Britain and European Integration 1945-1998

A Documentary History

David Gowland, Arthur Turner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135114695
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: History

An illuminating and comprehensive exploration of a subject which has dominated the British political scene for much of the period since the Second World War. Through a wide and varied collection of documents, complemented by detailed and perceptive analysis, this book explores Britain's reactions to the dynamics of European integration. Key subjects covered include: * European unity and "missed opportunities" in the early post-war years * the Commonwealth dimension and the "special relationship" * Britain's belated attempts to join the EC in the 1960s * the singlecurrency.0L Many of its numerous sources are made widely accessible here for the first time. It is an invaluable resource for all students of Politics, Modern British History and European Studies.

1 Reconstruction and European Unity: 1945–1949

During the early post-war years Britain occupied an indeterminate position within the international system. Although one of the ‘Big Three’ victorious allies, it did not possess the resources of the US and the USSR. Nor did it share the wartime experience of occupation, division and defeat of many continental European states. The documents in this section reflect the impact of these and other conditions on the evolution of British policy towards the idea of European unity during the period of post-war reconstruction.

In the immediate aftermath of war British policymakers believed that the country’s status as an independent great power was best enhanced by leadership of a ‘third force’ comprising the west European states and their overseas possessions in a tripartite international system. This view was gradually undermined, however, as Cold War tensions formalised the division of Europe and of Germany and as the problems of post-war recovery in Europe impressed on British policymakers the dangers of overclose relations with states that appeared to offer a host of liabilities rather than assets. At the same time British financial weakness and the legacy of wartime debts of £4.7 billion resulted in heavy dependence on American assistance following the UK/US loan negotiations of September-December 1945 and the Marshall aid offer of June 1947. By 1949 the formation of the Atlantic Pact and British antipathy towards far-reaching plans for European integration resulted in a more defined and circumscribed view of British involvement in Western Europe among Whitehall policymakers than had earlier been the case. The emerging consensus on European policy remained substantially intact during the following decade when Britain refused to participate in the origins of the European Community.

Historians have offered different assessments of British policy towards Europe in this period. Particular attention has been paid to the main objects and motives of Ernest Bevin whose dominant personality and strong position in Clement Attlee’s newly elected Labour government of July 1945 gave him much scope to determine policy as Foreign Secretary. Some accounts focus on the origins and impact of the Cold War and stress Bevin’s role in shaping a Western bloc based on the restoration of the close wartime relationship between the UK and the US. This emphasis on the ‘Atlanticist’ strain in British policy is summed up in the view that the Atlantic Pact of 1949 was Bevin’s ‘crowning achievement’. Other studies, however, argue that Bevin was principally concerned to restore Britain’s credentials as a world power on an equal footing with and independent of the US and the USSR. The formation of an American-dominated Western alliance was thus a second-best solution, which was indicative of British weakness. It marked the failure of Bevin’s grand design to organise ‘the middle of the planet’ – including the west European states – as a power bloc comparable to the US and the USSR.

Britain’s precarious position as a world power at the end of the Second World War highlighted the value of assuming a leadership role in the reconstruction of Europe and of developing close relations with the west European states (1.1 and 1.3). A principal reason for doing so was to enhance British power and influence in the conduct of relations with the US and the USSR (1.2). This primarily global emphasis in British policy meant that regional European cooperation was viewed in the context of Britain’s great power relations and of global institutions for resolving international problems (1.3B). Bevin and senior Whitehall officials were convinced of the need to develop close relations with the Western European states and especially with France in the first instance. From the outset, however, they were conscious of the limited British assistance that could be offered to these states and also of the relative weaknesses of these states as an organised bloc (1.2 and 1.3B).

The cause of European unity attracted the support of British political leaders who, contrary to some accounts, were no less possessed of vision and imagination than their continental counterparts. Winston Churchill was a dominant figure on European platforms where his grandiloquent rhetoric sought to boost European morale and to encourage a new Franco-German partnership (1.4). Significantly, however, he portrayed Britain as a sponsor of rather than a full participant in the new Europe. In a characteristically more prosaic manner, Bevin also supported the idea of European unity, most positively in his Western Union speech of January 1948 at a time when four-power cooperation in Germany had collapsed and the economic division of Europe had hardened following the offer of American (Marshall) aid in June 1947 (1.5). This speech marked both the apogee of Bevin’s third force thinking and also his growing recognition of the importance of American assistance in addressing the problems of economic recovery and security in Western Europe. It also demonstrated that his interest in European unity lay principally in the fields of defence and security and economic cooperation: he was far more circumspect about detailed plans for the political unification of Europe.

The immediate consequence of Bevin’s speech was the formation of a mutual security pact – the Brussels Treaty Organisation (BTO) – in March 1948, comprising Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Earlier interest in constructing a European bloc of states to contain post-war Germany was here overtaken by growing anxiety with what was perceived as the greater Soviet threat to Western Europe. At the same time the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was founded to supervise the distribution of American aid among 16 west European countries. Both organisations were shaped in accordance with British support for the principle of intergovernmental cooperation. They also established the foundations for a British-led Western Europe with a proprietorial attitude in Whitehall towards the functioning of such organisations.

By the time of Bevin’s Western Union speech there was a rising tide of interest in continental, and especially French, circles in far-reaching forms of economic integration. Most notably the idea of a west European customs union, which came to fruition 10 years later in the EEC Treaty of Rome, began to take root, especially as France made an unsuccessful attempt to forge a customs union with Italy and the Benelux states. Initially, Whitehall opinion was divided about the advantages of British membership of a European customs union. Bevin was a long-standing supporter of this project. He was also concerned to give some economic substance to his Western Union grand design. As in other areas, however, his strong preference for a Western Union bank at this time depended on American backing in the absence of sufficient British reserves to underwrite such a venture. Immediately after the Western Union speech a Foreign Office paper presented the case for British membership of a European customs union and thus for a course of action which would have fundamentally changed Britain’s role in Europe in later years (1.6). In characterising Whitehall’s attitude towards the idea, the author of this paper touched on a feature that was also evident in official British reactions to advances in European integration in later years: 'the short term complexities and adjustments loom more largely in the minds of departments than the problematical (though generally conceded) long term advantages’. In the event, the Treasury under Stafford Cripps, the recently appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Board of Trade under Harold Wilson successfully opposed the idea. Bevin’s particular interest in fostering close economic relations with France made little impact on the Treasury view that a dollar-starved European customs union was unlikely to serve the dollar-earning and dollar-saving principles underlying Britain’s foreign economic policy at this time. In his rejection of the idea of British membership of a customs union, Cripps advanced a potent mix of arguments that concentrated on the preservation of national economic sovereignty, the long-term dangers of a customs union and the vital importance of maintaining a protectionist commercial policy (1.7).

By late 1948 Bevin’s interest in European unity began to wane, especially as mounting support for a federal Europe found a platform at The Hague Congress of Europe (May 1948) and as the idea of a European parliamentary assembly was subsequently taken up by the French government in the BTO. In the course of negotiations resulting in the formation of the Council of Europe in 1949, Bevin was greatly irritated by federalist ambitions that accompanied the formation of this organisation (1.8). He was thus all the more disposed to define the limits of British interest in Europe. Cripps and Bevin eventually forged a common position on the general question of British involvement in the economic recovery of Western Europe. Their paper of January 1949 was approved by the Cabinet’s Economic Policy Committee (1.9). In preparing this paper, Foreign Office and Treasury officials had urged that British assistance to Western Europe should be governed by the concept of limited liability and should avoid any surrender of national sovereignty. This position more sharply defined and qualified British policy towards Europe than at the time of Bevin’s Western Union initiative. It also registered an increasingly pessimistic view in British circles about political and economic conditions in the continental European states.

At the same time support for a federal Europe among the continental states confirmed the weaknesses of these states in British eyes, justifying British scepticism about the idea and also reinforcing the importance of British guidance and leadership (1.10). The prevalent attitude of British policymakers was often based on a mixture of condescension, arrogance and insularity arising out of the continuing influence of Britain’s exceptional wartime status as compared with the altogether different experiences of the continental European states. British policymakers also demonstrated a deeply ingrained consciousness of the quanlititative difference between Britain and the continental states in the post-war international system. Many of the factors accounting for post-war interest in European integration had far less application in Britain than on the continent (1.11).

Document 1.1

The following extract is from a memorandum of 11 July 1945 by Sir Orme Sargent, a senior Foreign Office official who became Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office in 1946.

Stocktaking After Ve-Day

The end of the war in Europe leaves us facing three main problems, none of which has any resemblance to the problems with which we were faced at the end of the last war. They are (a) the military occupation by Soviet troops of a large part of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Government’s future policy generally; (b) the economic rehabilitation of Europe so as to prevent a general economic collapse; and (c) the task of administering Germany and deciding on her future institutions in agreement with the Soviet, United States and French Governments.

2. Our own position, too, in dealing with these problems is very different from what it was at the end of the last war, when we and France shared and disputed, and eventually lost, control of Europe. This time the control is to a large degree in the hands of the Soviet Union and the United States, and neither of them is likely to consider British interests overmuch if they interfere with their own and unless we assert ourselves.

3. Thus it suits us that the principle of cooperation between the three Great Powers should be specifically accepted as the basis on which problems arising out of the war should be handled and decided. Such a co-operative system will, it is hoped, give us a position in the world which we might otherwise find it increasingly difficult to assert and maintain were the other two Great Powers to act independently. It is not that either the United States or the Soviet Union do not wish to collaborate with Great Britain … But the fact remains that in the minds of our big partners, especially in that of the United States, there is a feeling that Great Britain is now a secondary Power and can be treated as such, and that in the long run all will be well if they – the United States and the Soviet Union – as the two supreme World Powers of the future, understand one another. It is this misconception which it must be our policy to combat.

4. We have many cards in our hands if we choose to use them – our political maturity; our diplomatic experience; the confidence which the solidarity of our democratic institutions inspires in Western Europe; and our incomparable war record. Unlike our two great partners we are not regarded in Western Europe either as gangsters or as go-getters. But we must do something about organising our side or we shall find our friends gradually drifting away from us. Time is not necessarily on our side. For this reason and because we are numerically the weakest and geographically the smallest of the three Great Powers, it is essential that we should increase our strength in not only the diplomatic but also the economic and military spheres. This clearly can best be done by enrolling France and the lesser Western European Powers, and, of course, also the Dominions, as collaborators with us in the tripartite system. Only so shall we be able, in the long run, to compel our two big partners to treat us as an equal. Even so, our collaboration with the Soviet Union, and even with the United States, is not going to be easy in view of the wide divergence between our respective outlooks, traditions and methods.

Source: Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], FO 371/50912

Document 1.2

The following extract is taken from the minutes of a meeting of Foreign Office, Treasury and Board of Trade officials on 25 July 1945, the day before the announcement of the general election results. It reveals some of the main features of Whitehall opinion concerning economic relations with France and Western Europe.

Sir Wilfred Eady [Treasury] said that in general terms the Treasury regarded a close association with the Western European powers as clearly in the economic interests of our country …

Development of association, both politically and economically, with Western Europe involved three considerations, that the scheme was within the framework of the San Francisco ideas [United Nations Charter], that any plan did not involve transferring to the United Kingdom some of the political and financial weaknesses of the other partners, and that both politically and economically the association could not be regarded as designed in opposition to policy of economic cooperation with the United States …

Sir Percivale Liesching [Board of Trade] said that there could be a great improvement in our trading relations with Western Europe, but that progress towards such an improvement was held up by the absence of a Cabinet decision on our commercial policy. In any case, the idea of a Customs Union in Western Europe or between this country and France was much too ambitious to aim at as the first objective of our policy. A Customs Union between two such equal powers as the United Kingdom and France was a very difficult proposition. It would in any case presuppose a strong political tie and, even with such a tie, it would under the current philosophy of full employment imply concrete mobility of labour between the two countries and this was difficult to visualise. It would be very difficult to find remedies for the various problems which a Customs Union would bring in its train for the Government of each of the countries concerned. Moreover a Customs Union would involve a common level of tariffs suitable both to the highly developed metropolitan countries and to their colonial dependencies whose economic circumstances were very different. This was a formidable difficulty. We should also have to reckon with the fact that the Dominions might suffer and that there might be a re-orientation on their part towards the United States …

Mr. Harvey [Foreign Office] said that the Foreign Office favoured the formation of a Western bloc in order that both we and our Western European Allies should carry more weight in the counsels of the Big Three. So far, however, we had had nothing much to offer to the other Western European countries. The Foreign Office had never thought it would be necessary to have anything so provocative as a Customs Union. What they looked forward to was a regional group on the lines contemplated at San Francisco the other potential partners in such a group being just as anxious as we were to be covered by the formula of the United Nations Charter. Until such a regional group could be formed we should do whatever we could for these countries on the economic side.

Source: PRO, T 236/779

Document 1.3

The general election of 5 July 1945 resulted in the formation of a Labour government under Clement Attlee. Ernest Bevin served as Foreign Secretary throughout the lifetime of this government and until ill health ended his period of office in March 1951. The following extracts reveal Bevin’s thinking about Europe and wider international developments in the early post-war period. Extract A is taken from a record of a meeting between Bevin and Foreign Office officials on 13 August 1945. Extract B is part of a memorandum (8 November 1945) by Bevin.

A

2. The Secretary of State explained that his long-term policy was to establish close relations between this country and the countries on the Mediterranean and Atlantic fringes of Europe – e.g. more especially Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. He wanted to see close a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Reconstruction and European unity: 1945–1949
• 2. ‘Lost opportunities’: 1950–1957
• 3. The ‘special relationship’: 1945–1963
• 4. Kith and kin: the Commonwealth and Europe, 1945–1961
• 5. Knocking at the door: 1959–1963
• 6. Another veto: 1964–1969
• 7. Entry and renegotiation: 1970–1975
• 8. In transition: 1973–1979
• 9. ‘No, no, yes’: 1979–1990
• 10. Staying in but opting out: 1990–1997
• 11. New Labour and Europe: 1997–1998
• Appendix: The institutions of the European Community/European Union
• Further reading
• Chronological table
• Index