Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs: Reserve but Proud Reserve. Britain Detached from Europe

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Akhil amar I'm a sterling professor of law and political science here at Yale I'm filling in for Ian Shapiro who is in a plane somewhere and sends you all his greetings and and he would like you to feel most welcome here at the Whitney and Betty Macmillan Center for International and area studies at Yale University it's my great pleasure in Ian's stead and honor to introduce our very distinguished since Henry Stimson lecture professor Vernon Bob Danner and I'm going to tell you a little bit about him now and he asked me not to be too effusive but I'm supposed to tell you some things and then I'm actually gonna go off script and say some more things that I'm sure will embarrass and even further so he is a professor a professor of government at the Institute of Contemporary British history King's College in London a frequent contributor to TV radio press a fellow of the British Academy honorary fellow of the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and fellow of the Royal Historical Society of the Academy of the social sciences he's been an advisor to any number of governments including those of and this is I think in alphabetical order the Czech Republic Hungary Kosovo Israel Mauritius Slovakia and Trinidad in 2008 he was awarded the sir Isaiah Berlin award by the political science political Studies Association for lifetime contribution to political science in 2009 he was made a Chevalier the Legion d'Honneur by President Nicolas Sarkozy his books include devolution and more recently one of the books I especially wants to bring to your attention beyond a grexit toward his British constitution that's for 2018 now the overarching title of his lectures this week and next is britain and europe in a troubled world they'll focus on four themes today reserve but proud reserve britain's detachment from europe on wednesday Pandora's box and the Trojan horses Britain in Europe next Monday brexit means brexit written out of Europe that's April 15th which us which we Americans know us tax day and the last lecture never closer Union does the EU have a future that's Wednesday April 17th I hope you'll join us for all of them the funding for this lecture series comes from an anonymous donor in honor of Henry Stimson Yale College 1918 88 excuse me attorney and statesman whose government service culminated with his tenure as Secretary of State during World War two since 1998 the Macmillan Center and the Yale University Press have collaborated to bring distinguished diplomats and foreign policy experts to the Senate to lecture on their books that are then published by Yale Press recent Stimpson lectures have included talks by John Donne I think that's the Michael Walzer anyway Michael David make you our own beloved date David made you Susan's end from Williams and many others so now I'm going to go off script a little bit and just speak a little bit more person that's what Ian wanted me to say and I wanted to just say just a couple of words more about what an honor it is to welcome our distinguished lecture in my capacity as a constitutionalist and a Singapore now some of you know I get to teach constitutional law here at Yale it's really an extraordinary opportunity it sure beats working but our Constitution and revolves in America very tightly around a small test and those of us who study it we might be commenters about it and that's that's about it now the British constitution of which our guest of honor is an expert is does not consist of one clarified short document but a whole cluster of important texts Magna Carta active union principles institutions practices and centrally works of authority pieces written about these central elements trying to synthesize them into a coherent whole so so our guest today is actually in some sense that no living American is a framer a family's not merely an interpretive the project because some of his works are in a tradition going from stretching back to Blackstone Walter Paget a dicey his works have already become and will continue to be works of authority will be telling us what that a part of this unwritten British constitution so just right over here we have a residential college named for Ben Franklin you see and he was a great founder but he's no more we can't talk to him we can't talk to Lincoln the constitutional amendments that have happened in our lifetime are not particularly momentous we have with us here really a founder in an important way the modern British constitution the world so here's what's really we bring lots of very distinguished people yeah that's what Yale is we bring people who are extraordinary for us thinkers and our guest is surely that you've heard his resume and sometimes we bring people feel or extraordinary as doers Mike the great Henry Stimson for whom this series is its name only very rarely though do you have someone who is extraordinary and a dude and even then it's it's not obvious the case that what makes them so famous as a favorite is also what makes them so extraordinary as a doer Benjamin Franklin was a framer but actually I'm not sure he was the best constitutional figure of Disney alright he's maybe I need to speak up he's famous for other things like the lightning rod and bifocals so so but our guest of honor is actually a thinker and a doer on the same topic and more and more what he thinks about and what he writes about is perhaps one of the most important issues in our world today the relationship between britain and europe so it's as if we have in our mist Ben Franklin talking to us at the moment let's say of the impounding of the American Constitution about his ideas about constitutionalism that's actually in effect what we lack today so it gives me a really an extraordinary pleasure to introduce our guest of honor well our kill thank you for that generous introduction and you've really embarrassed me more than I thought possible and were very kind to call me a constitutional expert but you may say that it's not difficult to be that if you come from a country which doesn't have a constitution and when I was a professor of government at Oxford my colleagues rather unkindly said that a constitutional expert was just a historian who'd given his telephone number to the journalists now I must say I think it was extraordinarily farsighted of Yale to ask me to give these lectures and a week when extraordinary and striking things are happening in Britain as you may know the date in legislation for us to leave the European Union is this Friday at midnight continental time 11:00 p.m. British time you see even on that there's a divergence between Britain and the continent and it's very possible that in the next two or three weeks we will have a change of prime minister indeed I would say probably more likely than not but that's just a guess but any rate that our prime minister Theresa May has said she will leave shortly and she shall be the sixth of the last seven conservative prime ministers who's been ruined by Europe the question of our engagement with your from the time that Harold Macmillan first applied to join the European communities in 1961 and I'll be talking more about that in future lectures but might be of interest to point out two resumes six of the last seven conservative prime ministers be ruined by Europe the one exception was Alec douglas-home whose only Prime Minister for a year so he didn't have time to be ruined by Europe I hope these lectures cast light not on this just this topic but also on much more fundamental problems of modern politics the grand themes of nationalism and internationalism sovereignty and identity and perhaps most fundamental of all the question of whether a nation can or should escape from its history which is a problem of particular significance to a country such as Britain with its long evolutionary and on the whole peaceful history perhaps it's worth pointing out the British monarchy can trace its origins back to the 7th century and Parliament has its origins in medieval times and the question perhaps worth asking is whether that history remains an inspiration or is it instead a constraint preventing Britain from adjusting effectively coming to terms with the modern world and I think the working out of these themes is important to Americans as it is to us in Europe and Henry Stimson was of course himself concerned as Franklin Roosevelt Secretary of War with the postwar reconstruction of Europe though the main problems he faced were connected with Asia but he was most definitely an internationalist and during his lifetime it was absolutely clear that America could not but be concerned with what was happening in Europe now perhaps Europe first impinge upon America at the beginning of the 20th century in 1911 there was a crisis between the European powers that could have led to war when Germany is sought to contest French clay to a sphere interest in Morocco which was to become a French protectorate in 1912 and Britain at that time had an arm taunt with France and supported France in the diplomatic dispute which ended peacefully but after the Christ's had been resolved America's former President Theodore Roosevelt incidentally once American student of mine once told me that the Republican Roosevelt's pronounced their surname Roosevelt while the Democratic branch of the family pronounced their surname Roosevelt I've never heard that confirmed or we need refuted by anyone I want if anyone can tell me were that's right or not I'd be grateful anyway Theodore Roosevelt told the German ambassador that if Germany had overrun France the United States would not have remained neutral and the Ambassador said this seemed contrary to the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt replied in the following way he said as long as England succeeds in keeping up the balance of power in Europe not only in principle but in reality well and good should she however for some reason or rather fail in doing so the United States would be obliged to step in at least temporarily in order to re-establish the balance of power in Europe never mind against which country and he then added in fact we are becoming owing to our strength and geographical position more and more the balance of power on the whole globe and that is an astonishing prediction of the course of 20th century history because of course twice in the twentieth century Americans felt they were compelled as Theodore Roosevelt had said to step in to protect the balance of power in Europe and resist German attempts to become the dominant power on the continent and twice in both world wars if if it had been confined to European powers Germany might well have won and the key factors in both wars were the intervention of America and of the Eurasian landmass of Russia was only partly a European power so if any American were to ask why they should be interested in what happens in Europe you can point to the world wars most Americans might have thought in 1914 that an obscure Balkan quarrel involving the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne in in Sarajevo had no relevance to them or that a quarrel between Germany and Poland in 1939 about the city of Danzig had no relevance to them but they would have been wrong at the end of the First World War the American President Woodrow Wilson made a speech in Colorado I think his last speech before he had a stroke and he spoke of Americans who had sacrificed their lives to create a better Europe and a better world he spoke and I quote of the serried ranks of those boys in khaki not only those boys who came home but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France and he spoke of his clients as the next generation and said he intended to redeem his pledges they shall not be sent upon a similar errand though of course they were now in 1966 when Frances president de Gaulle sought a more independent stance in relation to NATO he asked the United States to remove her men and bases from French territory an American President Lyndon Johnson asked whether the American cemeteries containing the graves of some 60,000 American soldiers should be removed as well now a main motivation behind the construction of the European Union was the desire to prevent future Wars by overcoming the forces of nationalism which had caused them the European Union was and remains essentially a peace project and you can divide the history of Europe since 1914 into two neatly contrasting periods between the wars polity on the continent was marked by turbulence and stress but for nearly 75 years its western half has known political stability and high rates of economic growth and this is in do part due to the recognition of collective security and interdependence in a continent which had suffered badly from the absence of it now the book from which I quoted Theodore Roosevelt's comment on the balance of power has as its title the last European war and that is a description the author gives to the second world war since it seems to be the last war fought to prevent one European power from dominating another and since the end of the Cold War it is highly unlikely that a purely European power were ever again seek to dominate the continent and of course no European power can hope to aspire to match the United States a superpower but Hitler's attempt to dominate Europe nearly succeeded had it succeeded there would have been a united Europe but it would not have been United in freedom and when in 1940 the British government decided to continue the fight against Hitler against seemingly impossible odds Winston Churchill said that Britain was fighting by ourselves alone but not for ourselves alone his aim was to liberate Europe and once that had been achieved European leaders had to decide how such future catastrophes could be avoided and they came to the view that Nazism and fascism were bat extreme examples of nationalism and that Europe would not know peace until nationalism had been transcended now at the beginning of the 20th century the force of nationalism had appeared to be an essential ingredient of self-government and therefore of democracy the ideal of self-determination within national states was founded on the 19th century liberal view that humanity was naturally divided into nations and that every nation should have its own state it was a doctrine champion with great enthusiasm American President Woodrow Wilson and in Europe the 20th century ideal of self-determination was perhaps best symbolized by Joseph Pilsudski the Polish leader between the wars who tried though without success to create a multinational Polish state in which not only polls but minorities Jews Ukrainians Lithuanians and Germans would feel comfortable Pilsudski had began as a socialist but when he led the movement for Polish independence his former socialist comrades reproached him and he rejected them with the following words he said comrades I rode on the red painted tram car of socialism as far as the stop called independence but there I alighted and he then added you are free to drive on to the terminus if you can but please address me as sir now what pilsudski said in a way symbolizes the 20th century because in the 19th century Karl Marx had predicted a future based on class war and revolution but in the 20th century the classes collaborated and wars were fought in Europe between multinational empires and independent nation-states and after the fall of communism at the end of the 20th century popular nationalism long suppressed by communism broke up the Russian Empire created by the czars and extended by Stalin as well as the two multinational states created in 1919 by the treaties ending the first world war Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and the legacy of Woodrow Wilson's idea of self-determination was shown to have outlasted that of Lenin in the 19th century most liberals welcomed the advance of nationalism which they associated with government by consent for consent so it seems was most easily confirmed within a national community the Italian liberal recepy mad scene they saw nationalism as an analogue on the political level to individual freedom Matheny hoped to see a Europe of independent nation-states freely cooperating together for the good of their peoples individual and collective self-determination was seen not only as compatible but indeed complementary and it was for this reason that liberals supported nationalism against its enemies whether those enemies were clerical reactionary or monarchic Oh in Britain it was a struggle for Italian unity and self-determination the Risorgimento which persuaded Gladstone to switch from the Conservatives of Liberal Party in November 1914 another Liberal prime minister Asquith declared that one of Britain's war aims was to ensure that the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation he was of course thinking of Serbia and Belgium but those sensitive to our own native British hypocrisy might bear this in mind but when at the end of the war one particular small nationality on Britain's own doorstep the Irish sought to secure these very same rights by voting for the separatist shin famed party in 1918 which refused to recognise Westminster and set up a separate Parliament in Dublin the response of the British government far from ensuring that these rights were in Asquith words placed upon an unassailable foundation the response of the British government was to refused to recognise the Dublin Parliament's and attempt to put down Sinn féin by force so we perhaps like other countries have our own hypocrisy now men such as Gladstone on a squid could not foresee that the generous impulses behind the Risorgimento would lead in Italy to a fascist regime led by Mussolini who was to prove the model for Hitler and perhaps and fascism and national socialism behind all their rhetorical rhodomont odd were really nothing more than labels for radical nationalism carried to extreme lengths and the 20th century has been inhospitable to the hopes of liberal nationalists such as martini and by contrast were their nineteenth-century predecessors liberals today tend to see nationalism as an enemy rather than a friend this was predicted by Woodrow Wilson Secretary of State Robert Lansing who declared with some prescence that the phrase self-determination was loaded with dynamite it will raise hopes that can never be realized it will I fear cost thousands of lives in the end it is bound to be discredited to be called a dream of an idealist and of course the principle of self-determination was to be used by Hitler to justify the annexation of Austria and the german-speaking heirs of sudha of Czechoslovakia in 1938 so while the aim of 19th century liberals was to give effect to nationalism their successes in the latter half of a 20th century have sought to transcend it and the movement to unite Europe after 1945 was an attempt to transcend that force which it was believed had been responsible for the ruinous wars that had ravaged the continent it was an attempt to replace an international system by means of which sovereign states somehow adjusted their claims against each other as they arose so as to preserve a balance of power to replace that with a system in which they could be adjusted within a single framework that of European unity as it were to internalise conflict so rendering it peaceful and it also had a geopolitical significance because Europeans had come to realize their weakness in the face of the superpowers and they did not want to become totally subordinated to the United States they wanted decisions affecting Europe to be made by Europeans the only way if that dependence could be avoided would be if Europe were to unite so the idea of European unity stemmed from a sense of the continents weakness not its strength the danger that the destinies of Europe would depend not on her own efforts but upon the disposition of powers outside Europe now Europe had not been united since the end of the Roman Empire and many since then had tried to unite Europe by conquest most recently in Napoleon and Hitler could Europe be united peacefully and democratically that was the problem faced by the founding fathers of the movement for European unity and they found the answer by not confronting the issue directly and here they differed from the founding fathers if I were to say to you that the 9th of May 1950 was one of the most important dates in post-war European history and I suspect that most of you would not know what I was talking about the same would be true incidentally if I said that to a British audience they would not know what you were talking about but the 9th of May was the date of the Schumann Declaration which gave rise to the first steps towards European unity the European Coal and Steel community created in 1952 and one commentators said every decade that passes confirms this events as one of the landmarks of a century the implications go well beyond Europe now Robbie Schumann who was a foreign minister of France the author of the Declaration had been born in Luxembourg but has spent much of his early life in the border area of Lorraine which was part of Germany until 1919 having been conquered by Bismarck in his war against France in 1870 shoe man had been conscripted to fight for Germany in 1914 but had been rejected on health grounds in the second world war he had been a member of the French Resistance so he had been a German citizen before becoming a French citizen at the age of 32 he regarded himself as a franco-german however he was not the prime mover of the project that honor belongs to Jean Monnet a diplomat and international civil servant a remarkable man never elected to any public office or holding any post in any national government he wielded greater influence in 20th century than almost all elected politicians he's regarded as the first statesman of interdependence and as early as 1954 sorry as early as 1943 he said there will be no peace in Europe if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty the countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples and necessary prosperity and Social Development and it was Monet who wrote the Schumann declaration it might well have been called the Monet declaration the movement for unity began with the regulation of the production of coal and steel under a supranational Authority the European Coal and Steel community it continued with the Treaty of Rome 1957 establishing the European communities sometimes called the Common Market which became a single community in 1967 and then with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 establishing the European Union and providing for a common European currency in the euro and the Schumann plan was intended as the answer to a practical problem that of reintegrating West Germany into the economic life of Western Europe so as to ensure revival and the problem was perhaps a bit easier because Germany was not only defeated but divided at that time and the plan was based on a mixture of fear and hope the fear that the recovery of German industrial might would lead to war and the hope that coal and steel could be turned into weapons of peace to undermine the basis of antagonism well Edward Heath the Prime Minister took Britain into the European Community in 1973 told the House of Commons in 1975 rightly that the purpose was political he said the European community had been founded for a political purpose it was not a federal 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 that very political purpose economic means for political purpose now this 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 on the continent on the contrary the founding fathers saw it as a step towards a complete unification of Europe since the United Germany firmly anchored in Europe would be the best guarantee the Russians could have that there will be no revival of German aggression a Winston Churchill who was a strong proponent of a united Europe he'd be expelled I think from the Conservative Party today for that reason but he said at the Albert Hall in 1948 the whole purpose of a united democratic Europe is to give definite guarantees against aggression the creation of a healthy and contented Europe is the first and truest interest of a Soviet Union we therefore hope that all sincere efforts to promote European government and stability would receive as they deserve the sympathy and support of Russia and speaking in Brussels in 1949 Churchill said with great presence the Europe we seek to unite is all Europe now the mechanism proposed for the Coal and Steel community was that the production of coal and steel in France and Germany be placed under a common Authority called the high authority a transnational body whose members were to be appointed by the Member States but were not to represent the Member States they were to represent a common European interest which transcended the interests of the separate States they were to embody a European perspective not a national perspective and the purpose was to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible because France and Germany would be in an embrace so close that neither could draw back far enough at it the other and this plan marked the birth of European unity the Coal and Steel community like the European Union had a Council of Ministers a court of justice and a common assembly a European Parliament in embryo though that common assembly was not directly elected but appointed by the various national parliaments and it had a new supervisory powers the European partners much wider powers the high authority was the European Commission in embryo now since 1985 9th of May which I mentioned the date of the Schumann plan have been known on the continent as Europe day and sometimes as Schumann day as apparently moved by Catholics to beatify Schumann's but it appears the Catholic Church demands evidence of a miracle before that can occur some might perhaps say the creation of the European Coal and Steel community just a few years after the end of the war with all the antagonists at aroused was such a miracle others might say the continued survival of the European Union is a miracle the Catholic Church is not yet convinced now if as Schumann hoped this was to be the basis of European unity then all other three European countries were to be invited to join and in the end the founding nations were France Germany Italy and the three Benelux countries they were also the founding members of the European communities who signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 Britain did not join and Britain did not join the European communities until 1973 after two previous attempts to join had been vetoed by the French president Charles de Gaulle now after processions you may say after brexit to the European Union which is a successor to his earlier but it will have 27 members and almost every country in Europe will belong the main exceptions are the countries of the Western Balkans most of which were part of the former Yugoslavia now in his memoirs Dean Acheson the United States Secretary of State from 1949 53 he calls his men was present at the creation a good title because these were the formative steps are absolutely fundamental they were the years in which new relationships were being formed which would long survive and until the late 1950s that countries of Europe had a great deal of freedom of maneuver Britain particularly so own to the great prestige she'd won during the war after that relationships would have become frozen and it was to prove very difficult to alter them one British ex ambassador to America declared in 1954 that history has given us a period within which to work out our problems the period began with the end of the Second World War and may last as long as the working lifetime of my generation that is perhaps a decade it would not be longer it may well be shorter the whole period whatever its duration may be is crucial what we do or fail to do will be decisive there will be no second chance and that was right the fact that Britain did not join until fifteen years after the European community was formed meant she had no voice in the institutional structure nor in the economic arrangements agreed on by the founding members she had to accept rules and institutions drawn up by others it was a fatal handicap now why did Britain not join at the time the Declaration was made in 1950 Britain had a Labour government which had just nationalized the steel industry and so just nationalized the toll industry and was in the process of nationalizing the steel industry how could these nationalized industries be merged with a European Authority built up on the basis of private ownership the government moreover was a firm believer in Keynesian economics which entailed national counter-cyclical economic policies how could they cede authority to a higher authority which could close mines or steel works in Britain speaking for the conservative opposition the future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan remembering very high levels of Arlen employment in his constituency in the north of England between the walls said this one thing is certain and we may as well face it now people are not going to hand over to any footprint 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 Durham in the Midlands in South Wales or in Scotland and there was a wider fear concerning the final destination of the European movement a federation Anthony Eden who became Foreign Secretary in the Conservative government in 1951 he spoke at Columbia University in January 1952 when he got an honorary degree at the time when the Americans were trying to press Britain to join a united Europe to strengthen defense and and Western Europe of the whole and he said this if you drive a nation to adopt procedures which run counter to its instincts you weaken and may destroy the motive force of its action you will realize that I'm speaking of the frequent suggestions that the United Kingdom should join a federation on the continent of Europe and he concluded this is something which we know in our bones we cannot do now even his period of prime ministers obscured effect he was a very great Foreign Secretary he used the phrase in our bones British resistance to joining a European Federation was not something that could be overcome by argument by a calculation of costs and benefits it was an instinctive hostility something we in our bones knew we could never join this was a crucial turning point in European history until then it had been assumed that Britain had a veto on European integration and an American diplomat serving in London David Bruce who later became ambassador said this in 1950 he said there will be no European integration without wholehearted participation by the United Kingdom then he said the second proposition the united kingdom will not wholeheartedly participate so the third proposition was ago there will be no purely European integration and that assessment was shared by British officials one of whom made the arrogant comment in 1948 if the United Kingdom's not lead the movement it will not occur for no other country in Europe has the moral authority and the organising capacity now the success of the Coal and Steel community showed the Europeans they could build a united Europe without Britain Britain was not as it were present at the creation Robert Schuman when he produced the plan he said the nations of Europe shared a common destiny and Britain has always been ambivalent about whether she shares that destiny or not and that ambivalence is well exemplified in the career of the greatest of British twentieth-century statesmen Winston Churchill we've been a strong supporter of the United Europe but could not quite make up his mind as to whether Britain herself could be part of it now in the postwar years Churchill's involvement in the European cause came about in a curious way he had been defeated in the general election of 1945 and just over a year after the end of the war in September 1946 he was due to make a speech at Zurich University and he was apparently in of a grumpy mood before the speech and his son-in-law Duncan sands who were also Conservative MPs asked him why he was so grumpy and Churchill said he was due to make a speech comparing the British parliamentary system and the Swiss cantonal system of government and San said you know nothing about that and Churchill so that is why I'm so irritable sans suggested instead of a speech on comparative government Churchill should instead speak on the question they had been discussing that very night at dinner the future of Europe and that was how the Zurich speech came to be born and Churchill 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 is my counsel to Europe can be given in a single word unite their walls he said 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 all the greater part of it as free and happy as Switzerland is today and he then said I am going to say something that will astonish you 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 said just 16 months after the defeat of Nazi Germany there's wasn't the first occasion by any means on which she'd argued for united Europe he'd first argued for it in 1930 and then in 1942 after the Battle of El Alamein when it was clear that Britain would win the war he wrote his foreign secretary in 1942 he wrote to 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 hard as it is to say now I look forward to a United States of Europe in which the barriers between the nations would be greatly minimized and unrestricted travel will be possible in his Zurich speech Churchill said Britain must be among the friends and sponsors of the new Europe he didn't say Britain should be part of it but in other speeches at the time he did say that Britain should be a part of it but his own Conservative government elected in 1951 adopted the same policy as the Labour government of detachment from Europe and when in 1961 Harold Macmillan applied to join the European community Churchill very rarely for him couldn't make up his mind whether he was in favor or not he wrote the following letter to the chair of his constituency party he said for many years I had believed that measures to promote European unity were ultimately essential to the well-being of the West in a speech at Zurich in 1946 I urged the creation of the European family and I'm sometimes given credit for stimulating the ideals of European unity which led to the formation of the economic and the other to communities in the aftermath of the Second World War the key to these endeavors lay in partnership between France and Germany at that time this happy outcome seemed a fantasy but it is now accomplished and France and West Germany are more intimately linked that may have ever been before in their history they together with Italy Belgium Holland and Luxembourg are welding themselves into an organic whole stronger and more dynamic from the sum of its parts we might well play a great part in these developments to the profit not only of ourselves but of our European friends also but we have another role which we cannot abdicate that of leader of the British Commonwealth in my conception of a united Europe I never contemplated the dilution of the Commonwealth to sum up my views I would say this I think that the governments are right to apply to join the European communities not because I am yet convinced that we shall be able to join but because there appears to be no other way by which we can find out exactly whether the conditions of men Jabar acceptable now I think it'd be fair to say that this is a fence fitting letter he couldn't the great man simply couldn't make up his mind but after two goals veto in 1963 Churchill draft a letter to the Belgian statesman poor re-spark saying the future of Europe if Britain were to be excluded is bleak indeed but in the end he didn't send a letter and the key question is what would have been his attitude when he came to realise the Commonwealth whatever its value could not be a substitute for Empire in other words was not a political unit and Edward Heath who was a colleague in his peacetime government later wrote that Churchill's reluctance was based on circumstance it was not opposition based on principles and that when Churchill had realized that Britain would not remain an imperial power he would like de Gaulle in France have perceived his country's future lay in Europe I myself take that view but of course the argument is still open was a big argument in Britain perhaps a futile one on what Churchill would have done how he devoted from the referendum and so on now you may think all this is odd because Britain after all is geographically part of Europe though many in Britain are accustomed to speak of Europe when they mean the continent and recently British ministers have taken to saying that when we leave the European Union we won't be leaving Europe as if we could as it were leave Europe but we've never been able to give a definitive answer to the question of whether politically we belong or not and I think to most Americans this attitude may seem borrowed after all Dover is 27 miles from Calais on a clear day you can see the French coast from Dover and the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994 links Brittany more closely to the continent you may say we no longer in Ireland even perhaps Europe looks more united from America than it does to Europeans themselves the British store and AJP Taylor once said on that issue no doubt all the inhabitants of the world look the same when viewed from the moon all sheep look alike to us and probably we all look alike to sheep but Britain is different and the reasons lie deep in British history and the nature of Britain's imperial past because too many in the 20th century Britain appeared a different power from those on the continent at the beginning of the 20th century Westminster was the Parliament not only the United Kingdom but also the Empire Westminster was then often known as the Imperial Parliament and that term survived a remarkably long time it was last used in the 1970s by a Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in debates on devolution he spoke Westminster as the Imperial Parliament it was a legislature of the largest land Empire the world had ever seen covering in addition to 38 million people living in Britain around three hundred and sixty million people around the world covering one-fifth of the globe and therefore the political answer to whether Britain was part of Europe was not as clear of the geographical answer and if you go back to 1900 most people would have said the less Britain had to do with the continent the better we were an imperial power and not a European power in 1938 when it seemed that Britain might have to go to war because of the conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia over the fate of the german-speaking inhabitants of Czechoslovakia Neville Chamberlain the Prime Minister broadcast the country saying this how horrible fantastic incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing and he's been much criticized for this statement it probably did reflect the feelings of many people in Britain and a year later we were to go to war because of the quarrel in another faraway country Poland but the British people would not have regarded Canada Australia or New Zealand which are far further away in in geographical terms as faraway countries these were countries in which many people had relatives and again to quote Anthony Eden in 1952 he told his private sector what you've got to remember if you looked at the postbag of any English village and examined the letters coming in from abroad to the whole population ninety percent of them would come from way beyond Europe now because of her island situation her trading position was quite different from that of the continental powers as the first industrial nation she had a much smaller agricultural sector than her continental competitors and as a maritime power she relied on cheap food from the colonies her commercial system was based on free trade unlike the high tariffs countries of the continent with their large agricultural sectors and because she was a maritime power and an island she could rely on the Navy to defend her unlike continental countries she did not need a large army and she did not have conscription in peacetime until April 1939 just five months before the outbreak of the second war in 1900 Britain had no troops on the continent at all and she'd not agreed to maintain troops on the continent until 1954 we hadn't at that time before the First World War no European alliances until young science except with Portugal we lived in splendid isolation protected by the Navy and the Empire you may remember the words of John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard a second this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war the infection presumably comes from the continent so Britain had a policy defined by Disraeli as one of reserve but proud reserve now that period of isolation no it's long gone still retains some of its impact upon the British people and that was what president de Gaulle of France said when he first vetoed the British application to join the European community in 1963 he said that the Treaty of Rome which established the European communities had been signed in 1957 by six continental states which were of the same nature Britain by contrast was insula she is maritime she is linked through her exchanges her markets her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities and only slight agricultural ones so the goal said the nature of the structure the very situation that our England's differ profoundly from those of the Continentals but could Britain change could she become European world a goal successor George Pompidou certainly thought so and in 1971 Edward Heath came to visit him to successfully negotiate Britain's entry and Pompidou gave a press conference in which he said this he said he'd asked Edward Heath what he thought of Europe in other words whether Britain was really determined to become European were the Britain which is which is an island was determined to tie herself to the continent and whether she was prepared consequently to loosen her ties with the open sea towards which she has always looked and Pompidou summarized Heath's response and I can say he said that the explanations and views expressed to me by mr. Heath are in keeping with France's concept of the future of Europe but were they in correspondence with the concept of the British people towards Europe this is not at all clear now of course the 20th century Chone Britain could not isolate herself from the continent she thought many wars because of Europe but nevertheless in history the main events which have defined British consciousness are events that occurred when Britain was alone confronting a hostile continent under Napoleon and of course Hitler and that's why Dunkirk is seen in Britain not as a kind of defeat but something the victory and this well summed up by the king at the time George of Sixth who wrote his mother perhaps not appreciating the danger Britain was in personally I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper and the King's official biographer says and in these sentiments he was at one with the vast majority of his subjects and 1940 showed that Britain didn't stand or fall in the same way as the countries of the continent when France was defeated she was defeated when Britain was defeated she could withdraw from the continent and because she was an island could carry on the fight so her fate was not bound up with that of the continent the same of course is true a Russia for a very different reason of the vast Eurasian landmass and of course that war emphasized the differences between Britain and the continent Britain was the only one of the European combatants which had been ruled neither bound fascist or Nazi government nor invaded by the Nazi or fascist powers in consequence she was the only country whose institutions remained intact during the war most of them had to adopt new constitutions and to come to terms with the experience of fascism Nazism or collaboration to put the point somewhat crudely young people on the continent had to ask themselves whether they could be proud of what their parents or grandparents might have done in the war people in Britain didn't have to ask that question and run Bulgarian political scientists have said being European is about being aware of what we did and so you they needed to overcome the past by creating new institutions in their own countries and a new transnational nationalism the sense of being European was a state of mind born of defeat occupation and the gulf between those who collaborated and those who resisted now Britain through the accident of geography did not share those feelings and they saw themselves still as a great power and the same British ex ambassador to the United States I've already quoted said in 1954 what is note were as a way we take this axiom that Britain is a great power for granted it is not a belief arrived at after reflection by a conscious decision it is part of the habit and furniture of our minds a principle so much at one with our outlook and character that it determines the way we act without emerging into clear consciousness but it was not taken for granted of course abroad when the facts of the loss of empire and Britain's economic weakness were painfully apparent so there was this huge difference in national psychology and the psychology of self-confidence was wet expressed by the labor postwar prime minister clement attlee in Molalla last if not the last speeches he ever made in 1967 to a labor committee called the Common Market safeguards committee which is a euphemism for Britain not joining Europe and I should say that Ashley was a very laconic and terse speaker who never wasted words and he said this his speech was very short and laconic 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 four of them from the other two and then he sat down and ROM money wisely said Britain had not been conquered or invaded she felt no need to exercise history that point of view her commitment to the content was bound to be limited so perhaps the goal was right and Pompidou was wrong it was not that we were not a cooperative power in Europe we were perfectly happy to cooperate as long as that did not involve any commitment to a supranational organisation that was the key worry that we had and and which is still where now if Churchill was I think one of those who did understand that the war had undermined Britain's international position he saw it as essentially a temporary phenomenon something that could be transformed through an act of will as he had transformed Britain's position in 1940 through a similar act of will I think he did not appreciate the war had permanently undermine Britain's international position so that she was never going to be a great power again when he became leader of the Conservative Party in 1940 some months RT became prime minister he said one of the central purposes of his political career had been the maintenance of the enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire the central theme of his political career was the decline of British power perhaps inevitable but it was declined and Churchill understood it he told his private secretary in retirement that he'd been a failure and his private secretary thought he was gaga he said why do so and Churchill said I worked very hard all my life and I've achieved a great deal in the end to achieve nothing and that last word according to his private secretary fell with sombre emphasis he said to a political colleague towards the end of his life his torrents are apt to judge ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which followed from them judged by that standard I am Not sure that I shall be held to have done very well now in 1949 robert schumann had said without britain there can be no europe but the success of the Coal and Steel community showed that without Britain there could be Europe and it showed that Britain would not be a dominant power in the new Europe all this was confirmed in 1956 by the suez crisis which led to a further divergence between British and French policy for Britain the failure of the Suez expedition brought the lesson that Britain needed to regenerate the special relationship with the United States the French drew a different lesson Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told the French Foreign Minister Christian Beno on the 6th of November 1956 just after the failure of the expedition was clear but for Britain France and Germany there was only one way of playing a decisive role in the world that is to unite Europe we have no time to waste make Europe your revenge and that is what the French did but not written and Adenauer said that Britain had become like a rich man who had lost all his property but does not realize it and perhaps worth mentioning the founders of European unity were not only Jean Monnet and Joseph Stalin but also Egypt's leader President Nasser indeed a French observer once said a statue should be raised to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser as the Federation of Europe for nationalizing the canal and creating the conditions for the largest Western European powers to bond now let me conclude in the following way you can have two alternative conclusions you can first say it was a mistake for Britain to have lost the leadership of Europe American Secretary of State Dean Acheson said it was the greatest mistake of the post-war period but you can also say it was a right to because if Britain had joined she would have faced the same sorts of problems that she actually did face after she did join in 1973 who Euroskeptics would say for Britain it was the commitment to Europe not the refusal it was a mistake though this view has to confront the fact that since 1961 every British Prime Minister has thought it would be best for Britain to be part of the European community of the European Union but when the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957 hardly anyone suggested to Britain that she should join and in particular those who were late to advocate British membership were opposed to it Harold Macmillan for example who was later to lead the government which made the application said I do not believe this house would ever agreed to our entering arrangements which as a matter of principle would prevent our treating the 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 in the 1959 election the first art of the formation of the European communities none of the party manifesto suggested that Britain should join not even the small liberal party which was to become the most enthusiastically pro-european of all the British parties its election manifesto did not mention Europe and by contrast with a long and somewhat tortured discussion of the Schumann plan in Britain membership of the European community was hardly discussed at all it was taken for granted that Britain should not join the decision was taken by default because it was a reaffirmation of existing policy to join would have implied a radical discontinuity of approach an imaginative leap and leap of faith perhaps in 1954 the former version Baz drive twice quoted said this we thought that the old Europe of independent quarreling sovereign states was continuing it was not something novel was happening and perhaps British leaders were at fault in not recognizing it the British would remain good Europeans in the sense of being in Europe and being committed to European security but not in the sense of being of Europe and the British attitude has not in my view fundamentally altered since these formative years she has not been uncertain half in half Alton generally opposed the further integration but unable to suggest any alternative commanding confidence on the continent the pattern was set for better or worse in the 1950s moves on the continent towards European unity was seen as a problem not as a challenge much less an inspiration and how British politicians sought to resolve that problem will be the subject of my next lecture but it may be that all the arguments were here today with first rehearsed in the 1950s and there is nothing new to say but nevertheless I do hope to find some material for the remaining three lecture sir thank you a little conversation and to get us started it's a word that I'm not sure I heard you say in the entirety of your remarks but at least to my mind it hovered over much of your discussion especially the second half so we heard about France Germany even Switzerland Egypt you didn't hear the word India but of course when you talk about Empire see here's the problem you know for these guys they think of Churchill's he's up there with Franklin Roosevelt and Vado's you see against Hitler and against Mussolini Stalin is a little bit more complicated but he's the one who sees Stalin as the problem before Americans turn against Uncle Joe but Americans you know what they think it's boring stuff thinking close your eyes and thinking when I say Churchill you think Hitler Roosevelt Stalin you do not think on you and if you think Gandhi you see then you actually understand that Churchill is actually why the big losers the loss of this jewel in the crown the Empire this way have very far-reaching consequences for British self-understanding and for Hitler's obviously for Churchill's own that was a Freudian slip he's skinny because I feel my dad was born under the British Raj and millions of Americans to be millions inference of Indians died in famines because the Brits did not actually do so well by the Indian perspective the massacre in Ritzer and and these massive M's Churchill has a lot to answer for to Indians and so I'd like you to say a little bit more about that because it hovered over India that you've implied was absolutely central to the British Empire and it was governed from Westminster until the time of Indian independence and it conditioned Britain's whole world policy in the 19th and early 20th century because the defense of India was important to Britain as the defense of Britain and therefore we had all sorts of trading bases on the route to India we needed to protect the Suez Canal at the Cape and so on and trading bases between India and Australia to link the Empire and British elites said this is of fundamental importance to us and as soon as we lose India imperialist said we will cease to be a great power and Churchill who was imperialist certainly took that view and I think it's probably fair to say that India is one of the few countries perhaps the only country where Churchill is not regarded as a hero for the reasons you have given it is fair to say he was the strongest in condemnation again it's a massacre in the House of Commons he and announced that absolutely but he was he was against independent Indian independence and he fought indeed against even moderate air engine self-government for reasons which I think are worth looking that he said India at the time was divided that one-third of India was governed by the Indian princes who were as it were subordinate to British rule but broadly autonomous in their domestic policies and Churchill thought it would be very difficult to get the Indian princes to accept a united India this was done through the doings of Lord Mountbatten the last Viceroy who Churchill fell out with for this very reason he also said that British rule is the only thing that keeps the different religions of India particular Muslims and Hindus together and that has not proved a wholly false prediction because with Indian independence Burma was not strictly adding part of India but Pakistan and Bangladesh are now independent countries and facing great difficulties and unlike India they are countries governed by a particular religion I mean India is a secular country and liberal country a great liberal democracy Pakistan and Bangladesh really are not and Churchill took the view be better if the whole Indian Empire held together and of course when Indian independence came there were massacres on both sides with Hindus in what is now Pakistan being slaughtered and expelled and Muslims in India the same happened to them I think many people don't understand how little the British public were interested in Empire just as perhaps have a little interested in Europe it's a matter for the elites who wanted Britain to be a great power in the world and to be represented at the top table most people in Britain had much more mundane things to get on with in their lives to give one extreme example in 1950 a survey was done but asked the British people if they could name a single British colony 49% could not one person gave the answer Lincolnshire and the Empire and this was why we managed to get rid of the Empire without the traumas that affected say France or Portugal or Belgium most British people weren't interested just as they're not on the whole very interested in Europe they're interested in in British Affairs what goes on in Britain the problems they have domestically the health service the economy had transferred all the rest of it and you get a I think a false view of Britain by looking at Churchill and Churchill himself recognized that he said sadly to a colleague at the end of his life you know I could have defended the British Empire against the British well I should say to declare my credential in the beginning that I was in the losing side in the referendum that I voted remain and perhaps the implications of what I said was that Britain should have been there but I really think that the differences in structure and perception between Britain and the Commonwealth country sorry and the European country the Continental countries are such and the difference in the history that we'd have faced the same problems if we had been there at the beginning we rather think perhaps our prestige would have helped us and it might have done for a while but our outlook as' was so different in my opinion just as I hold a view which is incapable of conformational refutation but even if we hadn't had that referendum in 2016 was the strains and the relationship would probably have led to us leaving eventually anyway and this really entrenches on something I'm going to say next time but the reason we joined was not we shared a belief in that common destiny but we saw a various economic benefits for ourselves in joining or at least stopping disadvantages so we weren't part of it and I think that would have always been the case and that that's a judgment of seeing capable of any confirmation or refutation in it the general view in Britain I suppose amongst the liberal elite is we made a mistake but I think the argument isn't perhaps as clear-cut as I presented it it's true we were begged to join begged to give the leadership of Europe and one can see why wasn't done we and after all one has perhaps I've underestimated that democracy in Europe will seem very unstable at the time France had a new government every nine months under the Fourth Republic a very large Communist Party calmness reposed to this so were the go lists at that time German democracy was a new thing no one could believe it necessary flourish so was Italian democracy these seemed unstable countries was we had do you see what we called the old Commonwealth Australia Canada New Zealand we thought how ties were there and we thought perhaps foolishly we were taken more seriously in America than so attending that was the key I think it was the particular Commonwealth links and the links with America where as remember his mother was American and someone once said of church of limas half American but all British and no I think he wasn't thinking I think it it would have been a view without any really conscious thought if we join Europe we abound to dominate I think he would have I mean I think most not just him but I think everyone in Britain would have thought that at the end of the 1940s and it his his some his ambivalence was simply whether it was compatible with the Commonwealth ties or the as he used to call it the Empire didn't like the term Commonwealth a map she preferred term Empire so I I think was that but I say he was he had a tremendous insight from from 1930 really onwards that Europe had to unite he was a in a way the profit of united Europe but he was ambivalent couldn't make him up his mind whether Britain should actually join I say it would he through knew him well so that his opposition was a matter of circumstance well you may say Heath would have said that his grandson in in the House of Commons Nicholas Soames former Tory Minister more strong pro-european though another grandson now was not so it's impossible to say I I would put this younger and in two points first you're right the 1975 referendum the first we had on that when we were already in Europe led to a two-to-one majority for remaining in this trenches on what I'm going to say in a future lecture but habit of it now in my opinion this did not show great enthusiasm for European unity but fear of what would happen if we left because in the 70s we were the sick man of Europe in a way that I think perhaps France is now inflation was twenty six percent unemployment heavily rising the trade unions seemed to have a stranglehold on British life and Churchill's son-in-law who'd been a European commissioner said this was no time for Britain to leave a Christmas club let alone the Common Market we were in a very weak position I think was fear of the consequence of not going and at that time also the issue was presented as one of moderates against extremists because the people who were against were the extreme left and extreme right whom people didn't like and everyone of moderate views therefore was Pro Europe now in the 2016 referendum that wasn't the case we had no fear of leaving because we seem to be doing better than the eurozone countries we seem to be were doing rather well and we had no no inflation unemployment was falling and the trade union power had been much weakened and there were many people on a moderate side of politics who did favor leaving Europe it wasn't simply moderates versus extremists in in 1975 one of the Pro Europeans had said that if we leave Europe we'll be in an old people's home for fading nations and he said it wouldn't be a very comfortable old people's home I don't like the look of some of the wardens now you may say that's true now of the wardens who are there but I mean there's two facts that I think um if I may say so I think you overestimate him the press I no scholar of the press we've seen with the newspaper editors want to sell papers and they sell papers by reflecting popular opinion rather than creating it to give you one example there was a large discussion a long discussion in the conservative part in 2008 when the lisbon treaty was signed on whether there should be a referendum on it and the key populist paper The Daily Mail had nothing in its headlines about didn't run the issue it realized people weren't interested at that time and so I think the pay at the newspapers only had effect because they reflected opinion that was already there not because they created the pin knowing that wasn't the reason for the results a reason for the resulting basically didn't want to be part of a European call it quasi Federation whatever you call they didn't want to be part of it restitute here your body of work has focused quite a lot on many other things the question of referendum indirect minimum receive Newcomb was it imaginable to a referendum on British and treatment earlier or it's a great concept of British referendum later Linda Susan beginning on entering or rather than whether they should leave and satisfy yes my and then finally connected because you compare to the American Constitution if the other countries in Europe have entered the common market or the EU in more of an American referendum way yeah we're ever and main.c point the other countries I think would all have accepted it because for them it was an escape from a condition they didn't like for the six as I said that escaped from the dilemmas and traumas of the war occupation resistance collaboration all the rest of it for most of the other countries an escape from dictatorship Spain Portugal Greece the ex communist countries pwned Hungary Romania Bulgaria the rest so I think they would all have joined Denmark had a referendum and Sweden had a referendum I think they joined Ireland had a referendum a can interesting point about whether Britain should have had one and this was discussed and Edward Heath said well we're represented by the Parliament we won't have one I think if we had had one I think you're probably right we wouldn't enjoy in the opinion polls may show that and the referendum was until we had one thought to be unconstitutional but then in Britain what is unconstitutional mean and it was a hell the Labour Party which succeeded Heath in 1974 had a referendum not because it sincerely wished to and to learn about the views of the British people nothing as grand as that but to cover over a party dispute and the the left-wing then was against and the right-wing broadly in favor and that threatened to break the party up so Wilson said let's have a referendum and then bow parties can support the labor government on the grounds of the people will decide and Wilson having said six out of seven conservative Prime's have been ruined by Europe Harold Wilson whose reputation isn't high in Britain probably is the only Prime Minister to have triumphed over Europe and the day after the referendum yielded that two-to-one majority he said to his private secretary and people say I have no sense of strategy that I can't think strategically he said I think there's anyone who succeeded but our problem now which I want to talk about further in later lectures is that for the first time in British history the referendum has yielded a result which Parliament does not like so it poses a sovereignty of the people against the sovereignty of parliament and this is one of the reasons for our problems in implementing brexit never happened before in British history and people who are against referendums of which there are a larger number perhaps they ally themselves with some reactionary points of view but one great French reactionary Joseph de Maistre who was opposed to French Revolution so the principle of the sovereignty of the people is so dangerous that even if it were true it would be best to conceal it and that is what many people feel in Britain now [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Yale University

Views: 24,780

Keywords: brexit, europe, european union, uk, eu, united kingdom, england, ireland, northern ireland, vernon bogdanor, theresa may, brexit delay, macmillan center, yale, yale university, wales, scotland, parliament, jeremy corbyn, brexit deal, withdrawl agreement, transition period, no-deal, no-deal brexit, no deal

Id: 1brWd9HGbcI

Length: 85min 11sec (5111 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019