The United Kingdom as an outsider to the EU

term paper abstract, winter semester 2007/2007, Potsdam University by Lisanne Dorn and Lars Dittmer

„Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least five hundred years – to create a disunited Europe. (…)It was necessary for us to break up the EEC,(…) now that we’re in, we were able to make a pig’s breakfast out of it.“ (The Complete Yes Minister, qtd. In Otte 1)

The essence that this sarcastic quotation transports, brushing away all party politics, great leaders and platform commitments, suggests that Euro-scepticism has always been in Great Britain’s political culture and it is here to stay. Intrinsic motifs and reasons for the British Euroscepticism will be dealt with in part I of this paper and indeed, they constitute strong evidence that the rejection of Europe – not only of the EU as a political instrument – is firmly entrenched in major parts of the UK’s society. To assume however that this sentiment has been equally present in all the political phases and parties in post WWII Great Britain is scientifically unsustainable. It becomes obvious especially if one considers the pro-European mood in the devolved Scottish Parliament and the parties represented in it, eg. The Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats (Watts/Pilkington 222, 243).

Roosevelt and Churchill aboard the U.S. S. Augusta, off the coast of Newfoundland, August 1941

Also on UK level the political approach towards the EU and its institutions has changed with the political personal in charge, intergovernmental relations and constellations; it is true especially in regard of the UK that the lines of approval and rejection of the EU are not congruent with party loyalities. t is therefore the task of this paper to distil ideological determinants and mind-sets and the crucial phases in British policies towards the European Union after World War II. Focus in part one lies on Britishness and its surrounding ideological patterns; part two at its core examines the last three governments of the United Kingdom, that is the administrations of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair.

It will be one of the statements of this work that both of the subsequent governments in many respects can be seen in the tradition of the first mentioned, although it was then indicated in another way and hoped by many pro-Europeans that this would not be the case. Furthermore one aim will be to isolate a tendency that enables the percipients of this academic work to venture an outlook on the future relations between Europe and the UK, which is especially vital in regard of the sustainability of the Union: It has now enlarged to 27 members with some more countries in the waiting loop and its constitution is still on hold. It must be emphasized that the UK is a major player in European politics and by no means just a by-stander.

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Table of Contents
1
General Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
1.1
Introduction and approach of this paper………………………………………………………….. 3
2
Britishness …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
2.1
Cultural identity…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
2.2
Britain and the EMU ……………………………………………………………………………………… 5
2.3
Britain and the European Constitution ……………………………………………………………. 6
3
Special Relationship………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
4
The Euro-sceptic Press in Great Britain …………………………………………………………. 10
5
The „Awkward Partner“ enters the union ……………………………………………………….. 12
6
Margaret Thatcher: Alone against the Superstate ……………………………………………. 15
6.1
Margaret Thatcher and the BBQ ……………………………………………………………………. 15
6.2
The Late 1980s ­ Struggle Over Europe …………………………………………………………….. 17
7
John Major: A phase of transition …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 18
8
New Labour: Old Wine in New Bottles? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 21
8.1
Hopes for a pro-European approach………………………………………………………………. 21
8.2
New Labour and the Euro…………………………………………………………………………….. 22
9
Evaluation and outlook………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 24
10
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….26

To support the above-mentioned

tendency this paper will repeatedly recur on figures of surveys among the UK’s people and

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examine if Euroscepticism was shared on both levels, in the governments and in the population or if classical patterns of bottom up or top down politics can be established. As Julie Smith and Mariana Tsatsas in their work The New Bilateralism point out,
there are many factors that determine bilateral relations (5). This term paper is incorporating the points that are important in the examination of the topic; it names the treaties that shape
the European interactions on a transnational level and provides the necessary terminology in the respective historical contexts. It is however also determined to not neglect the relations
between the people who govern the countries; it is thus not only party platforms, bi- and multilateral treaties and assumed political alliances within the political left/right pattern that
shape European relations, but also the chemistry between the leaders: „…good personal relations are extremely important in building effective bilateral relations between states
(Smith/Tsatsas 7).
These relations often do not adjust to political affiliations; for example although Tony Blair was usually associated with a „catch-all“ politics slightly tending to the left, however
with the former conservative Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, he got warmer than with many of „his fellow European Social Democrats“ (Smith/Tsatsas 31). Margaret Thatcher
however could not conceal her disliking for her conservative counterpart in Germany: „she thought (Helmut) Kohl boring, clumsy and provincial…: „My God, that man is so German“
(Campbell 304). It has become common to declare Margaret Thatcher the greatest anti-European in British history after WWII – it is however necessary to take a look back into the early years of the community to understand that also the Iron Lady’s policies were in some measure in line with those of her predecessors.
2 Britishness
2.1 Cultural identity
Britain’s sense of itself is a strongly encouraged self-perception by its imperial past and its geographical and linguistic isolation of the rest of Europe. As in most western democracies, a strong sense of cultural identity and a concept of what Britain means is deeply rooted in Great Britain. Here Robbins offers a traditional view of cultural identification:“ identification is constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristic with
another person or group, or with an ideal, and with a natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this foundation“ (Robbins 282). Thus there are two factors: identification – here clearly seen as a construct – is based on either some common origin
and/or shared characteristics; this could be historical events from the shared imperial past or, as stated above, the geographical and linguistic isolation from continental Europe.
The second and most likely more vital factor stated by Robbins is „the natural closure of solidarity“. This concept of closure is strongly associated with the topic of cultural/group identity by many
socialists. It describes the unconscious intention of a specific social group to not only form this group for reasons of shared origins and characteristics, but to then defend it and its perceived status from an external threat. This external threat is often referred to as „the
Other“, which shows that it can appear in various forms and always starts as an imagined or at least perceived threat, long before it can be grasped and named factually. In the beginning the only thing that the specific social group might be certain of, is that there is a difference between their supposedly homogenous group and the external other. The manifestation of this difference rapidly turns „the Other“ into an external threat against which the shared traditions and values of the group have to be defended. Thus according to contemporary social theory, it could be plausibly argued, that one element at least of recent expressions of Euro-scepticism in Britain „stems from the presence of and perceived threat from an external „Other“, namely continental Europe“ (Robbins 285).
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