The UK public’s attitudes to the European Economic Community were vastly more positive than it has been recently claimed. David Thackeray writes that this period, between losing an empire and leaving Europe, is integral to understand why Brexit happened and what awaits in the future for the UK.
On referendum day in June last year, the 52-year old Nigel Farage expressed his satisfaction with being able to vote on the matter of Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU) for the first time. Brexiters like Farage have long claimed that membership of the EU/EEC (European Economic Community) lacked a democratic mandate.
My research argues that this notion is based on a ‘myth of 1975’. In fact, British public opinion was largely sympathetic towards EEC membership for much of the 1960s. During the first EEC application, Gallup polls demonstrate that approval of the idea of Britain joining the Community outstripped disapproval by a clear margin throughout the lifetime of the application, although there was an overall increase in disapproval rates too.
Gallup polls suggest enthusiasm for EEC membership grew in 1967 when Britain was dealing with the fall-out of a devaluation crisis. While there was some scepticism towards the original terms of entry in 1973 (a scepticism shared with the other new entrants, Denmark and Ireland), attitudes towards the EEC warmed thereafter and the renegotiation process was broadly popular.
CC BY-SA 4.0)
Referendum claims that Britain’s first renegotiation relied purely on economic concerns are another example of the myth of 1975 (although the Common Market issue was undoubtedly prominent), which ignores the wider political and social appeals of EEC membership at the time.
Opinion polls produced in early 1975 suggested that the electorate was lukewarm in its support for the EEC. But the idea of renegotiating was popular, especially among Labour voters. The renegotiation process, however flimsy it may seem in hindsight, appeared to demonstrate that the EEC was willing to listen to Britain’s concerns and that Britain could lever authority within the Community.
The triumph of the Leave campaign in 2016 resulted from their ability to overhaul earlier perceptions that EU membership was vital to Britain’s economic future. Crucially, it was able to popularise a plausible rhetoric of EU failure.
Indeed, the Leave campaign’s ability to present Europe as a region of economic stagnation and a security threat on account of its porous borders would have seemed remarkable to audiences in 1975 (when the issue of free movement of labour barely featured and Britain was far from the healthiest of the EEC’s economies).
The Brexit vote requires us to produce new histories of Britain’s relations with Europe. Indeed, we should ask why references to this history in the public debate often turned to counterfactual discussions about what Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher would have done if they were alive in 2016, and why expert opinion was given short shrift in some quarters.
In much of the research literature on European integration, there seems to be an assumption that closer co-operation with Europe was the best course for post-war Britain and that in ‘missing the boat’ on several occasions, the country exacerbated its decline in world status.
Such an approach now seems problematic in light of the Brexit vote. As such, we need new histories of Euro-scepticism, but also of Euro-enthusiasm, aware of the differing experiences of the ‘four nations’, which can connect with a broad audience.
Of course, the EEC of 1975, which Britons voted two to one to remain a part of, was highly different in character to the EU of 2016 that the electorate narrowly voted to leave. In the post-Brexit world we need to develop a clearer understanding of how Euroscepticism has developed as a popular culture – its myths, conventional wisdoms, selective reading of history and, most importantly, how it has developed a plausible rhetoric of EU ‘failure’.
While a great deal of attention has been paid to Britain’s applications to join the EEC it is imperative that we get a clearer understanding of how Europe’s influence was understood in everyday popular culture and business life in the years after 1973, and in particular how this relationship (and its earlier history) has been reconceptualised through processes of globalisation, the eastern enlargement of the EU and experiences of mass immigration.
Finally, the result of the referendum is a useful reminder that we need to pay attention to the ‘cultural throw’ of economic theories, how they were articulated in everyday debate and received by the public.
We are now faced with a curious situation where Theresa May’s government appears likely to encourage aspects of globalisation through an economically liberal agenda (revivifying links with established and emerging markets through trade treaties and encouraging investment through a low corporation tax) while also promoting a populist agenda, which may be associated with anti-globalisation (curbing free movement of labour and presumably leaving the Single Market).
Britain now faces a period of profound uncertainty as we wait to see whether the (often conflicting) promises of Brexit campaigners can be made real.
This blog post was originally published in The Long Run (the blog of the Economic History Society). It gives the views of its author, not the position of LSE Brexit or the London School of Economics.
Dr David Thackeray is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Exeter.
Public support for the EU is in practice highly correlated with people’s fear of military conflicts in Europe. This includes memories of the past just as the experienced real threats during the Cold War. The economic aspects of EU integration however tend in any country to be understood only by a minority.
Britain may have less of a collectively shared memory about the catastrophes of a war in Europe than other countries. It has therefore just been a matter of time until Brexit happened.
Interestingly, the patriotic public discourse in Britain seems to focus on “national independence” rather than on “national power”. I am wondering if keeping Britain in Europe in order to maintain political influence could have been more convincing as an argument to Remain than economic arguments.
The changing nature of the EEC as it morphed into the EU is the principle driver for Brexit. The original EEC focus used on “negative integration” in the economic sphere, i.e. the removal of economic barriers and was largely popular with Britons. Once the single market was complete the EU increasingly turned to “positive integration”, I.e. Harmonisation of legislation in more politically salient policy areas and this is where the crisis of democratic legitimacy began to grow. From the EU institutional perspective the harmonisation was desirable as means to further its own institutional agenda of building a European state, a goal not desired by the UK. The harmonised legislation was typically poor quality, as the EU was less concerned with good policy outcomes and moreover interested in extending the ‘aquis’ in order to further the superstate agenda. Hence the growth in dysfunctional policy making at EU level. In order to overcome objections to more “positive integration” the EU treaties were changed to extend the use of Qualified Majority Voting into new and more politically salient policy areas and reducing voting thresholds. However, positive integration is not a win-win in the manner that negative integration is. By simply outvoting member-states like the Uk and compelling them to adopt increasingly dysfunctional legislation the EU created resistance that grew and grew with every EU Treaty. When it was no longer possible to secure popular support for increased integration, the EU simply ignored the lost referendums in France, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands anyway, requiring voters to vote again until they got it right (from the EU institutional perspective) or simply bypassed the people completely by having national parliaments ratify. It was only a matter of time before democratic politics found a way to break this undesired and dysfunctional European integration, starting in the UK. The EU is still not listening so it will be interesting to see how other nations restore democratic control. All signs are that the EU system is a capture of the political system by non-democratic forces who will not voluntarily relinquish their aquired powers.
Britain will be up against and part of the rest of Europe as long as the tectonic plate upon which Europe is sited holds together.The political tectonic plates is quite another matter.History teaches again and again that they who are in power never willingly give it up.All that happens is a passing of the baton to carefully selected new and newly groomed and indoctrinated entrants who will pay their dues to those who retired thus from the fray of holding together a power clique and maintaining and amassing power in its many and various natures, shapes and configurations.From within and without Europe faces a flood of passion.Once that passion is spent, there will be a different Europe.What that will then look like is anybody’s guess, but it depends upon the European peoples as to how they will fare.The people in charge now, with the possible exception of England’s Tories and the Swiss cantons, will not under any circumstances, on the evidence available to us, be able to hold Europe together and face the tide of discontent, malcontents and refugees from without.