan had outlined we favor the balance of power on the continent with no single dominant bloc or power but even said fears of Soviet Union has altered these things and we must encourage Western European integration the emergence of Russia as an overriding threat has altered all this and they said that the European defense community was the best way to achieve German rearmament and strengthen the Western alliance against the Soviet Union so you may say Tom mone is one of the founders of European unity but you also have to say that Joseph Stalin is the second now a Britain's dilemma and which of these positions of takers resolved by the French National Assembly which in 1944 in 1954 voted not to ratify the EGC treaty a mixture of go lists and communists and socialists voted it down and that was further proof to many in Britain of the unstable and volatile nature of French politics not consistent from one moment to the next and some said Frank's rejection was due to the British failure to participate but I doubt it now the plovar plan was replaced by yet another plan this is a British plan the Eden plan from Anthony Eden who in 1954 established West European Union and intergovernmental arrangement and for the first time Britain committed herself to security of the continent by agreeing to the permanent stationing of British troops and the tactical air force on the continent so again we remain good Europeans in the sense of being in Europe and committed to European security but we were not good Europeans in the sense of being part of the orc and the failure of the European defense community which shows that European unity could not proceed too rapidly that immediate political union was utopian Schumann had realized that and so also the immediate defence Union the idea of the European army must go slowly through concrete economic achievements and the third attempt of integration did that that was the creation of the common market European community under the Treaty of Rome 1957 now in June 1955 the foreign ministers of the six members of the coal and steel community met at Messina in Sicily and decided to set up an ad hoc committee to create a common market and Breton was again invited to join and the British act you toured this development was laid out in the report of an inter-ministerial committee at the time which said on the whole the establishment of a European Common Market would be bad for the United Kingdom and if possible should be frustrated but if it came into being with us outside we should pay an increasing price commercially though even this would not necessarily outweigh the political objections joining the committee used for arguments against all familiar first it would weaken the relationship with the Commonwealth second the customs union with a common external tariff which the Europeans were creating would be constitute a British idea of free trade in foodstuffs third it might lead to further integration and ultimately to political Federation which it said was not acceptable to public opinion in this country and thought removed protection from British industry against foreign competition so the committee recommended the ministers that we should not enter the common market this would not represent any change of policy and would cause no surprise in Europe but nevertheless Britain took up the stance which the actually government rejected with a Shuman plan of taking part in the discussions and seeing if they could be transformed into something that Britain could live with but instead of sending a minister as the other countries did she sent an official from the Board of Trade who eventually withdrew from the discussion when it was clear for the supranational community was to be created and that perhaps was a test of the argument of Churchill and Macmillan that we could have transformed the Shuman plan had we only joined in the discussions we did not succeed from forming the idea of the Common Market and in November 1955 it was announced Britain would not participate further in the discussions and the official withdrew and those who were later to prove pro-european did not at that time suggest we should join the Common Market in November 1956 Harold Macmillan's as Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons I do not believe that this house would ever agree to our entering Arrangements which is a matter of principle would prevent outreaching with great range of imports from the Commonwealth at least as favorably as those from the European countries so this objection even if there were no other would be quite fatal to any proposal that the United Kingdom should seek to take part in a european common market by joining a customs union and Reginald maudling a later chancellor told the Commons in February in 1959 we must recognize that for us to sign the treaty of Rome would be to accept as the ultimate goal political Federation in Europe including ourselves that as I have said does not seem to me to be a proposition which at the moment command majority support in the country you may think that was an understatement now by contrast with the discussion on the Schumann plan the common market was hardly discussed in the country or in Parliament it was taken for granted we should enjoy the decision was taken by default because of the reaffirmation of existing policy the policy decided at the time of a Schumann plan but we wanted cooperation in Western Europe but not the political consequences now shortly after Britain withdrew from the discussions on the common market the suez crisis occurred which led to a further divergence between British and French attitudes because for Britain the failure of the Suez expedition brought the lesson that Britain needed to regenerate the special relationship with America but the French drew a different lesson and they drew a lesson which Konrad Adenauer Germany's Chancellor gave to them immediately after the failure he said for Britain France and Germany Adenauer said there was only one way of playing a decisive role in the world that is to unite Europe we have no time to waste Europe will be your revenge ladies on America through frustrating and Adenauer was a very critical of the British attitude Britain he said was like an old man who has lost all his property and does not realize it that's a perceptive comment but the French then said we can't rely on the Americans and always that is down we must integrate further with Europe so in addition to Joseph Stalin and John Monet estándares of Europe you may also say that the third one was Egypt's president NASA at the time the series now of course the failure to take part in the Coal and Steel community made it much less likely that we would participate in this further stage of European integration the Treaty of Rome and we thought that the old Europe of independent quarreling sovereign nation-states was continuing if that wouldn't come to anything but something novel was happening and perhaps we did not recognize it Europe was congealing into a new shape and was not to change significantly for over 30 years until the Berlin wall collapsed in 1989 but even so our relationship with European institutions is hardly altered since the 1950s it has been uncertain half in half out strongly opposed to federalism but unable to suggest an alternative which commands real enthusiasm on the continent and that pattern was set for better or worse in the 1950s and I think that all the arguments we hear today were first rehearsed in the 1950s and really there is nothing new to say but nevertheless I hope to find enough material somehow the remaining four you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: history, european union, european politics, european business, europe, european history, history of europe, common market, european common market

Id: cETz_eOYBj0

Length: 57min 22sec (3442 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2014