Back in the early 1960s, when I was a lobby correspondent on Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express, I was deputed to make contact with the then Labour, Hugh Gaitskell, over Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s decision to
seek membership of what we then called the European Common Market. Beaverbrook, a devoted Empire and Commonwealth man, was fiercely opposed to the application, and Gaitskell had just committed the Labour Party to oppose it, though in the teeth of bitter hostility from most of his closest political allies.
The idea was that some kind of informal alliance could be formed, leading to the Daily Express (circulation 4.25 million) coming out for Labour at the approaching general election. It was an intriguing situation for a young journalist who, as it happened, shared Beaverbrook’s and Gaitskell’s hostility to the Common Market. I had many sessions with Gaitskell’s press secretary, John Harris, and paid a couple of visits to the Gaitskell family home in Frognal, Hampstead.
The two sides of the European argument had been shaping up against each other inside both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party for some months during the 1962 conference season. But both party leaders eventually carried their parties with them, although angry minorities remained in both organisations, determined to carry on the fight. To my chagrin, however, my hoped-for alliance between Labour and the Express ran into the buffers when General de Gaulle gave his historic “Non” to Macmillan. With that, the entire application collapsed.
I tell this peculiar story simply to draw attention to the fact that Europe, and Britain’s role in it, has been splitting political parties ever since Macmillan’s doomed initiative half a century ago, and shows no sign of losing its toxic political quality. The Tories are once again facing a difficult time over the perpetually vexed question of parliamentary sovereignty; the Liberal Democrats will split if the coalition tries to come out against Europe; and Labour, though currently enjoying the embarrassment of its rivals, will sooner or later have to come down on one side or the other. When it does so, it will inevitably alienate one or other wing of its supporters.
But the oddest feature of the whole 50-year saga is the way in which the various participants have changed sides, sometimes switching back and forth more than once. Labour started out as anti, then, half way into Harold Wilson’s leadership, came out in favour, while Ted Heath swung the Tory Party from lukewarm support into bulging-eyed Euro-fanaticism, only to be followed by Margaret Thatcher’s equally bulging-eyed hostility. Then we had assorted second-rate Conservative leaders whose jingoistic anti-Europeanism took their party into the wilderness. In David Cameron, we now have a juggler.
On the Labour side, Callaghan’s party was pretty cool about Europe, Michael Foot’s was somewhat anti, Neil Kinnock’s was strongly anti, John Smith’s was pro-ish and Tony Blair might have been pro-ish if Gordon Brown had not – thank God – stopped him taking us into the doomed eurozone. We wait to see where young Ed Miliband will take us.
If that seems confusing, my own position is no less so. I started out strongly anti, not least because I agreed with Nye Bevan’s view that the Common Market was a capitalist club with the dual purpose of ruling out any socialist threat to private property, while simultaneously providing an economic foundation for Nato. However, I also shared Hugh Gaitskell’s belief in the Commonwealth as an effective trading organisation, founded on ties of blood and tradition, which would have given us a living outside Europe.
But, alas, the prospect of any version of socialism which would genuinely threaten private property seems to have dwindled almost out of sight in the modern Labour Party and we are now in the business of ameliorating the worst excesses of capitalism. And if that is the game, I have to concede that the European “capitalist club” has done at least as good and in some cases a better job than Labour.
The sight of Conservative and sometimes even Labour governments seeking exemption from European legislation designed to protect workers’ rights against their employers has almost turned me into a European. It certainly turned my stomach.
Moreover, we are in and the idea of getting us out seems fanciful, to put it mildly. The Commonwealth countries, having been rejected by us, have gone their own way. That particular trading partnership is a dead duck. So our best hope now is to make the best of what we’ve got.
Yet that, too, looks like being difficult. The eurozone is in deep trouble, and although we aren’t (thank you again, Gordon) actually in it, its collapse would precipitate a crisis which would engulf us as well as the rest of Europe. But, with any luck, the lessons of the eurozone fiasco will be learned – namely, that pressing ahead with idealistic projects such as “ever-closer union” without the support of the people or the acquiescence of the wider world is a recipe for disaster.
So if we are really lucky, we could end up with a common sense Europe rather than a daft, head-in-the-clouds Europe. These days, I’d settle for that.
