Table of Contents
Table of Contents 0. Introduction 3-13 0.1 Us or Them? On the dominant perception of British European problem 8 0.2 Britain and Europe: Ambiguity and exceptionality 17 1. Terms and concepts of the British European Discourse 14-22 1.1 Nationalism, development of identities, Englishness and Britishness 16 1.2 Europeanness as a separate identity 21 2. British assessment of Europe prior to 1789: Classic antiquity and the Grand Tour 23-30 2.1 The medieval perceptions 23 2.2 The Protestant restoration: British archipelago, Gens Anglorum and the divorce of 27 identities 2.3 Protestantism, Puritanism and an anti European drifting 28 3. The 17 th and 18 th centuries: Convergence and divergence 31-37 3.1 17 th century: Arminianism, Pragmatism and a philosophical disjunction 32 3.2 Beginnings of Federalism: The Anglo American Protestant providence 35 3.3 Impact of Enlightenment on the British understanding of Europe 36 4. 1789-1848: Britain as a lone outpost of stability 38-47 4.1 Changes in the official perceptions of Continent 38 4.2 Hyperbole of the Empire concept: Rule Britannia and the rest of the world 41 4.3 International climate of the early 19 th century and political treatment of Europe 43 4.3.1 Castlereagh: The pro European of his age? 43 4.3.2 George Canning, the Holly Alliance and British determination against Europe 45 5. Jolly Old Empire: The Victorian Era and Splendid Isolation from the Continent 48-53 5.1. The official politics vs. the development of Atlantic Federalism 48 5.2 Anglo Saxon Constitutional Federalism and moving off the Continent 49 5.3 Diverting the Federalist case through traditional concepts 50 5.4 The British Imperial Federation: Commitment to Empire and a birth of new inspiration 51 6. Complexity of the ‘Era of isolation’ (1850s-1890s) 54-61 6.1 Furtive beginnings of European Federalism: Intellectual and philosophical origins 54 6.2 Victorian Britain and Europe: Official disregard of the European matters 57 6.3 Gladstone, Disraeli and the others: Disappearance of Europe and exceptions to the rule 58 6.4 Splendid Isolation: A term which came too late 60 7. British missed chances in the early 20 th century 62-67 7.1 The turn of the century: A new reality 62
[1] 7.2 Rosebery, Grey and Europe: The purpose built alliances 63 7.3 The era of paradoxes: European spirit vs. nationalistic ‘Realpolitik’ 65 8. The post-war era: Back to the nations 68-74 8.1 The Wilsonian heritage: Idealism, lofty concepts and return to the nations 68 8.2 British blunders after Versailles and misconceptions of the European question 71 8.3 Thwarting the Briand Plan and British European thinking in the 1930s 72 9. The 1930s: Britain leaves Europe alone 75-82 9.1 British short sighted Appeasement: A failure of momentary prospects 76 9.2 The 1930s from a different perspective 77 9.3 First major appeal of modern Federalism: Lothian and Curtis 78 9.4 Atlantic vs. European model 80 10. Intensification of ‘Europeanization’ of Britain in WWII 83-101 10.1 European Federalism in Britain: A rise of new generation 83 10.2 Remnants of the burdens of the past: The early federalist drafts 85 10.3 Federal Union: Unfolding the European sentiment 87 10.4 The Labour fraction of Federal Union 91 10.5 Britain and France: The Indissoluble Union? 96 11. The post-war Britain: The power politics and ‘Europe’ as an instrument 102-108 11.1 The Western Bloc 103 11.2 The Labour politics: The indefinite concept of Europe as a ‘Third Power’ 104 11.3 The Third Power or Close Association with Europe: The antagonizing concepts? 107 12. The development of European sentiment in the Welfare Britain 109-124 12.1 Churchill: Uncovering one European myth 109 12.2 Churchill’s appeal’s outcome and European dispositions in the post war Britain 117 13. Conclusion 125-139 Works Cited 140-151
[2]
0. Introduction
The introductory chapter of this dissertation explores the issue of British identity as a whole and hints at different aspects related to the forming of Britain’s specific sense of identity and the part the Continent played in it. It provides a theoretical account on various terms, concepts and ideas, which co shaped the British specificity and prove indispensable for understanding the widely discussed British divergence but also the frequently neglected convergence and the ensuing official debate of Europe. A special attention will be paid to the introduction of the triad of Englishness, Britishness and the problematic Europeanness.
In Chapter two an assessment of development of European Identity prior to the 1789 is provided. It follows the gradual development of what is to be later perceived as a fundamental divergence, the route from original medieval cognation with Continent (France) and relative closeness to the Western Europe up to the symbolic philosophical and cultural divorce with
Continent is depicted and roots of divergence and dissimilarity of Britain are delineated. This part identifies and interprets the distinct medieval perceptions of France and applies the concepts, identities and values explored in detail in the initial chapter to trace the evolution of these on the background of real historical events. These values and concepts brought about the distinct perceptions of eras like the Reformation, which resulted in fundamental religious dissension symbolised by Protestantism and Puritanism. It also stresses the interconnectedness of various characteristic aspects of British society, which helped to create a powerful combination, from which the ideology of British Empire arose.
The third chapter covers the 17 th and 18 th centuries and portrays on the one hand the dominant historic process of philosophical disjunction caused by the emerging Pragmatism and the specific impact of Enlightenment on the perception of Europe, and thus stresses the philosophical divergence, which is to be projected later in the British diplomacy and
[3] international relations. On the other hand, it also hints at the other side of the issue and examines the origins of Federalist theory as the future tangible platform of European identity in the British Isles. It poses as a general introduction to the more extensive debate of
Federalism in the subsequent chapters.
Chapter four is roughly devoted to the period of 1789 94, marked by the turbulent years in Continental Europe, when Britain can be perceived (and that is how many British themselves perceived their country) as an outpost of stability and solidity. The attention is focused on the dominant change of British perception of the Continent at that time, which was reflected in the politics and the overall atmosphere of what we today call ‘the Napoleonic Era’ and/or the ‘Concert of Europe.’ The focus is on the concept of British Empire as well as nationalism, both of which are closely linked. Particularly emphasized is the persistence of
European sentiment in this turbulent era and its reflection in the diplomacy and political posture in exceptional personalities of British public life like Castlereagh and Canning.
The fifth section is devoted to another rigidly interpreted period of the British history, the Victorian era and to what has been termed by subsequent discourse as the fabular
‘splendid isolation.’ Here likewise and in accordance with the purpose of this dissertation a deliberately complex approach is adopted to provide a different view. It also attempts to include other than the generally accepted majority view of Victorian society and tries to single out the influential theories of Atlanticism and Imperial Federalism, both of which were significant and illustrative for this period and both of which had to do later with British
European considerations and posed as an inspiration for British pro Europeanism. The aim of this thesis is also to explain the logic of official British detachment of Europe and to suggest that the disregard of Europe was far from being purely a matter of British imperial haughtiness. The Continent itself is to be equally blamed for this standoffish position of the
British representation.
[4] Chapter six takes the reader back in time to familiarize him/her with the beginnings of
European federalism in Britain. In this part, Federalism, which is a crucial term for the second half of the dissertation, is introduced as an indispensable term and concept that provided a framework and concrete dimension for the 20 th century British European debate. A considerable attention is paid to influential personalities and scholars like John Seeley, W.T.
Stead and their European considerations within a predominantly scholarly debate.
Subsequently, a comparison is provided with the official disregard for European matters by late Victorian British governments. The gradual British decline from power and an official inability to admit it and respond appropriately is explored in detail since it is a constitutive part of British European discourse to be fully manifested later in the 20 th century. It is further to be shown that the concept of “Splendid isolation” failed to respond to the far reaching changes at the turn of the 20 th century and that even in the darker ages of the British
Continental relations there existed exceptions to the rule.
The seventh chapter is devoted to the evergreen question of Britain’s missed chances
(as far as the European question is concerned) and traces these ‘omissions’ back to the turn of the century and beyond. It reveals the major of Britain’s unquestionable mistakes in her
European policy and the fossilization of once functioning but then already obsolete views and political strategies. The thesis introduces this time as the ‘Era of Paradoxes’ and incongruous phenomena in British milieu and provides explanation of this assertion. This chapter also follows the indications of pro European sentiment in Britain and affect of the threat of war on the European considerations.
The following part explores the post war era, which is frequently associated with
British Appeasement and the often quoted British lack of understanding of Europe. It investigates the incomprehension of official politics and the global tendency to return to the nation states; it equally subjects to criticism the functional weaknesses of the Wilsonian
[5] League of Nations’ international system and the British role in it. In relation to this, the seventh chapter also concentrates on the first prophets, who pointed at the dangers and pitfalls of such British approach, and a general confidence in momentary prospects. It examines the early European activities as the Briand plan and interprets the British unfavourable responses to it. Yet, together with Chapter nine it also attempts to provide another perspective of the
1930s as a productive era of pro European federalism, the era of the origination of
Churchillian ‘United Nations of Europe’ idea, Lothian’s ‘Pacifism is not Enough’ and other concepts, which would act as rudiments of war and post war continental Federalism. The
1930s should be also seen as the era when the first major appeal of pro European thinking can be detected and the prolific basis formed in the Thirties will be made use of during the war.
Chapter ten regards the intensification of Europeanization of Britain during WWII. It examines the advanced European concepts of British personalities, the institutionalization of
British European sentiment as well as the wide public appeal of these activities. It investigates the review of European models by a new generation of British pro European federalists, while it also traces the remnants of the past traditions in them. A considerable part of this chapter is devoted to the importance of Federal Union in promoting the identity of Europeanness and providing it with actual substance.
The following eleventh chapter attempts at a complex description of the overall British drift in the post war era. It introduces such terms as ‘Power Politics’, ‘Third Power’ and accounts for British problematic position (and even more problematic perception of this position) in the post war world. It also introduces the post war modifications of British
European thinking, namely the Western Bloc and Close Association and touches on the reasons of British post war caution and disregard for Europe. It also attempts to explain and justify the British politics, since this era is generally interpreted from the continental point of
[6] view. It is suggested that a more complex view of the period should be utilized to reassess the
British policy towards the EEC in the 1950s.
The last part explores in depth the popular personality of Winston Churchill and the
European nimbus, which surrounds him. It strives to portray his character in its immense complexity and to reassess his European dimension in relation to the level of European discourse of his time. It further examines Churchill’s indisputable appeal on subsequent proponents of Europe and on their European activities. The last part also introduces the figures like Duncan Sandys or Ronald MacKay and their concrete efforts and activities for the institutions promoting the European unity. It also studies the assets of various governmental as well as non governmental pro European fractions and institutions for the Federalist debates and for the moving off of the actual and functional European integration debate in the 1950s.
In the first chapters (i.e. 1 5), the approach is rather theoretically and ideologically centred. The author explains and explores underlying terms indispensable for further parts of the thesis and namely indispensable for the sake of completeness. Thus, in the first chapters I deal with terms and concepts like Englishness/Britishness as opposed to Europeanness,
Nation and Nationality or British Identity. This thesis searches and examines the origin of
English/British exceptionality and divergence and traces its development throughout centuries, looking for source of the dissimilarities with the Continent. That inevitably leads to touching upon the powerful concept of Protestantism, the fabled English navy, legal system, existence of Parliament, peculiarity of insular political and philosophical thinking, the
Empiricist as opposed to Cartesian tradition etc. The framework to this development of concept tracing will be provided by British historical development and reference to historical events significant for formation of English/British attitude to Europe. Nevertheless, this part of the work will be still rather theoretical and less concise than the section to follow.
[7] The second part (i.e. chapters 6 11) provides a more in depth and detailed analysis of international relations and politics. It is closely related to particular events in modern British history and abandons the already introduced concepts for more detailed analysis of already deeply rooted and seemingly insurmountable divergence, which is delineated in the first part and will be hereafter accepted as an initial position, as a premise.
A considerable space is left for an interpretation of the British 20th century decline from power and to the interpretation of the development of British European identity, for the
British motives and motivation in this respect and a reflection of all this in British European and Anti European policy as well as the divisions and conflicts along the British secular traditions (Pragmatism, Empire, Commonwealth, etc.).
0.1 Us or Them? On the dominant perception of British European problem
This thesis is concerned with the question of whether or not Britain is part of Europe or the other way round, whether Europe includes the United Kingdom, which still persists as a major topic of current European politics. The exact connotations that the concept evokes have evolved gradually but considerably over the course of the last two centuries. Britain has always been leaving her options open and thus creating an uncertainty of its own identity, perplexity and dilemma. This constitutes the general level of my thesis and at the same time remains extremely vital for the area of international relations, history and politics in general.
In the 1950s, Britain was continuously shocking the Continent by her standoffish politics, which was attacked as selfish, self centred, (post ) imperial, staunchly anti European, etc.
The British, to appropriate Linda Colley’s words “saw themselves, particularly in times of emergency, as a people apart,” traditional values enabling the nation to survive virtually unchanged … its values have been retained untarnished. 1 Even after joining the European
1 Cited in: Gough Yates, K. “British Films of World War II.” Microsoft Encarta 2006 [DVD] . Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005. 13 June 2006.
[8] Community in 1973, Britain continued to be perceived only as a half member, largely unreliable and fundamentally different. The bidding question is then what preceded this specific British position in integrated Europe, which factors and events are responsible for the
British weird partnership with Continent? What are then the roots of the Britain’s reserved approach to the European integration, an approach so widely referred to?
The British evergreen question “Us or Them” deserves considerably more attention by the scholarly research, which is currently concentrated on the popular though somewhat confused problem of US War on Terror and alike. Current researchers are concurrently preoccupied with the European Union issue and the future development of Europe and in this context we should definitely re appreciate the Britain’s European debate as one of the decisive aspects in further European drift. The existing trend of research (and not necessarily continental) into British European problems is to employ a linear, uncomplicated approach, trace the Foreign Office and government politics and tell a schematic story about the essentially different and specifically weird Albion, which developed into the magnificent
Empire towering above the rest of mankind. By locking herself in this isolated tower Britain lost touch with the agile Continent and her largely unjust and conceited essential anti
Europeanism has been the reason why the British missed the bus called ‘Europe.’ Moreover, the official EU production makes you think that Britain won her fight with this ‘imperfection’ and at last became a contended EU nation. This is, nevertheless a crude simplification resulting from one sided view of Government politics.
It is essential to realize that Britain became characteristically different through a specific development, in many respects dissimilar to that of the continental nation states.
Britain largely originated on different fundamental concepts and ideas and her identity was indeed formed on a distinct basis (and more often than not in an opposition to the continental
[9] one) – but it is to be equally argued that this all also responded logically to the Continental political course.
One of this thesis’ aims is to illustrate the logic of the development of British European identity, of British relation to Europe, which is frequently conceptualized in between two extreme views. The objective of this project is to go into the British perception of Continental
Europe and do justice to the complexity of this issue; in the first place to deconstruct the oversimplifying ideologizing myths of sheer Europeanness or essential anti Europeanness that burden it. In this manner, a complex but lucid and transparent view of the issue will be attempted.
I focus on the problem of perception of the continental Europe by the British Empire, its diplomacy and personalities throughout the 18 th century – i.e. as source of inspiration, reserved reverence and esteem for its traditions, a complete abandonment of Europe as an object of scorn and contempt during the self confident Victorian era. Equally investigated will be the rethinking of this concept after the shocking wakening caused by WWI, the unreasonable ignorance of European matters in the inter war era which ultimately proved fatal and more importantly sluggish and unwilling post war reorientation. Subsequently, this thesis examines the inability of objective evaluation of the situation following the ultimate defeat of
Nazism. The measures accepted in response to the victory in WWII definitely led to Britain missing her bus and losing touch with rapid development of the Western Europe.
It is being continuously emphasized that in Britain, various EU rules are construed as a malign attack on the British way of life which needs to be repelled with the same force as
Hitler's aggression in 1939–1940. 2 “Britons are afraid of the European Union because they are forced to adapt their specific cultural and institutional rules and values towards what emerges
2 See MacMillan, S. “Britain’s Betrayal.” Slate – International Papers . 23 May 2003. Online 15 June 2006.
[10] as a common European norm, which they dislike.”3 The peculiar combination of Britain's allegedly uneasy relationship with its European partners with the divisive force of 'Europe' in
British domestic politics has not only received extensive media comment 4, but also induced an avalanche of academic literature, including many textbooks. These tend to start the story in
1945 and are usually structured chronologically, taking a historical approach which is frequently explanatory and usually takes account of theoretical explanations of British
European policy or, indeed, of the integration process.
The area of interest in this thesis is the process of formation of specific British identity and its following impact on British relations with what is termed the Continental Europe. The aim of this thesis is then to provide as complete and complex portrayal of the ambiguous and complicated relationship of Britain and Europe as possible. I would like this work to be as concrete and specific as possible, therefore my approach rests in taking advantage of my field of interest – that is Diplomacy, History and International relations. I occasionally support my arguments by excursion into cultural spheres and aspects of development, based on literary production. I attempt to follow the phenomenon in question along the British historical development and try to make the complexity of this matter as much articulate as possible.
Therefore, the focus of this thesis is rather on the latter part – the issue of British European relation in the first half of the 20 th century, while the former part provides the necessary background.
0.2 Britain and Europe: Ambiguity and exceptionality
The dominant stream of current historiography (be it British or Continental), in terms of dealing with British historical development, British attitude to Europe and position within it is
3 Behnisch, A.J. “For Britain, joining Europe was associated with national decline and loss of great power status.” New Statesman . 1996. Goliath – Industry and Business News. 16 December 2002. Online 15 June 2006. < http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199 999323/For Britain joining Europe was.html >. 4 See for instance Bowring, P. “Britain and the Continent: Let’s See Who Needs Whom.” International Herald Tribune , 16 February 1999. Online 15 June. < http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/02/16/edbow.t_0.php>.
[11] simplified. Furthermore, the perception of this relationship is idealized (in terms of past as well as present state) and intentionally conceptualized. This is particularly apparent in endeavour of official EU bodies and British representatives to cover British misdemeanour, to
‘europeanize’ British past and to search for Europeanness where this never was or at least never has been as apparent as presented. Whether this endeavour for European presentation concerned British cosmopolitan diplomats of the 18th and 19th centuries or Churchill, this tactics is what we are witnessing these days in all official media. Nevertheless, the centuries of different, in fact antagonistic development cannot be blotted out by 40 years of rapprochement to Europe, especially if this has been originally an inevitable need and urgency and a marriage out of convenience.
In Britain, there has always existed something specific, different and special, a certain level of seclusiveness and distance and, whether the British or EU political representatives admit it or not, it is in part valid even today, when Blairist Britain presents itself as a loyal and reliable EU member. 5 This sentiment of exceptionality and difference is symptomatic for Brits and their identity and can be traced in philosophy, literature, later in films and in all cultural spheres in general. But first of all, it is reflected in British history, politics, diplomacy and international relations. Present day press and media are mostly ruled from Brussels,
Strasburg, Geneva and Paris and they look at British history and strive hard to emphasize every single trace of possitiveness in European matters. It searches for sincere European visionaries, who frankly and genuinely loved Europe and European idea; but the fact is that such ardent pro Europeans have never existed in Britain, and even nowadays they are rather scarce. Europeans as well as British official representatives, all should finally become aware of the fact that even the “most confident pro Europeans” have always played it close to their chest and spoke out of both sides of their mouths, in other words they acted somewhat
5 See for instance Blair, T. “Britain in Europe.” Speech by the Prime Minister. 14 October 1999. Directgov Website of the UK Government . Online 15 June 2006. < http://www.number 10.gov.uk/output/Page1461.asp>.
[12] reluctantly as far as the common European interests were concerned. That is the case of
Churchill, Macmillan, Castlereagh, Canning, Rosebery, Kerr to mention only a few. The readiness to oppose Europe and reassert its former greatness has always been present as proven by the milieu of Thatcherism. The position of Britain and her representatives has always been at least ambiguous.
This ambiguity proves its existence even in Blairist Britain nowadays. Blair and others are, under the supervision of Brussels, formally trying to conceal and dismiss this obscurity.
Jeremy Black, among numerous others, argues this point:
“Blair— the youthful Mr. Toad of British politics, with his faddish enthusiasm for novelty and his determination to ignore an ancestral heritage— clearly feels that he can square the circle, or rather circles. He intends to reconcile traditional assumptions with new identities and to keep different alignments and commitments— especially NATO and the EU, USA and the Continent— in concert and, indeed, mutually supportive” (Black 2002: 9).
However, the uncertainty remains deeply imbedded in the British/English nation as well as in every individual and that has been forming the current modern Britain for centuries.
Thus, the objective of this thesis is to find out this issue’s essence(s) and depict its development by means of looking for the position of Continental Europe in the English and later British discourse.
[13] 1. Terms and concepts of the British European Discourse
To draft the content of my project and what is to be dealt with I would also like to outline the basic terms and concepts of my thesis. The notions that are essential for this thesis are primarily Culture, Nation and Nationalism (in the British context), Identity, Britishness and Englishness as opposed to Europeanness. The introductory explanations are indispensable for a transparent and complex historical and political survey this thesis aims at, for mapping out the British relations toward Europe, their changes and developments.
The notion of ‘Identity’ is elaborated in Linda Colleys’ influential book Britons:
Forging the Nation btw. 1707-1837 . Colleys argues that the most powerful forces forming identity in Britain were Religions and Wars. 6 Since 1707, the British saw themselves as religiously fused, standing firm against classical continental Catholicism (Armitage 8). This underlying religious opposition and cultural and traditional variety affect each other mutually and eventually lead to ardent and militant nationalism, which was not archetypal for the 19th century splendid isolation only, but its remnants still exist even these days, even though the reality is already different. This is, perhaps, to be linked with Edward Said’s generalized concept – the Nostalgia for Empire. 7 We could see this reappearing in militant nationalism of
Churchill’s wartime or later with the Falklands War and “‘It’s great to be Great again’” revival of the Thatcherite 80s (Jenkins 212).8
Colleys simplifiedly points out that Nationalism is an exaggerated form of national
(group) identity. 9 It frequently bears a negative connotation as it is no longer a sense of belonging only but embraces also self definition and separation from and fear of “the
6 See Colley, p. 322. 7 “A proper understanding of imperialism must take stock also in the present of the nostalgia for empire, that is, you still find it in the writings of French and English historians” (Said, E. Culture and Imperialism. Speech for the York University. Toronto. 10 February 1993. Online 15 June. < http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/barsaid.htm>. 8 The Tory Election of 1987 official slogan. 9 Colley, L. “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument“. Journal of British Studies , Vol. 31, No. 4, Britishness and Europeanness: Who Are the British Anyway? (October 1992), pp. 309 329.
[14] others”10 (further resulting in chauvinism and racism). As noted in George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn , patriotism and intelligence frequently does not come together. 11 In his Notes on Nationalism he further insinuates that “Patriotism and Nationalism are not to be confused” as it was frequently the case in Britain, in France, in post 1871 Germany and elsewhere. 12
This confusion definitely contributed to the ideological misapprehension of Europe in some spheres of the British discourse. This is further developed and commented on for instance in
Stuart Hall’s comments on Thatcherism: Thatcherism feels itself more English than it was ever thought possible still to be within the 60/70 scenario of imperial and postcolonial decline” (Eley 413). He claims the “identities were not born but made, i.e. politically and culturally prefabricated.” As it is further insinuated by Gertrud Szamosi, “it was drawn from the ideology of Enoch Powel’s Little Englandism, a post colonial revival of chauvinism”13 , which tended to assume that place of birth, cultural and racial identity are the same. 14 It was a peculiar combination of racism and populism that “reduced Britain to imagined monocultural community, thus making things much easier for itself” (Kostova 47). This, in times of
Thatcher administration, eventually “led to crisis of national identity and its replacement by personal identity, the refuge to profound individualism (Thatcher: “There’s no such thing as society, there are only individuals”). As Szamosi notes, ‘Private good’ and ‘public evil’ became watchwords of this era 15 , when only few intelligent individuals (as J.G. Pocock or S.
Rushdie) called for the need of pluralistic, multicultural revision, whereas majority was buried 10 According to Colley, “the fear of the other” became linked with the forging of British identity in the 18 th century … Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other” (Colley 6) . 11 “Both Blimps and highbrows took for granted, as though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence … Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again” Orwell,G. The Lion and the Unicorn . Part I. England Your England. 1941. George Orwell Essays. Online 15 June. < http://www.k 1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/lionunicorn.html>. 12 Orwell, G. Notes on Nationalism . London: Polemic, 1945. Online
[15] in a pure capitalist, monetary word, where culture has disappeared and was replaced by money and capital. 16 This was also reflected in literary production of that time, for example in
Martin Amis’s Money: A Suicide Note or Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money ” (Kostova 48).
1.1 Nationalism, development of identities, Englishness and Britishness
Nationalism and Identity are central concepts in relation to the theme of this thesis.
The modern nationalism responded to the increasing globalisation (following WWII). The inevitable globalisation concentrating benefits in some parts driven by the logic of capital accumulation at the expense of others, led to nationalism of small losers. Britain was ultimately forced (owing to external pressure) to allow the free movement of capital across its borders, to participate in the construction of the emerging world economy. That (in the 1970s and 1980s) led to the division of British unity, the resurgence of nationalist movements on the one hand (the Socialist nationalism of the ardent Labour leader of the 1980s Tony Benn), the active move towards Europe on the other (opposition to Thatcher’s EMR politics). 17
Coming to terms of the specific European and English identities, however, produced an immense strain, for it goes against the grain of centuries of the already mentioned anti
European sentiment of the ex imperial power (once ruling more dominions than the Ancient
Rome) and its new modest position in European reality.
Krishan Kumar argues that Britishness is in these days already outdated and denied as identity, “as a legal and political term used mostly by foreigners” (Kumar 1993: 59). What it is presently substituted with is the so called “Four Nations Approach”, popularized by Hugh
16 See for instance “British History: A plea for a New Subject.” Journal of Modern History . Vol. 4 (1975), pp. 601 628. Rushdie, S. Imaginary Homelands . London: Grant Books, 1992. 17 See Braqq, B. “Looking for a New England: Nationalism and Socialism.” New Statesman & Society. March 1995. Online 15 June. < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3348/is_199503/ai_n8068035>. For reference to personalities of modern British politics see: Kavanagh, D.: Politics and Personalities . London: Macmillan, 1990
[16] Kearney in his The British and Isles: A History of Four Nations (1989) 18 . Kearney claims that
Britishness was superimposed as a unifying factor: “Britain was an invented nation superimposed, if only for a while, onto much older alignments and loyalties (Kearney 5).
Colley supports this and adds: “Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences” (Colley 5).
In fact, Britishness was, paradoxically enough, an identity preceding that of
Englishness. Already Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain refers to a
“common British descent.” As pointed out by Krishan Kumar “Britain seems to be the most ancient of the relevant terms … It was first recorded by the Greeks of the fourth century BC as ‘Retinoic’, which Romans turned into the Latin ‘Britanni’ and ‘Britannia’ for their home”
(Monmouth 5) 19 . Monmouth further specifies that when the Angles and Saxons invaded the islands in the 5th century AD they did not associate themselves with Britannia anymore and they called the island they settled ‘Engla land’ (Monmouth 7). British identity persisted during the Old English period but was widely used only as a historical term until about the time of Henry VIII and Edward VI when it came again into practical politics in connection with the effort to unite England and Scotland. James I proclaimed himself ‘King of Great
Britain’ but “efforts to promote Britain as an overarching identity appear to have had limited success by the Act of Union in 1707” (Kumar 2003: 5).20 In the 16 th century it was temporarily replaced by still premature English nationalism, but following this ‘Elizabethean
Shakesperean interlude’, Britishness was taken incorporated for another 250 years as a dominant identity.
18 Kearney claims that “British national community is best conceived as four nations and one” (Kearney 4). 19 See also Kumar (1993), p 57. 20 Also reflected in Kumar (2000), p. 589.
[17] It was a period of strong opposition to others, of strong territorial nationalism, of common sentiment unification, based on Protestant inheritance and sheer anti Catholicism 21 , facing thus two principal rivals – France and Spain. In this milieu the Britishness would find its breeding ground and get into common use as illustrated by William Sommerville’s Chase
(1735), a perfect testimony of the nationalist mood of its time: “Hail, happy Britain! Highly favoured isle, and Heaven´s peculiar care.”22
At this time, Englishness was defined by a newly formed anti Catholic Oxford
Movement – G.K. Chesterton, G. Greene, E. Waugh, etc. Britishness incorporated intensive sense of physical and existential insular separation, the sense of oceanic destiny. Britain was seen as eternally cut off the mainland of Europe, as an empire that would never be effective when within, but is indispensable as an external guardian of the balance of power. This imperial discourse was calling the tune in the modern era of early 20 th century e.g. in E.M.
Forster’s A Passage to India (1927), which in lofty imperial language of that time drafted a concept of “other Europeans.”
Britain also saw it exceptionality and dissimilarity to Europe in her way of handling colonies. Britain always had more distant, proconsular relation to her colonies and managed to develop quite close relations with them (unlike Mainland colonial powers that have always been rather exploitative). The concept of Britishness is traditionally considered to have crumbled with a departure of Celtic Groups separation (Kumar 2003: 76).
Except for the 16 th century episode and perhaps the Cromwell’s rule, the Englishness is a more recent concept, in fact a 19 th century invention, rather cultural notion. Scholars like
21 Ireland was generally seen as an Achilles heel of otherwise strong and powerful kingdom. (The use of "Achilles' heel" (or "Achilles heel") as an English expression for “area of weakness, vulnerable spot” dates only to 1855 (Merriam Webster), or, in the form "heel of Achilles," 1810 (OED: Coleridge, "Ireland, that vulnerable heel of the British Achilles".)) 22 Gilfillan, G. The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase with Memoirs and Critical Dissertations . Project Gutenberg. 2004.
[18] Gerald Newman or Paul Langford 23 or Bernard Crick stress ‘the sense of peculiarities and exceptionalism’, central to this notion, developed ironically by host of people of non English background, namely by David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Fergusson, Edmund Burke, Robert
Owen, David Ricardo, Benjamin Disraeli, James and John Stuart Mill (Ricardo and Disraeli being even sons of Jewish immigrants). In Englishness Identified (2000), Paul Langford even notes that “it was only in 1805 that the word ‘Englishness’ entered the national vocabulary and it was most probably invented by William Taylor of Norwich in conscious imitation of the ‘Deutschtum’ of early German Romanticism” (Langford 1 2). As to the origins of
Englishness, Krishan Kumar supports his argument by asserting that the “English showed little self consciousness in this period”.24 It was only when it began to falter, when its industrial supremacy and faith in the empire began to waver, that a degree of English self consciousness began to emerge, when what he calls the ‘moment of Englishness’ came.
(Kumar 2000: 592).25
This national identity was focused on single and unified country and is rooted in the era of George III. It is based on idea that British constitution descended from free institutions of the Anglo Saxon community, tradition system is based on Common law and everything other stems from “1066 and all that.” 26 This perception of past led to The Whig Interpretation of history that grasped historical development as linear series through well known markers
(along this axis: forming the Parliament, Protestant Reformation, Civil War, Glorious
Revolution of 1688, Industrial Revolution). It created a brand new model of uninterrupted progress and development in a never defeated and blessed country. It suggested that all that
23 Langford, P . Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650 1850 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 24 That author refers to the late 18 th and early 19 th century. 25 See also Kumar (2003), p. 175. 26 A term used by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman for their satiric rewording of British history, namely its Whig interpretation, appearing serially in Punch Magazine. The whole title was 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates . ("1066 and All That." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jun 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Online 24 Jun 2006.
[19] “England etc.” differs in from the rest of Europe is highly positive and desirable to maintain, as proved by British prosperity as opposed to continental warfare and discontent.
It emphasized and conceptualized the fundamental differences in individual psychology and thinking – that is Cartesian as opposed to pragmatic, utilitarian, concrete, highly individualist ( Francis Bacon, John Locke, J.S. Mill, Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russel).
It was, in a fact, a retrogressive appraisal of historically conditioned differences and their subsequent stressing and underlining. The end of 19 th century was marked by a fresh way of
Nationalism, related to numerous celebratory literary accounts on the English distinctiveness, to the publication of Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles and its notion “the genius of English” and further celebratory accounts on English canon like Palgrave’s Golden
Treasury of English Verse , Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) or Macmillan’s series
“English Men of Letters.”
Since the 1930s, as will be illustrated further on, Britain has suffered an identity crisis.
As Britain and Commonwealth declined as a world power, the “core nation” found itself standing exposed and no longer protected. In consequence, a new way of Englishness originated promoted by men like Enoch Powell, Norman Trebbit, Jonathan Clark, John
Vincent and others; Englishness in a more narrow and conventional sense, often bordering on fanaticism. It was no longer an opposition to Europe, but an opposition to everything of non
English origin. Little Englandism was based purely on tribalism, negative exclusion, as may be contemplated on Salman Rushdie’s affair.
In Bernard Crick’s essay The English and The British , the author tries to simplify the case by claiming that the cultural tolerance and the indirect rule of ‘Englishness’ caused this identity to be more elusive in the end. If compared to its passivity, it is then obvious that
“Britishness with a policy more active and direct has later become dominant” (Crick 4). This
[20] is, however, a fruitless searching for a tradition of federal political ideas where almost none can be found; the situation, as shown above, is more complicated than that.
1.2 Europeanness as a separate identity
Europeanness represents yet another identity in the British Isles, and it is evidently increasingly so. Despite the European drift growing stronger under the New Labour administration, it is often perceived as sinking to common Europeanness, losing one’s true national identity in favour of vague and loose federal structure. No wonder that the British feel it this way. 27 When compared to preceding pompous and rather clear cut concepts, this identity is one of averageness and mediocrity of daily life and for British, who have been used to centuries of grandioseness and splendour, even though at length largely gratuitous, this has represented rather a loss than acquisition of an alternative. Europeanness in the English sense means the English identity being just one among many of roughly the same level. Thus, a citizen may be identified as for instance Northumbrian, English, British and European. The problem of this identity is, however, that it possesses no real historical/cultural basis; Europe is not yet a distinct territorial entity with its own culture or history. Therefore, it is for years to come doomed to be perceived as a rather abstract and artificially made concept, not a mere identity for the British. This Blairian Euroculture and Eurohome still have not got beyond
Eurospeak 28 . This is the main issue to be suggested in this thesis. British identity was found on contrast against Europe and it will take some time until this essential contradiction is effaced by the course time. There is a high probability, however, that this process has already gone further than many scholars and politicians initially expected and that it is highly
27 Consult for instance Lawday, D. “Just who do they think they are?” New Statesman . 26 March 1999. Online 15 June. < http://www.newstatesman.com/199903260021 >. 28 I owe this metaphor to Krishan Kumar, p.79
[21] probable the time will come, when there are no English, no Welsh, neither Scottish, there are even no British; there will be only Europeans 29 . But this will still take some time.
In general, there remains a distinct lack of widespread enthusiasm in England for the
European integration and European identity, and instead a continuing quest for an alternative national destiny, which today, without an empire, is considerably more problematic and elusive. However, as a result of the longstanding effects of historical separations, it is likely to be still a destiny linked to Europe, though not of it.
29 This is a simplified and reduced prediction, of course, since history proved to be a cycle of tendencies to integrations and subsequent eras of break ups and disintegration. Therefore, this only suggests a current tendency that is presently likely to become reality in Britain.
[22] 2. British assessment of Europe prior to 1789: Classic antiquity and the Grand
Tour
The English suspicion of Europe (its Christian Transcendentalism and Universalism) sprang naturally from multiple sources; for “no single can account for so multifaced … [an] identity” (Smith 3). To locate the ambivalence and disbelief of the idea of Europe, we must go back to the Reformation and beyond. Despite the popular reductive claims of the essential dissimilarity, peculiarity and divergence, of the essential opposition and taking the stand of other.30 This image of Britain will be intentionally created only later, in a different atmosphere. In the pre Reformation era these assertions proves less valid then ever. The
British European journey starts with surprising cognation and affinity.
2.1 The medieval perceptions
From the time when Britain became an island off the European continent 31 , Britain experienced continual traffic and movements of people and ideas, including those from Rome.
Rome’s imperial preoccupation and later Christian mission under St. Augustine gave
England’s kingdoms not only their diocesan organisation but shaped the first and most influential literary concept of Englishness in Venerable Bede’s Historia of the Gens Anglorum
(Smith 4). The territorial acquisitions of Henry II in the 12 th century united large parts of former French kingdom with his English realm 32 , which opened the way for the Hundred
30 See for instance “Britain as the Europe’s Other” chapter in Marcussen, M, et al. “Constructing Europe? The evolution of French, British and German nation state identities.” Journal of European Public Policy. Vol.6, No.4 (December 1999), pp. 614 633. 31 It was probably already the Mesolithic epoch which usually refers specifically to a development in north western Europe that began about 8000 BC, after the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, and lasted until about 2700 BC. “United Kingdom. Geography.” Microsoft Encarta 2006 [DVD] . Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005. 32 Henry II’s territories are frequently referred to as the Angevine empire, extending in the latter part of the 12 th century from Scotland to Pyrenees. Henry acquired most of his continental possessions by inheritance through his mother Matilda (English princess). he became duke of Normandy in 1150; he succeeded his father as count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine in 1151; and in 1152, by marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine, he acquired that duchy, together with Gascony, Poitou, and Auvergne. Brittany, first conquered by Henry I in 1113, was finally brought into the Angevin “empire” when Henry II's son Geoffrey, who had married the heiress of Duke Conan IV,
[23] Years War, in what John Gillingham has termed England's first empire (Gillingham 396).
Nevertheless, the Middle Ages were still the times of a mighty Anglo French empire, where the elite spoke French and crossed the Channel freely enough.33 The English participated in the Crusades; the Englishman Nicholas Brakespear was even Pope Adrian IV from 1154 to
1159.
These interactions with continent, however, did not lessen the continuous impact of an offshore island location, memorably clarified by Gildas in the mid sixth century when he writes that the island of Britain
“lies virtually at the end of the world, towards the west and northwest... It is fortified on all sides by a vast and more or less uncrossable ring of sea, apart from the straits on the south where one can cross to Belgic Gaul” (Howe 39).34 The sense of an ‘uncrossable ring of sea’ has been extremely potent and is invoked in John Gaunt’s eulogy of England. “This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England (Richard II, Act II) This vision uttered by the dying John of Gaunt in Shakespeare’s Richard II becomes an insular hymn aimed at a shallow king, treating the realm as a source of revenue. Gaunt is
succeeded as duke of Brittany in 1171. (“Angevine Empire”. Encyclopædia Britannica . 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD 15 June 2006.) 33 An existence and character of the Angevine empire is one of the historical facts, which somewhat contradicts the general phrase of essential difference of the British isles and Continental Europe. 34 Quoted also in Smith, p.4.
[24] pressing the ideological strain (so much that he overlooks that the island includes the separate kingdom of Scotland). Shakespeare wrote it less than seven years after the defeat of the
Spanish Armada, which shows that this sea faring and insularity both rested in at the heart of nation identity, … “reviving an ancient myth of Albion” (Boxhoorn 14).
Gaunt’s speech is a compelling evocation of the myth of Albion, that sense of national destiny which received an important charge from contemporary religious history. England is a demi paradise in its Protestant reformation, and the ‘infection’ that is held in a check by its moat is the power of Catholic countries (Spain), the Antichrist forces.
English intervention on the mainland of Europe in the latter medieval period was an invariably aggressive pursuit of dynastic claims. The Agincourt carol, which celebrated Henry
V’s great victory in 1415, as well as the songs which refer to Henry VIII’s attempt at a repetition a century later, share the assumption that it was a part of the divine order for the
English to rule French. The English conviction of their ethnic superiority even prior to the
Puritan era. Churchill unwittingly reminds us of their racial confidence and geographic patriotism can, which can be illustrated on their war songs or their unfortunate 1512 expedition to western Pyrenees. 35
Sea faring preoccupied the English much more than their West European counterparts.
In the last phase of the Hundred Years War, English kingdom ceased to be a land based
Continental power, the English thus concentrated on sea faring and, from the 16 th century, on the naval power. “The Channel and the weather created a mighty fortification that over the centuries prevented the island from invasion. English elites in Shakespeare’s times regarded their island an unconquerable fortress” (Bradshaw Roberts 51 54).36
35 English led by trust in divine providence shocked continental observers by their immoderate consumption of unfamiliar fruits and wines so that the army wasted away with dysentery (Churchill 37). It is also referred to by Boxhoorn, p. 5. 36 This perception was widely confirmed by the miraculous dispersal of Philip II's great Armada in l588.
[25] From this time arises also the familiar English preoccupation with Continental hegemony, policy of opposing any country that would challenge the English and later British naval supremacy. British reliance and fascination with naval power has been a powerful factor in territorialisation of the English and British (Smith 5).
In the process of development of a nation state, a formation of specifically English law took on special significance. “By the 13 th century”, writes Rees Davies, “English law was regarded as one of the distinctive hallmarks of Englishness and as an integral part of English political culture” (Davies 106). “Common law founded on cumulative principle of precedent rather than theoretical code enshrines an essential ingredient of Anglo Saxon mentality” (Boxhoorn
7).
In the 14th century, the expansion of an English nation state was already evident. A stable and unitary state with concept of sacred kingship developed under Henry V.
Shakespeare harnessed this fact and as David J. Baker puts it in his Henry V , he “both produces a vision of an ideal Britain and inscribes into his play the voices of various British peoples that are meant to be subsumed” (Baker 17) . As Baker further notes it was not only the familiar Shakespeare who contributed to the development of the British national identity and were in service of the official ideology. “Among the authors who served one or more of the four English rulers are Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marvell, who are studied here in the way they responded to the complexities of British history that encompassed their “nation.” They not only participated in nation building/destroying, but their works are shown often to be meditations on that process and their own roles in the process” (Baker 8).
[26] 2.2 The Protestant restoration: British archipelago, Gens Anglorum and the divorce of
Identities
Henry VIII’s replacement of the Catholic Church with a national church brought a mere transformation of the English nation state that acquired new dimension. In the Act in
Restraint of Appeals (1533), English Parliament boldly decreed that England was an empire entire of itself, free of any entanglements, whether in Europe or further abroad. 37 This is soon to be violated; however, the Protestantism and English identity became closely linked. In
Elisabeth’s times, hers was a “sacral monarchy’, and for her subjects, both the monarchy and the Queen were regarded as signs of divine favour to England. That encouraged a significant strengthening of English identity. It was a mere cultural regulation of the English society, regulation through showy displays of royal power, through Protestant translations of Bible, issuing of the Book of Common Prayer. This adherence to Protestantism ensured concretization of peculiar English identity, i.e. the identity of Englishness.
The sense of exceptionality was also laid in the antiquity of Gens Anglorum . Even though the identity is highly disputable because of Norman interference (as Krishan Kumar suggests), “the nation and certain ethnic form of identity was forged since the 9th century (as the Angelcynn ) under the unifying figure of Rex Anglorum ” (Davies 198). Thus, to paraphrase
Adrian Hastings, even though it did not approximate to the ideal type of nation for several more centuries, it was centralized enough to form a specific English law and increasingly
English language that became integral part of English identity (Hastings 35, 41).38 The
English national profile became more continuously visible only after the Tudor unification.
With the strengthening of language and customs came xenophobia. Anonymous Italian around 1500 noted: “They have an antipathy to foreigners, and imagine that they never come
37 Bentley, G. “A break with Rome.” Encyclopædia Britannica . 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD 15 June 2006. For the full text of Act see:
[27] into their island, but to make themselves master of it, and to usurp their goods … (Loades
298). 39
2.3 Protestantism, Puritanism and an anti-European drifting
It was on this foundation of Puritan set of rules, that a sense of English national identity has evolved, forging a movement of national autonomy. By the end of 16 th century,
Puritans were forging and practising the pre existing sense of English national identity, hearten by the opposition to Catholicism. The Puritan concept of ethnic election placed the chosen English people against their Popish enemies and gave them right to impose their true faith on unwilling parts of English commonwealth. The puritanist nationalism was highly ideological, based on Milton’s belief that “Britain’s God … hath yet ever had this island under the special indulgent eye of his providence” (Smith 7). But it was an early case of religious nationalism, that casted the Continent aside. Without this injection, there would be hardly any Glorious Revolution, no Protestant nation analysed by Colley, Newman, Robbins, etc., no Splendid Isolation of the Victorian era.
“The English case manifests a potent conjunction of state, nation and the reformed
Anglican Church. All this, tightly knit with monarchical state, proved crucial for shaping of attitudes to Europe” (Bradshaw Roberts 15). Protestantism added a new layer to the English national identity and provided a potent justification for subsequent British foreign policies in the concert of European states, as well as for the foe identification, imperial annexations and large scale conversions. English identity was instilled with exceptionality and “placed within a broader pattern of national protestant attitudes towards the ideal of ‘Europe” (Smith 8).
This dissenting religion of an obstinate opposition to Papacy gave the early national identities
39 Cited also in Smith, A. “‘Set in the silver sea’: English national identity and European integration”, National identity and euroscepticism : a comparison between France and the UK . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 13 May 2005. p. 6.
[28] a political energy and longevity that has not been fully spent even today, when it is already spiritually weakened.
In the course of the 16 th century, a distinctive nationalistic scheme developed. As the religious change (though not only it) isolated England even from her previous allies and exposed her to imminent danger, a kind of devotion to ‘the other Eden’ developed.40 The last
English outpost on the mainland – Calais – fell to the Duke of Guise in 1558 which even intensified a sense of island as a refuge from the fires of Counter Reformation (Boxhoorn 6).
If anyone can claim to be an architect of what will become the British Imperialist ideology (and thus the divergence from Europe), it must be John Foxe. 41 His Acts and
Monuments (1563) with its accounts of the repression of Protestantism under Mary Tudor had widespread influence on English and later British consciousness. In his narrative of martyrdom, a profound mistrust of Catholicism is implicit and it will later become a powerful political and social factor. 42
This was the passive part of Reformation experience in England. Foxe shared his exile in Basel under Mary Tudor with kindred spirit, John Bale, who took care of the active part.
He used the media of drama and history to spread an apocalyptic vision of English role in world history. He has hardened Elizabethan England by a sense of divine vocation. England was once again chosen by destiny to lead the forces of light in their clash with continental
Anti Christ. This apocalyptic vision shaped English view in the 1580s and led directly to
English intervention in the Netherlands. The 1580s, therefore, may be grasped as a key decade
40 This refers to the New Eden, a Puritan concept and their goal. New Eden was represented by New England and the idea was connected to the ideology of exceptionalism and divine favour. 41 1516 1587; English Puritan preacher and author of The Book of Martyrs, a graphic and polemic account of those who suffered for the cause of Protestantism. Widely read, often the most valued book beside the Bible in the households of English Puritans, it helped shape popular opinion about Roman Catholicism for at least a century. 42 Centuries later, the Treaty of Rome was still seen as a Roman Catholic plot and one would still find similar views held in some parts of the UK today. See Averill, Kenelm. “The ‘Paranoid Style’ in British Politics—anti Europeanism in Britain as right wing populism.” PSA 2005. 3 Dec. 2005. Online 25 May.
[29] in shaping the English anti European ideology, over the following centuries so distinctive.
Rebecca Langlands expresses this as follows: “A religious mythology of ‘chosenness’ defined
Englishness in opposition to the hostile Catholic states of Europe (France and Spain in particular) and provided the English with a sense of unique identity and destiny” (Langlands
59). A figure like Philip Sidney who died in fighting the Spaniards at Zutphen combined a revived interest in chivalry (a feature of Elizabeth’s court) with a fierce Anglicanism and enthusiasm for a colonial development in the New World, which was to become a main preoccupation of nation state in the decades to follow. Sidney embodied the later ideal of
English gentleman and it is no accident that such heroic legends take on new vitality at the dawn of the great age of British Imperialism, i.e. in the later 19 th century.
“The boyhood of Raleigh, Drake playing his game of bowls regardless of the approaching Armada, the wounded Sidney handing his drinking bottle to a dying soldier, these are the images which sustained the Victorians´ sense of their imperial destiny, a destiny which had its roots in the Elizabethan defence of godly England. Any social history of the English gentleman which fails to include some consideration of the Elizabethan ideal of the Protestant knight is only telling a fragment of the story” (Boxhoorn 7). Utilizing Benedict Anderson’s helpful definition of a nation as ‘an imagined political community’, Colley feels it plausible in this period to refer to the nation of Great Britain and to emergent British nationalism. Colley has bound it to the investment in Protestantism 43 claiming that “Protestantism lays at the core of British national identity” (Colley 369).
43 While explicitly referring to Great Britain, she excluded Ireland completely.
[30] 3. The 17 th and 18 th centuries: Convergence and divergence 44
Numerous highly respected scholars (for example Colley, Pagden, Langlands or Kumar) refer in their works to the easily observable phenomenon of rise of nationalism in the 17 th and 18 th centuries and link this sentiment to the specific concept of English/British Pragmatism and philosophical dissolution with Continental Europe, which it produced. Krishan Kumar reminds us that Protestantism was originally an international movement, “as international as the Catholicism it opposed in every quarter.” But, as he goes on to explain “especially after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the English had a surge of confidence that made them see themselves as leading the protestant crusade on behalf of Protestants everywhere”
(Kumar 2006: 7). This Protestant cause was also immensely valuable in what Kumar calls the
‘mission of the making the Britishness.’ 45 The adoption of these religious values does not represent the only cause of the far reaching ideological changes of the respective centuries. It, however, triggered the emergence of other ideas and values, which participated on the change of milieu and on the reflection of ideology in the politics and diplomacy. The formation of specific British identity (i.e. Britishness) is closely related to the development of the philosophy of Pragmatism. The outwardly self confident nation employed powerful tools to create a vindication of its ambitious policy. Sustained efforts were made both by the government and by the writers and poets to establish a British identity suitable for the new political reality (and after 1707 for the brand new political entity). However, as Jeremy Black, the renown expert on this period of British history stresses by means of the title of his famous book 46 , the relation of Britain and the continental Europe entails not only the divergence but also the convergence, the tradition of identifying oneself with the Continent and its history.
The persistence of these values is also reflected in this chapter.
44 I owe these terms to Jeremy Black. 45 According to Krishan Kumar or Rebecca Langlands this is closely and inextricably linked to the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707. 46 Black, J. Convergence or Divergence? Britain and the Continent . New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
[31] 3.1 17 th century: Arminianism, Pragmatism and a philosophical disjunction
The negative features of British attitudes to Europe were in 17th century once again stressed by rapid development of Pragmatism in this era. Strictly speaking, Pragmatism developed and carried and ideology, which constrained outlooks of English/British society.
These constraints operated directly through myths and symbols mentioned in the preceding chapter and in this respect, Britain had a heritage of exceptional richness and complexity. The
English became traditionally and intrinsically that is thought and operated within a completely different code, which is to be evinced in their way of life, political thinking and diplomacy as well as economic methods (i.e. their lack of long term strategies and planning).
In the British philosophical tradition the gradual appearance of what is generally known as ‘social contract’ theory appeared. In the great pantheon of political thinkers who helped to shape the new climate in which old, encrusted ideas of authority and obligation were quickly discredited, the names of Algernon Sydney, John Locke and David Hume loom large. Theorists like Edmund Burke trace a fairly consistent line of though grounded in a social contract, natural rights, popular consent, legitimate resistance to authorities and utilitarianism. This penetration of central power left plenty of room for local self determination, which will later lead directly to nationalisation of identities, realisation of differences between Britain and Europe.
The evolution of Pragmatism can be seen as a consequence of peculiar nature of
English reformation – that is seeking for via media , for political compromise of dark individualism and the traditional dogmatic authority of Rome. The result was a typical British appeal to common sense, to cold reasonableness, which is so fittingly expressed on the epitaph of an 18 th century bishop – “He was not enthusiastick” (Robbins 81)
During the Civil War the forces of enthusiasm (so alien to the British) broke loose.
The fury of religious radicalism stood now exposed and pulled the country away from the
[32] former “delicate compromise designed 70 years earlier by Elizabeth and her ministers”
(Loades 3).
This consensus of reason, reliance on experience rather than on inspiration gave
Anglicanism its peculiar character and led to a distinctive (later anti European) intellectual tradition. However, it would be mistake to claim, that this tradition was essentially strictly
English, or in direct opposition to Europe – quite the contrary. In the years to come, Britain strongly inclined to forget that their tradition actually had once been based on their contacts with Europe, namely the Netherland. Britain turned to Dutch sources of inspiration, most obviously to Erasmus and Grotius. Their appeals to reason and evidence led directly to the common sense philosophy of John Locke and English inspiration from Continent is even in this era of self reliance and detachedness quite obvious. In addition to Locke, the mighty theoretical intelligence behind a Glorious Revolution included pragmatist theorists like
George Saville, Marquis of Halifax 47 and others.
Then, in reaction to the Civil War trauma, the English turned to non dogmatic
Pragmatism. It was a source of the 18 th and 19 th centuries political Conservatism (even of the
Whig Party) embodied by personalities on either side as Townsend, Robert Walpole, later
Robert Peel or Benjamin Disraeli. The main concerns were thus common and uncontroversial values, which has been clearly visible in the British tradition up to recently. 48 Pragmatism became based on a belief in imperfection, on a presupposition that any desire for perfection would be a cause of alien enthusiasm that leads to doom. Thus, even the chosen and provident
British were imperfect and had to believe in and rely on the accumulated political wisdom of the community, on its customs, traditions and institutions. Britain will remain detached,
47 His brief but influential work The Character of a Trimmer (1674) can be called a handbook of Glorious Revolution and British Pragmatism. The facts are courtesy of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Online 20 May. < http://plato.stanford.edu/> 48 Included otherwise tough and strong minded Thatcherism: note for example Lord Butler´s „The Art of the possible“ or Thatcher´s favourite philosopher Lord Anthony Quinton’s „The Politics of Imperfection“. On Thatcherism consult the study: Jenkins, P. The Thatcher Revolution . London: Cape, 1987
[33] burdened by and entrapped in this cliché like ideological shell for much of the 20 th century.
She abandoned this shell of hers long after it had become obsolete and untenable.
This peculiar combination of factors accounts for the English detachment from Europe and its pursuit of a different course. During the crucial period of 1688 1760, the public administration was conducted by a succession of Whig politicians. The frontiers of monarchy were guarded by common religion and by the Royal Navy. The gentle, but powerful influence of laws and manners cemented the extending union of states, the Hanoverian kings appeared to possess a sovereign authority and here lay the ‘ideological origins of the British Empire.’49
The chronological origins of the British Empire have most often been traced back to the reign of Elizabeth I. and to the maritime exploits of her sailors. This chronology defined the Empire as Protestant, Anglo British, benign and extra European, because it originated in the post Reformation, specifically English activities and was product of the navies. External imperialism was the offspring of English ideologies of ethnic (and racial) supremacy and divinely appointed civilising mission (Armitage 6).
The ideology of Tobias Smollett, William Hogarth, Henry Fielding or Richard Cowper rejected the aristocratic cosmopolitanism and championed instead the supposedly native
English qualities of sincerity, simplicity, innocence and plain dealing. As Gerald Newman claims: “by 1789 the making of English nationalism was over” (Newman 227).
All these aspects were developing the image of Britain as a sceptred isle, fortified by white cliffs against invasions from abroad. After the severance from Rome and the attempted
Spanish and French invasion with the Armada, it recurs in the 17 th century in British fears about ‘popish plots’ to blow up the Houses of Parliament or install Catholic monarchs.
49 I owe this term to David Armitage and his homonymous essay.
[34] 3.2 Beginnings of Federalism: The Anglo-American Protestant providence
So far, I have illustrated the development of divergence solely, but still some pro
European voices existed, more or less declaring Britain to be a part of Europe. It is little known, that there existed various early Federalist attempts to unite the English colonies in
America, end even this has seemingly little relevance to the topic of this dissertation, the federalist idea would be later extremely vital. It formed a basis for a development of the
European idea and European movement in Britain and posed as a counterpart, in certain respect, to the traditionally British values and ideas (Centralism, Constitutional Monarchy,
Protestantism, Empiricism, Splendid isolation, etc.), even though at the federalist theory was unequivocally adjusted to the British interests.
These attempts peaked around 1696 7 in the William Penn’s Plan, which proposed a federal type union among the New England colonies with deputies in a General Assembly.
This very advanced an in detail elaborated plan was introduced in An Essay Towards the
Peace of Europe, a typical product of Protestant Anglo centric world, and included bodies and authorities like Congress or Commissioner (appointed by the king). This would later inspire his federalist successors like Benjamin Franklin and the whole breakthrough of American
Federalism, including The Articles of Confederation 50 , The Annapolis Convention 51 or The
Philadelphia Convention 52 . “This document … also had an influence on those who have prepared twentieth century constitutions for international organizations” (Bronner 17).
50 Articles of Confederation represent the first constitution of the United States. The Articles were in force from March 1, 1781, to June 21, 1788, when the present Constitution of the United States went into effect. They were written in 1777 during the early part of the American Revolution by a committee of the Second Continental Congress of the 13 colonies. "Articles of Confederation." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia . Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 May 2006. 51 Annapolis Convention, meeting held in Annapolis, Maryland, from September 11 to 14, 1786. The convention was called to discuss the question of commercial regulations and other issues not covered by the Articles of Confederation. "Annapolis Convention." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia . 24 Apr 2006. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 May 2006. 52 The Philadelphia Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787. Although it was purportedly intended only to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention of many of the Convention's proponents (Madison, Hamilton) was from the outset to create a new government rather than "fix" the existing one. The result of the Convention was the United States Constitution. "Philadelphia Convention." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia . Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 May 2006.
[35] The Declaration of Independence is also relevant to the issue and together with ‘social contract’ theory it provided continuity for British tradition out of which ideas and concepts like pro European federalism would emerge.
3.3 Impact of Enlightenment on the British understanding of Europe
In fact, Britain did not have Enlightenment in a European sense. It did not need to have that one. England was already well on its way to becoming a modern commercial state during the 17th and 18th century, a fact which is confirmed by the Glorious Revolution that took place in the 17th century and established the commercial, tolerant, and socially mobile nature of British society. According to John Dwyer “This gradual and benign progress towards modernity meant that England did not require the religion of reason in order to build a more efficient and homogeneous society.” ( The Enlightenment and Its Critics , Lecture 3) 53
The traces of European Enlightenment in Britain had to share the credit with the 18 th century flourishing imperialism and conservatism, with the British Empirical tradition. The early imperialists were often scholar traders, sociable and diplomatic; their thoughts being based on
Adam Smith, on the Burkean conservatism and ‘Enlightened’ deism – rudiments of the 18 th century cultural tolerance. The pro European sentiment was promoted mostly in the cultural sphere and was highly individual and elitist. The society and politics headed in an imperial direction. However, a part of the British educated elite acknowledged some debt to a
European culture, which stretched back to the Ancient Greece and Rome. Gerald Newman observes this phenomenon and remarks that Edmund Burke wrote about Europe as “virtually one great state, having the same basis of general law with some diversity of provincial customs and local establishments.” (Newman 1 18).
As a result, a number of authors and intellectuals of Britain recognized that their own output belonged within a wider European tradition. As noted by Ludlow, “the French 53 Taken from Lectures: Intellectual History. Can be accessed online on http://opencopy.org/content/view/53/34/
[36] language was widely learnt, French manners were imitated, and continental travel was seen as a vital, and civilizing, part of a young man’s education” (Ludlow 116). The involvement of
Lord Byron in the Greek struggle for independence, the leisure travel patterns and the language learning habits of the British elite have reflected a sense of proximity to the continent. The importance of Grand Tour in the 18 th century and the centrality of Latin and
Ancient Greek to a proper education up till the 20 th century suggest that “some British felt themselves to be the heirs of a European tradition stretching back to Classical antiquity”
(Ludlow 103). France, Italy, Switzerland or Germany were emerging as favourite tourist destinations. The Cimitero degli Inglesi [English Cemetery] in the middle of Florence is an eloquent reminder that even at the height of ‘splendid isolation’ the British never cut themselves off entirely from the continental culture.
[37] 4. 1789-1848: Britain as a lone outpost of stability
British relation towards Europe was based on value judgements about Europe’s worth and meaning; it was influenced by subjective attitudes, like scorn for Continental instability.
Britain’s readiness to assume a major guardian role in European diplomacy has, to a large extent, been influenced by judgements about the likelihood of conflict or collapse between or within the major states. The question was posed: If the states are stable now, are they likely to remain so? Moreover, for the British the post 1789 events in France severely ruptured the bonds and alignments with Continent. A pro European sentiment almost vanished from
British public or at least became much less traceable. Gerald Newman even refers to “the revolt against cosmopolitanism” by people like William Hogarth or Henry Fielding (Newman
76). Pierce Ludlow mentions the “rise of literary and artistic culture highly critical of the
‘fashion’ for all things foreign” (Ludlow 116). Even at the highest levels of the British society, the cosmopolitan character was substituted by nationalism and political radicalism.
An ever greater emphasis was placed on the Saxon tradition and freedoms and this shift was given a powerful impetus by the realm of culture, by people like William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Gibbon or even the earlier proponent of an ancient bond with Continent, Edmund Burke.
4.1 Changes in the official perceptions of the Continent
British 19 th century assessments of Europe were deeply marked by the ‘lessons’ of the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Prior to 1789, Edward Gibbon could argue that
Europe as a whole was strengthened rather than weakened by its periodic disputes and wars.
In a famous passage of his Decline and Fall , which asked whether the 18 th century Europe might have a fate identical to the Roman Empire, the historian asserted improbability. Europe, though comparable to Rome in the extent to which it stood ‘above the rest of mankind’, was,
[38] unlike Rome, “likely to be affected by frailty brought to Rome with Christianity, primarily due to its very diversity and decentralization” (Clark 270).
“In peace, the progress of knowledge is accelerated by the emulation of so many active rivals: in war, the European forces are exercised by temperate and indecisive contests”
(Gibbon, 277 9). This was a discourse of the official British historiography in 18 th century. At that time, Europe was still perceived by many as a dynamic and confident civilization, free from an imminent danger.
The French Revolution proved immensely important in the British European relations, since it swept away the preceding comfortable assumptions – at least in the British eyes. In
Britain, the progressive ideas of French revolutionaries made less impression than did indisputable barbarity of their methods. The old fear of Britain has taken a concrete secular dimension with this ‘Old Boney’ threatening to sweep over the Channel. 54 Gibbon anticipated that the only danger for Europe can come from the barbarian without; instead the threat arose from its internal divisions. As a consequence, this prompted Britain to two intertwined conclusions. First, a direct involvement in all European wars (and European matters) should be avoided wherever possible. Second, the continental politics should be regarded as an object lesson in how not to govern. Bolstered by the events of 1830 and 1848 when Britain once more appeared as a lone outpost of stability, while a wave of unrest swept the continent, the mistrust of European politics gradually unified with the same old belief that Britain and its neighbours are fundamentally divergent and so are their political paths.
By 1849, another distinguished historian, Thomas Macaulay, a champion of the Whig
Interpretation of history, could draw a contrast between ‘blessed’ Britain and the rest of
Europe (similar to one Gibbon saw between Europe and Ancient Rome).
54 “In Britain, opposition to Napoleon (who was often referred to as "Old Boney") became almost a national religion.” See Saska, H. Timeline: Napoleon’s Vast Empire (1809 11). Napoleonic Satires. A Brown University Library Digital Collection . 2003. Online 15 June.
[39] “The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil blood … Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila and Alboin were enlightened and humane … Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted” (Macaulay 655 64) 55 .
Even George Canning, one of the most thoughtful and liberal Conservative politicians of the age, was highly suspicious of the ‘troublesome Europe’ led by hostile France. Back in
1798, he referred to the new states formed under the French Revolutionaries:
“The Cisalpine republic selected as a living subject for her [France’s] experiments in political anatomy; whom she has delivered up tied and bound to a series of butchering, bungling, philosophical professors to distort and mangle, and lop, and stretch its limbs into all sorts of fantastical shapes, and to hunt through its palpitating frame the vital principle of republicanism ” (Black 2002: 7)56 Britain accepted this image of her isolated resistance to a continental despotism, which is later to take its full and final meaning in the ‘Heroic War’ in the Battle of Britain, when another power hungry dictator was stopped at the white cliffs.
Even in cultural terms, Britain was already in many ways separate from the Continent.
British socialism, for example, owed little or nothing to the philosophies of Hegel or Marx. In accordance with the dominant order, it was empirical, pragmatic, home grown affair which had developed out of the Fabian tradition 57 , the non conformist Churches and the 19 th century social reform. Such figures as William Morris 58 were quintessentially English, i.e. insular and
55 Cited also in Ludlow, p. 109. 56 Black, J. "Blair, Britain, Europe and International Relations." Watch on the West Journal. Vol. 3(2002): pp. 7 10. 57 A socialist society founded in 1883–84 in London, having as its goal the establishment of a democratic socialist state in Great Britain. The Fabians put their faith in evolutionary socialism rather than in revolution. 58 William Morris (1834 1896); English designer, craftsman, poet, and early Socialist, whose designs for furniture, fabrics, stained glass, wallpaper, and other decorative products generated the Arts and Crafts Movement in England and revolutionized Victorian taste.
[40] highly uninternational. The, for Britain typical, divorce of Church and politics also accounted for an unsurpassable misunderstanding with the Continent, cultural as well as political. 59
4.2 Hyperbole of the Empire concept: Rule Britannia and the rest of the world
British 19 th century relation to Europe must be necessarily understood and viewed through the ever present concept of Empire for it is the ‘Imperial Britain’ that contributes essentially to the emergence of a sense of British national identity. After all, it was a
Welshman who coined the term “British Empire” 60 and a Scot who wrote “Rule Britannia.” 61
The involvement of Britain in Europe was restricted to necessary acts of international diplomacy; the vast and after French Revolution increasingly alien empire “encouraged the
British to see themselves as a distinct, special and – often superior people” (Colley 324). This was an era of confidence and arrogance, a peak of what we simplifiedly call the ‘Splendid
Isolation.’ Britain, after a long strain to do so, definitely parted with continental Europe and locked in her splendid shell limited herself to keeping her eye on the continental balance of power. For the rest, they lost even the rest of the earlier sense of belonging.
Britain followed her own specific interests, created its own world. As colonizers destined to rule, they populated those parts, which they erroneously considered as unsettled.
They also established permanent and significant colonies in Africa and Asia. And even where they remained in substantial minority and where their presence would be transitory 62 they came to develop an important ‘illusion of permanence’, something that clearly set them apart
59 Britain, for instance, never experienced a major political force of Christian Democrats, who were dominant and at times considerably influential political agents of continental Europe. 60 Few know that it was invented by John Dee (July 13, 1527 – 1608 or 1609), a noted Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. Dee was born in the Tower Ward in London but to a Welsh family. 61 James Thomson (September 11, 1700 – August 27, 1748) was a Scottish poet and playwright. He was born at Ednam in Roxburghshire, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. The song appeared in the masque, Alfred , which contained the song, "Rule Britannia", and was first performed at Cliveden, the country home of the Prince and Princess of Wales. This was the charter of the land, and guardian angels sung this strain: 'Rule Britannia, rule the waves, Britons never will be slaves.' (Thomson and Mallet, Alfred , 1740). 62 … such as India and Ceylon and later Kenya and Rhodesia and perhaps even eventually South Africa.
[41] from Europe, disturbed by revolutionary muddles. Moreover, the migration of vast numbers of Britons overseas not only removed the strains of industrial overpopulation, unemployment and poverty; “it also created a new sense of belonging to a global British community, to what will come to existence as ‘Greater Britain.’ ” (Colley 189)
The colonisation and forming the Empire remains definitely underestimated in the
British European discourse, even though the question of Colonisation and Empire undoubtedly directly affects the British European policy for all the 20 th century. Two important recent surveys may be taken as an example: C.A. Bayly’s Imperial Meridian: The
British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 and P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British
Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688-1914 .63 In both works, the Colonisation is marginalized and simplified as series of attempts to establish overseas despotism by
“Gentlemanly Capitalists” (Bayly 9). Surely, this was a process of immense ideological importance, of detaching oneself from the villain others, which is momentous in terms of future development of Britain.
Especially after 1815, this large scale colonisation also led to forging an Anglophone alliance of Britain, USA and Canada a major player in the 20 th century diplomacy. Many immigrants (though certainly not all) had a strong sense of their own ethnicity and they retained that sense even upon their arrival in British North America. To paraphrase Winston
Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Nations , “they moved as part of a chain migration that linked them to their friends and families at home and in the colonies. This family migration from certain communities in Britain meant that the chain eventually became stronger on the North American side of the Atlantic” (Churchill 14). The specific British
63 C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World (Harlow, 1989) and P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion , 1688-1914 (Harlow, 1993)
[42] sense of identity often prevailed being liven up by organisations like ‘The Orange Lodge’ 64 , emphasizing British history and British heroes like Nelson, Wellington or Gordon 65 , British victories in the Crimean War, in the Indian Mutiny or in the Boer War; the ideology has been dilated. The Victorian monarchy came to be venerated and pictures of Queen Victoria were hanging almost all around the world. Imperialism acquired a widely popular dimension, especially in the middle and later decades of the 19 th century; Europe no longer mattered.
4.3 International Climate of the early 19 th century and political treatment of
Europe
4.3.1 Castlereagh: The pro-European of his age?
The British Empire was in its prime. Napoleon’s fall in 1815 as well as the actuality of
Europe brought her to the top, to the role of indubitable and largely uncontested master of the world. France and the rest of Europe were depleted by wars, Germany was not yet unified,
Italia still crumbled in countless parts, Russia bowed out from European politics. European powers suffered from revolutions and minor civil wars, which would ultimately result in forming new nations and communities. In these strangely turbulent years, the insular identity was extremely powerful. The above mentioned situation naturally suited the British politics, which, therefore, became a confident guardian of European Status Quo in the Concert (or
Balance) of Powers framework. Lord Castlereagh and his contemporaries assumed position in many respects similar to the early British attitude towards the European integration – that is 64 Also Orange Institution or Orange Order, the Protestant fraternal organization based predominantly in Ireland and Scotland. It was also popular throughout the Commonwealth of Nations and in the United States. The Orange Order was founded in Loughgall, County Armagh, Ireland in 1795, but its roots go back to conflicts arising out of the creation of English and Scottish Protestant communities in Ulster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Orange Lodge originated from the Peep O'Day Boys, a protestant group formed in response to the secretive Catholic agrarian groups as Hearts of Steele and Hearts of Oak, Thrashers or the Ribbonmen. ("Orange Institution." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . 21 Jun 2006. Wikimedia Foundation. Online 24 Jun 2006.
[43] they tried to combine a strong interference in matters of their own interests and an opposition or skilful obstructiveness in all other areas to thwart the concepts profitable and beneficial for others. In other words, British position towards Europe could be worded as follows: We must stay in only to guard our own interests and to ensure that Europe will not arise.
This general sentiment of British politics is extremely vital since it would still matter more than a century later; the difference being that in the 19 th century Britain could get away with this theory, she could afford it.
In this light and in the context of British political thinking of the early 19 th century,
Castlereagh has been a pro European politician, an exceptionally cosmopolitan personality with European awareness. Henry Kissinger, a renown expert on the Metternich era and the early 19 th century diplomacy ratifies the, for this time exceptional, European awareness as well as the cosmopolitan character of Castlereagh’s personality.
“Being the only British politician to understand Meternich’s ambitions and reasoning, and the need for an organized European order, he was strongly criticised in Britain, for getting too involved in continental politics in the name of the British interest.” (Kissinger 15)
In the French matters, a particularly topical problem of that time, he opposed the absolute paralysing of France that followed the Vienna Congress. Unlike the others, untouched by popular infatuations or desire for revenge, he envisaged the age when France would be crucial for European balance of powers and thus for Britain. Ergo, Castlereagh represented a minor exception in British politics. At the cost of domestic disagreements,
Castlereagh ultimately withdrew his units from France and enforced that France would be readmitted to European powers. After the Congress of Vienna, he was forbidden to attend any more European congresses.
[44] Castlereagh’s opposition to interventions by the Holy Alliance owed, however, not only to his respect for human rights, as Churchill tries to suggest 66 , but substantially to the overall British policy of indifference to Europe. The fact is that Castlereagh could hardly have been friend of continental despotism. After all, Britain already had a parliamentary system, which at least imperfectly represented her people. Catlereagh’s colleagues served their absolutist rulers. As Winston Churchill puts it: “British power stemmed from highly developed trade and supremacy of naval power and rose independently of all European ideas.” (16)
4.3.2 George Canning, the Holly Alliance and British determination against Europe
Another slight deviation from norm could be perceived in George Canning. Canning was an early 19 th century Churchill. A sparkling man with an inclination to sarcasm, he was generally considered to be a liberal intriguer. The “bloody genius” of British politics made an enemy of countless Tories, surprisingly enough notably Castlereagh, whom he had much in common with. That is why he broke through only after jaded Castlereagh cut his throat in
August 1822. Subsequently, Canning was called back from his exile in India and appointed a
Minister of Foreign affairs. Canning, like Castlereagh combined concealed and “cunning”
British interests in undermining British dynasties with genuine romantic sentiment of every nation’s right to its self determination. Therefore, he candidly sympathized with the Spanish uprising and at the Verona Congress he rejected the possibility of intervention on behalf of the
Bourbons (Churchill 17).
The British motivation had been substantially more intricate than just wholehearted
“support of Spanish ‘liberals’”, which Churchill ideologically preaches (Churchill 30). In the first instance, the Bourbons were originally French dynasty, but more importantly France, the age old continental rival, apprehended the intervention in the Spanish issue in terms of 66 Churchill, p. 15.
[45] regaining one’s honour and respect, which represented the least desirable thing for Britain. It is essential to realize that this egoistic anxiety (of superpowers) of others improving their position represents a leading motivation throughout modern politics, namely the 19 th century.
Quoting Canning himself while speaking on behalf of the European Congresses supports this point tellingly enough:
“… For if such a war England sustained for a quarter of a century in behalf of all Europe, and by turns against all Europe in its own behalf, had not taught all Europe where they ought to look for protection against overgrown and overbearing power. … No part that she could take in a [Vienna] Congress … would acquire for Great Britain the confidence which such a war had failed to command. If the occasion came, the world should see. But it was not by perpetually creating occasions; it was not by incessant meddling with petty interests, and domestick squabbles in other Countries, that the influence of Great Britain was to be maintained” (Stapleton 37 8). Britons watched Europe carefully for they were ever prepared to stand up for their interests in case of need. Their hunger for power overrode even age long animosity, as proved by the Peace of Utrecht in 1714 when Britain teamed up with France to hold back the dangerously strengthened Habsburgs. Moreover, Canning was primarily not after Europe, his principal concern were economically important Latin American colonies and struggle with the
USA and president Monroe. 67 Nevertheless, for the purpose of this thesis even that must be considered, since it resulted in a temporal intensification of British involvement on the
Continent. The Holy Alliance congress ultimately entrusted France with restoring the Spanish order, which in Britain led to large scale, though unofficial, volunteering to support the
Revolution by happenchance a similar to that Revolution of which, few years ago, they had been the most ardent opponents.
67 For more information on Canning’s Latin American preoccupation see “George Canning.” Canning House Web. 2005.Online 15 June. < http://www.canninghouse.com/about_us/history/>.
[46] A very similar situation followed with the Greeks, who declared themselves independent in 1822. “A wave of enthusiasm flooded Britain. Namely the intellectuals, having been suckled on the Ancient Greek legends, were calling for intervention, the voluntary contribution having been collected” (Churchill 32). Lord Byron with other Romantics set out to help the Greeks only to lose all his illusions before he would find his death at Missolonghi.
The Holy Alliance divided itself on this matter, Russia and Austria stood in opposition. 68 The fear that Russia would profit unjustifiably from this conflict led to endless complications in
Eastern matters, leading to the Whig opposition and ultimately Canning’s death.
Although the portrayals of Castlereagh and Canning were largely ambiguous and indefinite in terms of Europe, it could not have been omitted since it, to a large extent, gives a true picture of indistinct stance of the rest of British pro European elites in continental issue.
It may serve as an appropriate depiction of, in terms of British European relationship, the transitory period, when one may still partly witness the remnants of pre Napoleonic era sentiment for Europe, descendant of the Age of Reason sentiment by Hume and Classic
Antiquity admirers. This sentiment was revived by Romanticism, the classical tradition perhaps superseded by an ethnic self determination. But apart from all this, the underlying view of European mainland already differed.
68 “Holy Alliance.” Microsoft Encarta 2006 [DVD] . Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005.
[47] 5. Jolly Old Empire: The Victorian Era and Splendid Isolation from the
Continent
During the long 19 th century, between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, Britain emerged as a global super power. Her commercial, industrial, financial and imperial powers were unrivalled for most of the century. As a consequence, the relationship with the European continent throughout this period seemed rather dilatory and irresolute. Britain was the whale, a big fish in decaying European waters and a question was posed by the British political class and public opinion, whether Britain can and should be a part of Europe at all. Nevertheless, the Britain’s attitude towards and role in the 19 th century Europe appears more complicated than it may seem. At first sight, it was undoubtedly an era of Britishness, a proud allegiance to the Crown and all who came under the rule of majestic Britannia “were her subjects whether they liked it or not … While this at first had many advantages in the imperial era, “by the 20 th century it was proving ill adapted to the needs of a modern state” (McCrone 595).
5.1. The official politics vs. the development of Atlantic Federalism
In this specific British period, it became apparent that Continent no longer meant an equal partner. It was considered a weird outland, no longer just different, but for the British obviously heading in demonstrably wrong way. The Brits already took the best from pre
Napoleonic era, Europe no longer represented an inspiration; there was nothing more to pick up. Britons viewed mainland countries as inferior in every dissimilar aspect. Paraphrasing
Jeremy Black, when discussing British attitudes to Europe, this thesis no longer discusses the extent of a sense of identity or belonging; it rather discusses the extent of British involvement in European matters and investigates the possible intentions behind all this. (Black 1994: 15).
For the decades to come, the official historiography will “regard the cross channel relations almost exclusively in terms of stand offish and impersonal diplomacy, political flushings and
[48] calculations and provisional, purpose built pacts and treaties resulting from all that. Hardly anything can be mentioned to the identity bonds with Europe, for these were erased and suppressed throughout the age that would follow.
Although the majority headed in the above mentioned official line, the 19 th century idea of Federalism, inspired by the American experience, found its proponents in the British
Isles. The arguments in favour of ratifying the federal constitution made by Hamilton,
Madison, Jay and others in The Federalist Papers 69 were transformed into a parliamentary rather than presidential form. In this specifically British adaptation, the Federalist idea was used throughout the 19 th century in the British Empire as an attempt to hold the colonial territories together.
5.2 Anglo-Saxon Constitutional Federalism and moving off the Continent
The publication of De Tocqueville’s De la Démocracie en Amérique brought the above mentioned American Federal experience to the fore and this Anglo Saxon School of
Constitutional Federalism was adopted primarily by Charles MacKay 70 , the first to use the term ‘United States of Europe’ in full analogy to the USA in his homonymous essay The
United States of Europe of 1848.71 His programme based on a global system of constitutional monarchies commissioned to safeguard peace, a Holy Alliance of Nations concept was an echo of some of his predecessors. His true contribution rests in cut and dried incorporation of
Continental Europe into his concept and his prediction that the demand of unification of
European countries will arise in the future and will arise from within (not necessarily as 69 The series of 85 essays on the proposed new Constitution of the United States and on the nature of republican government, published between 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in an effort to persuade New York state voters to support ratification. See “The Federalist Papers.” Founding Fathers Homepage . 2001 2004. Online 15 June. < http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fedindex.htm>. 70 Charles Mackay (1814 1889) a British poet and journalist, a famous song writer, born at Perth, and educated at the Royal Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but spent much of his early life in France. Coming to London in 1834, he engaged in journalism, wrote a History of London , famous Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds etc. Mackay acted as Times correspondent during the American Civil War and in that capacity discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy. (Wikipedia) 71 Quoted from Veber, V. Dějiny sjednocené Evropy . Praha: Lidové Noviny, 2004.
[49] acreaction to external danger) – an exceptional and practically pipe dream assertion in mid
19 th century Britain.
British personalities picked up the threads of his work only in terms of his overall fascination with the American system, which he intended to adopt. 72 The European element of this concept was logically dismissed and mostly ignored in British circles and no follower emerged for a long time. In the meantime, the continental scholars followed up with the
United States of Europe idea and particularly German scholars (like Constantin Frantz, Rudolf
Pannwitz or Karl Jeutsch, Karl Georg Winkelbech), plus numerous Italian (Carlo Cattaneo 73 ,
Giuseppe Mazzini) and French scholars (Victor Hugo 74 , Pierre Joseph Proudon) developed it a little further. 75
The main stream of British thinkers, however, followed a different path. In the splendidly isolated imperial Britain of Gladstone, Palmerston, Disraeli and others, the Anglo
Saxon Constitutional Federalism was further adjusted (in fact restricted) to what is generally called the British Imperial Federalism, a severely limited federalist concept infiltrated by the
British secular traditions.
5.3 Diverting the Federalist case through traditional concepts
The imperial federalism takes generally two main forms: the need to unite British colonial territories and the need to retain the unity of Empire. The idea thus found itself, once again, serving to British sovereign territorial interests and as such it could be opened to the public. The British public became increasingly interested in this “version” of federal idea during the 19 th century. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty “puts Federalism in the context of an
72 He namely appreciated the US system of Free Trade, their principle of representation, but as every British scholar he kept pouncing that the bloated executive be subjected to change and considerably minimized. 73 Carlo Cattaneo sought to transform the Habsburg empire into a democratic federal union on the US model and also argued that “we shall never have peace until we founded the United States of Europe” (Woodard 10). 74 He inspired the foundation the International League for Peace & Freedom had been founded with a magazine Les Etats Unis d’Europe. Somewhat oddly it became a champion of the idea of the League of Nations in 1917. 75 Quoted in Woodard, p. 11.
[50] individual’s struggle for freedom against authority”, as the advantage of dispersal of power.
Edward E. Freeman wrote A History of Federal Government in Greece &Italy , published in
1863. John Robert Seeley 76 asserted that a federal union is the “most efficacious and the most congenial of all the checks on centralised oppression of minorities” (Woodard 12).
By the late 19 th century, an elaboration of American federalism and federal solutions to the British imperial and other international problems was becoming substantial. Stephen
Woodward asserts that “in the second half of the century, a more in depth scholarly research was carried out into Federalism and the American Constitutional experience” (Woodard 13).
The Federalist idea continued to grow and flourish with such personalities as Lord Acton,
James Bryce, John Dymond, Charles Donald Farquaharson, Brooke Foss Westcott, Freeman or Sidgwick etc. These all investigated mainly the problem of war and peace; they failed to follow up with MacKay’s advanced vision, but succeeded in consolidating and developing the
Federalist cause, creating thus a starting block and platform for Euro federation thoughts in
Britain of late 30s. This would also ensure the continuation of such thinking 77 , even though often surviving on margins and peripheries of public interest. An academic and political knowledge of Federalism was therefore already established in the UK by the 1930s at the latest, but most probably earlier.
5.4 The British Imperial Federation: Commitment to Empire and a birth of new
inspiration
One can witness a sudden surge in the popularity of the Federal idea in the 1870s in response to perceived economic decline, a change in international power relations against
British hegemony, the mounting menace of Ireland and other political uncertainties posed by
76 Sir John Robert Seeley (1834 January 13, 1895) was an English essayist and historian, known for his accounts on the expansion of Britain. See Expansion of England (1883) which did much to make Englishmen regard the colonies, not as mere appendages, but as an expansion of the British state as well as of British nationality, and to remind them of the value of Britain's empire in the East. 77 With the exception of WWI 1914 1918 interlude when no such traces are traceable.
[51] urban enfranchisement in 1867. The series of major challenges to the old order amounted to modernisation of British politics, even though in a limited sense. 1870s were an important turning point in the growing appeal of federalism in British politics. But then the federal idea meant ‘Imperial Federation’, an ambiguous term first used by reverend William Arthur in
1853. 78 It created numerous misconceptions and was largely used as convenient cry for those who sought a more binding and regulated empire but could not agree upon how to achieve it.
Most of those who sympathized with this vague concept (Edward Jenkins, Edward Freeman) did not really believe in superimposed federal constitution and had not Europe in their minds.
There were also attempts to reshape the Empire itself as an Imperial Federation (most intensively in 1880s 1920s). The contemplation about federating the Empire occurred in two waves. Firstly, the Imperial Federation League was launched on 29 July 1884 to “secure by
Federation the permanent unity of the Empire” (Burgess . The league was supported by many senior and prominent British and colonial statesmen 79 , but it collapsed in December 1893 following the rejection of the detailed federal plan by Gladstone’s Liberal government. 80
Secondly, members of Lord Milner’s Kindergarten including Philip Kerr
(subsequently Lord Lothian), Lionel Curtis, Leopold Amery, F.S. Oliver and Edward Grigg established around 1909 10 The Round Table Movement “whose aim was the “organic unity” of the Empire and to educate the British public of Edwardian age for constitutional reform”
(Burgess 1995: 81). But specific plans were avoided and its representatives stuck to arguing for the principle. The effort was later reinforced by a debate in Britain on abandoning free trade and creating a protected united imperial economy 81 . But history was already moving away from them. The white territories of newly defined Commonwealth would be gaining in self governing responsibilities with the status of Dominion and they would see no need to
78 First used in The London Quarterly Review , Dec.1853, p.550 79 For instance James Bryce, James Anthony Froude, John Robert Seeley, Edward Morgan Forster etc ... 80 For the collection of documents see:
[52] support any imperial federation. Major hopes were lost at Imperial War Conference in 1917.
After WWI , the idea faded and the Statute of Westminster of 1931 killed it once and for all.
The relation between Empire and Federalism was confused and muddled from the beginning and thus it remained a punk theory. However, the significance of the imperial federation principles, as ushered, lay in the efforts of their supporters after its collapse, since these turned their attention to other utilization of federalism. In other words, the ambitions of these concepts came to nothing; nevertheless the principles of these imperial federalists, in particular of Lord Lothian, would later on inspire others.
On the basis of this, after WWI the thinking of the imperial federalists would on the one hand turn increasingly toward creating and Atlantic or English speaking union; another result distinctive for British interpretation of Federalism. By the 1940s the ‘Atlanticism’ had been a key part of British policy, “and it is this which explains much of the exceptionalism of the British political elite to the process of European integration.”(Baker 16)
But what is more important for the subject of this thesis, their writings would be influential in developing a true federalist movement based on MacKay’s idea of United States of Europe, the Federal Union in 1938 1940. On the other hand, an even more decisive level of activities would originate. Sometimes at the turn of the 20 th century these Imperial Federalists would, though still discreetly and inconspicuously, become International Federalists.
[53] 6. Complexity of the ‘Era of isolation’ (1850s-1890s)
The 19 th British anti Europeanism and Britain’s ‘Splendid Isolation’ will be introduced in this chapter. In the second half of the 19 th century, the official British diplomacy was indeed directed in the name of nationalism and Empire. It is the time, when the European continent found itself in critical stage and was fully preoccupied with its own problems. There was no single European country to equal the grandeur of powerful Britain at that time. This definitely played to British nationalists’ hand. But in the midst of this generally familiar state of affairs, the different views and theories started to appear. These originally minority concepts gradually developed into a relatively powerful framework of thoughts and considering them may cast a somewhat different light on the famed period.
6.1 Furtive beginnings of European Federalism: Intellectual and philosophical origins
“The nations of Europe must constitute themselves into some form of Federation. …We shall never abolish war in Europe unless we … take up a completely new citizenship. We must cease to be mere Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans and must begin to take as much pride in calling ourselves Europeans. … [All] schemes will fail which propose to unite Europe merely by adding together new states that compose it. The individual, and not merely the state, must enter into a distinct relation to the Federation. … [The] federation wanted is a real union of peoples” (Seeley 441 4) 82
These are words by a prominent Englishman addressing the Peace Society in 1871. Sir
John Seeley, regius Professor of modern history at Cambridge (1869 95) and the Chairman of
IFL (1886 93) urged a political strategy, which grew slowly but surely in the minds of many in the following century. 83 His work was an uneasy combination of political science and an
82 Seeley, J.R. (1871) “The United States of Europe”, Macmillan’s Magazine , XIII, 441 4. Quoted in Burgess, M. The British Tradition of Federalism , Leicester University Press, 1997. For further information on Seeley see footnote on p.36. 83 For Seeley’s political ideas see Wormell, D. Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. ch.6.
[54] earnest patriot commitment and reflected many contemporary trends of his day. Seeley, echoing Froude, his imperial themes and anxiety about the new era of large unified states
(Germany, Italy), sought salvation in the Empire. In his The Expansion of England he saw the
Federal Idea as the means for consolidation of the British state, as the only way to guarantee peace and liberty in the age of large scale political units. As a consequence, he was specifically interested in the historical role of ‘the English state’ as a nation state and “traced its emergence back to self realisation in the 17 th 18 th century” (Pagden 2002: 38).
Nevertheless, unlike Freeman he gave precedence to the present over the past. The aim for him was in the present to learn from the mistakes of our past and avoid repeating it. At the dawn of a new era, it is essential to concern ourselves for the future of Britain and to interest ourselves in the historical evolution of the international system. The solution would be a genuine transformation of states and citizens; this created a hallmark prominent in the intellectual debate on a federal Europe and Seeley can be considered as the one who incorporated European dimension into British tradition. The idea would be reiterated in numerous alterations in British pro Europeanism: The primary cause of war is inherent in the nation state itself; therefore Britain must be situated into larger context of European federation. He did not believe it could be translated into practical politics of the 1870s, but it was “the logical theoretical outcome of his research into history and politics” (Pagden 2006:
43).
Furthermore, in his work he (and all further mentioned in this chapter) would use the term ‘Europe’ referring to France, Germany and/or Britain alike, which clearly expresses that
European identity and Europeanness in Britain existed (and was championed) even at the peak of what we term Splendid isolation. Far from being dominant, it co existed and scratched its living as the revived element of British ideological tradition.
[55] European aspect of British Federalism prior to WWI is a relatively unknown issue even for the researchers into federalism, since pro Europeanism existed mostly as a trace or hint within the dominant Imperial Federalist preoccupation and even then this European dimension was difficult to uncover. Therefore, another quite obvious euro representative worth mentioning would be William Thomas Stead 84 , a representative of early federalist tradition linking
Empire, Ireland and Europe. As editor of Pall Mall Gazette and imperial federalist in the 80s,
Stead had used his position as a leading journalist to publicise the federal cause and attack
Gladstone’s naval policies. As editor of the renowned Review of Reviews in the 90s, he toured
Europe and published his The United States of Europe on the Eve of the Parliament of Peace
(London 1899) 85 . He advocated the need for Europe of an unseen event towards which the whole continent would be moving “with a slow and relentless march and which would come within the pale of practical polities” (Goněc, Idea I , 30). 86
Sir Max Waechter, an industrialist of German origin, also typified this conviction that national rivalries were nurturing a dangerous armament struggle, which would weaken
Europe’s economic and moral position in the world. He urged the peoples of Europe to move towards a federation built around Britain and Germany. Waechter also had many valuable continental contacts and was actively involved in the first Congress for European
Federation. 87 In 1914 he also established the European Unity League in London to work for a
‘federation of the states of Europe on economic basis.’ 88 Yet, the British considerations of
Europe were still largely academic before 1914 and there was nothing to effectively function as an organised political movement on European behalf. But, as a matter of fact, “even among
84 William Thomas Stead (1849 1912), British journalist, editor and publisher, fervent supporter of British Russian friendship. Stead was a passenger on the British transatlantic liner Titanic when the ship struck an iceberg and sank, and he was one of the approximately 1,500 passengers who perished. 85 By ‘Parliament of Peace’ he referred to the Hague Conference of May July 1899. 86 Quoted in Burgess, M. The British Tradition of Federalism , Leicester University Press, 1995. p.134 87 It took place in Rome, May 1909. See also: 88 The Times , 31.1. 1914. p.6.
[56] continental Europeans the movement to unite Europe politically did not really get under way before World War I” (Lipgens 35).
6.2 Victorian Britain and Europe: Official disregard of the European matters
In this era, Britain contrived to appropriate much of the non colonized world. At the expense of weaken Netherland, she subjugated South Africa, which with colonisation of
Australia and New Zealand led to origination of yet more spectacular and monumental British empire, secured by the traditional naval power and embracing more than one fifth of all mankind.
This strong sense of imperialism was intensified by an existence of many charismatic individualities that Britain produced at this time, be it Robert Peel, John Russell, Benjamin
Disraeli or William Gladstone. As a matter of fact, Victorian Britain went further in disregarding continental matters. As stated by Ludlow, Seawright etc, regardless whether
Peelist Tories and later Disraelist Conservatives, Palmerstonian Whigs and later Gladstonian
Liberals, British aggrandizement and disregard for Europe was an underlying notion of the whole political and cultural spectrum (Ludlow et al 16). The Party line followed rather different views of home affairs. As far as foreign affairs were concerned, there was little difference. Peel was known as fervent opponent of Irish Catholics’ emancipation, ancient
Whig Palmerston was known for his aggressive imperial policy. 89
The mid 19 th century has been predominantly rooted as an era of an apparent British superiority to others among others caused by a great industrial potential. Up to 1870, Britain was producing more than a half of coal world supply. Its iron production exceeded that of all other countries in the world. The Britishness and Crown populated human hearts together with an unprecedented loyalty and awareness of national pride. The whole Britain, even 89 Apart from blistering diplomatic notes consider repression of Indian Mutiny in 1858 or Crimean war against “overgrown barbarian of East” – Russia, which was also backed up by Canning and Wellington. (see in Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples p.212.)
[57] though her prosperity has been distributed “so unevenly” 90 , was savouring this boon that made life much easier and sounded this self trust all around the world. 91
6.3 Gladstone, Disraeli and the others: Disappearance of Europe and exceptions to the
rule
Seemingly, Europe had nearly no place in the two decades of the Gladstonian and
Disraeli cabinets either. In fact, their duel attracted people often more then did the Balkans
Crisis that is British established sphere of interest. The years 1868 74 mark a famous reform period during which Britain got only disturbed by Bismarck’s crushing France in 1870.
Gladstone ‘contented himself with an ideological notion about a renewed Concert in Europe’ but this only underlined the (originally Conservative) tradition in foreign policy and had little to do with a regard for Europe (Charmley 121).
And if Gladstone was inactive in European matters, Disraeli’s cabinet went slightly further in incorporating Continent in political discourse since it uncoiled foreign affairs. This
‘revival’ did not mean the change in mutual relations, Europe rather got into Disraeli’s way as
“[Britain] aimed at a new conception of colonial Empire – a major weakness of Gladstonian politics. ...Gladstonian passion for economy, his stand offish attitude towards Europe and indifference to colonies affected the society … in a negative way.” (Churchill 213).
All projects of European character remained henceforth in the given situation rather modest and indefinite. The term ‘Federation’ was replaced by the indefinite ‘Association’.
Nevertheless, exceptions existed to the rule and visionaries kept appearing. Moved by Henry
Richard, the House of Commons in Britain carried a motion in 1873 calling for a permanent
90 I owe this expression to Winston Churchill and his History of the English Speaking Peoples . 91 Most illustrative example being the pompous Great Exhibition of 1851 in eccentric Crystal Palace built specifically for that purpose.
[58] system of International Arbitration. 92 Some elaborate proposals appeared, for example in 1877
“Professor James Lorimer of Edinburgh suggested a creation of European Assembly and a
Supra Government”, a common legislation and military forces 93 that all in his outline of the plan for International government (Burgess 1995: 52).
It is largely unfamiliar that the first embryonic world parliament, called the Inter
Parliamentary Union, was formed on the basis of these in the British Isles organized in 1886 by William Randal Cremer, a British Labour leader, together with Frederic Passy, a French economist. It was composed of legislators from many countries, and played quite a role in the
Hague Conferences which followed shortly thereafter. In 1904 the Union formally proposed
“an international congress which should meet periodically to discuss international questions”
(Hamer 26).
Federalism managed to displace the ‘myth of the unitary state.’ 94 The essential displacement of the ‘Unity’ category was essential since it opened up the possibilities of alternative perspectives in Britain. But during the 19 th century this unitary perception of nation 95 enjoyed a generally unrivalled dominance. This was reflected in Albert Dicey’s publication of 1885 The Law of the Constitution . As John Pinder states, in this enormously influential book Dicey “bequeathed a legacy eulogising the parliamentary sovereignty and raised the notion of the unitary state, in direct contradiction to a Federation, almost to deity”
(Pinder 112). In a classic late Victorian exposition he delivered his famous verdict on federal government as a weak government tending to produce Conservatism.
Continental scholars like Blüntschi, a German legal expert, also partially attuned their demands to accommodate to the rising sentiment of nationalism and national chauvinism.
92 See “Henry Richard.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . 25 Nov 2005. Wikimedia Foundation. Online 25 June 2006.
[59] Influential Blüntschi, himself, was proposing a curtailed Confederation with the Joint
Arbitration court only. But even this Union, where nation specific particularities would be preserved, would be too strong an obligation for Britain to undertake. With regard to the vigour of nationalism, any thoughts considering European unity, let alone British affiliation with the Continent, seemed largely utopian.
6.4 Splendid Isolation: A term which came too late
The so called ‘Splendid Isolation’, as a description of the British policy towards continental Europe at the turn of the 19 th century, is only partially accurate. The term itself was, characteristically enough, coined not in Britain but by a Canadian journalist to satirise the unpopularity of Britain on the Continent after the outbreak of the Boer War.96 In these days of rapid modernization and life style improvement, it was already apparent that Britain could never be completely isolated from the continent only twenty miles away. What she could afford, at maximum, was a certain remoteness and standoffishness, which she was taking advantage of. Behind the shield of the Royal Navy, Britain could still feel secure against any attack and therefore not as dependent on continental manoeuvrings as a country whose frontier could be crossed at any moment by hostile armies would be. To this the already mentioned traditional British interest in preserving a European balance of power was added.
Britain still indicated readiness to ally itself with the opposing coalition and to pursue, with a small expeditionary force, a peripheral maritime based strategy, if any country threatened to dominate the Continental affairs. This was, for example, the reason why Britain
96 Although some argue that the term was invented by Sigmund Freud, it is probable that George Foster, the Canadian MP visiting Britain used this term first. “In these somewhat troublesome days when the great Mother Empire stands splendidly isolated in Europe.” (George Foster's speech in the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, January 16, 1896). Following this speech, the headline “Splendid Isolation” appeared in The Times . January 22, 1896 and shortly afterwards this term was used in the House of Commons by Lord Goschen: “We have stood here alone in what is called isolation our splendid isolation, as one of our colonial friends was good enough to call it.” (The 1st Lord Goschen's speech at Lewes, February 26, 1896).
[60] had become involved in the war against the France of Louis XIV and of Napoleon. But those times were different from the new era the world was about to enter and as the century began.
And so began the Britain’s struggle to come to terms with her deteriorating situation and position, a bitter struggle that will last many decades and ultimately result in enforced concessions to the Continent – so tough and humiliating for proud and majestic Albion. The initiation of this process will be dealt with in the following chapter. The Splendid Isolation, as a myth, came too late. By the time it was coined, it was already hardly topical. Isolation might have still existed but was no longer splendid.
[61] 7. British missed chances in the early 20 th century
Britain’s missed chances since 1945 constitute a widely discussed issue of the
European debate, but British misjudgements of Europe have not been limited to the period after the Second World War. The preceding years are equally studded with momentous mistakes and serious neglects and these are central to what was to come later. But although its power has frequently been exaggerated, Britain then still “possessed the largest Empire the world had ever known or seen, it has been the first major industrialised power with remarkably stable parliamentary democracy (if compared to Continental regimes)” (Young 6).
In certain respect, at the outset of the 20 th century, British policy towards Europe could be considered clean and sensible. In other words, Britain would keep at arm’s length from the continental Europe and, honestly put, rightly so. She knew what she was doing when she rejected to follow the politically confused, bewildered and individualistic Europe, disturbed by numerous scandals and affairs. 97 Generally, Britain had been under a considerable pressure to interest itself more closely in continental affairs since the end of 19 th century.
7.1 The turn of the century: A new reality
In the first decade of the 20 th century, it finally started to be apparent that the threat now came not from France, but from Germany. After 1890 Germany’s industrial production
“roared ahead” of Britain’s, its coal production was already half that celebrated of Britain and by 1913 it matched it. In 1890 German steel production achieved two thirds that of Britain but by 1914 it was already a double! At the same time, Germany began to “rattle its sabre”
(Denman 36 7). After the failure of the Jameson Raid in 1895, the German emperor William
II congratulated the Transvaal President Kruger on having maintained his independence. He tried, however without success, to organise a continental league against Britain. In 1897 his
97 See for instance the Dreyfuss Affair.
[62] new navy minister, Tirpitz, started building an unheard of German high seas fleet and the
Anglo German naval shipbuilding race began. After further German provocations 98 , the possibility of war was hanging in the air.
Most would argue that British decline relative to new arising competitors had already begun as also other powers like the United States or Japan were rising to challenge industrial, commercial and naval pre eminence, all highly embedded and traditional for Britain. “The
Boer War revealed both military weaknesses and the danger of a European combination against Britain, calling into question the notion of ‘splendid isolation’” (Charmley 135).
Disregarding all the above mentioned issues, the latter years of the 19 th century, and the early years of the 20 th century, marked the height of the age of imperialism. Bismarck
“tramped across the stage” 99 , Kipling wrote his stories of the White Man’s Burden , and the great powers of Europe struggled for influence in the world at large.
7.2 Rosebery, Grey and Europe: The purpose-built alliances
During the critical years, British foreign policy was in the hands of Edward Grey, 100 a man whose qualifications for this office were not immediately apparent. He had been sacked from Oxford for idleness and apart from his mother tongue spoke only in broken French. To the companies of foreign diplomats and human society in general, he avowedly preferred salmon sishing and squirrel hunting. That also explains a lot in terms of the British 98 The major international crisis was the Moroccan crisis (1905–06, 1911), two international crises centring on France's attempts to control Morocco and on Germany's concurrent attempts to stem French power. It also included the Agadir Incident, event involving a German attempt to challenge French rights in Morocco by sending the gunboat Panther to Agadir in July 1911. This action incited the Second Moroccan Crisis. This “Agadir Incident” sparked a flurry of war talk during the summer and fall (the British even made preparations for eventual war), but international negotiations continued, and the crisis subsided with the conclusion of the convention of Nov. 4, 1911, in which France was given rights to a protectorship over Morocco and, in return, Germany was given strips of territory from the French Congo. (“Moroccan crises .” Encyclopædia Britannica . 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD 18 May 2006.) 99 This is a term used by Roy Denman. 100 Sir Edward Grey (1862 1933), 3 rd Baronet and 1 st Viscount Grey of Fallodon. British statesman whose 11 years (1905–16) as British foreign secretary, the longest uninterrupted tenure of that office in history, were marked by the start of World War I, about which he made a comment that became proverbial: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
[63] underestimation of Foreign Affairs. During his fiendishly long appointment in the Foreign
Office he almost never went abroad. 101 (Lutz 54)
As a member of a left of centre Cabinet, passionately opposing wars and war alliances, he was in a singularly difficult position, yet he had a clear perception of the British interests. He served as Under Secretary at the Foreign Office under Lord Rosebery in 1892 5, when he could see that a Germany ruling the continent, determined to challenge the British naval supremacy, and with its fleet able to use the Channel ports, would pose an unacceptable threat for Britain. Therefore, in 1902 entered the first long term security alliance in peacetime, though significantly it was not primarily concerned with Europe. 102 And therefore, as soon as
1904 Britain settled her differences with France and Russia in ‘Ententes’, although, again, these agreements principally involved Imperial issues.
In 1906 Grey promised France an unreserved support, authorised secret staff conversations with the French and later came to terms with Russia (Greenhalgh 11). Few
British politicians were so fully aware of potential consequences of a possibility of Germany’s victory for their country. Once Germany had entered France through Belgium, he kept persuading both the Cabinet and then the House of Commons to declare war. At this point it is essential to concede that his view of British interests had always been realistic and his domestic stance in the wartime skilful and courageous. Thus, in 1914 did British finally commit themselves to a war? The new, seemingly modern and revised British policy would, however, in years to come remain burdened with age old traditional preconceptions and misjudgements.
101 The exception would be his being persuaded to accompany George V. on a state visit to Paris in May 1914. 102 It was a Treaty with Japan signed to protect the British position in the Far East
[64] 7.3 The era of paradoxes: European spirit vs. nationalistic ‘Realpolitik’
The burden of British European relations prevailed. “Notwithstanding this dramatic change in policy, in the wake of the WWI, Britain tried to distance itself from Europe once more, extending its rule to new areas of the Middle East, rejecting a formal alliance with
France and refusing to give real authority to the newly formed peace keeping body, the
League of Nations” (Young 9) .
Thus, at the turn of the 20th century one might witness another paradox and historical contradiction. The nations of Europe (Britain included) appeared particularly tightly defined, their overall image and their particularities seemingly carved on tablets of stone. On the other hand, however, Britain as well as the Continent were outdated and their social and political orders were obsolete. Europe of that time was a thing of the past and outlived its purpose which resulted in turmoil desperately kept “under official hats.” In other words, the nations were sharply divided. Not only were the differences international, as it is generally presented, but also, and more importantly, intranational – in terms of opinions, beliefs and attitudes in general. This ambiguity is touched upon in the section 0.2 and in the introductory chapter in general.
If seen from a different perspective, there exists yet another level of the problem. On the one hand, the publications appeared on single economic space, on civilisation homogeneity, on full convertibility, of free capital circulation, etc. André Siegfried would be an apt example of this sheer (mainly continental) enthusiasm, relating himself also to
Gladstonian Britain and propagating the common Europageist (European spirit). He stressed the ideological level and discovered liaisons between Britain and the Continent as a fondness for knowledge or inclination to business activities. (Pegg 101). He also argued for social homogeneity; as many others he was exploiting the contacts of kinship of the cosmopolitan
[65] gentry or the bourgeoisie 103 and was engaged in business activities to support his argumentation a frequent refrain of populizing historians, which, however coherent it may appear, is also only a subjective perspective.
After all, the threat of war did usher in a period of intellectual and political retrospection, which resulted in an intense debate on Federalism within the political elite. For example, Carl Pegg claims that ‘some of the most impressive and optimistic assertions of the
European idea were in England in 1914’ (Lipgens 36). The Union for Democratic Control, founded in London by Ramsay MacDonald, Charles Trevelyan and Norman Angell, declared its manifesto that: “Policy should no longer be aimed at a balance of power but should be directed to establishing a European federation of states” (Lipgens 36). The widely read
Review of Reviews and the working man’s Daily Citizen both told their readers the general mantra of Federalism that future peace and stability in Europe depended upon federal solution. As Pegg notes, “in its first issue after the WWI outbreak, the Review of Reviews carried an article entitled “The United States of Europe: The Only Way Out” and every issue of the journal for many months carried at least one article arguing the political organisation of
Europe” (Pegg 9).
Euro federalist ideas were propounded not only because of the Irish question, but also due to the conflict perceived as inherent in the international system (as it would be the case later with WWII). The sovereign states’ absence of international machinery to arbitrate peacefully would be argued even later on. The threat of war always had a catalytic effect upon the intellectual considerations of Europe; as shown by John Pinder, the emergence of particular new ideas (as Liberal tradition) was rooted in these particular concerns. 104
103 On further information on this insightful and perceptive political commentator of British environs see for instance
[66] The Liberal tradition proved to be powerful in the war years. 105 The originally continental theory was adopted by Frederic William Maitland and “developed to a distinctive school of thought of British political pluralism led first by Ernest Barker” (Burgess 1995:
136). As Michael Burgess further notes, this school was further associated with John Neville
Figgis, G.D.H. Cole or Harold J. Laski all of whom substantially contributed to federal ideas and got the agenda for European federalism in Britain. 106 Barker’s Political Thought in
England claimed the discrediting of the state in England; a single unitary state with a single sovereignty being a dubious conception failing to respond to the realities of life. In his studies of sovereignty he even concluded that “every state is a federal society” (Pinder 112).
On the political level, there was nothing like Europe anymore. The ‘Realpolitik’ and an acute nationalism of political representation, the attacks of imperialism – all this contributed to the apparent disappearance of Europe as a political concept. Europe was no more.
105 A source of these ideas was German jurist and legal historian Otto von Gierke who resurrected the federal concept of Johannes Althusius. 106 On British political pluralism see: Hirst, P.Q. (ed.) The Pluralist Theory of the State . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
[67] 8. The post-war era: Back to the nations
The year of 1914 evidently marked the end of one British era, the end of Isolation.
German bombs on London in 1915 signalled that the British territory was no longer invulnerable, one pillar of the Splendid isolation tumbled down. After the First World War,
Britain would find itself inextricably linked with the Continental Europe. But it would take the British decades to admit it. It was a strange period for Britain, when her severe misjudgements of the international situation led to factual breakup of the League of Nations and a system it attempted to construct. For the old majestic Britain, it was the era of at first inconspicuous decline from power and an official obstinacy as far as the needs for responding to the WWI changes were concerned. But it is also the era of reconsiderations of the weird concept of British Imperial Federation and the period, when the European sentiment of British elites and intelligence was furnished with first palpable, though still largely theoretical and frequently from the reality cut off) design.
8.1 The Wilsonian heritage: Idealism, lofty Concepts and return to the nations
‘In Wilson´s New Diplomacy the term Europe sneaked off. The national concept has won and only the extremes remained, “there were only Nationalities and League of Nations roofing over them” (Gerbet 12). Nothing in between remained. This sickly system was unstable from the very beginning and the future would only prove this point.
Lloyd George too remained closely adhered to the old traditional concept of the
Balance of Power (then just dressed in a new robe). Old British Foreign Office line of distance preservence was resumed. The British assumed an orientation towards winning the leading position and dominance in the League of Nations as soon as possible (to have their say on the Continent) and helping the Germany to recover (to prevent France from becoming the Continental leader). Therefore, the idea of ‘Europeanness’ in Britain as well as “the
[68] linkage between Britain and Continental Europe were considerably weakened and enfeebled in comparison to the pre war situation when promising signs of solidarity and unity had emerged between the two units” (Gerbet 13). National advocates of European concept in
Britain and elsewhere found themselves in isolation after the Paris Conference, since official government politics made several steps backwards and as hundred years ago, following the
Vienna Congress, adopted politics of different priorities.
In the post war period, particularly as enthusiasm for the League of Nations waned, the idea of uniting Europe in a federal union was reasserted. Sir Max Waechter, a German born British industrialist, had taken up the federalist cause in 1909. In 1924 he published his treatise How to Abolish War: the United States of Europe , in which he wrote: “Europe is gradually losing its position in the world … My starting point is the absolute impossibility of
Europe being able to hold its own against American competition” (Burgess 1995: 140).
Waechter saw European federation as being based on a ‘European Unity League’ to advance the European ideas, “but it never really became a going concern” (Burgess 2000: 7).
Waechter provided a theoretical support for actual tangible and fervent political activities of Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian, whose thinking had moved on from the Imperial federation to the International federation. Lothian himself would symbolise a transition from old to modern concept, being a man born deep in Victorian era. He had picked up on some of the late 19 th century British imperial federalists such as W.T. Stead, who believed in the wider and more general applicability of federalism and he still relied primarily on a symbolic bond amongst English speaking countries. Priscilla Roberts makes a remark on this and in her research on Lothian and Atlanticism reminds us of the fashion to stress and elevate the secondary concern of Lothian.
“A new generation of historians have drawn attention to the posthumous impact of his and other British calls for world federalism …in inspiring Altiero Spinelli and associated European intellectual federalists to establish what would eventually become the European
[69] Union. Admittedly, John Pinder or Andrea Bosco have drawn attention to the irony that Lothian invariably believed that the closer association of the British Empire or Commonwealth with the United States must be the core and sine qua non of any such union of the European democracies, an outlook he believes accounts for Lothian's failure to put forward any concrete proposals for the development of European unity” (Roberts 113).
In his Lord Lothian and his World , Turner, too, raised the "irony" that "European federalists" have honoured Lothian as the intellectual ancestor of a concept which he would hardly have recognised and which would have been quite low in his order of priorities (Turner
19).
But he would also publish a book: The United States of Europe on the Eve of the
Parliament of Peace in 1899. 107 By 1915, Lothian was arguing for “an organic union of the world.” Lothian gave a lecture in Williamstown USA in August 1922 entitled The Prevention of War , on the need for Federalism to end the anarchy prevailing in international relations 108
(Pegg 12). The awareness of this decline of the European idea in favour of the Nation state had been reflected in Albert Demangeou’s Le décline de l´Europe as well as by others. Unlike at the turn of the century, however, the British remained almost untouched by these concerns of predominantly Continental intellectuals and left them virtually unnoticed.
All above mentioned resulted in a slight loss of prestige of the British Isles in the eyes of Continental intellectuals. An exception in this would be Eduard Herriot who maintained that Britain still is more than a shadow of its formal glory and that her participation in cultural or political unification is indispensable. (Goněc, Idea I , 21). With this conviction he set out to project a European Union within the framework of League of Nations. Needless to say that this scheme was doomed to fiasco from the very beginning, being far more naive than bold
107 The Hague Peace Conference was the ‘Parliament of Peace’ he had in mind. 108 He, in fact, gave a true picture of power, authority and capabilities of impotent League of Nations.
[70] and revolutionary. Briand´s similar attempt less than a decade later would be just slightly more promising but would be swept away likewise.
8.2 British blunders after Versailles and misconceptions of the European question
For 14 after war years British diplomacy was captive to common misconception of strangling of German democracy. The bitter and vengeful Treaty of Versailles 109 found its foresighted opponent. The Lloyd George’s so called Fontainebleau Memorandum was leaked, where he demanded the terms of Versailles bring radically modified: “If she [Germany] feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find means of exacting retribution from he conquerors.” 110 A general parliamentary uproar followed and a telegram of protest signed by some 200 coalition members sent to Paris and published in The Times the next morning. Mr. George then capitulated.
In 1923, when France occupied the Ruhr to enforce reparation payments from the
Germans, Britain typically criticised the French and tried to pose as an arbiter in the continental matters. Nevertheless, the British government acquiesced the French occupation in the end, which led to the collapse of the German currency and the ruin of their middle class 111 (Denman 38). What followed was a stability of mid 20s when Locarno Pact treated
Germany as an equal power, the Deutsche Mark was stabilised and Germany joined the
League of Nations. However, this wise and prudent politics was a matter of momentary favourable international climate. As the Locarno helped to stabilise the West European borders, Britain was once again allowed to concentrate fully on “its own” Imperial matters.
109 Germany was forced to accept guilt for the war, crippling reparations, four million Germans cut off from the Fatherland in the newly independent Poland and Czechoslovakia, and vastly unequal armed forces. 110 The Fontainebleau Memorandum reproduced in Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties . Vol. I, London, 1938, pp. 404 11. Quoted also in Denman, p. 38. 111 In November 1923 an unknown agitator, Adolf Hitler, unsuccessfully attempted a putsch in Munich and was able to trumpet throughout impoverished land his denunciation of Versailles during his trial.
[71] Yet with the Wall Street crash in October 1929 the sky darkened again. 112 American loans dried up and the contraction of world trade was attempted to be solved by two important international initiatives. Both were aborted, one by British intransigence, the other with
British substantial help. Whereas the second will be dealt with in subsequent chapter, the first was a plan by Germany and Austria to form a customs union put forward in March 1931. The
French opposed it; the British, despite official advice to the contrary, supported the denial.
The political consequences we not long in coming and in an unwisely called election in
September 1930, the National Socialists were rocketed from 800.000 to 8.5 million. 113 Thus, despite the already mentioned increasing pressures to involve itself in continental affairs,
Britain preferred to support the ancient and largely old fashioned concept of the “Balance of
Power”, treating Europe from outside. They maintained that “such stance would be the best way to preserve its liberal institutions, it world trade and safeguard its strength” (Young 11).
8.3 Thwarting the Briand Plan and British European thinking in the 1930s
The proposal put forward in 1929 by the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, for a
‘federal and free trade Europe’ is by many considered the first serious suggestion of Federal
Europe in practical policies. As there are numerous parallels between the Briand plan issue and the developments after 1945, this episode is worthy of attention for this topic.
Briand proposed his scheme on 5 September 1929 in Madrid. 114 After the failure of
French aggressive policy, France accepted the reparations payments reduction and tried to develop a policy of cooperation with Germany. Ergo, the Briand plan originated as a French attempt for German cooperation and guarantee of French security by means of embracing
Germany in a European framework. Such European federation, if formed, would help the
112 I owe this expression to Roy Denman. 113 This estimation is to be found in Denman, R. “Missed Chances: Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century”. The Political Quarterly . Vol. 66, No. 1. (January 1995), pp. 36 45. 114 For actual wording of the Memorandum see Stas, K. “A union, not a unity: The Briand Memorandum.” Ellopos. The European Prospect Page. Online 25 April.
[72] Continent stand up to American economic competition. Britain would be a pillar of the whole system, since, as the Paneuropean Movement maintained, without her economic potential no economic structure would be attainable.
However, British ministers showed little enthusiasm for a number of reasons. As early as at the Geneva Conference, British diplomat Henderson demanded concretization of the scheme and its official presentation. At the same time, he warned that Britain would not act against USA or USSR in any way. Later on, Britain would adopt complete neutrality stance and the official line of Foreign Office supported by public press pointed out, that Britain should keep the Commonwealth interests in mind, not some immature concepts of continental politicians. Therefore, to use the words by Vladimír Goněc, Briand Memorandum may include Continent, but Britain would never be included, since such newly formed institution would just unnecessarily double the function of already existing bodies (Goněc, Idea I, 22).
On the economic side, as Robert Boyce has argued “they were opposed to regional trading blocks, preferring a liberal trade policy; they wished to preserve their special ties with
Commonwealth and they did not wish to argue with the United States, since this would restrict their exports” (Boyce 36).
On the political side, no one in government had shown any enthusiasm for ‘Pan
European’ ideas 115 of individuals like Count Coudenhove Kalergi or Edouard Herriot, which had grown in appeal after the appalling destruction of WWI and unreliability of Versailles arrangement. Ralph White argues that Britain was interested in European cooperation to preserve the peace, but wished to achieve this via more traditional methods (White 63).
The Daily Express wrote: “This nation takes no interest in becoming either political or economical part of Europe. We are predestined for better future than this one.” (Daily
Express, Jan.1930) 115 These ideas and hopes for Paneuropa existed since the end of 19 th century and were, at length, revived after WWI by political changes in namely in central and Eastern Europe and by personalities like Edouard Herriot or Aristide Briand.
[73] Winston Churchill would address the same issue with more caution, drawing a clear line between the two entities in question. To loosely paraphrase his view of the United States of Europe, European mass, as soon as it unites itself and forms a Federation or part
Federation, as soon as it realizes its Continentalism, will create an unparalleled organisation, doing so without Russia or Great Britain. He also believed that obsolete hatreds could be appeased by the American federalist model, but Britain, herself, would not belong anywhere.
“…As regards Britain, we have our own dreams. We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked but not compromised” ( United States of Europe , 1930).
Whatever the reason was, few welcomed this scheme. Stresemann, himself an honourable exception, died in October 1929 and Briand, faced with numerous obstacles, “did not produce a detailed version until May 1930 and even then he was contradictory and vague”
(Young 4). 116 The British denial sounded in the highest positions. Even top UN officials like
E. Drummond considered the scheme unacceptable and more detrimental than beneficial to
Europe. Drummond himself was a Secretary of the Commission entrusted with preparation and together with Henderson, British direct delegate, they made sure all efforts would die in vain.
116 He would be criticised later for this indecisiveness and inconsistency, which, according to European Integration researchers, accounted for its final fail.
[74] 9. The 1930s: Britain leaves Europe alone
In the 1930s, any hopes of a European federation receded with the already mentioned economic setback and the development shifted towards exclusive trading and economic blocks. Faced by the balance of payments deficits and the decline of traditional industries
(already quite apparent), Britain created an ‘imperial preference system’ 117 in trades and tariffs, and developed the Sterling Area to protect its share of the world trade. 118 The London
Conference in April 1932 actually buried Tardieu Plan of the Danube Confederation 119 when
MacDonald lured Tardieu with the concept of Franco British dominance in Europe
(subsequently torpedoed by Italy). 120 After that, Britain increasingly acted as an unconcerned observer in European matters, gradually withdrawing and discharging herself from all her obligations in the Continent.
Inevitably, the British got on the train called ‘Appeasement’ taking them directly to
WWII atrocities. While retreating from and disdaining the Continent, Britain was not hesitating to negotiate with Hitler and meet his needs – a peculiar ambivalence and unforgivable and irresponsible manners of the British nations, largely criticised even today. In terms of the international diplomacy, Britain has always been largely illegible and illogical for scholars, but this empiricist ‘Politics of the Moment’ without long range prospects had been an aged vice of British politics; a vice she could afford up till 19 th century, not now.
117 The effects of Great Depression were the search for “sheltered market” and the spread of the protectionist spirit. With a radical change in tariff policy in 1931 2, Britain opened the way for a systematic policy of economic preference. The principle of “home producers first, empire producers second and foreign producers last” was negotiated at the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa in 1932 and took the form of a series of bilateral agreements intended to extend for 5 years. 118 See Young, p.4. 119 Four years later a similar concept drafted by Czechoslovak agrarian politician Milan Hodža. Both of them sketched a central Europe agrarian bloc cooperation and relied on British market to “swallow up” their agrarian overproduction in exchange for consumption of British industrial one. (See: Bosák, T.: Hodžův podunajský plán a jeho reflexe v soudobém tisku. Diss. Masaryk University, 2004). 120 See Goněc, V. Za sjednocenou Evropu. Z myšlenek a programů Huberta Ripky. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2004, pp. 13 14.
[75] 9.1 British short-sighted Appeasement: A failure of momentary prospects
On January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor and British ministers totally misjudged Hitler, spent six years in trying to meet his wishes to end up being fooled. Sir John
Simon, the Foreign Secretary, went a long way towards meeting Hitler’s wishes for an army of 300.000 men. Anthony Eden, Minister for the League of Nation Affairs, further discussed it with Hitler in Berlin (more than any British minister had bothered to do in Stresemann’s or
Brüning’s days). Hitler baffled him 121 and persuaded him and the British ambassador Sir Eric
Phipps not only to agree to Hitler’s proposals ‘but to agree that these should be put forward by the British, for which he received a rebuke from Sir John Simon’ (Denman 39).
Hitler was left with the impression that Britain was prepared to turn a blind eye to his offensive action. He announced massive conscription and rearmament and in June 1934 he was able to breach the Versailles Treaty by an Anglo German naval agreement (the Hoar
Ribbentrop Pact). Britain thus unquestioningly actively participated in laying the basis for the
German armed strength and in violating the international order. Further incomprehensible actions followed. On 7 March 1936 Hitler’s troops entered the demilitarised zone of the
Rhineland. ‘The French Cabinet was split over intervention, but had Britain been willing to join them, they would have marched. The Germans had only three battalions west of the
Rhine and would thus have been forced to withdraw. “This might conceivably have toppled
Hitler” (Denman 40). But Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, was adamant against intervention. March 1936 offered the last chance of stopping Hitler in his track and missing it was a disaster.
121 In Eden’s Diary we read: “[Hitler] seemed to me more sincere than I expected … without doubt the man has charm. Dare I confess it? I rather liked him.” West, R. The Drift to War . London: Bloomsberry, 1991, p.85.
[76] That was a general and official line. Had Britain joined forces with Mussolini, Austria could have been saved from annexation. But Eden, who had taken over as Foreign Secretary in December 1935, resolutely opposed dealing with Mussolini 122 .
9.2 The 1930s from a different perspective
Some in Britain, however, did show an appreciation of the potential gains of an economic cooperation. Among them was Ernest Bevin 123 , then a trade union leader obsessed with the
American large and single market vision. He was showing a fitful interest in the European unity in the 1930s, whereas in 1940s he advocated a popular Anglo French imperial customs union. But his time in this thesis is yet to come.
The historical development, nevertheless, is rarely clear and simple; quite the contrary, it is usually more intricate and should be viewed from both sides. Thus, looking back at the idea of a European federal union (dealt with since the 19th century), we may note that it inspired many others in this period of 1930s. Edouard Herriot, for example, wrote The United
States of Europe (1931). Many others argued this case: Luigi Einaudi, Giovanni Agnelli,
Andrea Cabiati, Maurice Renoult, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Roger Manuel, Hennan Kranold,
Sobei Mgoi, Edo Fimmen.
But, amazingly enough, although these ideas were in the background, the birth of modern European federalism had to a large extent different and somewhat paradoxical origins: the belief in federalism in the British Empire! Ergo, the European integration process owes a lot to the Anglo Saxon countries (since one made the initial discovery of modern
Federalism and the other definitely endowed it with European dimension). Surprisingly, the integration of Europe was most significantly (and in a crucial moment) contributed to by
122 It was widely rumoured that Eden’s notorious vanity had been bruised previously by Mussolini. 123 British trade unionist and statesman, one of the most powerful British union leaders in the first half of the 20th century. He also proved to be a forceful minister of labour and national service during World War II and foreign secretary in the immediate post war period.
[77] those, who have most feverishly been attempting to detach themselves from this process, by those who were most eager to find their own way.
9.3 First major appeal of modern Federalism: Lothian and Curtis
The in the continent largely respected Pan European Union had indeed very little impact in Britain. 124 The British European ideas reappeared in an own peculiar way. A different course of events propelled them to forefront of the intellectual and later public policy among the elites.
Phillip Kerr anticipated already in 1907: “Federation will ultimately come. It’s really only a matter of time” (Pinder 208). Being aware that the situation is becoming serious, Lord
Lothian 125 attempted to alarm the official Foreign politics by developing his “the Prevention of War” theme in Pacifism is not Enough, nor Patriotism Either at the Burge Memorial
Lecture on May 1935. He expressed his fear that the League of Nations was a crippled institution and that Europe was about to repeat the mistakes of 1914. The expert on Lothian’s legacy Andrea Bosco claims that “Kerr’s asset rests in his being able to “give a ‘positive’ interpretation of international relations and in simple form place them in the political science”
(Bosco 472).
That represents an impulse for further initiatives. On 14 th September 1938 three young men from Oxford, Charles Kimber, Derek Rawnsley, and Patrick Ransome, felt desperately that the threat of war could be averted if the states of Europe were united. They organised a meeting for their acquaintances interested in launching a new political movement to prevent the war. Kimber and Rawnsley knew little about the federalist theory, ‘they believed in a
European league with a supranational parliament, law enforcement capability and common defence do maintain peace.’ (Gerbet 10)
124 Founded in Vienna, 1923 by Count Coudenhove Kalergi. 125 For more information see p. 40.
[78] Ransome concretized what they sought as a Federal Europe and in 1938 they set out to seek help from others to establish an effective campaign. They contacted and gained support of many influential and public figures, namely the generally distinguished Lothian and Curtis, who introduced them to others including the mighty Astors family, to William H. Beveridge,
Ernest Bevin, Barbara Wooton, Lionel Robbins or Jack Sinclair. The movement was formally founded (and the fuzzy provisional statement of aims provided) in November 1938. It outlined Lothian’s first substantial pamphlet of what would become Federal Union, The
Ending of Armageddon .
“War is inherent in the relation between sovereign states… A consequence of this anarchy of sovereignties it that every state is inevitably driven to sacrifice the rights and independence of its own citizens in order to increase its own strength in the struggle for existence … Sovereignty inevitably leads to economic nationalism, whereby each state promotes the interests of its own nation regardless of the economic interests … The only final remedy for this supreme evil of our time is a federal union of the peoples so that while every nation is completely self governing in its own internal affairs all the people are united into a single Commonwealth for their common affair.” The interwar years can be also seen as an intellectual watershed in terms of increasing receptivity to the pro European ideas (though mostly on the level of elites).
European federalism was logically seen as means whereby war could be averted. On the other hand, its significance should not be exaggerated since “the dominance of the nation states was still very much of reality both as an institution and in the mind of the public at large” (Lipgens
41).
But it is equally true that “after 1923, whole staffs of periodicals, associated pressure groups in many countries, and at least two dozen books published every year pursued the aim of an effective league of European states against the renewed threat of nationalism” (Lipgens 38).
[79] 9.4 Atlantic vs. European model
Lothian as the inter war Ambassador to the United States naturally related himself to their model. “The Americans had already established their sovereignty, discovered the federal principle … This discovery made possible the development of a system of federal union…”
In this spirit, he saw the task in creating a “constitutional construction which represents a step beyond present federations of states and provinces” (i.e. Commonwealth). 126
He promoted to give free play to national differences and feelings and at the same time organically unite all inhabitants under constitutional law which itself will end war, preserve liberty and make prosperity secure.
Such was the manifesto and shared ideas of the Federal Union, however, differences survived. Kimber, Rawnsley, Ransome or Archbishop William Temple were above all interested in European Union whilst Lothian and Curtis were attracted to the Atlantic federation, particularly as expressed in an influential book by W.B. Curry, The case of
Federal Union , published in London 1939 or in the work by Clarence Streit, Union Now !127 , published the same year. Walter Lipgens considers these publications “a strong backing and real momentum” for the British European ideas. (Lipgens 64). It argued for a creation of a union of 15 democracies with common citizenship, defence, currency, a tariff free market and a postal system. Curry claimed to had been inspired by H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell.
“Within six months more than 100,000 pieces were sold” (Burgess 1995: 141). Lothian supported European federation in an article in Christian Science Monitor in 1938, but, in accordance with Churchill and others, he did not think Britain should be part of it.
126 All quotations refer to Kerr, P. The Ending of Armageddon – Or the Federal Principle as the only basis for international peace, liberty and prosperity . London: Federal Union Press, 1939. Online 15 June. < http://www.federalunion.org.uk/archives/endarmaggedon.shtml>. 127 Streit, C.K. The Union Now . New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1939. Curry, W.B. The Case for Federal Union . London, 1939. Both publications represented a strong momentum for the Federal Union and Curry’s was even published with Federal Union’s official blessing and contains a propagandist epilogue urging readers to join the organisation.
[80] “To breach the traditional style of thinking in British politics, British official and traditional theory of International relations – still deeply rooted in 19th century Victorian Britain – was exceptionally complicated – in fact, its remnants are haunting even today …The British obsessed with modelling the Balance of Power system, the Britain as a ‘guard dog’ of the Continental Europe, the British would determine and adjudicate the history of the whole world, but on the contrary she would not answer for her actions to anybody, nobody would put his oar in her sovereign matters; this still persisted as a recurring motive of British Foreign Office policy”. (Goněc, Idea II, 9). Nevertheless, the minority stream, which has been already touched upon, increased in appeal in the late 1930s as the discontent with Chamberlain’s Appeasement was rising. After the naivety of its (or Chamberlain’s) basic assumption had been confirmed in September
1939 128 , the affiliation to the Continental Europe and the Euro thinking in Britain became more influential and powerful than ever before. For the two years to follow the British image would change considerably. Much of what had been formed and made fast for centuries, was broken into pieces almost overnight. Even though this renaissance of the interest in the
Continent would prove to be a temporary issue, it still represents a vital point for the British
European debate. Barbara Wooton addressed the first public meeting of Federal Union on 18 th
May 1939. It numbered just over twenty local organisations in February 1940. During 1940/1 the support grew with astonishing speed and produced an equally astonishing output of books and pamphlets. In the height of its effectiveness, the Euro federalist movement “produced the average two hundred press mentions each week and by June 1940 there were 225 branches in the movement with more than 12,000 members. The activities included Conferences, study groups, weekend schools, public meetings etc.” (Pinder Mayne 31 2). 129
Such infatuation of the British would not survive the end of the war; in fact it would loose much of its appeal at the end of 1940 and more obviously by 1941. But surprisingly
128 On 1st September 1939, Hitler’s troops attacked Poland and Western allies declared war on Germany. 129 Quoted also in Burgess (1995), p. 141.
[81] enough, British would not be the ones to back out. For this once, it would be the Continent who would disdain and turn down all activities and Britain would feel too proud and lofty to impose herself twice. More importantly, the modern British concept of affiliation and cooperation with Continent was elaborated to unprecedented dimensions. In less than two years, there had been a heyday of British Continental commitment and Federalism unheard of.
[82] 10. Intensification of ‘Europeanization’ of Britain in WWII
The transitional generation of Lord Lothian was superseded by the more or less fully committed Federalists, a generation that would take on his legacy, willing to develop these a few steps further. In the WWII aftermath, few members of this generation would even attempt to put the theoretical accounts on British European federalism into practise, enforce them in
Governmental politics and implement them in the British Foreign affairs. Nonetheless, wartime provided a space for theoretical calculation and agitation only. An ideological superstructure was formed to allow for actual deeds and particular activities to be carried out later.
10.1 European Federalism in Britain: A rise of new generation
John Williams holds: “The British political establishment's habit of giving precedence to the mythological Anglo American "Special Relationship" over the acceptance of integrating itself into Europe reflects its maladjustment to the post cold war era.” (Williams,
J: Europe’s Choice )130 However, that posed a problem already before the war, even though less apparently. One of the tasks or even duties of the generation influenced by Lord Lothian was thus to deconstruct the myths of Isolationism, Pacifism, the protestant based Atlantic
Union and obsession with USA in general. Lionel Curtis 131 set out in this direction.
Curtis still dreamed of “a British led European civilization drawn in equal parts from the Greco Roman tradition and the legacy of liberty bequeathed by the twin revolutions of the late eighteenth century in America and France” (Gorman 4). Nevertheless, he reached a logical conclusion that the American isolationism of that time ruled out the eventuality of
Atlantic Union, an inference quite apparent, though straightforwardly worded for the first 130 Williams, John: “Europe’s Choice.” Federal Union Web . 19 November 2002. Accessed 7 th April 2006.
[83] time. Instead, he proposed a new British orientation on the Continental Europe, whose backbone would be formed by a union of Britain and France. This union would bear most signs of a full bodied federation, “possessing clearly defined institutions with firm powers and authorities” (Goněc, Idea II , 21). To make the whole issue clear and unobstructed, he is considering primarily common defence and foreign affairs. He logically prefers a defence union to an economic one; the economic benefits would be inevitable subsidiary product of this process.
Curtis reached these conclusions while working for the Foreign Office Research
Group with highly regarded Arnold Toynbee 132 , the head of the Royal Institute research division. He had been British expert on Europe since the WWI and had spent the whole interwar period in the Foreign Office service. In 1939, he wrote his First Thoughts on a Peace
Settlement , and Second Thoughts on a Peace Settlement (1940), where he elaborated the dominant theme of British European discourse of that time – i.e. the British French Union. He took up the Kerr’s and Curtis’s arguments and designed a utilitarian and pragmatic liaison with Europe, from which the Union with France would be the first and the only presently passable phase. Toynbee, unlike many others, adopted an exceptionally matter of fact approach to this issue, finally dismissed ideological problems and in the spirit of pragmatic interpretation of history he was searching for a solution to the pressing problem of peace preservation and security safeguarding.
These influential solitaires of British European discourse drew their inspiration from the powerful lobbying of Winston Churchill, an exceptionally pro European element within
132 English historian, philosopher and professor of Byzantology, whose 12 volume A Study of History (1934–61) put forward a philosophy of history, based on an analysis of the cyclical development and decline of civilizations, that provoked much discussion. Toynbee was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (where he later organized his research team). Toynbee produced numerous smaller works and served as director of foreign research of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1939–43) and director of the research department of the Foreign Office (1943–46); he also retained his position at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 1956. A prolific writer, he continued to produce volumes on world religions, western civilization, classical history, and world travel throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
[84] the British political discourse since the early 1930s and an early advocate of the Court of
Justice as the only European authority.
10.2 Remnants of the burdens of the past: The early federalist drafts
The British were scared stiff by the idea of a powerful executive usurping the judicial and legislative power. To paraphrase Vladimír Goněc, The continental inclination to oversizing and overestimation of the executive power had indeed been apparent before WWII
(namely in France) and British with their secular inclination to the contrary, with their crucial Common Law tradition and mistrust of anything that would restrict the power of
Parliament – had a justified and compelling reason. 133
Therefore, British scholars and Federation supporters were in this phase feverishly reasoning the existence of the common judicial body equipped with complex authorities and substituting the missing elements of legislative and especially executive on the European scale. With the mental attitude “We do not wish for another continental Government” and under the influence of The United States of Europe 134 , Churchill’s promotional article, the new movements arose.
Surprisingly enough, prior to 1938 the only political organisation championing the
European idea in Britain was the New Commonwealth Society (NCS), in current perspective only a first step towards the institutionalisation of modern Europeanism in Britain. Formed in
1932, its founding figure and major driving force was Davis Davies. Strictly speaking, NCS advocated not a Federation but a fundamental reorganisation of the international system. It promoted a world order, which owed a lot to federal influences. Its asset rests in further specification of British Federalist views and concerns, in making the views more neat and
133 For discussion of British specific approach to Institutional Problematic, consult the following: Flinders, M.: “Shifting the Balance? Parliament, the Executive and the British Constitution”. Political Studies . 2002. vol.50, pp. 23 42. 134 The United States of Europe , in: Saturday Evening Post, 15.2. 1930
[85] sophisticated. By the end of the 1930s, the NCS, with Churchill as the President, had branches in all English speaking and West European countries. The New Commonwealth programme of November 1939 suggested a creation of the European Assembly. Under this brand new term, however, the disguised Court of Justice was masked; the same arbitration system, the identical powers and authorities. The significance of this institution in British European discourse initially exceeded its factual contribution.
That was discerned by David Davies 135 , a founder and treasurer of the New
Commonwealth Society, who innovated the New Commonwealth Programme in 1940 in his
A Federated Europe .136 There he drafted virtually a confederal scheme preserving the decision making of the member states but challenging the traditional notion of national sovereignty. He depicted his ‘United States of Europe’ as a regional bloc within the League of
Nations. “He urged a reinforcement of the League of Nations by a creation of the [already mentioned] compulsory Court of Arbitration and a strong international body of troops to enforce its decisions” (Lipgens 63, 159). Acting as another British advocate of international policing force to prevent the war, Davies “closed the stable after the horse had bolted” and slightly refined the whole concept, supplementing the Arbitration with an admissible form of an international executive for the British, that is the united armed forces only. His pleas foreshadowed the eventual creation of the United Nations at the end of WWII. Otherwise, the suggested Confederation would be loose enough to allow for exclusively British interests and would not lay any further claims on the member states. Even for British federalists it was tough to break down the limits and prejudices imposed by their Imperial past.
135 Lord David Davies, 1st baron of Llandinam, former Welsh promoter of the League of Nations and a Labour MP in 1906 29. He left the League of Nations idea after the failure of Disarmament Conference in 1933 and created his own society which worked to produce more effective a body. He wrote many books and pamphlets on this theme, including The Problem of the Twentieth Century (1930). 136 Davies, D.D.: A Federated Europe . London 1940
[86] 10.3 Federal Union: Unfolding the European sentiment
The New Commonwealth Society was the precursor of “easily the most important
British political organisation and champion of interwar and namely war [Euro ] federalism, the Federal Union” (Pinder Mayne 21).137
In the later part of this thesis’s insight into the British perception of Continental
Europe, the research logically becomes more concrete and the thesis inevitably shifts from abstract concepts, terms and theories to more concrete and actual personalities – scholars and public figures and their works and findings. In fact, what Britain witnessed at the end of
1930s was an unusual and unprecedented preoccupation with the Continental matters. This preoccupation was, however, no longer represented by lofty thoughts, concepts and treatises.
At that time, the relation of Britain and Continent was given a concrete form by and within the scheme of Federalism.
The European federalism, vital in this respect, employed in part by the New
Commonwealth movement was further contributed to and developed by William Henry
Beveridge 138 , the University of Oxford master and influential scholar who would later on influence such personalities as H. Laski, I. Jennings, J. Robbins or F. von Hayek. The war had merely emphasized the urgent necessity for putting these ideas into practise.
In autumn 1939, Beveridge played a crucial role in setting up a new institution, the
Federal Union, with an intention to adopt a full fledged federal stance and with determination to go a lot further than the somewhat half hearted and timid New Commonwealth. Beveridge attempted to create an actual body pressing on the federalist cause, a body, which would
137 An account in Pinder, J. Mayne, R. Federal Union: The Pioneers . London: Federal Union Press, 2000. 138 William Henry Beveridge (1879 1963), British economist, born in Rangpur (now in Pakistan), and educated at the University of Oxford. He was made director of labour exchanges for the city of London in 1908. From 1919 to 1937 he was director of the London School of Economics and from 1937 to 1944 was master of University College, Oxford. He was elected a Liberal member of the House of Commons in 1944, and in November of that year the House endorsed a government motion for an extensive social insurance plan—the Beveridge Plan in a modified form. Beveridge was knighted in 1919 and created baron in 1946.
[87] finally adopt a lucid attitude towards the Continent and a British connectedness to it. Such effort needs tangible institutions to support it and thus Beveridge instigated a creation of the
Research Institute for Study of Economic and Legal Problems of the Federation.
He necessarily adopted the then dominant theory of British French Union as a core of affiliation with the Continent, but unlike his predecessors he also added Belgium, Netherland,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Island to his scheme. Furthermore, he also showed his capability of foresight and mentioned the possibility of including Germany to the European framework, providing it will repudiate Nazism. The inclusion of Germany became an area of fervent federalist discussion in the wartime. Beveridge and other far sighted Federalists from
Britain and Italy wisely stood up for German involvement in the war aftermath as a means of securing the world peace, to make sure that the fatal mistake of 1920s and 1930s (of strangling and neglecting Germany) would not occur again. A neglect and ignorance can no longer be a solution for Britain. An ignorance, he claimed in his Full Employment in a Free
Society speech in 1941 “is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.” (Burgess 2000: 77). In a universal sense,
Britain must not ignore and underestimate the continental states of Europe anymore. She must at last awoke from her deep sleep and start to communicate with her European partners – not as a beau geste but because it is a necessity for her. This last appeal was still pronounced under his breath, but Beveridge’s successors (and many surprisingly immediate ones) will make this appeal much more eloquent in the years to come.
In May 1940, Beveridge published his Peace by Federation? 139 , where he reiterated his conviction that not only British involvement in European matters, but British integration with Continental Europe might be essential for preserving the peace. In such an integration all nations with democratic system should have a chance to take part, regardless of their dark past controversies. In connection with that he restated the urgency to involve the post war 139 Beveridge, W.H. Peace by Federation? . London 1940
[88] Germany. Furthermore, he specified his Federalist idea by promoting a two chamber
Parliament accompanied once again by the highly favoured Federal Court. By accepting this almost compulsory constituent of British Federalism he gave credit to then already antiquated
New Commonwealth theory. But he offset his insisting on this remnant of Anglo Saxon tradition by means of equipping his Federation with a wider authorization – apart from the
Foreign affairs and common defence he involved trade, currency and migration.
A legal framework for the Federal Union Movement was in large part provided by Sir
Ivor Jennings. 140 Jennings was a highly regarded expert on the Federal law and namely on the constitutional law of the Commonwealth. His significance for this dissertation rests in his faultless, highly systematic and incredibly precise proposition of a Federal Constitution, definitely one of the top achievements of British pro Europeanism ever. He included his draft treaty in his advanced federation analysis A Federation for Western Europe , published in
Cambridge 1940.
The area of constitutional law was the realm of Kenneth Cecile Wheare, another legal expert and a vice Chancellor of Oxford University. He is known for his 1946 study Federal
Government 141 , but few know that even more influential was his What Federal Government is
(1941) as Federal Tract No.4. 142 It represents a largely dogmatic and uncompromising view juxtaposing the order as peace versus anarchy war. In a reproachful tone Wheare adopts a realistic standpoint and argues for “means to providing a system of government in circumstances where people are prepared to give up only certain limited powers and wish to retain other limited powers” (Burgess 144). Both of these must, according to Wheare, be exercised by the co ordinate authorities.
140 Sir Ivor Jennings (1903 1965), Professor of Law at the London University and London School of Economics, the author of Commonwealth states’ constitutions (e.g. Ceylon, Pakistan, Malaysia). On of the proponents of the United States of Europe since the early 30s and since 1939 a member of the Federal Union. 141 K.C. Wheare. Federal Government , 4th ed. London 1963 (reprinted 1980) 142 See:
[89] In the area of Economics, the expert on international trade and distinguished economist Lionel Robbins 143 is worth mentioning. Robbins has been an influential personality, almost a celebrity of the intellectual circles of Britain up till 1980s. Apart from his major concern, he was also an author of the British educational reforms in 1960s. But his prime contributions belong to the 1930s and 1940s and rest in researching the conditions and prerequisites of international trade and in a thorough analysis of the inter war situation as a lesson of ‘How not to do it’ (Goněc, Idea II , 21). Though examining a different field of research, he arrived at similar destination as his previously mentioned predecessors. He called for a guaranteeing international institution but insisted that such a body must have a real legislation as well as executive competence. (Goněc, Idea II , 25). In other words, however tempting it might have been for British to limit integration to judicial area only (that is the
Arbitration or Federal Court), a proper Parliament like as well as Government like body would prove inevitable; there cannot be functional and purposive integration without these.
These issues were already dealt with in his Economic Planning and International Order
(1937) and later on the federalist case was refined in Economic Causes of War (1939). He approached the matter from an economic standpoint of free trade, migration and common currency; this “led him to reject the narrow minded practises detrimental to international peace” (Pinder Mayne 35). In his argumentation for an affiliation with Continental Europe he went quite far, especially for a British. “The cause of all wars”, he claimed, “is national sovereignty and economic protectionism. If we do not destroy the nation states, those nation states will destroy us” (Robbins 73). This publication of Robbins had a decisive influence on the thinking of Altiero Spinelli and thus on forming of the resistance movement in Italy.
143 Lionel Robbins (1898 1984), Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics from 1929 to 1961, an expert on the history of economic thinking, the Life Peer since 1959.
[90] Specifically for the Federal Union he wrote an essay The Economic Aspects of
Federation 144 , which considerably influenced another expert on international commerce and market and ardent pro European Ferdinand von Hayek and his Economic Conditions of Inter state Federalism 145 , where he stressed the importance of economic aspect of potential integration with Continent claiming that “ ...the 19 th century Liberalism failed since it was not capable of dealing with questions of International trade” (Burgess 2000: 17). 146
10.4 The Labour fraction of Federal Union
Federal Union owed no special allegiance to any political ideology but maintained this position only with a great diligence. In the early years the representation of socialist views was manifestly strong. Prof. C.E.M. Joad, the head of the Department of Philosophy and
Psychology at the London University and later BBC’s radio celebrity, sketched his left wing views in The Philosophy of Federal Union. 147
H.N. Brailsford, a prominent Independent Labour Party member and contributor to the
New Statesman , wrote a forceful pamphlet The Federal Idea while other notable left wing sympathisers as Konni Zilliacus ensured the further ventilation of socialists’ views. Such was the socialists’ strength that the Federal Union’s Executive Committee (chaired after August
1941 by Miss F.L. Josephy) “made a conscious effort to seek contributions of a more conservative complexion” (Pinder Mayne 45 6). 148
144 Robbins, L. “The Economic Aspects of Federation”. In: Channing, Pierce (eds). Federal Union , London 1940. 145 Hayek, F.von. “Economic Conditions of Inter state Federalism”. In: New Commonwealth Quarterly . V. 1939.No.2. 146 These ideas were expressed the New Commonwealth Quarterly. Vol.V, p. 131 (Quoted also in Goněc, Idea II, p. 26. 147 Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891 1953), British philosopher, author, teacher, and radio personality. He was one of Britain's most colourful and controversial intellectual figures of the 1940s. A pacifist and peace proponent until the last years of his life, a champion of unpopular causes and a writer of popular philosophical works. He became widely known to the British public as an agile participant in the BBC “Brains Trust” program from 1941 to 1947. 148 The socialists’ dominance on such occasions is hardly surprising given its fundamentally humanist bases, optimistic view of human nature, strong pacifist strain and firm devotion to the case of world peace.
[91] The Federal Union (FU) considerably shaped the thoughts and concepts of then more relevant Labour, namely of young scientific economy adept Harold Wilson149 , who was working for the Federal Union Research Institute. He initiated his steep career working under
Beveridge and affected by his work as well as by those of Robbins and von Hayek, he wrote
The Economic Aspects of Federation 150 , where he pushed forward his older colleagues’ ideas and in concrete proposal suggested a gradual and step by step road to Federation, the gradual lowering of tariff rates and developing a customs union. Following the end of WWII, Wilson will enter upon the political career as a Labour MP and will abandon his talent and promising prospects in his own field for top politics and government activities. Nonetheless, apart from his prime ministership he remained a highly regarded British specialist on the European matters, most notably in the area of Economic integration, the area crucial for the European integration offset.
Another pro European associated with the Labour would be Barbara Frances
Wooton. 151 Wooton had already been researcher for Labour already in the pre war era and during the war she became an influential theoretician of pro European federalism within the party structures – in fact she formed the European dimension of otherwise generally insular and isolationistic Labour politics; she wrote for instance a cogent essay Socialism and
Federation . Her contribution to the Federal activities in Britain in the investigated era was extremely important because in 1939 40 she was a Chairman of the Federal Union Executive
Committee and for the rest of the war she was presiding over the National Council of the respective institution. (Burgess 2000: 27). Wooton, strictly speaking, triggered a radical
149 Harold Wilson (1910 1995), educated at Jesus College, University of Oxford, since 1939 a Federal Union Member, Labour MP since 1945 and British prime minister (1964 70, 1974 76). After that he retained his seat in Parliament. In mid 1976 Wilson was knighted, and in 1983 he was made a life peer. His books include Purpose in Power (1966), A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (1977), and The Chariot of Israel (1981). 150 Wilson, H. “The Economic Aspects of Federation”. In: Federal Union Research Institute First Annual Report 1939 1940 . London 1940 (the title of his and Robbins’s work being identical by coincidence). 151 Barbara Frances Wooton (1897 1998), Labour researcher, theoretician and MP, assistant professor of Social science at the University of London, the Chairman of Labour Party Parliamentary Club in the House of Lords since 1967
[92] change in rigid Labour concepts and in its members’ view of the Continental Europe. To tell the truth, this transformation affected rather numerous individual members; immediately after the end of the war the Labour as a whole would readily abandon the continental concepts for the electoral preferences and the publicly popular (and at that time largely nonsensical)
Welfare policy.
In spite of this, Wooton managed to generate a distinct stream of thoughts within
Labour. She gave notice to her colleagues: Social transformation cannot be precondition of
Federation. Quite the contrary! In Wooton’s view “the federation of Britain and Continental
Europe will be indispensable for initiation of any such transformation and in implication for safeguarding peace, freedom and social development …” (Goněc, Idea II, 27). In other words, there is no point in hesitating and procrastinating the eventual affiliation with Europe until the achievement of an ideal state. Britain cannot manage without Europe and a Federation with
Continent represents a solution (maybe the only one), in fact a precondition for meeting all essential Labour demands, for achieving the desired state – the Welfare state.
In Labour this ideological legacy was accepted and applied in practice by Ronald
MacKay, an Australian born Commonwealth top economist and memorable Federalist as well as a fervent advocate of partnership with the European continent in the post war period. As a chief executive of the Federal Union, he developed his theory as early as 1939 in his extremely influential book, in what was to become a ‘bible or primer of British federalists’ 152 ,
Federal Europe , which was published in London 1940. In his work MacKay criticised the previous attempts of Britain to bring itself closer to the Continent and the former federalist effort as fuzzy and inconsistent. 153 Similarly to Jennings, in a supplement to his exposition he offered his own proposal of a Federal constitution. His variant might not have equalled to
Jenning’s legal exactness and precision but MacKay’s achievement definitely surpassed that
152 I owe this formulation to Vladimír Goněc and his Evropská idea II. 153 He mentions namely the Briand Plan in this respect.
[93] of his colleague in terms of tremendous impact on public, in terms of public popularity and thus became an essential part of the British European relations canon, a British primer of
Euro federalism.
MacKay worked as a Chairman of FU’s Executive Committee and in the critical years saved the organisation from bankruptcy. MacKay definitely ranks among the most influential proponents of an alignment with Europe ever to be found in the British environs and his contribution to the ‘European matters’ would become enormous especially in the post war period of reconstruction and in its endeavour to provide the euro federalist theories with concrete political dimension. His last book, published posthumously in 1961 entitled Towards the United States of Europe 154 is considered a masterpiece even today. Accompanied by
Labour MPs such as Henry Usborne, John Parker, Victor Collins or reverend Gordon Lang he did a great piece for promoting European affiliation in the Commons and elsewhere. The support of Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee was equally noteworthy in the early years
(Newman 77). 155
Arnold Toynbee’s European dimension has already been touched upon in connection with Lionel Curtis 156 . Yet, it remains essential to stress this highly respected and universal scholar’s importance for promotion, propagation and popularization of the European idea in the British Isles. Toynbee as an inspirer and director of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs and head of the Foreign Office Research Group during WWII secured the considerable change in public perception of the Continent and partnership with Europe in the early 1940s. His expert team at the Balliol College, Oxford ensured a wide support for the
Federal Union Movement and its transition into the Federal Movement since the 1th of
September 1939 with mass membership and keen support. He and his team also kept securing
154 MacKay, R. Towards the United States of Europe . London: Hutchinson, 1961. 155 Also quoted in Burgess (1995), p.146. 156 See page 83 and the ‘A rise of new generation’ chapter.
[94] a wide journalistic support of the euro federalism namely by The Times , The Manchester
Guardian , New Statesman and other print (Goněc, Idea II, 37).
Federal Union has been also adept at collecting the essays and pamphlets of its contributors. In 1940 an impressive Federal Union: A Symposium 157 was published and in
1943 the renowned Federal Tracts were republished as Studies in Federal Planning .
Another platform which facilitated a genuine intellectual debate during the war and ensured an impressive array of support from among the established intellectual and political elite was the Federal Union Research Institute (FURI) established in March 1940. This included numerous academics, lawyers, journalists, novelists, economists and even trade unionists. Its energetic chairman was William Beveridge and with Patrick Ransome as the
Secretary, “FURI represented a veritable centre of intellectual activity, organising conferences and publishing federalist literature of the highest analytical quality” (Burgess 1995: 143).
Burgess further reminds us of many prominent figures (apart from those already mentioned) were associated with FURI: K.C. Wheare, Prof. C.E.M. Joad, A.L. Goodhart, Ramsay Muir,
J.B. Priestley, H.N. Brailsford, James Meade, Lord Lugard etc.
Poor financial situation almost ruined the Federal Union and in March 1941 the fully paid up membership amounted only to 1351 with large debts. “The crisis was largely resolved at the end of 1942 and at the end of 1944 the official membership had recovered to healthy
4727” (Pinder Mayne 32). By then, however, the Federal Union has lost its momentum and popular appeal, which has to do with a failure of project drafted in the subsequent chapter.
Toynbee and the Balliol College experts also introduced and to a large extent developed the question of British French Union, which emerged as a main result of their analysis and as a dominant message to British public. The progress and destiny of this most distinct and noticeable concept of British federalism, which Toynbee and his collaborators
157 Chatting Pearce, M. Federal Union: A Symposium . London: Federal Union Press, 1940.
[95] adjusted particularly for the war situation, would prove decisive for the further British orientation.
10.5 Britain and France: The Indissoluble Union?
The general heyday of British sentiment for Europe at the turn of 1930s and 1940s resulted inevitably in an emergence of specific and tangible political actions. The alliance of
Britain and France had existed as a substantial issue in the British pro Europeanism since the beginnings of British federalism and perhaps even beyond. In the quest for securing the
British position and safety, numerous voices appeared, claiming that Britain can no longer stand alone (ex. Churchill). For her safety a securing of other European states was necessary and in fact even indispensable. Long gone were the times when Britain uppishly ignored the
Continental events. British former power dwelling in her extraordinary Empire, in her Navy and perhaps her divergence in general became an expensively maintained illusion. An illusion of former exceptionality and greatness, of what was no longer true, however difficult it might have been to admit it.
There arose a new necessity stipulated by the new geopolitical situation to involve itself in the Continental Europe and preferably to team up or even unify Britain with the strong continental nation state(s) and form at least a security alliance, which would be capable of defending itself against the potential aggressions from Germany and elsewhere. Which strong continental nation to single out was quite apparent, since Germany was the adversary,
Communist Russia or USSR traditionally unacceptable, Habsburg dominated Central Europe and its successional states largely incompatible and all others simply not strong enough and thus pointless to be in agreement with. Therefore, at the beginning of new century the
‘Entente Cordiale’ was made, which sealed the end of an age long rivalry between Britain and
France and in response to the WW I, to the Versailles system and ultimately under the
[96] German danger and the threat of war the cross channel collaboration and partnership emerged.
As it was noted by R.A Wilford, “the ideas developed by the British Federal Union
Movement had an important impact on the wartime development of federalist ideas in Europe among Resistance movements and determined that there would be no more destructive wars”
(Wilford 302).158
The Union had been proposed by continental (i.e. French) pro European politicians
(like Jean Monnet, Paul Reynaud) already before the war broke out. But British federalists and more so the Foreign Office had proved immature to accept this proposition. As a matter of fact, the dominant foreign policy line had still been governed by Appeasement and by foolish hope that Hitler could have been stopped and Britain saved by sacrificing the
Continent. This line had been virtually abandoned as late as after Hitler’s aggression in
Poland. Up to then, Britain had not been offering resistance, but she had not been overly interested.
In the new plight the idea behind the union was: “What has not been united in peacetime, might be united under the threat of war” (Gerbet 8). And thus Toynbee in 1940, with respect to the new situation, worded this already previously delineated idea 159 and at the
Chatham House he in fact put this idea into the context of British conventional balance of power conception; this accounted for its wide appeal on public as well as official representatives and foreign policy line at that time. At least by June 1940 and possibly later the British French Union externally embodied the golden age of British Federalism and posed a concrete manifestation of the British pro European federalist theories.
Equally, the Federal Union 1 st Annual Delegates’ Conference of February 1940 presented its draft programme ‘Aims and Policy’ (adopted on 31 st March), which focused on a 158 For the impact of British federalism on the European Resistance movements see also Goněc, V. Evropská idea II. 159 See for instance Ernest Bevin on page 52 or Lionel Curtis, p.56.
[97] federation of ‘the Allies’ with nucleus being Britain France axis (Forman 76 7). As a matter of fact, German inclusion was explicitly foreseen and the ultimate aim of world federation adopted. These initiatives resulted in energetic intergovernmental discussions, which subsequently developed the union case to an unhoped for and unexpectedly advanced dimension (in terms of the British pro European considerations); and that all practically in a couple of months. At first, the concern of the debates was an economic and Parliamentary union, but since the spring 1940 the topic became broader and involved the parliamentary control of Executive and, astonishingly enough, a co ordinated colonial policy.
Both nations created a Coordination Board chaired by Jean Monnet. 160 Monnet’s pro
Europeanism as well as the presence of other Federalists in the French government accounted for a favourable climate for negotiation. Monnet managed to persuade Neville Chamberlain, nevertheless little happened thereafter and it appears today that the ideal constellation was missed. Together with Robert Vansittart 161 , then Foreign Office secretary, Desmond Morton
(the personal Secretary of Churchill) and Arthur Salter a detailed project has been developed by May 1940 and on 15 th June 1940 presented to Churchill, who seemed to be quite favourable to the project. Britain even reacted by officially offering her ally a lofty and rhetoric ‘Indissoluble Union’, which would include the already mentioned common citizenship, imperial unity and even the single cabinet.
In a grandiose manner it claimed: “At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this 160 Jean Monnet (1888 1979), great personage of European integration, proponent of European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). From 1952 to 1955 Monnet served as the first president of the ECSC's High Authority. The ECSC inspired the creation of the European Economic Community, or Common Market, in 1957.During World War I Monnet was the French representative on the Inter Allied Maritime Commission, and after the war he was deputy secretary general of the League of Nations (1919–23). After the liberation of France, Monnet headed a government committee to prepare a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction and modernization of the French economy. On Jan. 11, 1947, the Monnet Plan was adopted by the French government, and Monnet himself was appointed commissioner general of the National Planning Board. 161 Vansittart, Robert Gilbert Vansittart, Baron (1881 1957), British diplomat, author, and extreme Germanophobe. As permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office (1930–38), he warned the British government of the growing military power of Germany and insisted that Great Britain should rearm. Vansittart espoused a Germanophobic doctrine, which became known as ‘Vansittartism’. Vansittart was regarded by Neville Chamberlain as a hindrance to the British government's efforts to reach a settlement with Hitler.
[98] declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves” ( Declaration on Franco-British Union , June 1940).162
Significantly enough, for Churchill and his half hearted Europeanism it was a deed of zero consequence and what is more, carried out too late. Britain made this proposal just before the Fall of France to the Nazis in June 1940. In reaction to that Paul Reynaud resigned and was replaced by a right wing nationalist marshal Petain; the climate in Paris changed considerably. Consequently, the proposal was turned down by the new French cabinet (in
13:11 ratio), who probably feared a British attempt to take over the French empire as well as the strength and dictation of Germany. Therefore, Britain was left to face Hitler alone and the indissoluble union was quickly forgotten, while it is noteworthy that it was not Britain who swept the Union away. But still, it was revealed that the British official policy still continued to demonstrate an absence of understanding for Europe. Whatever revolutionary changes in her perception of the Continent might have come about, Britain would still retain her reserve and reticence. It is quite presumable that Churchill was hardly serious in proposing the Union.
His main aim was to support Reynaud, to provide him with assistance and prevent his capitulation. It appears now that this radical proposal drawn up by both countries’ officials appealed to Churchill and the British wartime coalition government mainly as a way to ensure the British security – to keep the French in combat.
What is worse, the situation turned upside down. The proud and majestic Albion and its grandiose Empire felt betrayed by the refusal of British helpfulness and kindness, her readiness to descend down and cast herself into the continental matters. Moreover, Britain would now undergo the Blitz and her Finest Hour; a successful defence of her Isles against the continental menace would once again prove that Britain can after all do without a
162 Quoted in Salmon, T. Nicoll. W. (ed.) Building European Union: A Documentary History and Analysis . Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
[99] Continental assistance. Her heroic war would bring about the boost of self confidence and nationalism and subsequently bring back the familiar and proverbial sense of superiority at most levels of the British society.
Federal Union never managed to reconcile two broad schools of thought, those of
Federalism and Confederalism. Both of these emerged inevitably in the Federal Union in
1941 2. F.L. Josephy and others put the European federation achievement wisely before all more grandiose projects. The other tendency, highly inconsistent but nevertheless popular throughout the world, was manifested in Britain by the ‘Peace Aims Committee’ members, particularly Konni Zilliacus or Charles Kimber, and insisted upon an overall confederal world order into which the previously formed regional federations could be fitted. 163 The attempt to clarify the movement’s goals resulted in an uneasy compromise of 1942, which clearly gave weight to the world order proposal and claimed that ‘a federal initiative should not take place independently or outside the overall confederal design” (Forman 79).
This was, indeed, the beginning of the end in terms of Federal Union and its effectiveness in promoting the affiliation to the continent. The entrance of the United States into the war in December 1941 prompted the supporters of the Federal Union to consider prospects of further Anglo American cooperation in more institutional terms. Prof. George
Catlin and others revived an Atlantic Union as a nucleus for future world federation and thus the federalist considerations largely got back to where they started. In fact, the ‘federal
Europe’ direction temporarily triumphed in the Federal Union in September 1944 and an
“immediate aim of the promotion of a democratic federation of Europe as part of the post war settlement was adopted” (Lipgens 148). Yet, in general, by then the European federation cause was with highest probability already lost, in Britain, the momentum missed and the sheer “Europeanness” of British environs gradually evaporated.
163 For instance Zilliacus, a radical socialist within the Labour, was naturally concerned with British Soviet post war cooperation.
[100] In retrospect, the Federal Union exerted an enormous influence upon British public opinion as an avowedly propagandist pressure group and as such it was able to secure a privileged access to the official government circles, which was a unique and powerful combination. Its direct impact is rather difficult to assess but it definitely helped to familiarise the elites’ opinion with the Federal Union and for certain period even ensured a wide support by British public. Towards the close of the war, early in the spring of 1945 when France was taken over by the Allies, the victorious Britain hastily took her obligation back. After all, why would Britain, the conqueror of Hitler and a restored world power band together with devastated and previously collaborating France? For the Foreign Office, new strategies and new partners (like USA) would appear more attractive and alluring. On top of that, Britain had always considered everything in a short run.
[101] 11. The post-war Britain: The power politics and ‘Europe’ as an instrument
History tends to repeat itself and it is particularly quintessential for the historical development that Britain left the war more majestic and in many respects quite different from the British nation that had entered it.
Britain had entered the war as a fading but left it as a victorious nation. The war never entered her soil and in comparison with France and other continental ‘rivals’ Britain stood economically untouched. Ironically, the Anglo American world capitalized on this war in many respects and not only in terms of reputation. The common war experience would definitely bring them closer together, even though this relationship was far more complicated then it may seem. Some allies were great and some even greater and the United States were considerably more hesitant over this new partnership. For the United States, Britain and the
States were truly bound together by language, culture, liberal political doctrine 164 and some have even discussed ‘Anglo America’ in terms of a single power. 165 But they were often divided over dominant issues as the future of colonialism and economic policy. 166 Even during the war and more so after its end “they were two sovereign states with distinct strategic interests and it was more than bitter for Britain to adjust to a fresh position of inferiority to the
United States by 1944” (Young 18). F.D. Roosevelt and US have, after all, several times insinuated Churchill that Britain was considered an outsider in the scheme of ‘Big Three.’ In
Roosevelt’s concept of ‘Four Policemen’, Britain was even the fourth one behind China.
Therefore, the position towards the USSR was, initially, not that of inferiority but that of esteem. As to the Soviets, Churchill despite his later claims to have foreseen the Soviet menace, hoped for a working relationship with Stalin even in 1945, even though he personally hated the arrogant and self important “Uncle Joe,” who kept mocking him with Roosevelt on
164 See references to Atlantic Federalism earlier in this thesis. 165 Namely in the time the USSR was already emerging as a new menace to the West. 166 See references to Preferential system and Ottawa Agreement.
[102] numerous occasions. However, as John Young observes, only “the Red Army’s advance into the Eastern Europe in 1944 5 created an apprehension in the Whitehall” (Young 20).
11.1 The Western Bloc
Thus, for some an idea of ‘European bloc’ would re emerge largely as a way to withstand the Soviet strength and menace. Typically enough for the post war policy, neither this European idea was born in the British heads. Ironically, the idea of ‘Western Bloc’ was first put forward by Stalin himself in talks with the foreign secretary Eden in December 1941.
Stalin actually offered the British military bases to compensate to them for the Soviet predominance in Eastern Europe. This step immediately attracted attention of the exile politicians in London – especially Trygve Lie from Norway, Holland’s Eelco van Kleffens and notably Paul Henri Spaak, who would be pressing for Britain to lead the whole Western
Europe towards greater political and economical unity in the post war era. 167
Numerous influential figures like the Labour leader Clement Attlee or South African premier general Smuts also believed in this vision and need and with the victory in sight even the Foreign Office considered these ideas sympathetically. Such ‘Western Bloc’ would boost the British influence not only on the Continent. By making her the ‘spokesman of Western
Europe’ 168 , it would improve her position in the world and ergo within the Big Three.
Yet again, Eden did not wish to upset the United States since it was vital to keep them involved in war. And more importantly, any attempt to achieve such bloc in the wartime was scotched by ‘The Big European’ Churchill, who argued that “Britain lacked the resources to build a strong and viable military alliance”; and every other alliance was considered unnecessary or even undesirable (Baylis 273).169 At best “Churchill maintained on a loose
167 See Spaak, P.H. The Continuing Battle, 1971, p. 76 8 168 I owe this expression to John Young 169 Consult also Woodward, L. “British Foreign Policy in the Second World War.” Vol. 5 (1976), pp. 181 97. Quoted in Young 6.
[103] ‘Council of Europe’ as a part of a number of regional organisations under the United Nations”
(Young 7).
Nevertheless, despite the Prime Minister’s opposition, the Western Bloc remained a strong and powerful idea of the Foreign Office (FO) and in early July 1945 Orme Sargent, a later Under Secretary of the FO wrote an important memorandum, Stocktaking after VE-day .
There he gave a true picture of British situation and at the same time proved the dismissal of any pro European sentiment in this seemingly European concept. This claimed: “Britain as the weakest of ‘Big Three’ must make itself the leader of Western Europe countries as well as the Commonwealth in order to compel her two big partners to treat her as an equal” (Baylis
275).170
11.2 The Labour politics: The indefinite concept of Europe as a ‘Third Power’
On 13 th August 1945, the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin 171 held a meeting with the
Foreign Office officials to discuss the future British policy towards Western Europe. At the session he outlined a ‘grand design’ to build co operation with the Continent at all levels. The first step would be an alliance with France, a fellow colonial power and, most importantly, still the largest European democracy an element of War federalism continuance. The second step would be extending this basis outwards to the Low Countries 172 , Scandinavia and Italy.
It might once again seem that Britain was ready to undertake the close commitment to the Continent, from which she had historically shrunk. But as it was always the case the state of affairs was substantially more complicated than that and the indisputable fact is that 12 years later, in March 1957 when the EEC was founded, it happened without Britain, who was repeatedly distancing herself to create a supranational institution in Europe. That is to say,
170 Quoted also in Young, p.22. 171 For previous references on Bevin see p. 52 172 i.e. The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg. These countries developed into the Benelux customs union during WWII.
[104] despite all more or less promising indications of association with Continent, the post war
British based their identity, “their political and economic future in the international sphere on the American alliance and the Empire Commonwealth” (Reynolds 178). In other words, the real and genuine pro Europeanism in the British environs disappeared from the seemingly
European concepts of official politics. If there ever was any on the governmental level, it certainly disappeared by the end of the war and most probably by 1942. For many years since
1945, Britain would grasp the link with Continent as a partnership out of convenience and reason, as an auxiliary on her own way to become a world power; she would perceive the alliance with Continental Europe as a an evil necessary for Britain to become an equal team mate in the ‘Big Three’ global game. That was the dominant perception of British Continental relations and this all would soon backfire on Britain who would pay dearly for it. British involvement in Europe, according to Clement Attlee’s government, could only impede
Britain’s own path towards the construction of a socialist miracle of Welfare State. Especially for governmental politics, ‘Europe’ ceased to be an alternative to the Commonwealth or
Atlanticism, rather “a barrier to the New Jerusalem which the post war Labour Party wished to build” (Ludlow 118). British return to the power politics with all its vices will have deplorable consequences when her retarded economic crises comes at the end of 40s and more so after Truman disengages from the European matters. Many writers and journalists 173 have argued the Britain ‘missed the bus in Europe’ and even though they referred first and foremost to the 1950s, this missing of the bus was clearly apparent already in the 1940s and has its roots, as this thesis revealed, long before that.
Some were more aware of the pitfalls and dangers of this politics than others.
Moreover, the wisest already feared the Soviet aggression. Americans were expected to withdraw their troops and a British position, they realized, was still far from being strong. The
British, cheered up by their victory, ignored the lack of financial reserves, the decimated trade 173 For instance Nora Beloff, Anthony Nutting in the 1960s.
[105] and navy and opted for costly social reforms and nationalisation, the pressures were mounting in the Commonwealth for decolonisation. A majority of Labour government would dismiss these alarming facts and the unwise Welfare policy would inevitably ruin the British Isles in a couple of years. Ernest Bevin would be a valuable exception in the highest Labour politics. As writers like Sean Greenwood have shown, Bevin also acted in accord with the dominant stream at the end of the war, but unlike others, he was a true expert and a jewel of Attlee’s
Labour and last but not least he had been influenced by the British Federalism. (Greenwood
430). Ironically, Bevin externally represented perhaps the most anti European and isolationist
British government ever and a number of difficulties dogged his attempts, mainly those caused by two principal ministries – Ministry of Treasury and the Board of Trade.
The ‘Third Power’ Concept has been also popular with the Leftists, since it envisioned
Europe as a self sufficient unit capable of resisting the pressure of American capital on one hand and thus acting as a reliable partner for the USSR on the other hand. This theme was worded for instance G.D.H. Cole, 174 a prominent Labour publicist, who claimed that Europe could enforce coequality only be means of unification and subsequent economic recovery. In effect, this would guarantee the security of and respect by USSR. 175 This interpretation of the idea attracted especially the left wing of Labour, which, led by pro European socialist Richard
Crossman elaborated it in a manifest Keep Left in the spring 1947. 176 As V. Goněc notes, “a pragmatic self assertiveness of restored Europe was also adopted as a vision of prominent
London weekly The Economist ”.177 He continues by saying that “since the early summer of
1945 it promoted an economic cooperation of the Western Europe as a gist of to be federated
174 George Douglas Howard Cole – Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford and author of the monumental 7 volumed History of Socialist Thought 175 He suggested this idea in Cole, G.D.H. On Labour’s Foreign Policy . London, 1946. p. 12 176 Keep Left . By a Group of Members. London 47. p. 38 177 The topic appeared in the editorials since the 2 nd June 1945; ex. “Western Association I. – New Model in Europe?” In: The Economist . 5310. London 1945. Consequent, the issue was intensively pursued since October 1946.
[106] Europe” (Goněc, Idea II , 75 6). All was again based on the familiar yet problematic
‘partnership of Britain and France’ assumption.
11.3 The Third Power or Close Association with Europe: The antagonizing concepts?
Few know that Bevin, as a part of his ‘Close Association’ attempted to revive the
British French Union. The post war relations were already mentioned to be poor and
Churchill and De Gaulle had an intense love hate relationship. De Gaulle was too aloof to wish to rely on British ‘charity’ or to sign a British dominated entente, and he generally despised the British fellow power, America. In the second part of the war, De Gaulle set out two important conditions for any British French alliance, neither of which were the British ready to oblige. “These differences concerned, as 20 years earlier, mainly treating Germany and the Middle East. Bevin hoped to resolve these controversies quickly but then the De
Gaulle’s resignation came and a coalition with strong Communists came to power, which
Bevin had little liking for.” According to Sean Greenwood, the French Alliance was then redefined within Foreign Office as “primarily influencing upon French internal affairs than as a core of larger European policy” (Greenwood 424).
“In April 1946, Bevin sent one of his leading officials, Oliver Harvey, to Paris. When
Harvey reached Paris, the French Communists and Christian Democrats united against Félix
Gouin and his pro European Socialists, the harsh demands on Germany were confirmed and
British generosity was once again snubbed” (George 3). Later that month, British cabinet rejected the French plan to separate the Ruhr and Rhineland from Germany. The development of Cold War tensions between United States and Russia also had a detrimental effect on the
British French relations. Bevin managed to get a Customs Union study established in the early 1947, he interested himself seriously in European cooperation, but the acts of an
Economic Committee formed in September 1946 represent his only tangible success. As
[107] noted by Baylis, the Treasury and Board of Trade reaction was obviously unfavourable 178 and
Bevin’s plans came to naught (Baylis 270). Bevin developed his concept in a more general sense as well. A primary defence concept of Europe as a Third Power was a typical product of the climate of that time and much to this question has been already mentioned above.
In my view, Bevin remains one of the most underestimated pro European politicians since his contribution to the European Idea in largely unfavourable British conditions was extremely valuable in the post war era. In the quest for ‘Europeanization’ of the British politics, Bevin was probably fighting a lost battle from the beginning but he would have had managed much more in the matter, had the overall climate been more felicitous.
Although the late 1940s were an era when Britain did take the lead in building a variety of supra European bodies, “designed primarily both to distribute American aid through Marshall Plan and to put in place defensive structures which might help repel a Soviet attack, it did so officially with misgivings, unwilling to see itself reduced to ‘just another
European country’ ” (Ludlow 111). But Britain was also unwilling to become dependent on the continental armies which were as likely to collapse in the face of a Soviet challenge as they had been in the face of Germans in 1940. Official British policy making was understandably influenced by the ‘lesson of 1940’, “belief that no continental country could be considered reliable and that Europe was vulnerable without American assistance”
(Reynolds 315 20). Furthermore, it may be helpful in this respect to stress the Schaad’s argument that relations with France were also influenced by lack of “understanding the intricacies of coalition politics, and its attitude towards the rapid rotation of governments under Fourth Republic only confirmed this rule” (Ludlow 112). This should be reassessed as an essential aspect in relation to the starting point of British policy towards EEC in the early
1950s.
178 They insisted repeatedly on a preservation of the Commonwealth trade and pursuing the freer world trade, from which Britain had traditionally gained.
[108] 12. The Development of European Sentiment in the Welfare Britain
WWII gave impetus to the idea of European unity. In many of the European resistance groups and among representatives of those governments in exile in London which had been unable to preserve their national independence in the face of the German onslaught, a view developed that only by the creation of some form of European federation would Europe enjoy a permanent peace. In the post war reconstruction era, the desperate need of collaboration was felt mostly by a new generation of continental politicians, who sprang from the Resistance
Movements (for instance Konrad Adenauer, Paul Henri Spaak or Alcide de Gasperi). In
Britain, the situation was different, since the conditions for development were rather unfavourable, as explicated above. But since the last shots of Wehrmacht, many prominent
Britishmen felt a commitment of their powerful motherland to meet the obligations to the desolated Europe. It was Britain, after all, who acquainted the Resistance leaders with the federalist thinking and who led Europe against Hitler; and now that the war has ended, Britain should take the lead again. But still the pressing question remained: How, when and, first of all, for what costs?
12.1 Churchill: Uncovering one European myth
Churchill undoubtedly was a fascinating man and a great personality of many decades of British politics. He was a man born for being famous, born for being politician and a great tactician indeed. He was an icon of British life, a man of clear vision speaking of ‘So we had won after all’ 179 on the day Pearl Harbour forced the Americans to enter the war, announcing the 'Iron Curtain' had descended across Europe, seeing the importance of a unification of
Europe, among other things. But everything he did was first and foremost driven by the desire of his own greatness and was serving the purpose of protection and aggrandizement of the 179 “So we had won after all! … Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.” (“RWN’s Favourite Quotations from Winston Churchill.” Right Wing News . 2001 6. Online 15 June. < http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/churchill.php>.
[109] British Empire. It is important to realize what kind of person Churchill was to disclose that the
‘Great European’ myth is to a large extent another ideological simplification created by
Churchill’s succeeding admirers. Since if we reconsider Churchill’s Europeanism in the context of his era, we find out that in comparison with Jennings, MacKay, Toynbee,
Beveridge and numerous others, Churchill’s European idea in the 1940s was largely a rhetorical exercise and his main (although less valued) contribution to European discourse in
Britain rests in the early 1930s.
Churchill’s post war Europeanism is clearly overestimated and ‘ideologized’, since his intentions were primarily British not European centred. But Churchill was more visible than others because of his incredible talent to provide his lofty ideas with pompous and bombastic shape. Every oration of Churchill appealed to millions of people and was extremely influential since his divination like speeches were almost ‘Britishly splendid’ to listen to. We will find out that it was this immense influence he managed to originate, the presentation of his concepts not their actual content, that represented his chief credit for British Europeanism.
Behind the lofty schemes, there lurked the Little Europeanism and the intentions behind these purposefully indefinite concepts were frequently highly nationalistic and almost anti
European in their character.
In the 1930s he indubitably took over the role of organiser and the most visible instigator of the unification of Europe. As a great foreseeing politician he discerned the malfunction of the League of Nations system and the threat it could give rise to. He became a powerful cobelligerent of Briand and still during his lifetime on 15 th February 1930 he published the already mentioned article The United States of Europe , which supported Briand,
Coudenhove Kalergi and alike. As it was noted, the Great War produced an understandable desire to ensure that no comparable carnage could occur again. For many it also further cemented the perceived link between the problematic Continent and bloodshed and this is the
[110] starting point for Churchill’s observations. Unlike many others, however, he wisely arrived at different conclusions. In this article, he in his characteristic manner compared the idea of
European unity “to a fire which had smouldered for years but which was only now at stage where it was likely to set alight the ‘rubbish heap’ of Europe.” (Ludlow 109). He wrote:
“We must regard this heap a little more closely in the glowing light. It has been the growth of centuries, and even millenniums have passed since some of its still existing materials were deposited. In the main, it is made up of the bones and broken weapons of uncounted millions who brought on another to violent death long ago … But in it, mixed up with all this litter, scattered about and intermingled, are some of the most precious and dearly loved treasures of the strongest races in the world …” (Saturday Evening Post, 15 February 1930). The conclusion to be drawn from this continental mix of barbarity and civilization was that Britain should do the maximum to encourage Europe to unite. And this was the dominant message of Churchill in terms of Europeanness.
Churchill represents an embodiment of twin beliefs easily traceable in the British
European discourse throughout the 20th century. First, British should not let herself be involved in the instability of continental Europe, and second, that British involvement would stabilize the situation on continental side and ensure that matters would not slip out of control.
Churchill did not think highly of the continent. He was at first aware and afraid that its fragmentation could cause troubles for Britain and later wisely realized that the limited unification can vice versa be profitable for the declining British Empire; his intentions were primary self serving and long antiquated in modern British European discourse. There was the old fashioned idea behind it that Britain should stay apart from this process as a powerful conductor and controller of this process and would allow only what is beneficial for her. In comparison to the ideological base of The New Commonwealth Society or The Federal
Union, Churchill’s ‘Europeanism’ was largely a disguised nationalism and ‘all serves to
British interests’ approach. This would manifest itself in the late 1940s and the early 1950s.
[111] Churchill referred to Europe on numerous occasions but a lot more often when he was in the opposition. The mischief was that, while in office, his European activities considerably decreased. One can thus trace only two major ‘European speeches’ in the wartime. Moreover, as Václav Veber points out its primary purpose was ‘to affect the American policy and move
Roosevelt to enter the war’ (Veber 187). Another display of European sentiment would be
Churchill’s memorandum to the Conservative heir Anthony Eden from autumn 1942.
Churchill refers here to the ‘resurrection of Europe’ and of ‘defunct fame of parent continent of modern nations and civilisations.’ He reminds that it would be a tragedy if Russian barbarism subdued ‘the culture and independence of ancient European states’, while he continues to explicate that ‘Europe must move ahead concordantly’ and that he ‘looks forward to the United States of Europe, when the territorial boundaries would be minimized’ (Veber
188).
As always, there occurred enough words but few deeds followed. When, for instance, still before the D Day Duff Cooper, Churchill’s advisor on Foreign Affairs suggested a creation of Europe as a bloc “between American power and Soviet imperialism.” 180 Churchill refused Cooper’s proposal and in practise he unequivocally supported Roosevelt. On the occasion of official meeting with de Gaulle he privately informed the French leader that if there was a choice between America and rival European system, he would always decide for
America (Kersaudy 301). 181
Winston Churchill dashed into the post war integration considerations. As a matter of fact, Churchill has always preferred Atlanticism and Anglo American cooperation to any form of affiliation with the Continent. A wise and sage politician and great tactician as he was, he nonetheless realized that mere strengthening of this alliance will not be sufficient to
180 In effect this was a foreboding of the post war ‘Third Power’ concept. 181 These words were later remembered by de Gaulle and gave rise to the leaders’ mutual bitterness.
[112] avert the USSR aggression. 182 This was presented in 1946 at Fulton. Next to the ‘A A alliance’, which was a rudiment of the famous speech, 183 Churchill proposed a creation of a
‘new union, which would in the long term disqualify no nation. This by the way message and obviously a practically impossible idea was to be specified urgently but it was carried out by others; Churchill will henceforth remain distinctively (and one would dare to suggest purposefully) indefinite.
The renowned Zurich speech 184 was more Europe accented. It presented a specific and in the European debate context highly valued pragmatic moment. The proclamation can be summarized as follows: With respect to the USSR should we, who at present have ‘the will and the prerequisites’ begin immediately. The American nuclear protection will cease shortly and there is not much time to hesitate with the first steps. Churchill further appealed to France to reconcile with Germany and take a moral lead in the Continent. When it came to the composition of the authority presented, Churchill was predictably and consciously fairly vague. He referred to a ‘reviviscence of European spirit’ and as to the European bodies he insisted that its strength should never surpass the material strength of individual states. British position in this enterprise remained unclear and later a positive ‘Britain alongside Europe not in it’ approach was implemented.
The asset of Churchill’s Zurich Speech as well as his post war European discourse in general rests in definition and delimitation (though most probably also unintentional) of the to be European strategy. He also “underlined the essence and heart of the integration matter”
(Pagden 2002: 217). The credit goes deservedly to him for his exceptional assessment of the current situation and his extremely influential appeal for an immediate motion. He set in the
182 Most probably he was also coming to realize the overall unwillingness of US to throw itself in such partnership (See p.102). 183 Most people tend to overstate the reference to the far famed ‘Iron Curtain’ in this respect. Although this was evidence of Churchill’s exceptional political wisdom, in the general context of the oration, this particular mention was rather insignificant. 184 All further references to “Winston Churchill’s Speech to Academic Youth of 19 th September 1946.” JEF Europe. Young European Federalists. 2004 5. Online 15 June.
[113] motion the ‘two speed Europe’ and thus unknowingly inspired the Continent and showed how to start the integration up without hovering Britain.185 He also enforced the ‘little Europe’ concept (most probably without ever wanting to do so) and this originally defence and anti
Soviet motivated project led Europe to realize that all wide spectral concepts are not realist, which meant a first step towards the functional integration designed by Monnet and others.
Churchill thus provided an impetus for Continental Europe, which translated his down to earth and stand offish views to its own discourse, equipping it with a concrete dimension.
Churchill himself did not long for such far reaching results. He languished for his own fame and admiration. He wished to be directed in a great breadth. He had Britain and
Commonwealth in mind; he was an ardent ‘Atlanticist’ and looked forward to the prospects of
Anglo American cooperation. But he was wise enough to realize that a British idyll of this sort requires the collaboration with stronger Continental Europe if the Soviet threat was to be contained. In other words, British politics according to Churchill stood on a tripod; the
Commonwealth – the special partnership with USA and in the last place interrelationship with
Continent. That was the majority view of the Conservatives, traditionally viewed as Europe inclined, who, ironically enough under the leadership of “Great European”, make effective what is generally termed the “great Conservative betrayal of European idea” (Lipgens 381). 186
These Conservatives acted since the late 19 th century as the adherents of European federation as the only chance for Europe. 187 They claimed since the Victorian era that Europe must free itself from constant horrors, wars and armed peace, which “oppresses the spirit and eclipses the prospects of every nation” (Lord Salisbury, 1897). Churchill indeed was a great though fairly reluctant European whose incredible appeal accounted for much of the future 185 Author refers to the launch of functional European integration process in the early 1950s. 186 As reminded by Lipgens this betrayal of European ideals by Conservatives in the decade of 1945 55 is also referred to in Julian Critchley’s Eminent Europeans . “The Federation of Europe is the only hope we have,” said Lord Salisbury, Tory Prime Minister in 1897. How strange this sounds today!” (381). 187 Still, once again the separation is to be noticed. This notion of Conservative governmental circles was overall sympathetic to Europe but considers Britain apart from Continent and hints at its perceived desperate situation and its unsound character. It further suggests the suspicion and mistrust and as with Churchill later the role of Britain herself in the suggested Federation is not mentioned.
[114] success of the European integration, but less transparently he also contributed to thwarting the effectiveness of the European cooperation, to hinder its development and was never able to defy the said British prepossessions.
As an unprecedently authoritative politician, honoured worldwide as the war hero and saviour of Britain and the whole Europe he represented a highly respected guru for the
Continental Europe. He was temporarily a freelance politician, which he was by all means skilful at utilizing. His standing for himself definitely contributed to the credibility of
Churchill’s European activities and intentions behind his promotion of Europe. On the other hand, it is also probable that Churchill used these activities as well as his position to make himself visible and at the same time to deftly obstruct the Labour government, as suggested by Pierre Gerbet etc. Gerbet argues this ambiguity of Churchill’s Europeanism: “Churchill ... took advantage of his popularity and hindered the Labour policy with enthusiasm ... His enthusiastic speeches were ambiguous ...” (Gerbet 49). Wendell Mauter adds to the point: “In the post war years, his advocacy of European unification served as a forum for re establishing his status in his own party, in Britain, and on the international scene” (Mauter 69).
Pierre Gerbet further reminds us of the inactivity of Labour in the European matters and aptly points at Churchill’s part in the post war Labour orientation; Labour could officially hardly adopt a pro European policy since this was a primary political arena of Churchill.
Churchill took a stand of British chief propagator of Europe and any pro European concepts would conceive his point and thus play into his hand.
In terms of propaganda, Churchill managed a lot for British European relations but his inner conviction differed significantly from those of Reynaud, Spaak or Monnet. His
European sentiment was misinterpreted by his contemporaries who relied on him to bring the
Labour Britain to Europe and who nourished promises that Britain will give a half turn when he becomes Prime minister again. And today it is once again fashionable to put his European
[115] thinking on a pedestal and the researchers tend to forget that Churchill’s approach to Europe was quite different from what they try to insinuate; that Churchill was first of all a prideful individuality and orator always keen on making himself visible, an extremely talented politician far more provident and foresighted than the others; that he was a Big Englander, an ardent Free Marketer, a liberal Commonwealth politician and in addition to all this he was also a promoter of Europe.
But with regard to the advancement of European concepts of his time he was rather a liberal nationalist who adopted a restricted European idea; the restrictions and limits of his
Europeanism to be clearly revealed in the era to come. Effusively expressed, his European concept was that of Britain as a saviour of Continental Europe, as a positive power and ultimate authority complaisant to help the fragmented backward and pitiable Continent. The
Continent was then used as a tool profitable for Britain, mainly for her security; something
Britain can take advantage of on her way to becoming an Imperial world power. In fact,
Churchill’s European concepts were, in terms of an ideological superstructure, the reworded
European consideration of 18 th and 19 th centuries 188 and as a logical consequence, Churchill was hence willing to go only a few steps further. Churchill was aware what the era required and he knew well what the public wanted to hear; but his European platform remained in essence the same since his early political career in the imperial Edwardian Britain until the honorary presence in the House of Commons in the late 1950s. By then his European thinking was absolutely insufficient and in his years he would effectively act as an obstacle to other than theoretical involvement in European matters.
I would like to conclude the revelation of ‘Churchillian’ European myth using brilliant words of Hugo Young.
“Anyone wishing to explore the puzzle of Britain's relations with continental Europe in the twentieth century's second part must begin with Churchill, and not just because he came 188 See the tidings of Gibbon or Macaulay early in this thesis.
[116] first. In the history, Churchill's record plays as important a part as the aura that came after him. The last begetter of British greatness, he was also the prime exponent of British ambiguity. In him the two strains mingling in Britain's post war presentation of herself — illusion and uncertainty — had their most potent source. He epitomized the characteristic consistently displayed by almost every politician, irrespective of party, who came after him: an absence of steady vision on the greatest question concerning the future of Britain in the last fifty years. But he also spoke, none louder, for the reasons why such unsteadiness did not matter: why the issue of Europe could always be the plaything of fickle British politicians, because there always existed other possibilities for Britain, growing out of imperial history and military triumph” (Young, H. 6 7).
Churchill was called the father of `Europe', and he has done much to justify that label. But he was also the father of misunderstandings about Britain's part in the Europe, he so frequently lectured on. He encouraged Europe to misunderstand Britain, and Britain to misunderstand herself. Churchill’s case clearly illustrates the point reiterated several times in this thesis: the most grandiose and the most visible need not necessarily be the most valuable and momentous for the issue concerned.
12.2 Churchill’s appeal’s outcome and European dispositions in the post-war Britain
While Churchill’s true intentions behind his plans and theories on Europe remain highly disputatious, their huge appeal in many spheres of British society is not. The
Churchill’s heritors’ plans and arrangements were, however, more European oriented and although the Europeanism of the new generation was not so glittery and showy, they acted in a more forthright and sincere manner. Nevertheless, their today largely underestimated advanced views and realistic concepts found little response in the British government.
[117] As a lead in, the post war years of 1946 9 represented a heyday of European federal ideas and organisations sprang up across the whole continent. In Britain the situation was ostensibly identical. The European sentiment in the British Isles seemingly continued to flourish, but in fact these were predominantly “reverberations of the war ardour for continental Europe” (Dinan 12). However, there remains an indisputable fact that British scholars, pro European theoreticians and Federalists formed a constitutive part of the post war
European discourse in general and that in Britain there was a strong sense of Europeanness among numerous prominent personalities of British social and political life.
One of these, no doubt, was a great figure of British pro Europeanism, at present almost forgotten and undervalued Duncan Sandys, a close ally of Churchill and his son in law. 189 Sandys was an immensely ardent worker for European case and numerous pro
European achievements in the post war Britain, namely the inception United Europe
Movement, should be appreciated as his merits. Sandys’s further significant achievement was the creation of the British United Europe Committee, a representation of pro European
Conservatives and Liberals. The Executive Committee of Labour refused to take part in this institution with a reek of ‘Churchillism.’ Since the end of 1946, Sandys uncoiled his initiative internationally. The originally rival French United Europe Committee 190 showed a rather leftist and socialist inclination and therefore could not come to terms with Churchill’s anti soviet sentiment and tirades. Sandys was skilful enough to reconcile the two major pro
European streams and due to his weariless effort he provided a single roof for other
189 Sir Duncan Sandys (1908 1987), since 1974 Baron Duncan Sandys, British politician and statesman who exerted major influence on foreign and domestic policy during mid 20th century Conservative administrations. He was first elected to Parliament in 1935 as a leading opponent of Appeasement and proponent of military preparedness. During World War II (1941 4) as a Secretary of the Minister of War Sandys became expert on antiaircraft warfare; as chairman of the War Cabinet Committee for defence against the blitz of German bombs on southern England (1943–45). Since 1944 appointed the Minister of Works, Minister of Supply (1951 4), Minister of housing and local government (1954–57), Minister of defence (1957–59), Minister of aviation (1959–60), Secretary of state for commonwealth relations (1960–64). He was made Peer in 1974 and elevated to the House of Lords. 190 Le Conseil Francais pour l’Europe Unie (Chairman Edouard Herriot).
[118] organisations as well. 191 Since December 1947 the Joint International Committee of the
Movements for European Unity was created and éminence gris of British pro Europeanism
Duncan Sandys became Chairman of its Executive Committee and a chief organiser and coordinator of the European activities leading to Hague.
As a matter of fact, Sandys deserves credit for acquisition of a whole range of influential authorities for the Euro federalist matter. “The United Europe Movement paved the way to Hague Conference and to the subsequent formation of the Council of Europe”
(Loveday 620). Sandys managed to reconcile the differences with the French federalists and unified the British and Continental federalist movements. He became a coordinator of this liaison with the Continent. The spectacular Hague Congress brought to the fore great personages like Churchill, de Gasperi, Spaak and others and it was a splendorous manifestation of common European sentiment. In effect, however, it was the beginning of the end and the resultant Council of Europe was born as a dead child. It remained a dead track of
European integration process, since the already mentioned official British defiance to the prospects of European bodies with actual authorities and powers of decision.
Since October 1948 Duncan Sandys was in the lead of the International Executive
Committee and remained the executive driving force of the European Movement. The Vice
Chairman and Finance administrator post belonged to Lord Layton. Other important British personalities in the additional Council of Europe committees were for example H. Dalton or
E.C.S. Wade for the Academic Committee (since February 1949), the reporter of Legal
Committee David Maxwell Fyfe. “Further, the Assembly provided opportunities for the younger energetic Tory politicians such as Harold Macmillan, David Eccles and Robert
Boothby to gain wider status for their ideas by serving as delegates” (Mauter 4). Furthermore, it must be noted that Britain noticeably contributed to the economic aspect of the European
191 Since the end of July 1947 he established contacts with EPU, LICE (International League for Economic Cooperation), UEM and numerous others. Together they set up a single common committee.
[119] integration through the British national section of European Economic and Federal Union 192 , which was tardily formed in 1948 and whose members included Lord Beveridge, Sir W.
Layton or Sir H. Butler. (Goněc, Idea II , 40)
Churchill’s call in Zurich in September 1946 for the United States of Europe and his creation and leadership of the British United Europe Movement (UEM) in January 1947 was matched by the Leftists’ less ostentatious though more contributive activities in the Labour
‘Europe Group’ created in December 1947 in the Commons. In the midst of the Council of
Europe disputes, the socialist attempts to embroil swivering British government amplified.
Unlike the Conservatives and Liberals, “Left wing politicians were persistently persuaded that a wider European cooperation is virtually impossible without a support of Britain and her far famed Labour Party” (Goněc, Idea II , 41). The pro integration forces concentrated around
Ronald MacKay and Richard Crossman.
In December 1946 some of the most committed federalists, many of them the
Resistance leaders, came together to form the European Union of Federalists (UEF), whose aim was unsurprisingly to establish the federal United States of Europe and their strategy was
‘to move simply and dramatically to establish a constitution for a Federal Europe’ (George
2). 193
The powerful Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe was given an impulse by the fading away Independent Labour Party and its inheritors within the Labour. The major representatives were Bob Edwards, F.A. Ridley or John MacNair and as early as 1944 the influential publication The United Socialist States of Europe was published. 194 Edwards and others maintained that the once famous British Empire was unstoppably breaking down and the ‘closeness to Europe’ is the only way out. On the 23 rd of February 1947 at the London
Conference the International Committee for the Unites Socialist States of Europe was 192 Union Économique et Féderale Européenne. 193 For further information see:
[120] established, led by Bob Edwards. The following Montreaux Conference went ahead with the participation of the left wing of Labour, most notably Fenner Brockway 195 or Michael Foot 196 .
In 1947, however, the ILP was incorporated in Labour and a distinct leftist pro European platform gradually vanished. The Labour majority would then suffocate the Socialist
European initiatives.
Another inadvertent achievement of Churchill’s powerful rhetoric was the advanced, purely continental parallel worded in the Hertenstein Programme 197 and pursued in European
Union of Federalists (EUF). The inter war European Parliamentary Union (EPU) of
Coudenhove Kalergi on the contrary inspired the pro Continental personages in Britain.
Kalergi at first suggested Churchill the outright revival of EPU under a joint administration.
Churchill, Duncan, MacKay and others were all reserved towards this suggestion – besides other arguments, they perceived that Kalergi’s project was already antiquated. Renowned
Kalergi however initiated a creation of the National Committees for United Europe in numerous countries and Britain was no exception. In the House of Commons, a group under the leadership of Gordon Lang was formed. This later shifted its focus rather to a world federation, whereas the European federalists at first remained loyal to Churchill. Nevertheless, in 1948 after some hardships the British National Committee for Europe was eventually created. At the first congress of EPU in 1947 the draft of the European constitution was adopted. The constitution was drafted by Ronald W.G. MacKay, by then a factual guiding light of EPU. 198
195 lord Fenner Brockway, Labour MP (1929 31, 50 64), a prominent ILP politician, MP (1931 33) and Secretary (1939 46). 196 Michael Foot (1913), leader of Britain's Labour Party (1980 3), raised in a Liberal tradition but turned to Socialism after the 1930s crisis. An influential newspaper editor and columnist (1937 74), Labour MP (1945 55, 1955 60), 1974 6 Secretary of the State for Employment, 1976 9 Leader of the House of Commons; a distinct pacifist an promoter of nuclear disarmament. 197 See: http://www.federalunion.org.uk/archives/hertenstein.shtml 198 He was the first Vice President of EPU, the chairman post being symbolically occupied by Coudenhove Kalergi and the president being less distinctive Georges Bohy.
[121] In December 1947, in the intentions of the EPU, MacKay managed to organise an official support for European matters by grouping together Labour MPs and created the
Labour Group for Europe in the Commons. Then, in March 1948, the cross party collaboration between MacKay and Robert Boothy, the chief Conservative European federalist, “produced the All Party Group for European Federation numbering cca.133 MPs”
(Salmon Nicoll 17). This organisation reached agreement on a motion advocating a new
Assembly for Europe and functioned as an effective lobby group within the Parliament.
The climax of MacKay European activity as well as that of the EPU in general was the
2nd Congress of Interlaken from September 1948, where MacKay introduced his detailed
Federation plan, the shockingly progressive Interlaken Plan. It promoted an advanced idea of integration with continent in wider sense – that is economical and political integration. The prospects of British European relations seemed more than bright; the idea seemingly flourished in British life in general, surprisingly including the British parliamentary politics.
But the following development was forestalled by the unsympathetic government line and towards the end of 1940s the British active pro Europeans got into isolation. The year of 1949 represented an ultimate schism of the governmental politics and the pro European initiatives.
At the Conservative Party Conference in October 1949, Sandys introduced a motion supporting European unity. “During the ensuing debate, sentiments were expressed opposing
Britain forming a ‘subordinate unit’ in ‘some rigid federation of Europe from which the
Dominions kept aloof” (Mauter 6). Sandys, MacKay and others were forced to distance themselves from their continental commitments and the authorities themselves found themselves in unenviable situation, being stuck in between two millstones.
These federalists feared the “Little Europe” solution and the possibility that the process of integration would be kicked off leaving Britain behind. They realized that the
British position was already different and Monnet’s admonition of January 1949 of “We
[122] might as well start without you” sort was to be taken seriously. Therefore, the British personalities in question endeavoured badly to reinstate the communication on one hand and on the other hand under the motto “Closer to Reality”, “they resorted to delaying tactics, scrupulousness and pedantry in the European bodies, which in reverse resulted in their being criticised by the continental representatives” (May 71).199 The momentary situation appeared unsolvable. MacKay himself came to realize this reality in his treatise Western Union in
Crisis .200 It became increasingly apparent that Britain represented the main bother and the political elite (not only that of Labour) continued to be inflexible. This surfaces in Churchill
Attlee correspondence on the Hague Congress. Attlee is convinced it is a ‘premature farce’.
All this is solvable by means of intergovernmental diplomacy and Labour is not likely to solve it otherwise 201 (Gilbert 424 5). Shortly after, the top British representatives in the
European bodies were forced to resign. 202
The British continental considerations did not seem absolutely naive in the immediate aftermath of the war, “which had displaced the old national elites and turned the structure of
Europe upside down” (Lipgens 44). But, unfortunately, this disruption not only created a possibility of a new start, but also “hindered the necessary rapid constitutional convention”
(George 2). British official representation has indeed posed as a major obstacle in the entire process. By the time the European adherents met in Hague – in May 1948 the old political structures had already been re created and national governments had been restored throughout
Britain and the world in general. There indeed was some public sympathy for the federal cause and at the Hague Congress important national political figures (including Churchill)
199 Especially notable is the Federal Pact issue in the Council of Europe, one of the attempts to create an actual political authority. Sandys himself supported this matter and gave his consent but he was coerced by the government to argue its prematurity and sketchiness. 200 MacKay, R.W.G. Western Union in Crisis. Economic Anarchy and Political Union . Oxford, 1949. 201 “Attlee to Churchill,” 21 August 1948, Churchill Papers , 2/18, quoted in Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill , Vol. 8, 424 25. 202 Sandys was forced to do so shortly after Britain had vetoed the statute of the Council of Europe. He was replaced by Paul Henri Spaak.
[123] spoke in favour of the European Unity. But words are cheap and when the time came to turn them into reality the commitment was considerably less evident.
When the Labour of Clement Attlee declared that it was not about to assist in the creation of a federal unit, the federalists consoled themselves with the already mentioned argument that the Conservatives would soon return to office and then Churchill would reverse their policy. This would happen in October 1951. However, in late November that year Sir
Maxwell Fyfe, the Home Secretary and a renowned pro European would be telling the
Assembly of the Council “that Britain could not go along with the schemes that were being hatched to develop the Council into a European government” (George 3). Mainly, though not solely, for this British stubborn opposition, the highly ideological constitutional strategy of
Federalism had failed and it became obvious to the proponents of Federalism that a different strategy had to be adopted.
This was at the verge of 1940s and 1950s, when the functional model of European integration by sectors was developed by Robert Schuman, P.H. Spaak. But this would be the activity of the Continental pro Europeans; the British Federalism and pro Europeanism would at this point stay aside, being backgrounded by the official Euroscepticism.
The major European bodies’ schemes would come to reflect the British unyieldingness shortly and adopt a final decision to set out without Britain 203 . Ironically enough, this originally Churchill’s strategy will be applied against Britain herself, since the official British representation proved, in Churchill’s own words, feeble prerequisites and hardly any will.
203 This was adopted throughout 1950 and at the beginning of 1951 respectively at the congresses of Venice and Konstanz.
[124] 13. Conclusion
As a conclusion to this thesis, the following can be pronounced: We must recognise the significance of the distant past, stretching back at least to the Middle Ages, which helped to shape and mould the early concepts, political attitudes and expectations of the emerging
English nation. This legacy determined today’s customs, conventions, habits and popular traditions. These gradually shaped the British identity, the European dimension of which is the main subject of this research.
I argue that the continuity of European ideas in British conditions derives directly from the making of Britain, from the early processes of the state building and national integration, both of which were distinct and peculiar in the UK. The research on national identity (or identities) of this multi national state is central to the sources of British federal tradition and they are especially important for the way in which they have shed a new light upon the contingent nature of Britain.
These dimensions provide us with an alternative perspective of the British past, which rivals the unitary orthodoxy present in numerous historical researches. Britain (and later the
British Empire) and Europe (the Continent), whose relation constitutes an analytical framework, used in this dissertation to provide a complex portrait of the British evolution.
Purposefully producing a coherent developmental perspective of this evolution, it is argued that it is a crude oversimplification to go as far as to claim that Britain (and her identity) is essentially anti European, which is an established commonplace among current researchers and scholars. In fact, this is a unilateral and schematic interpretation, the origination of which owes largely to employing a limited set of techniques and methods, possibly to a pursuit of a dominant and therefore the most visible stream of British government politics only.
My aim, therefore, is to introduce the contrary or at least complementary view of British
European issue; i.e. to claim that British affiliation to Europe has always been a significant
[125] component of the British tradition and discourse. This sense of European identity in Britain existed and survived even the moments when the identities of Englishness and/or Britishness, emphasizing nationalism and self aggrandizement were at their peak. Consequently, it is important not to make exaggerated claims for this strand of the larger British tradition, but equally so important that we do not ignore this completely. Linda Colley in her text The
Britons: Forging the Nation represents the first case. Colley introduces a portrait of Britain blended, and forged in the face of menacing “Other[s]”. But in her argumentative work she considers only the dominant majority and disregards the others. She does well in recognising and defining the key factors of forming the British identity, she provides an excellent account on British self delimitation through the concepts of Englishness and offensive Britishness, through Pragmatism and Empiricism, or through the singularizing Protestantism. In the area of British European relations, however, she turns to simplifying conceptualizations. Colley is among those who fail to consider the British European discourse in relation to the contemporary state of affairs, to the geopolitical situation of the respective era.
It was the Reformation that, by most accounts, began England’s withdrawal from the
European mainland (though the loss of practically all of England’s French possessions in the fifteenth century might be said to have contributed to this move). England found itself confronted by two Catholic powers, first Spain, then France, that embodied different principles of culture and politics. Krishan Kumar reminds us that “we should remember though that Protestantism was as international as Catholicism, so that the mere fact of
England’s turning Protestant is not sufficient to explain a growing abandonment of continental ambitions and adventures” (Kumar 2003: 11). In addition, it is the idea of England as the ‘elect nation’, found in English Protestant theology of the 16th century, that has led some scholars to see the Protestant Reformation as launching England’s insular and anti
European self conception. But the doctrine of the ‘elect nation’ was by no means peculiar to
[126] Protestant England, having been anticipated in fact more than a century earlier by Catholic
France. To see the self asserting England as the inventor of European nationalism in the 16 th century thus proves a misconception. It is, therefore, essential to regard the situation as a whole, to include a wider set of tools to produce an even handed research.
The 19 th century is generally considered a peak of anti Europeanism in Britain. This thesis introduced the ‘Splendid Isolation’ as a term, which can be challenged and so can be the cut and dried anti Europeanism of this era. The governmental politics was indeed directed in the name of nationalism and Empire, but, in fact, Britain probably had no other option.
Even if she wished to follow the European continent, there was no single European country to follow at that time. During that period, the affiliation to the continental Europe equated mostly with the British relations to France. But as a matter of fact, for the most of the 19 th century, France, the jewel of Continental Europe has been tossed from side to side in revolutions, unstable government system and overall disorder, which did not place her in the position of reliable partner. This definitely played to British nationalists’ hands.
Searching for a suitable partner for Britain of the 19 th century, one would find none.
How can one marvel at the high degree of British nationalism if we regard the contemporary situation as a whole? How can one reproach the British for their fervent nationalism in the
Victorian era? Was the British haughtiness not a logical outcome of the overall trend to nation states in the 18 th 19 th centuries? One can witness ardent nationalist tendencies elsewhere in Europe, namely in Germany, Russia, France and even Italy, all of them insignificant when compared with the magnitude of the British Empire. Britain of this era was an undisputable Queen of Seas, an industrial superpower embracing more than a third of the world population. It was a modern constitutional monarchy with an advanced parliamentary system and could hardly feel any pride in being identified with rigorously catholic and old fashioned Spain, with underdeveloped tsarist Russia or rock ribbed Habsburg monarchy.
[127] Further, was Britain really ‘less European’ than these respective countries? Was its European appeal carried out by authorities less influential at that time than that of France, the cradle of future unified Europe? And where the British proponents of Europe more passive than those of the other continental states like Italy and Spain? The ‘state centred framework’ could be also justified and the ‘special path’ concept of Britain and Europe rejected in this case.
According to Gowland and Turner’s account on the 1950s, other states have also had
'strategic national purposes' in Europe (Gowland Turner 4), and the mere fact that Britain had different foreign policy goals from those of the French or Germans does not in itself mean that Britain should be seen as an awkward partner. 204
These are the essential questions to be when judging on the British contemplations on
Europe at the end of the 18 th and for the most of the 19 th century. Most researchers and authorities in current historiography trends disregard these matters, as stated above. The dominant research in British European relationship makes passing insinuations that the development of the British Empire was an act of deliberate economic and territorial aggression. While this can be viewed as valid under the overarching idea of the 18 th century conflict with the great “Other”, France, it is for all above mentioned reasons an inaccurate generalization of the 18 th and 19 th centuries.
A somewhat different situation can be witnessed in the first half of 20 th century. In the
20 th century the attention is shifted to the concrete issues, particularly to the theme of British pro European federalism, in which the British pro European identity and pro Europeanism in general found its tangible manifestation. The object of investigation also shifts from European identity in a more general sense to the affiliation to Europe in an advanced sense of prospects for interconnection and unification. Thus, Federalism is traced back to its roots in the 19 th
204 See for instance George, S. An Awkward Partner: Britain and the European Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Rodriguez, D.G.A. Why, and with what results, has the UK been an “awkward partner” in Europe. CIARI – Centro de Investigação e Análise em Relações Internacionais . 2003. Online 15 June.
[128] century and a paradox is hinted at: The European federalist thinking originated from theories principally alien and formed in contrast to it, in particular the British Imperial Federalism.
This case is emphasized as an important liaison between what is generally considered to be traditional for Britain and European identity. Once again, we can see that placing the 19 th –
20 th centuries British Empire in a direct opposition to European considerations may be misleading. It was federalism that provided an intricate interconnection of these two aspects present in British discourse.
WWI officially demonstrated the futility of the traditional 19th century assumption upon which the foreign policy was based. The British could no longer maintain a ‘healthy distance’ from what was perceived as purely continental affairs. The previous idea that they would intervene directly and decisively in these affairs only when their interests were at stake was redundant after 1919 at the latest. In response to this relative enfeeblement, the British calculatingly started searching for a new viable partnership. All the three streams that developed in response to the new geopolitical situation after WWI are therefore mentioned.
The dominant and by original historiographers followed futile attempt to rebuild the obsolete Empire into a modern Commonwealth and even more futile effort to control the
League of Nations while remaining apart from Continental Europe. The second solution was found in Atlantic Federalism, in the renewal of partnership and cooperation with the British next of kin, America – a commonsensical idea based on numerous similarities in philosophical, cultural and political sphere.
Last but not least, the European affiliation was adopted by European federalists. In the early 20 th century it was virtually insignificant because it was unjustifiable and there was no need perceived for it in Britain. Long years were needed to make Britain wake up and partially reappraise her extraordinarily deep seated traditions, customs and views. Especially grievous was the overall incomprehension on the official levels. This process is described in
[129] an account of the official relations of Britain and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, in the reference to British phenomenon of Appeasement. The incompetent League of Nations and rise of German nationalism did service to the far sighted British intellectuals like Kerr, Curtis,
Churchill, Laski etc. These individuals first recognize that “neither patriotism nor pacifism is enough” and that expectations invested in the United States are illegitimate. The powerful pro European stream thus originally re emerged as a provident warning and call for security alliance by educated individuals. Through the most of the 1920s and the first part of 1930s,
Britain, guided by such politicians as Austen Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, opted primarily for the politics of European involvement. As Baldwin aptly put it in the Commons in 1934: “When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of
Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies’ (Howard 112). But the
Conservative government was never fully convinced.
The European thinking in Britain of the 1930s had poor prospects of success. It was not only caused by the fuzziness of United States of Europe concept, since also by aged and justifiable disbelief of continent (that is mainly system of French 3 rd republic). Britain’s disinclination to involve itself too deeply in the 1920s 30s Europe was bolstered by an equally strong suspicion of domestic continental politics and the same disdain for the stability of the continent was much in evidence after 1945 as well. The problem of European concepts throughout the most of the 1930s was their vagueness and looseness and this can be fittingly illustrated on the case of Briand Plan. As stated, the British official representation firmly adopted a European stance and the late 1920s and early 1930s represent the relative decline of
Europeanism in Britain. However, it is again essential to consider the government politics and scholarly research apart. The official politics is not always the most important indicator, it does not necessarily mirror the general sentiment, as argued above.
[130] Thus, the alternative view of the 1930s is provided. It is suggested that the origins of
British European ideas during the inter war years may lie in the critique of national sovereignty furnished by the experience of WWI and the subsequent failure of the League of
Nations. While many others diverted their attention to Marxism and Socialism in the 1930s,
Kerr, Curtis, Jennings etc. continued to develop their original ideas about the peace in an international society and logically ended up with Europe unity issue as an outcome. Their doctrine could not be initially divorced from utopianism; it lacked a concrete political programme and ultimately failed to create political conditions in which a federal union of states was possible. Its legacy lies in the penetrating analysis of the international relations.
Britain could come to realize that ‘Appeasement and Pacifism was not enough’ because justice without force to support it was idealistic, because any self centred force, in terms of nation states, was simply self destructive.
The Federal Union brought a political effectiveness into British European considerations. It was the first real attempt to construct a realistic statement of immediate proposals to gain a wide support. It proved commitment to elaborate a set of aims directed at the peoples, transcending the war itself – therefore they contemplated what would replace
Nazism and showed a desire to nurture a new cosmopolitan society in order to replace the evil concept of nation state. But the shift of strategy of the Federal Union from a doctrinaire purity to the pursuit of political influence (Indissoluble Union) resulted in its ultimate failure and at the same time reflected its failure in stimulating the public opinion on any significant scale.
This strategic change towards the end of the war harboured difficulties for the European movement. It brought to the surface the deep seated differences of opinion about the scope of proposed Federation. Moreover, immediately after the WWII there was a strong movement for the creation of a united Europe, to remove the risk of another war starting from national divisions in the continent. Initially, the demand was mainly pressed by federalist groups
[131] which had grown up in the resistance movements of occupied Europe and which suggested a rather immediate creation of a federated Europe. The aim of this thesis was to suggest that the claim that Britain is essentially anti European is definitely overstated and in many respects inaccurate. It was proved that there is a fundamental continuity of pro European federalist thoughts and considerations stretching back to Seeley and beyond and continuing through
Lothian and Laski to the surprisingly advanced and highly specific concepts of MacKay,
Jennings or Toynbee. At least in the immediate post war years, this was leading directly to an active and energetic support for the alliance with the Continent by numerous, mainly non governmental bodies.
Yet, the reassertion of nation state after war (as the principal evil in British European discourse) ruled out any immediate prospects of success. In such a heated nationalistic climate it proved difficult for any government to create a basic domestic consensus on Britain's role in
Europe, let alone the participation in new sublime European projects. Throughout the late
1940s British government sent to the continent largely confusing signals as she organised the defence of Western Europe against Soviet encroachment but on the other hand declined supranational solutions to European problems in favour of the intergovernmental model.
Moreover, in terms of the Foreign Office line, the Commonwealth as well as the alliance with the U.S became a deterrent for "seeing any need to be part of a `narrow'
European grouping." Britain simply (and understandably at that time) could not see that the benefits of joining the European continent far outweighed the loss of Britain's empire and the dashing of the Commonwealth trade links. Another excuse to hide the even greater reasoning behind Britain's hesitancy was the cession of sovereignty. This was the true issue at hand, and
Britain was able to staunchly avoid it by citation of its other interests. The Left of the British politics looked askance at Continental Europe as primarily reactionary and conservative. For
[132] Foreign Office line "the continental commitment meant, as it had since Elizabeth I's day, a strategic obligation, not a form of political or economic union." 205
For British government in the formation of federations, economic factors such as the advantages of free trade have usually been overshadowed by the need for common defence against external pressures. In the post war years, notably Britain (but also France and
Netherlands) returned to pressing their dependencies to unite into politically and economically viable units. This development was the more notable since the contemporary Harold Laski’s view that federalism had outlived its usefulness had become widespread in British political circles. 206 This was further strengthened by specific economic and fiscal trends of Labour government.
In terms of European discourse, British post war years opened up a glaring gap between rhetoric and reality, which can be illustrated on Winston Churchill and other British
‘pro Europeans.’ As suggested, Churchill’s contribution to British pro Europeanism rests clearly in the early 1930s. The part of Churchill as the ‘Great European’ of 40s has been widely conceptualized and idealized and this dissertation has proved that Churchill was quite far from deserving such fame and this title in the midst of numerous more advanced pro
European projects by multitude of less visible but more ardent and more definite Europeans.
Churchill’s asset to European discourse rests in his incredible appeal, which was most probably misinterpreted in the Continent. The aim of this work was to dissolve and displace the generally perceived myths of the problematic concerned and show that the existence and degree of individual phenomena in the history (in this case the observed Europeanness and
European identity) should be regarded in relation to the contemporary situation and background (which is often not the case). Thus, the author suggests that for instance Lord
205 Kennedy, Paul. The Realities behind Diplomacy . Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1981. 206 Laski, Harold J. “The Obsolence of Federalism.” New Republic, May 1939, 98 (1274), pp.367 79 in: Hicks, U.K.: Federalism: Failure and success: A comparative study . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
[133] Castlereagh’s pro Europeanism must be viewed in relation to the geopolitical situation of that time and that it might be, as a result, in many respects even more advanced then were
Churchill’s great post war concepts.
It is suggested that Churchill practiced his British “Europeanism” in the most traditional anti European way. He saw Europe as a guarantee of the world (i.e. British) security and power position, not as a concept per se . His considerations were always purposefully lofty and ideological and always driven with regard of defence considerations.
These concepts of a defence union or security alliance were drafted already long before
Churchill and from the perspective of the 1940s they could be seen as obsolete. Consequently, this minimalistic approach to Europe even hindered the European integration and Churchill himself eventually posed as an obstacle to Britain’s deeper involvement in Europe. He proved to be the hero from whom the British weakness for nostalgia gained its richest nourishment.
Churchill, therefore, rather stands for dominant British thinking of Europe, which was visible in the British European political and policy making debate of several decades of 20 th century.
Such thinking did not overcome British doubts about whether European cooperation is at all suitable for Britain and it made British diplomats to feel that the country should play no more than an encouraging role from the sidelines. In fact, in its stronger variant, the need for British encouragement was superseded by a staunch belief that the stability of Europe can only be achieved through actual British participation and nationalist corollary of the post war Labour
that an effective European integration is impossible without the British participation.
It is furthermore essential to reject the other extreme – the seeking of pro European enthusiasm, sincere and widespread European sentiment and sudden ideological transformation where there was none. As shown, many of core British traditions and ideas were not in accordance with continental thinking and could, therefore, hardly be turned down overnight. For example, John W. Young sees British European policy largely as 'a reaction to
[134] decline' (Young 5). He rightly argues that the development of British European identity owed much to the changing role of Britain in the world (international) affairs. The generally increasing acceptance of Europe and partnership with the Continent since the 1870s and in particular after the turn of the century can be related with the British position of relative decline. Similarly, the British ideological abandonment of continental Europe towards the end of the war was connected to Britain’s temporary upswing and her perception of dominant position in the post war world, an erroneous evaluation, however, as my evidence provide proves (see Ch. 11). The new assessment of power relations in post war Europe assisted towards a gradual reassessment and reappraisal of British sovereign interests at home and abroad.
In addition, the problem of research into the European identity in the British Isles and into British European relations in general is that the focus of scholars is still almost solely on the ‘official mind’, which emphasises excessively diplomatic relations between the individual states and comfortably traces the intergovernmental policy. But this will never get further than the outcomes of British foreign policy. This intergovernmental approach focuses on ministerial politics and disregards most other factors in the diplomatic process. Such a singular approach is an unhelpful reiteration of the already familiar, results in conceptualizations and generalisations such as the mantra like ‘essential anti Europeanism of
Britain’. A typical example is provided in Medrano’s Framing Europe . The author summarizes:
“According to Gerald Newman, English national identity, a late 18th century product, was forged in direct contraposition to European, mainly French, culture by intellectuals deeply resentful of a caste like cosmopolitan British political elite. Colley reaches the same conclusion about the role of anti French sentiment at the root of British national identity, but stresses the role of war. The comparative strength of Briton´s belief in their being different from other cultures in general, and from other European cultures in particular conveys instead
[135] the effects of the British Empire on British identity and of the survival after WWII of the competing non European identities that resulted from it” (12).
This illustrates a frequently quoted perception of the British difference is why this thesis attempted for a different and more complex approach to the development of European identity in the British environs and it hopefully offered an alternative view of the matter in question by providing a complex portrayal of non governmental (political, cultural, literary etc.) elements in the British European discourse as well. To achieve the most appropriate analysis of the aspect of British history concerned, this dissertation strived to include also the minority views and perspectives, which are frequently more valuable to the research than the generally acknowledged dominant ones.
As to the British European issue as a whole, the analysis of the British European relations is burdened by two extreme approaches. First, the dominating view is that Britain was and still is an essentially different, isolated and anti European nation state, which constituted itself in utter opposition and with absolute misunderstanding of all continental.
Second would be the fashionable searching for keen and enthusiastic pro European traces in
British history as a part of pro EU propaganda. British European discourse is, nevertheless, a complex issue and phenomenon to be assessed from various perspectives.
Britain undoubtedly adopted its own ‘special path’ to Europe. Nevertheless, one must be careful in generalizing on her ‘awkward partnership’ with the Continent and, strictly speaking, the popular argument of ‘essential anti Europeanism’ is to be denied altogether. As regards the pre 1945 British development and especially the non government projects and activities, the whole series of highly advanced pro European projects can be found in British history. Particularly in the field of scholarly research, Britain contributed substantially to
European federalism and was definitely not behind the rest of the Western Europe in this respect. In the British European discourse it is particularly indispensable to distinguish the
[136] official Foreign Office and governmental politics and the continental considerations by educated public and intellectuals.
The official approach to Europe was indeed at times quirky and rather suspicious. This situation was, however, not contributed to by British imperialism and sense of superiority, the peculiarity of British identity formation or the religious and philosophical concepts, as illustrated in the first part of the text. An equal part of the blame is to be assigned to the
Continent itself. The Continental Europe has long been an uneven partner for powerful Britain and the British Isles rightfully perceived the continental instability and thus treated a possibility of such partnership with suspicion. Thus, the instability of political elites largely accounted for the incomprehension on the highest levels and the continental development complicated the relations a lot. This was the case in attitude to France for the most of the 20 th century. When Britain temporarily overcame these fears and surpassed herself by the proposition of Indissoluble Union during WWII, her activity ended in disappointment. This only strengthened the British disregard of Europe, for this once also with the disillusioned
British public. Considering all the aspects, British view of Europe was logical and up to certain moment entirely correspondent to the reality.
The unarguable fault of British politics was that in her majestic position she rested on her laurels. She failed to react on epoch making changes by the 20 th century outset and on the official level to reassess her relation to the ambitious Continent. The official disregard of the system of continental politics, the British partial withdrawal from Continental matters and the underestimation of the German menace are also explored. On the other hand, to subsequently seek the modern pro integrative thinking of French manner in the official British discourse represents a buck passing (e.g. Churchill).
The British relation to the Continent up to the 1950s has indeed been special and
Britain was undoubtedly exceptional in many respects. There are numerous causes for this
[137] exceptionality mentioned and concretized in this essay, for all of them significantly contributed to forming of the specific British identity, of British customs and traditions, which are generally considered anti European. Apart from researching British relation to the continental Europe and explaining the reasons for policy, seen as unfavourable to Europe, this thesis argues that anti Europeanism and more so a frequently used magic formula of
‘inherent, essential or traditional anti Europeanism’ is to say the least an ex parte oversimplification of the complex issue of British European historical interaction. To provide an evidence for this claim a different view of the European discourse in Britain was offered and the perplexity of the British dilemma was introduced. The more recent development of the continental affiliation in Britain is also viewed solely from the continental point of view and without regard for context and historical background. The research in the British
European matters concentrates predominantly on the post 1950s era of functional European integration; the pre 1945 era stands considerably neglected. Most accounts on the British way to Europe prior to WWII serve the purpose of finding the roots of the British essential anti
Europeanism and arguments for her post war “missing the bus” and her official disregard of
European integration in the 1950s. What is needed for both pre and post 1945 eras, however, is a revisionist interpretation interested in the individual, departmental, governmental, non governmental, interest group, media and international influences on Britain’s European policy. These individual agents counted for a great deal and were immensely important for a better and more complex apprehension of the issue. This thesis attempted to uncover and resolve numerous myths, which burden the British way to Europe. Identifying these historical, cultural and political myths and providing a fresh and complex view of the British European relations was a principal concern of this work.
The unusual and specific relation of Britain and Europe is positively a matter and result of a highly complex long term development. Britain undoubtedly underwent distinct
[138] experience. Nevertheless the blame for misapprehension (primarily on the official level) is not to be carried by the British exclusively, as most publications on British European relations imply. The misapprehension was mutual and so should be the blame. The issue should not be viewed in terms of a negative British approach to European matters, but through mutual self limitation and equally mutual (mis ) comprehension.
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