Vintage

The EU and the roots of British euroscepticism

IT is not difficult to provide a list of reasons for the high degree of scepticism about the EU in Britain, and to agree that each of them contains an element of truth. We can point to the fact that the UK finally managed to join the EC (as it then was) in 1973, the very time when the economic 'Golden Age' after the Second World War was coming to an end. The original six members had seen their economies prosper in the 1960s, and put this down at least in part to the EC. Britain faced the first great oil crisis, spiralling inflation and then calling in of the IMF to bail out a stricken economy, all within three years of entry. It wasn't correct to blame that on the EC, any more than The Six--the original members of the Common Market--had a right to attribute their healthy growth rates in the 60s to the EC alone. But it is easy to see why political perceptions might have been otherwise.

Then again we can understand how Britain's imperial past inevitably drove it to see Europe as a narrowing of focus, a drawing down from a world role to a continental one. For the island of Ireland slightly to the West, on the other hand, Europe was a great broadening of focus, because it meant less dependence upon Britain. Hence Ireland became euro-friendly and on the whole (with a blip around ratifying the Treaty of Nice) europhile, while Britain remained eurosceptic.

It is also true that even more than sixty years after the end of World War Two, the impact of that conflict on European perceptions remains profound. For continental Europe, caught in the grip of occupation, occupied people were confronted with an impossible choice between collaboration with an invader or a resistance that might have dire consequences for their families. Collaboration was perhaps an understandable choice, but the consequence was recriminations after the war and a feeling that the institutions of the state themselves had been brought into question. The sharing of sovereignty, which was at the very heart of the first moves towards European Union, was an acceptable way forward when national institutions had been discredited. Moreover, it was a practical way back into the European fold for Germany. Provided she was prepared to give up national control over (initially) coal and steel, she would be allowed to grow (economically) strong again. Pooling sovereignty was an ingenious solution to the dilemma of how to let Germany grow strong again (for otherwise Europe could not recover economically) without her growing dangerous again, as had happened after World War One. She could only recover under European auspices.

None of this had the same impact in Britain. Ever since the famous Low cartoon of the soldier shaking his fist across the Channel in June 1940 with the caption 'Very well, alone!', resistance to Nazi Germany had been seen as a single-handed effort with (eventually) help from the USSR and the US, plus of course considerable contingents from the Empire/Commonwealth. There is no doubt that this still feeds into the British psyche. 'Europe was occupied; we were not' feeds into 'Europe can go its own way; we're different'.

All these arguments have an element of truth in them and have been well rehearsed. But there is another point to be made, which receives less attention and yet is just as important for understanding the hard edge to much British euroscepticism. This is the fact that Britain sees itself as an 'EU in miniature'.

Just like the EU, Britain throws about the 'unity in diversity' motto as a way of holding its different parts together. It likes to point out, for instance, that Black and Asian 'Britons' find this a much more natural designation than 'Black English' or 'Black Welsh', as if 'British' were a naturally inclusive word. Like the EU, Britain wishes to stress that it is not overriding the identity of its separate nations (England, Wales, Scotland and if we take the UK rather than Britain, Northern Ireland) by bringing them together into a single 'United Kingdom', not a European Union but a British Union. Like EU flags and anthems, the UK almost overreaches itself in its desire to be an all-inclusive community, as it toys with the idea of a new public holiday to celebrate 'community heroes' and demonstrate the 'power of belonging'.

If, however, you were to reach behind the rhetoric, the reality is that the EU provides a much more effective structure for allowing its member nations their own identity and decision-making powers than does the 'British Union'. The 'British Union' has no notion of pooling or sharing sovereignty between England, Wales and Scotland. Rather, it determines that certain things will be decided at Westminster and certain others directed from Cardiff and Edinburgh. In the case of the European Union states the system depends on what area of policy is being considered (since 1992 this has amounted to which 'pillar' of the Maastricht Treaty a particular topic comes under). In areas like defence and national security, each state retains full sovereignty and the EU functions effectively like a treaty between independent states; in most economic areas community law prevails over national law and sovereignty is shared; in areas like justice and home affairs there is something of a tug-of-war between the two approaches. Certainly the EU arrangement remains one that is still undergoing modifications and is still the subject of fierce debate as to what should or should not be a matter of 'community policy' (hence all that talk of 'red lines' by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown). But the structure itself, combining areas where sovereignty is shared with areas where it is not, is firmly established, and goes back to the original decision in 1950 to pool sovereignty in the areas of coal and steel.

It is not difficult to see why the EU system, which we are constantly told the British dislike for being bureaucratic and elitist, might well appeal to countries like Wales and Scotland. Clearly they would have many fellow members of the same size in the EU, so they wouldn't feel too small to launch out on their own. Not only this, but some of these smaller countries are doing very well in the EU. Wales is bigger than Slovenia, about to take over the presidency of the EU and already using euros, just 15 years after it was embroiled in skirmishes with Serbian forces in the Balkan conflict which followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. And the biggest success story of all in some respects, the Republic of Ireland, has had an almost rags-to-riches transformation in the EU. It is unsurprising that the 'Celtic Tiger' was a model for many of the Central and East European nations when they joined the EU in 2004, as many of them admitted in the accession ceremony which was (significantly) held in Dublin.

Of course Irish economic success was due to more than EU membership. American investment, the English language, a highly-skilled workforce and tax incentives for business investment played a part too. The Irish can be 'eurosceptics' themselves too--witness the initial rejection of the Nice Treaty in a referendum. But it is still unsurprising that Ireland saw how the EU was a way of managing without the decades-long constraint of economic dependence on the UK. There may be problems with interest rates being determined in Frankfurt rather than Dublin, but Ireland knows the effects of having had its economy for so long ruled by London.

The truth is that the example of Ireland challenges the notion that without British 'subsidies' Wales and Scotland would very soon find that independence meant a lack of economic self-sustainability. This removes what is probably the chief incentive for the Welsh and Scots to avoid complete independence, which is the fear of economic ruin. The English threat to let them 'go their own way and see how they like it' still has weight for this reason, plus the grumbles from London about how much it subsidises what used to be called the 'Celtic fringe' but has been hastily re-defined as 'our island partners'. But that threat of independence having 'economic consequences' hardly seems so great when so many smaller countries have flourished in the EU environment.

Where it comes to supporting cultural autonomy and individuality, too, it is not clear that Europe wouldn't be a far better haven for Welsh or Scottish identity than Britain is. How many times do you hear those British complaints about all the EU official languages (currently twenty-three, including Irish), the cost of booths, equipment, hiring men and women to translate from Finnish to Estonian, say, and so on? Yet the EU could respond that this reflects a real commitment to linguistic diversity, and that far from being the 'one banana size fits all, one beer recipe fits all', culturally degrading force it is made out to be, Europe actually stands for a real commitment to diversity. The EU is pushing for every member of the community to speak three languages--could one imagine Britain encouraging the English to learn Welsh and Gaelic on the same principle?

I began this article by arguing that there are many understandable reasons why euroscepticism should be much stronger in Britain than in many other parts of the EU. I would end it by suggesting that this euroscepticism may be more 'English' than 'British'.

Of course I recognize that for Wales and Scotland to simply 'leave Britain for the EU' would be fraught with constitutional difficulties, and that they may not in the end want to (though in this context it would be worth keeping a close watch on what's happening in Belgium's ongoing political crisis as Flanders and Wallonia threaten to go their separate ways). I also recognize that there are other EU members with strongly separatist regions/nations (think of Catalonia) where this doesn't seem to translate into a general euroscepticism in the country as a whole of which they are part. So it cannot ever be the whole explanation of British euroscepticism--and I wouldn't want to suggest that it is. But when I listen to debates on the subject--particularly one or two Scottish Labour MPs (not the Prime Minister!) whose passion seems to reflect more self-interest than calm reflection on the subject--I can't help thinking that there's an element of truth in what I'm saying.

Britain is full of people predicting the break-up of the EU or at the very least British withdrawal. Such a scenario is always possible, but if I were to venture a personal prediction it is that the UK is more likely to break up than the EU. Organisationally cumbersome though it may be, the EU has a more effective understanding of how to bring together nations large and small than does even post-devolution Britain. Which is perhaps why the British like to sneer at Brussels--it has a tendency to do the work of being multi-national rather better.

Dr Mark Corner lectures in European Studies at the University of Leuven/Louvain in Belgium.