William Wallace How the Liberal Party Became Committed to European Union

t was not inevitable that the Liberal Party retrenchment in military spending. Protection should have become identified with sup- and economic nationalism, he and others argued, port for European unity. Throughout the made for war. The party later split both on Ire- Ipost-war years until the 1960 Liberal Assem- land and on free trade, with bly, a significant minority within the party opting in the 1890s for Imperial Preference. Many saw European integration as incompatible with Liberals did not distinguish between their eco- free trade, not as a step towards economic and nomic interest (often as businessmen or mill-own- political cooperation. When the 1961 Assem- ers) and their idealist commitment to peace and bly committed the party unequivocally to sup- international harmony. The impact of John May- port Macmillan’s first application to join the nard Keynes on Liberal Party thinking between European Communities there was near civil the wars, and the support that Lloyd George and war in France over Algeria, Italy was governed others gave to his commitment to a more active by Christian Democrats supported by the CIA state role in managing the economy, led to the against a Communist opposition, and West Ger- party giving out confused – even contradictory – many still had a number of judges and officials messages about free trade and the size of the state who had also held office in the 1930s: plenty of in the interwar years. reasons to be wary of commitment, only six- In the immediate aftermath of the First World teen years after the Second World War. A num- War, what Roy Douglas describes as ‘the Lib- ber of leading Liberals had been involved in the eral civil war’ revolved around how to respond to Council of Europe in the late 1940s, supporting unemployment and industrial adjustment; Lib- transatlantic cooperation and West European erals in parliament split three ways on issues of integration as steps towards a democratic world temporary protection and the ‘safeguarding of order; praised the Schuman industries’.3 Lloyd George’s establishment in the Plan of 1950 for a European Coal and Steel Com- 1920s of ‘a wide range of Inquiries, which were at munity as ‘the greatest step towards peace in the least as well staffed and financed as Royal Com- annals of European history.’1 Yet even for many missions’, deepened the contradictions between party members, the European continent seemed the Cobdenite commitment to free trade and remote and insecure; for all except those who retrenchment and the emerging Keynesian sup- had fought from Italy or Normandy through to port for an active and interventionist state. The Germany, it remained much more foreign than Beveridge Report, and Sir ’s Canada, Australia or New Zealand. The conver- welcome into the Liberal Party, and entry into sion of a party of local activists and enthusiasts parliament in the Berwick by-election of 1944, for the distant goal of world government into strengthened the image of a Keynesian social an active supporter of European integration was . During the Second World War, above all due to the charismatic persuasiveness of however, commitment to international institu- as leader, with the support of a small tions and open borders for both Keynesians and group of key advisers.2 Cobdenites remained global, as against regional Free trade was a fundamental tenet of political – partly because Liberals resisted a return to Brit- liberalism in the late nineteenth century and the ish ‘imperial preference.’ Sir , then first half of the twentieth century. Richard Cob- one of the party’s longest-serving MPs, warned in den had committed the infant Liberal Party to 1944 that regional economic federations ‘in pro- free trade and open borders, as making for peace portion as they are exclusive in character must and international cooperation, and permitting contain a threat to international harmony.’4

38 Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 How the Liberal Party Became Committed to European Union

Top: Clement Davies, Bottom: Walter Layton, Jo Grimond

Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 39 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

The Liberal Party after 1945 and for close British engagement in the political The war had provided divergent lessons for Liber- and economic reconstruction of Western Europe: als, and for others who joined as peace returned. Denis Healey, Lord Carrington, Edward Heath, The distinction between liberals and libertarians against Enoch Powell, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold was not then as evident as today. Exiles from the Wilson and others who spent the war in Africa and continent such as Friedrich von Hayek, who had India or in economic and transatlantic roles. Few moved to the London School of Economics at the of the leading figures in the post-war Liberal Party invitation of Lionel Robbins in 1931, had revolted had witnessed conflict on the continent; but many against the corporatist states of interwar Europe, of those who formed the core group around Jo Gri- and saw the only way to protect The Constitu- mond had. Grimond himself had been a staff officer tion of Liberty (the title of one of Hayek’s works in the 53rd division as it fought its way from Nor- on political economy) as paring back the role of mandy to Hamburg, Desmond Banks a colonel in government and taxation in the economy, leav- the artillery, a colonel on Montgom- ing private enterprise free to flourish. Beveridge ery’s staff. Mark Bonham Carter had been captured had been one of the leading members of the Aca- by the Italians in Tunisia, escaped from an Italian demic Assistance Council in the 1930s, formed to prison camp when Italy surrendered and joined help professors from Germany and other Central the Guards Armoured Division as it fought its way European countries who had fled to Britain; some into Germany; the experience, including the emo- of these came to see Britain as a model free society tion of liberating a concentration camp, made him in contrast to what they saw as a naturally author- ‘a passionate European’.6 Richard Wainwright itarian continent, and taught their students to had been a conscientious objector in the Friends share their view of an exceptional free England.5 Ambulance Unit, who had been with the unit as it With a Labour government in power, strengthen- followed the army from Normandy through Ant- ing the grip of the central state over the economy, werp to Germany as it collapsed.7 over local authorities and over individual citizens, There was also an age difference in attitudes to Liberalism and anti- overlapped as moti- regional cooperation. Older Liberals held more vating instincts within the party. often to the view that global free trade, with the Attitudes to cooperation with our European distant objective of world government, was supe- neighbours did not stand alone. They were mostly rior to regional schemes. Young Liberals, particu- part of contrasting mindsets – as they still are. larly in university societies, were more attracted Opponents of state intervention were often also by the idea of ‘federal union’ to unite a war-torn committed to the British Empire and Common- Europe. The 1948 , meeting wealth (as they then were) as forces for good in a month before the Hague Congress on Euro- world politics, alongside the Anglo-Saxon USA. pean Union, supported the creation of ‘a political Commitment to free trade meant opposition to union strong enough to save European democracy agricultural protection and the arguments for and the values of Western civilization’, although Clement Davies food security which marked continental agri- accepting an amendment pressed by Lord Sam- as party leader cultural policies; cheap food for Britain came uel, Lady and others to from Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand insist that this should not conflict with Com- insisted that and our African and Caribbean colonies. Global monwealth, UN or transatlantic links. Clement defence commitments kept open ‘the sea lanes’ Davies as party leader insisted that there was no there was no for British trade; so free traders were often strong contradiction between European integration and supporters of Britain’s global status and high the goal of world government; he was repeatedly contradiction defence spending. Proponents of Keynesian inter- critical of what he called ‘the imperial mind’ that ventionism were more open to cooperation with governed British foreign policy.8 between Euro- the continent, recognising the benefits of cooper- One of the older generation of Liberals was ation between employers and workers that conti- much more directly in touch with those who pean integration nental partnership brought. And they were often were designing the institutions of West Euro- and the goal of much more critical of British imperial policy in pean cooperation. Walter Layton, who became Malaya, Africa and Cyprus in the post-war years. a Liberal peer in 1946 and served as the group’s world govern- These opposing mindsets ran across all of the deputy leader from 1952 to 1955, had been an eco- political parties – linking support for nuclear nomics lecturer in Cambridge alongside Keynes ment; he was deterrence to the concept of a ‘global Britain’ when they and others were called into govern- with an exceptional role derived from its partner- ment in the First World War. During that war repeatedly critical ship with the USA and its leadership of the Com- he worked in allied economic planning in Lon- monwealth, and conversely linking opposition to don, Paris and Washington; ‘one of several life- of what he called nuclear deterrence to opposition to the ‘illusions’ long partnerships formed then was with a young of global status. It is striking – and saddening – Frenchman, Jean Monnet, who played a key role ‘the imperial how little the arguments about Britain’s role in the in persuading France of the need for systematic mind’ that gov- world have changed since the 1950s. In all three wartime planning’. Layton’s remarkable and var- parties, experience of the European continent in ied career included an advisory role (again, along- erned British for- the Second World War was a strong indicator for side Keynes) at the Versailles conference, efforts support for the European Movement after 1945 to renegotiate the financial reparations placed on eign policy.

40 Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

Those who joined Weimar Germany, and leadership of the British cooperation; but the free traders had the advan- delegation in the abortive efforts in 1931 to cre- tage of greater access to financial supporters for a – or rejoined ate a European customs union – as well as edit- cash-strapped party. The RRG dissociated itself ing and chairing the board of the from the party after a ‘stormy’ Assembly in 1954, – the party in News Chronicle. In the Second World War he re- losing some of its prominent members to Labour entered government service, again working with – including and Wilfred Roberts, 1957–9 were Monnet on transatlantic economic assistance.9 In both former MPs – when the group reaffiliated to radical in the 1943, when he left public service, he gave a series the party in 1956.13 of lectures on the theme of a united Europe. He It was the shock of the Suez intervention sense that they attended the Hague Congress of 1948, and as that turned the party round – and that attracted the only Liberal in the British delegation to the back into the party Liberals who shared Clement rejected the post- first Assembly of the Council of Europe, in 1949, Davies’s disdain for the ‘imperial mind’ that Suez was elected a vice-president.10 Layton was both clearly displayed. Those who joined – or rejoined war consensus passionately in favour of European integration – the party in 1957–9 were radical in the sense that and well informed about how it might be man- they rejected the post-war consensus of Britain of Britain as still aged. His son Christopher, in turn, became a key as still a world power, with global military and a world power, adviser to Grimond on economic and European imperial responsibilities. They were internation- issues between 1957 and 1966. alists, opposed to the post-imperial nationalism with global mili- Committed internationalists in the Liberal that characterised the Suez intervention. Most Party also had the Liberal International as effec- knew little of continental European politics; but tary and imperial tively a European network. The Liberal Interna- they were sympathetic to Grimond’s political tional was formally instituted at a conference in approach, and followed his lead. responsibilities. an Oxford College in 1947, after two preparatory meetings in Brussels and rural Norway. Sir Percy They were inter- Harris had been one of its enthusiastic support- The retreat of the free-traders ers, and Clement Davies, Lord Samuel and other In the autumn of 1961, and I spent a nationalists, senior British Liberals helped to shape the mani- week campaigning in the early stages of the Orp- opposed to the festo. The only non-European on the LI’s initial ington by-election. We stayed with Marjory Sel- executive was from Canada; Belgians, Swiss, don, a stalwart of the local Liberal Party. But we post-imperial Scandinavians, French and Italians were the most saw little of her husband, Arthur, who had left the active, with the distinguished Spanish intellectual party on the issue of free trade.14 Only some years nationalism that Dr Salvador de Madariaga representing the many later did I understand the origins of the Institute states where Liberals were still in prison or exile. of Economic Affairs, and how the disputes within characterised the ‘The Liberal Party as a body, however, remained the party about our approach to the European bleakly incurious about the affair’;11 local cam- Economic Community had been linked to the Suez interven- paigning, on domestic issues, preoccupied most raucous arguments in the 1958 Liberal Assembly, party members far more than international con- to the departure from the party of an influen- tion. Most knew cerns. The LI manifesto recommitted to world tial group of small-state economic liberals, some little of continen- peace and ‘a world organization of all nations’, of whom went on to win over many within the with no specific reference to the uncertain situa- Conservative Party to their ideas. tal European poli- tion across Europe. One sign of tensions to come Many of the leading figures in the Liberal within several Liberal parties was that the organ- Party for ten to fifteen years after 1945 had held tics; but they were isers discovered at a late stage in the preparations to this view, and formed a powerful opposition for the founding Oxford conference that Frie- within the party to Grimond’s determined sup- sympathetic to drich von Hayek was planning the initial meet- port for the United Kingdom to join the EEC. ing of the Mont Pelerin Society in Switzerland on They were a colourful, even eccentric crew. S. W Grimond’s politi- overlapping dates, with a number of intellectual Alexander was a successful journalist, pouring liberals invited to both.12 out articles and books promoting free trade; he cal approach, and The Liberal Party however had little clarity was also a Liberal candidate in 1950, and chair of followed his lead. on policy, and little capacity for coherent policy the London Liberal Party. Anthony Fisher, who development, in the ten years after 1945. The 1952 first met von Hayek in 1945, was then a dairy Assembly passed a resolution in favour of uni- farmer. Urged by von Hayek to make money lateral free trade, against the views of those who rather than become directly involved in politics, – like Walter Layton – had worked in govern- he discovered intensive chicken farming on a ment during and after both world wars and who visit to the USA, and introduced the battery cage supported active measures to promote economic to Britain. Buxted Chickens made him a very growth and industrial recovery. What policy wealthy man; from which, in 1955, he founded thinking there was took place within factions, (with Oliver Smedley) the Institute of Economic free traders on one side and radical Liberals on the Affairs (IEA).15 other. The (RRG), cre- Oliver Smedley was at that time a vice-pres- ated in 1952 ‘to save the soul of the Liberal Party’, ident of the Liberal Party. His behaviour at the contested with the free traders across a range of 1958 Liberal Assembly made a significant con- policies, including industrial policy and European tribution to the confusion that reigned. Michael

Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 41 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

McManus records that there ‘were a series of Grimond pub- of European integration, and a later contribution unedifying squabbles between Oliver Smedley, proposed abandoning the manufacture of British unofficial leader of the party’s remaining hard- lished The Liberal nuclear weapons in favour of stronger conven- line free-traders, and some of the party’s younger tional forces in Western Europe, and withdrawal members, who felt that his calls with “unilat- Future under his from all bases east of Suez except Singapore. The eral free trade” were archaic and impractical’.16 two themes were linked: the Conservative reac- And then there was Edward Martell, considered own name before tion to the failure of the Suez intervention was to by Roy Douglas and others to have been, with the 1959 election, stress our independent nuclear deterrent and the , one of the key figures in the special relationship with the USA, rather than to party’s survival and recovery after the Second drawing on the move with the French closer towards West Euro- World War. A man of immense energy, elected pean integration. The 1958 Assembly, regardless with Sir Percy Harris to the London County same network of Grimond’s prompting, passed a resolution in Council in 1946, ‘one must not discount his ser- favour of unilateral free trade. The team around vices to Liberalism in the late 1940s because of the of expert advis- Grimond, with now chair of the Lib- astounding political adventures on which he was eral Publication Department and a small team of later to embark’. He was an effective fundraiser; ers and others. parliamentary staff assisting on policy, were nev- ‘although a man with the makings of a dictator, Its international ertheless moving ahead with a different approach. he supplied the Liberals with a ceaseless flow of Less official bodies such as the Unservile State ideas, and a great deal of enthusiasm.’17 He left the chapters carry the Group and the New Orbits Group contributed party in the mid-1950s to establish the anti-social- published papers and books along similar lines.19 ist and anti-union People’s League for the Defence same themes of The Unservile State Group consisted primar- of Freedom. The free-traders lost influence as new ily of academics from Oxford, Cambridge, the members came into the party, and as Grimond modernisation, LSE and Edinburgh, with Jo Grimond himself as as leader set out a more Keynesian and European a member and as chair. Its opening approach. They drifted away into other bodies, adaptation to eco- volume, published in 1957, included a chapter on leaving a Liberal Party with a more anti-Conserv- ‘Britain in the World’ which criticised ‘the impe- ative bias than the anti-socialist stance they had nomic and tech- rial hangover’ and the ‘cloud of self-deception’ espoused. nological change, that still shaped British foreign policy; it argued Oliver Smedley took his belief in free markets for ‘some surrender of sovereignty’ in defence and and untrammelled capitalism to the limit – and and to Britain’s trade with our European partners, though rec- beyond it. As he moved away from the Liberal ognising that public opinion would require care- Party, after the 1960 Liberal Assembly decisively transformed ful persuasion to accept ‘any sort of European voted down his opposition to Common Market political union’.20 A further chapter, ‘Colonies membership, he became a pioneer of pirate radio – place in the world: to Commonwealth’, criticised the confusions of a cause espoused by the IEA in several pamphlets, Conservative decolonisation and the support for together with open competition in TV and less a recognition that white regimes in central and southern Africa. regulation of tobacco. Operating on the edge of the Grimond published The Liberal Future under law and from chartered ships or coastal batteries, ‘we live at the tail his own name before the 1959 election, draw- the cut-throat competition between these entre- end of the age of ing on the same network of expert advisers and preneurs was such that one of his rivals burst into others. Its international chapters carry the same Smedley’s house in mid-1966, knocked over his the nation state’ themes of modernisation, adaptation to economic housekeeper, and threatened Smedley – who shot and technological change, and to Britain’s trans- him dead. Pleading self-defence before Justice Mel- in which sharing formed place in the world: a recognition that ‘we ford Stevenson, one of England’s most conservative live at the tail end of the age of the nation state’ judges, he was acquitted. Commercial radio sur- of sovereignty is in which sharing of sovereignty is needed, that vived in a more respectable and regulated fashion, the Commonwealth and Europe offer competing but the BBC’s authoritarian monopoly – as free needed … frameworks for such sharing, that ‘the haziness of marketers saw it – was broken.18 the whole Commonwealth idea’ is a fundamen- tal weakness, and that ‘a Liberal foreign policy towards Europe would be based on the firm belief Grimond reshapes party policy that Britain is a part – a leading part – of Europe Jo Grimond became leader in November 1956, and that international bodies should be execu- on the day that British forces landed in Port Said, tive and not merely advisory.’21 Grimond went on followed by the humiliating Anglo-French with- to criticise the post-Suez shift in British defence drawal from the Suez Canal. He inherited a party policy towards independent nuclear deterrence, that was chaotic in its structure and undisciplined arguing instead for closer cooperation within in its approach to policy. He resolved the problem NATO and with our European neighbours. Here of reshaping party policy by working in paral- was a coherent alternative view of the world to lel to the party’s formal structures, attracting a Conservative orthodoxy, in which faster decol- number of first-class thinkers to advise him. He onisation, greater scepticism about the future began with a series of articles in Liberal News in coherence of the Commonwealth, and more mod- the Spring of 1957, under the heading ‘Where est ambitions in defence, went with support for Liberals Stand’; the first of these was in support closer European integration.

42 Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

The 1959 manifesto said little directly about suggested that Grimond had got it right: that European unity. This may perhaps have reflected economic reform and post-imperial adjustment some continuing hesitation within the party, required accession to the EEC. with the leadership unwilling to push the remain- ing dissidents further. Commitments to ‘stop the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons by After Grimond this country’ and to pursue interracial partner- , who succeeded Grimond as ship in Africa demonstrate the radical world view leader in 1967, was committed to the moderni- of which European integration was becoming, sation agenda, including the commitment to for Grimond and his closest advisers, an intrin- European integration. Joining the European sic part. Half the parliamentary candidates in Communities was not a controversial issue within that election mentioned Britain’s relationship the party under his leadership. ‘Bomber Thorpe’, with the European Communities in their election who had advocated military intervention against addresses.22 the unilateral declaration of Rhodesian inde- The modest successes of the 1959 election pendence, nevertheless deplored the direct action brought the party a gradual rise in membership and of the radical Young Liberals against the white in income – enabling the expansion of its policy South African regime, similarly resisted Young staff and the creation of a number of policy com- Liberal support for the Palestinians against Israel, mittees, combining sympathetic experts with and above all fought against the determined party activists. The first of a new series of pam- efforts of Young Liberals to commit the party phlets around the theme of modernisation for Brit- to unilateral nuclear disarmament.25 The Lib- ain, issued under Grimond’s chairmanship from eral Party was therefore split on major interna- the autumn of 1960, was Britain Must Join, unequiv- tional issues in the late 1960s, but not on Europe. ocally calling for UK entry to the EEC. A later The return of the Conservatives under Edward paper, Growth not Grandeur (1961), advocated fol- Heath in 1970, with his own version of a domes- lowing the French model of economic planning, tic and international modernisation agenda, led reductions in overseas commitments and defence to the revival of the UK application to join the spending, and a recognition that economic sover- European Communities, in which the shrunken eignty was no longer viable.23 Prime Minister Mac- group of six Liberal MPs could again play a sig- millan’s parallel moves towards economic planning nificant role within the Commons on votes where and negotiations with the EEC, combined with the both other parties were split. Informal whipping resistance of his own right-wing to these moves within the pro-EC wing of the Labour Party, and the government’s difficulties with funding its in 1971–2, as Labour MPs entered different vot- nuclear deterrent and defence programmes, added ing lobbies, built personal contacts and mutual popular credibility to these linked proposals. New respect. The surge in by-election votes for Lib- members who poured into the party in 1961–2 eral candidates, including victories, in 1972–3 largely accepted Grimond’s modernisation agenda, It should be increased the attractions of cooperation with the including its European, anti-colonial and end-to- Liberals to members of other parties. world-status elements. By 1963 commitment to emphasised that It should be emphasised that Liberal commit- European integration had become party ortho- ment to European integration, before the UK doxy, with only a minority of rural activists and Liberal commit- joined in 1973, was not based on any deep under- candidates opposed.24 standing of the policies or institutions of the EC The collapse of the first British application to ment to Euro- among more than a handful of people. Apart from join the EC, in January 1963, did not remove the Christopher Layton, Gladwyn Jebb (Lord Glad- issue from British politics – though it reduced pean integration, wyn), who moved from the cross benches to the the political saliency of one of the Liberal Party’s Liberals in the Lords in 1965, becoming Lords most recognisable policies. Both the Conserva- before the UK deputy leader and spokesman on foreign affairs tives and Labour had demonstrated deep internal joined in 1973, from 1966, was a major source of expertise and divisions on this partly symbolic issue, related to continental contacts; he had been involved in the defence of sovereignty, attitudes to the white was not based on European negotiations from 1947, and was ambas- Commonwealth, and assumptions about Britain’s sador to France from 1954 to 1960. Derek Ezra, place in the world. Modernisers within the other any deep under- who became a Liberal peer in 1983, but as chair parties noted Liberal opposition to defence spend- of the National Coal Board had remained out- ing and deployments east of Suez, and condem- standing of the side party politics until then, was probably also a nation of support for white Rhodesia, beginning source of informal advice; he had been a Young the long process through which internationalist policies or insti- Liberal before the war, and had been involved in members of both other parties realigned towards European negotiations since the initial propos- the Liberals. The Liberal manifestos in both 1964 tutions of the als for a European Coal and Steel Community and 1966 committed the party to full membership EC among more (ECSC) in 1950, including a period in the early of the European Communities. Labour’s forced 1950s as a member of the UK delegation to the withdrawal from east of Suez in 1968, following than a handful of ECSC in Luxembourg.26 Arthur Holt’s nephew its own (poorly prepared and unsuccessful) appli- Stephen became one of the first academic experts cation to join the ‘Common Market’ in mid-1967, people. on European integration. Some Liberal activists,

Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 43 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

in addition, were also active members of the 1974 as a gesture to its left-wing anti-Europeans, Jeremy Thorpe, European Movement, which gave them contacts that engaged Liberal activists in campaigning on Edward Heath and with continental speakers and with broader Euro- European issues, arguing the strengths and weak- Roy Jenkins share pean developments. nesses of EC policies, and working with pro-Euro- a platform during Surveys of voters in the 1960s showed a higher peans in other parties as the campaign proceeded. the 1975 referendum proportion of Liberal supporters in favour of The pro-European campaign in the 1975 ref- campaign entry into the Common Market (as the EEC was erendum was a genuinely cross-party exercise popularly labelled) than Labour or Conservative – in contrast to the campaign of 2016, which was voters. One survey of suburban voters, in 1962, tightly controlled from the Conservative prime showed 62 per cent of Liberal supporters in favour minister’s office. The pro-Europeans within the of joining; but across the country as a whole, other parties in 1975 recognised that they needed the proportion of ‘pro-European’ Liberal voters Liberal support to be sure of winning. Regional never reached 50 per cent.27 In rural constituen- campaigns were managed by coordinators from cies, from where elites and institutions in Lon- across the three parties; in the north-west, for don looked remote, European unification looked example, these were Peter Blaker MP for the even more unwelcome. It remained a source of Conservatives, John Roper MP for Labour, and tension within the party that so many voters in Helen Wallace (then chair of the Manchester City the seats that it won did not share the enthusiasm Liberals) for the Liberals. Experience of working of its London and suburban members. In 1971–2, together in a well-organised and successful cam- Emlyn Hooson dissented from his parliamen- paign created links at national, regional and local tary colleagues on several votes, responding to levels which laid some of the foundations for the the views of Montgomeryshire voters. Twenty later SDP–Liberal Alliance.28 years later, on the legislation implementing the The divisions on Europe within the Labour Maastricht Treaty on European Union, nine- Party were not resolved by the decisive outcome teen Liberal Democrat votes were crucial to John of the 1975 referendum. They similarly formed Major’s ability to defeat Conservative rebels, but part of conflicting mindsets. Commitment to Nick Harvey chose to represent the more sceptical state planning and sovereignty, resistance to views of the voters of North Devon. NATO membership and to nuclear weapons as Successful accession, in 1973, transformed the such, went along with a depiction of the Euro- domestic debate. Liberals now needed to take posi- pean Communities as a free market enterprise; tions on the direction and development of Euro- while in contrast an internationalist (European pean institutions and their policies. The February and Atlantic) acceptance of constraints on UK 1974 election manifesto declared that Liberals were sovereignty, and a preference for regulated mar- ‘effective but constructive critics of the policies of kets over direct state control, made for enthusi- the Common Market.’ In this they were informed asm for the EC. Europe, and nuclear weapons, by the critical views of a German Liberal EC were almost the most important symbolic divid- commissioner, Ralf Dahrendorf, who moved to ing lines between left and right in the Labour Britain in 1974 to become director of the London Party in the late-1970s. But they coincided with School of Economics; he later became a British cit- more liberal attitudes to civil liberties, and to izen and a Liberal Democrat peer (in 1988 and 1993 sexual freedoms, than many on the Labour left respectively). The bitter divide within the Labour were yet willing to accept. The relationship Party over EC membership, which led to refusal to between , who became leader of the take up places in the nominated European Parlia- Liberal Party on Jeremy Thorpe’s resignation in ment in 1973, gave the Liberals more opportunity 1976, and Roy Jenkins – which was a crucial fac- to learn the details of European policy, with Rus- tor in the formation of the Liberal–SDP Alliance sell Johnston MP and Lord Gladwyn as part of the – had been forged in the late 1960s when Jenkins British delegation. But it was the commitment to was Labour home secretary and Steel a newly a referendum on EC membership, given by the elected MP promoting a private member’s bill to Labour government that had returned to office in legalise abortion.

44 Journal of Liberal History 98 Spring 2018 How the Liberal Party became committed to European Union

Jenkins’s appointment as president 4 Quoted in Scott Clarke and John Curtice, 16 McManus, Jo Grimond, p. 133. of the European Commission, in 1977, ‘Liberal Democrats and Integration’, ch. 4 17 Douglas, History of the Liberal Party, p. 250. symbolised the alienation of Labour of David Baker and David Seawright (eds.), Bear in mind that on policy issues Roy Doug- ‘moderates’ from the leftward drift of Britain for and against Europe (Clarendon Press, las was close to the free traders, and opposed their party. The clear and consistent sup- 1998), p. 92. Harris had joined the Liberal joining the Common Market; so this should port of Liberals for European integration Party before the First World War, was per- count as a sympathetic assessment. was thus a powerful attraction for future suaded by Herbert Gladstone to stand as a 18 Adrian Johns, Death of a Pirate: British Radio cooperation. Informal conversations candidate in the 1906 general election, and and the Making of the Information Age (Norton, after Labour’s defeat in the 1979 election first elected in 1916. 2011). developed into proposals for the Liberals 5 Geoffrey Elton’s idealisation of Tudor 19 Peter Sloman’s Wikipedia article on the to make space for an allied new party, for England, which I and my contemporaries Unservile State Group is the most compre- which commitment to European union absorbed as history students in Cambridge, hensive review of this group of Oxbridge would be one of its founding principles. was one classic example of this. academics, financially supported through The surge of popular support for the 6 Jane and Leslie Bonham Carter, personal the early 1950s by Elliott Dodds and later by Liberal–SDP Alliance, in 1982–3, was information. Richard Wainwright. Its volume – George dashed by the Argentinian occupation 7 Matt Cole, Richard Wainwright: the Liberals Watson (ed.), The Unservile State – was pub- of the Falklands and the subsequent vic- and Liberal Democrats (Manchester University lished in 1957, and followed by a long series torious British recapture of the islands, Press, 2001), pp. 31–3. of pamphlets. For the New Orbits Group, see which re-established popular support for 8 Alan Butt Philip, ‘The Liberals and Europe’, Trevor Smith’s article in Journal of Liberal His- Britain’s image as a global power with a in Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), Liberal Party Politics tory 95, Summer 2017. powerful, and independent, role. But the (Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 219–20; Wallace, 20 Watson (ed.), Unservile State, pp. 265, 269. alliance survived, to re-emerge after the ‘The Liberal Revival’, p. 332. 21 Jo Grimond, The Liberal Future (Faber, 1959), 1987 election as the Liberal Democrats. 9 After the Second World War, Jean Monnet pp. 159, 163, 164. Grimond had laid the foundation for was the architect first of France’s post-war 22 Butt Philip, ‘The Liberals and Europe’, p. 222. this, in his broad modernisation agenda, economic planning system, and then of the 23 Wallace, ‘The Liberal Revival’, pp. 77–9. in his repeated calls when leader for a Schuman Plan, which led to the European Grimond published his own volume on policy ‘progressive alliance’, and above all in his Coal and Steel Community; he then became in 1963, The Liberal Challenge, which repeats commitment to international coopera- the first president of its ‘High Authority’. his perception of ‘the decline of national sov- tion through European integration. 10 Christopher Layton, ‘Walter Layton’, Dictio- ereignty’ (p. 227) but focuses in its interna- nary of Liberal Biography, (Politico’s Publishing tional chapter more on security and defence William Wallace is an emeritus professor of Ltd, 1998), pp. 217–19. than economic integration. It includes the international relations at the LSE, and a Lib- 11 John H. MacCallum Scott, Experiment in Inter- blunt statement that ‘Liberals believe that eral Democrat peer. He joined the Liberal nationalism (Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 18. Britain should not attempt to keep its own Party as a student in 1959. He was assistant 12 Richard Moore tells me that he invited Mil- deterrent.’ (p. 248) press officer in the Liberal Party Organisa- ton Friedman, then not yet a world-famous 24 Some of those who flocked into the party tion in the 1966 election, a member of various free market economist, to address the Cam- in the early sixties shed their international- policy advisory groups from 1966 onwards, bridge University Liberal Club; free market ism as they left the party; I recall a former chair of the New Orbits Group in 1966–68, liberals and social liberals at that point did not Young Liberal who stood as a Conservative in and a member of Party Council and of the Par- find their philosophies incompatible. Huddersfield in the 1970 election, proclaim- ty’s Standing (Policy) Committee from 1969 13 Wallace, ‘The Liberal Revival’, pp.13, 19. ing his opposition to Europe as well as to onwards. Desmond Banks was one of the leading mem- immigration. bers of the RRG; Jo Grimond attended many 25 Thorpe was particularly opposed to the dig- 1 David Dutton, A History of the Liberal Party in of its meetings, and the young Jeremy Thorpe ging up of the test match cricket pitch before the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, was an active member; Michael McManus, Jo England were to play the South African team, 2004), p. 157. Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire (Birlinn which captured public attention as well as 2 This article is a blend of personal recollection Ltd, 2001), p. 124. establishment condemnation. and research. The author joined the Liberal 14 ’s Wikipedia entry, accessed in 26 Some younger party members invested in Party at the end of 1959, was president of the August 2017, states that he was ‘involved’ in learning about the European institutions Cambridge University Liberal Club in 1962 the Orpington by-election; if so, this was an which in principle they supported. Helen and returned from three years in the USA in extremely discreet involvement. Wallace (then Rushworth) studied at the Col- 1965 to research and write a Ph.D. thesis (for 15 Anthony Fisher became increasingly caught lege of Europe in 1967–8; Simon Hughes and Cornell University) on ‘The Liberal Revival: up with American libertarian thinking, fund- Graham Colley were there in 1974–5. Levels the Liberal Party in Britain, 1955–1966’, tak- ing an American parallel to the IEA which of understanding of the EC within the Con- ing a month off in 1966 to work as assistant became the Atlas Network of free market servative and Labour Parties in the 1960s and press officer to Pratap Chitnis in the general institutes; he was involved also in founding early 1970s were similarly limited. election. His wife (Helen) joined the Liberal the Adam Smith Institute. Both his daughter 27 Wallace, ‘The Liberal Revival’, pp. 383–6. See Party before him, and was president of the and his granddaughter, Rachel Whetstone, also David Butler and Donald Stokes (eds.), Oxford University Liberal Club in 1965; her worked within this institutional network Political Change in Britain (Macmillan, 1969), father was an active participant in the Radical before Rachel and her husband Steve Hilton ch. 14. Reform Group. A copy of the Ph.D. thesis is worked for David Cameron and the Con- 28 John Roper, for example, became a Social lodged in Nuffield College Library, Oxford. servative Party. See also Richard Cockett, Democrat MP, and later a Liberal Democrat 3 Roy Douglas, History of the Liberal Party, 1895– Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the peer. 1970 (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971), pp. 154–5. Economic Counter-revolution (Fontana, 1995).

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