Brexit: A history of mistrust

The shock waves from the British decision to leave the European Union (EU) last month are still reverberating across the globe. It is critical to historicise the often uncomfortable relationship between Britain and Brussels in order to understand how such a calamitous decision came to pass.

The late British journalist, Hugo Young, had eloquently described his country’s early patronising attitude to Europe thus: “The island people were not only different but, mercifully, separate, housed behind their moat. They were also inestimably superior, as was shown by history both ancient and modern: by the resonance of the Empire on which the sun never set.” Former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had set the tone for his country’s relationship with Europe in a 1946 speech: “We are with Europe but not of it. We are linked but not compromised.” His successor, Clement Attlee, was wary of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) – established in 1951 as the forerunner of the European Economic Community (EEC) – and would not tolerate that the British coal and steel industries, which he had just nationalised, be controlled by a supranational body in Luxembourg.

American opposition to the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis led to a humiliating withdrawal and national trauma. This resulted in Anthony Eden’s resignation as prime minister, and underlined the fact that – in American secretary of state, Dean Acheson’s famous words – Britain had lost an Empire, but not yet found a role. Suez, in some ways, pushed London closer to Washington than Brussels. At a meeting in Stockholm in 1960, Britain signed the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) with non-EEC members Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, and Portugal. Two years later, at a Labour party conference, British scepticism of European integration was underlined by Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell’s hyperbolic observation that the country joining the Common Market would represent “the end of a thousand years of history.”

British Euroscepticism was again evidenced by a 1970 Gallup poll that suggested that 70% of its citizens disapproved of membership of the EEC, while only 19% approved. The success of the organisation, its importance as a market for British goods, and the country’s poor economic performance, finally convinced politicians in Westminster and mandarins in Whitehall to enter the Community in 1973. Conservative premier, Edward Heath, believed that British membership of the EEC would be a “win-win” situation: the country would contribute to Europe’s long-term security, while having access to a dynamic market that could modernise British industry.

The main concern for London in joining the EEC was the Common Agricultural Policy which accounted, in 1973, for 75% of the Community’s budget. Britain had a small farming sector and imported half of its food, and so the country lost much from its membership of the EEC by increasingly importing higher-priced food from the continent.

London became a net contributor to the budget to the tune of nearly one billion British pounds: more than any other country. Harold Wilson, who had rejected British membership of the EEC under the Labour party, came to power in 1974 with his party bitterly divided over Europe. A protracted renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership ensued. A regional development fund was created to contribute to disparities, and 67% of British voters agreed to stay in the EEC in a 1975 referendum.

The 1979 British election saw both the Conservatives and Labour continue to criticise the unfair system of budgetary contributions which short-changed Britain. The country declined to join the European Monetary System in 1979.

Margaret Thatcher came to power that year, arguing strongly for a Europe of sovereign states rather than of unelected bureaucrats. Though the British case for a budgetary rebate was justifiable and had sympathy among EEC members, the “Iron Lady’s” increasingly abrasive style in demanding “our money back” in a style of “handbag diplomacy” alienated her colleagues within the Community.

The Fontainebleau summit in 1984 eventually settled the issue in favour of a British rebate, but Thatcher had squandered much political capital. Britain was often treated by the EEC’s founding members as a “johnny-come-lately” that had arrogantly rejected joining the organisation at its creation, and signed up only after much of its rules had been set and a cosy culture established among its founding members. London was also distrusted by some as an “American Trojan Horse” which valued its “special relationship” with its cousins across the Atlantic much more than it did its neighbours across the Channel.

In 1992, Thatcher went to the College of Europe and delivered her notoriously trenchant “Bruges speech” in which she warned: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

Having uniquely secured an opt-out from the single currency and the social chapter of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty during negotiations on European Monetary Union, British premier, John Major’s biggest success appeared to have been expunging any references to “federalism” in the text. The banning of British beef from the EU after the outbreak of “mad cow disease” further poisoned the waters between London and Brussels. Major also alienated Germany and France by vetoing the candidacy of Belgian premier, Jean-Luc Dehaene, as president of the European Commission.

British premier, Tony Blair, and his successor, Gordon Brown, who had vowed to be at the heart of Europe found themselves, like their predecessors, at its edge. Blair opted out of the border controls of the Schengen agreement (along with Denmark and Ireland), and though he was liked by his EU colleagues, was keen to retain the support of media mogul, Rupert Murdoch’s Eurosceptic tabloids, and neither he nor Gordon Brown provided a credible defence of British interests in Europe.

This is the historical context in which British premier, David Cameron, made the ill-fated decision to hold a referendum to silence Eurosceptics in his own Conservative party. With comfortable Scottish and Northern Irish majorities voting to stay in the EU, the United Kingdom could become an oxymoron. Almost as if afflicted by the curse of Africa’s ancestors, the largest imperial power in the history of the world – Great Britain – could soon be transformed into Little England.

Dr. Adebajo is Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town.