Backbench Debate within the Conservative Party and its Influence on British Foreign Policy, 1948-57
Book Notes #46
Okay, now we’re getting really niche with these book titles. This book, by Sue Onslow, examines are very particular topic that ultimately relates to the Suez Crisis. It is during the years between World War II and the Suez Crisis that determined to what extent the British Empire would survive the second half of the twentieth century. This book was published in 1997.
In the Introduction, the author describes some of the unofficial (non-elective) Conservative backbench groups that vitally linked backbench influence. One such group, the Progress Trust, was a “libertarian” interest group for laissez-faire economics that evolved into a protector of Conservative principles, which in this case mean a paternalistic and hierarchical government.
P. 6:
“The Trust was highly organized and possessed its own sources of information. Membership was selective, limited to approximately 20 MPs. […] Its organization was extremely discreet and deliberately so, in the firm belief that private influence was the most effective way for a backbench group to convey its views to the party leadership. This was very much in keeping with the attitude to all private debate within the party’s backbench committees. The Progress Trust’s members’ highly discreet influence ensured the continuation of the Tory party as a class organization, despite its more progressive public face. By the late 1940s many MPs had come to regard the Progress Trust […] as the backbone of the Tory party. […] All in all, the Conservative leadership, in opposition and in government, was a good deal more sensitive towards their backbenchers than is generally acknowledged.”
The existence of such groups are the essence of Tory politics. Beyond the introduction and into the core time period addressed in the book, the Europeanists and smaller Anti-Europeanists were not active pressure groups like The Trust, but party sections that moved party opinion one way or the other. These groups favored (or disfavored) British integration into European systems after WWII.
P. 13:
“Approximately 60 Conservative MPs favoured an active approach towards European integration. There was a hard core: ‘a personal Churchill clique, (dating) back to anti-appeasement’, which included Winston Churchill, Duncan Sandys, Robert Boothby and Harold Macmillan. Beyond this lay two outer concentric circles of MPs whose enthusiasm for Europe fluctuated between 1946 and 1949. There were the ‘enthusiasts for some form of closer union’ who ably supported Churchill’s ‘clique’; although these MPs were sensitive towards potentially conflicting obligations of Empire and Europe, they were confident that the problems could be bridged. Beyond these MPs, there existed a wider circle of interested observers: ‘the pro-Commonwealthers’ who, while accepting that closer unspecified links with Europe were an excellent idea, were determined that ‘nothing should be done which might adversely affect the Commonwealth and Empire, particularly to the advantage of Continentals’.”
The Commonwealth was central to the question of joining Europe. Britain was still attempting to run its own empire after the Second World War and the Anti-Europeanists were concerned with how integration with European international bodies would inhibit Britain’s ability to run an empire as it saw fit.
P. 14-22:
“In any discussion of the Conservatives and Europe in the 1940s the principal figure is Churchill. […] Long before the War he had pondered the notion of European Union. […] He was to make a virtue of his lack of a clear plan on how European integration was to be achieved, claiming that his task was to provide the vision; it was for others to fill in the details. […] Churchill’s decision to adopt the cause of Europe was influenced by three Conservatives: Leo Amery, Duncan Sandys and Robert Boothby. Amery had long held coherent views of Europe’s place in an expanded imperial economic structure – ideas which his son, Julian, absorbed and argued with intellectual conviction and vigor. […] Amery was involved from the outset in Churchill’s pro-Europe venture. […] Julian Amery was staying […] in Gstaad when a telegram arrived from Churchill” ‘I remember you have a European movement and I am thinking of starting one. I would like to combine. Please send all details.’ Julian Amery returned to London fully briefed, and reported accordingly at Churchill’s lunch part on 30 September 1946, attended by Leo Amery, Sandys, and Boothby. […] Amery and Sandys shared the conviction that ‘the only hope of keeping Germany with us is to hold out the prospect of playing a real part in a united Europe rather than as an annex of Bolshevism’. […] Sandys was crucial in persuading Churchill to adopt the cause of Europe. […] Among the Conservative Europeanists, just as within the European Movement as a whole, differences existed over Britain’s relationship with the continent. These lay at the very heart of the Movement. Churchill might speak of Britain being part of the European family, but this always in the context of his vision of the ‘three interlocking circles’; Britain’s relationships with America and her Commonwealth and Empire precluded placing the greatest emphasis on Western Europe. […] Sandys had come to feel […] that the days of the Empire were numbered; he was fearful that if Britain allied with America she would be too subordinate to exercise any influence. In his opinion, Britain was no longer a great power and union with Europe offered the only feasible alternative.”
Sandys’s perspective was probably right; in retrospect, it is obvious that Britain should have gone “all in” on Europe earlier.
On the skeptical side, Anthony Eden was not anti-European but held the (accurate) view that the Europeanists in the Party lacked substance and were mostly emotional declarations. Not surprising considering that the supposed “Europeanists” had just finished bombing all European institutions into the Stone Age.
P. 25:
“Eden was not crudely ‘anti-European’, being acutely aware of the need, and the desirability, for harmonious relations with the Continent. Nor was he oblivious to the advantages of some sort of European economic integration. […] The Sceptics tended to be of an older political generation who wanted to rescue Europe from her post-war impotence, and to help unite the Continent under British leadership, by association with the British Commonwealth.”
Eden was probably also right; the Royal Navy and the Commonwealth combined with France’s land power in Africa could have guaranteed some greater degree of British and European power and autonomy; but the British wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The idea of Great Britain running Europe like it was part of the Commonwealth came from the fantasy of pre-war British power. Also not surprising since the Sceptics were of “an older political generation.”
P. 29:
“Although the date of entry into Parliament is not an infallible guide to backbenchers’ attitudes towards Europe, the anti-Europeans tended to be among the longer-serving MPs, and were all stalwart supporters of the Empire, for whom Britain’s imperial record was a source of considerable pride and achievement. They favoured increasing collaboration with the Commonwealth because this would not restrict Britain’s freedom of action, and heartily endorsed the view that every time Britain became entangled with Europe, the result was disagreeable. They were therefore determined that Britain should retain her historic aloofness from the Continent. This was not a large group, and these MPs’ hostility rarely emerged in debate or at question time. More usually they confined their criticism to party committees or discreet words to the Whips. This does not mean that their convictions were not deeply held.
[…]
Part of the problem was Churchill, who was evidently not a Tory. True to his Liberal roots, Churchill remained an advocate of free trade – in marked contrast to the Conservative advocates of maintaining and extending imperial preference; and Baxter, Mellor and Marlowe had supported Chamberlain in 1940. In addition, ‘nobody outside of (Churchill’s) intimate circle knew what he thought about Europe . . . To the backbenches it simply seemed that he was saying that Europe was a good thing and should set itself up on better lines than before, and that the Empire was a good thing and should continue to be such. How he proposed to reconcile the two was unclear.’ This lack of clarity – vital if Churchill and Sandys were to carry the motley collection of European politicians along with their crusade – alienated the anti-Europeans, unused perhaps to the apparent chicanery that accompanies diplomatic negotiations.
A discernible thread of anti-American feeling united these anti-Europeans; there was also a noticeable anti-UNO flavour in their views. They were strongly suspicious of American encouragement for European union. Did America see Britain as a second-class nation, in the same category as the prostrate and morally bankrupt nations of Western Europe? The idea that Britain was no longer a power of the first rank, and fit only to be, as Bevin once expressed it, ‘a cog in the European wheel’ was deeply insulting. It seemed that America was trying to hurry European integration to provide the excuse for another retreat into ‘splendid isolation’ – a concern these MPs shared with Bevin and the Foreign Office. The anti-Europeans were consistently opposed to what they regarded as American economic imperialism, voting against Bretton Woods and the US loan in 1945, and served notice again that they opposed American sponsorship of closer ties with the Continent by voting against Marshall Aid in 1948. It was feared that the creation of a United States of Europe was also part of America’s plan through the GATT to create global free trade without, of course, America lowering its own high tariff walls; Marshall Aid was thus seen as Europe under American tutelage. Washington's determination to reshape the global economy through the Bretton Woods System and the GATT was fundamentally inimical to the continuation of the sterling area and imperial preference – nothing less than a challenge to Britain’s status as a great power, at the political and economic head of the Empire and Commonwealth.
[…]
These MPs did not share Macmillan’s recurrent fear of Germany dominating a United Europe. As the 1940s progressed, there was a growing Conservative awareness of a revival of German economic competition in British overseas markets, but ‘Germany looked altogether too decrepit still to be thought of as a threat, and the Germans of those days were distressingly apologetic’. As for the notion of a Communist United Europe: ‘certainly the Communist threat in Europe, particularly in France and Italy, was perceived as being much more substantial than it really was, [but] I doubt whether [this] idea crossed the horizon at any time.’ Europe ‘did not appear to many people to require much thought! . . . They saw it as a straight case of either [Europe] or [Empire]. If that were so, there was no doubt which it should be’. Insofar as they considered the issue at all, faced with the idea of Europe uniting without Britain, these diehards entertained the historic feeling that a Europe united without Britain was a danger to this country and Britain should therefore try to prevent it happening.”
It’s clear that all three sides to this debate offered something of substance—the Europeanists understood the choice between American and Europe; the Sceptics understood the importance of the Commonwealth and the freedom of British action, but were too skeptical of how much combining with Europe would limit this action (as opposed to the alternative). The anti-Europeanists were rightly wary of America but wrongly believed that the choice was between Europe and Empire; in fact it was to be Europe and Empire, or just America.
Chapter Three gives us the years 1948-1950 when the Conservative Party was in the opposition. The Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin believed that;
“backed by the power of the Commonwealth and the americas, it should be possible to develop our own power and influence to equal that of the United States of America and the USSR . . . by giving a spiritual lead now we should be able to carry out our task in a way which will show clearly that we are not subservient to the US or the Soviet Union.”
A foreign policy conducted on the basis that Great Britain could equal the United States or Soviet Union had no chance of succeeding.
P. 33:
“Although Bevin’s move towards Europe was welcomed by the Conservative Europeanists, they remained impatient at the Government’s caution in seizing the lead in Europe.”
Eurpeonist MPs put forward an EDM (Early Day Motion) on European integration on March 16, 1948.
P. 36:
“The EDM on Western Union was debated during the second day of the foreign policy debate on 5 May, an unusual mark of attention for a backbench motion. In the main Conservatives showed themselves enthusiasts for membership of a European association or integration with Europe, but sought refuge in generalities which deliberately avoided examination of Britain’s exact role in a united Europe. With the example of Churchill’s grandiloquent phrases before them, there was little incentive for the Europeanists to grasp the nettle. Boothby alone disdained such obfuscation, elaborating his arguments for the need for a planned European economy combined with the development and regional and federation of European colonial territories. Calling on the Government to make plain its real intentions towards Europe, he argued passionately for a positive union, supported by the British Commonwealth and the United States.”
The Labour Government was not persuaded to accept European integration though the Congress of the Hague.
P. 37:
“Eden publicly endorsed Bevin’s cautious approach – implicitly rebuking his more enthusiastic colleagues and determined to discourage those Labour backbenchers who pinned their hopes on European political union forming the bulwark of Europe’s defences. In his view, ultimately Britain’s security lay with America an uncomfortable, indeed unpalatable, truth for some Tory and Labour MPs alike.”
After the Congress of the Hague (May 7-10 1948),
P. 41:
“Throughout the remainder of 1948 the Labour Government’s consistent drive was to dilute the supranational idea in Europe which emerged from the Hague. Bevin’s tactics were to delay while appearing to be constructive. […] He was determined that Britain ‘shouldn’t go into any kind of federal thing.’.”
He was probably right. At the Congress of the Hague, the federalists outnumbered the confederalists. A federation would not fit Europe and it certainly wouldn’t fit Britain, with the remnants of Empire and the Commonwealths.
P. 42:
“Churchill’s vision and enthusiasm continued to exceed what Bevin and the Foreign Office considered desirable or practicable politics. Convinced that ‘entanglement’ with Europe would inevitably inhibit severely Britain’s own efforts to recoup after the War, politically and economically, the Foreign office’s guiding principle remained that Britain should not become more involved in Europe than America was prepared to be, for fear that ‘if we become involved in the purely European grouping, they were more likely to pull out’ which would leave Britain with the worst of both worlds. The corollary of this anxiety meant that Labour’s policy towards Europe throughout this period was directed at combatting the ‘endemic US disposition to isolationism’ through opposition to anything distracted from intergovernmental links with the Continent. […] Churchill shared the Foreign officer’s view of the vital necessity of American support in the emerging Cold War. the fundamental difference between them lay in Churchill’s conviction of the necessity of Britain ‘being there’ in Europe to give direction whereas Bevin and the Foreign Office remained convinced that it was a distraction to the main thrust of their intergovernmental efforts through the OEEC and NATO.”
Churchill was certainly correct that Britain ought to have “been there” in Europe, but wrong in the reasoning. Likewise, the Labour government’s desire to only match American contributions to Europe in order to drawn in the Americans was mistaken. The British should have been in Europe precisely to keep away American influence.
P. 43:
“The Conservative Europeanists themselves were also having second thoughts about the direction in which the federalists were heading. Tensions within the British Group of EPU became irreconcilable at the Interlaken conference in September 1948; the five Conservative delegates were ‘not prepared to accept any immediate transfer of sovereignty to a European Parliament or a European political authority . . . If European union is to come about, as it must, it is not going to be assisted by fanatical federalists or constitution-mongers.’”
In fairness to the British, the difficulties they had in integrating with Europe were largely the fault of Europe, given that the foolish federal system was pushed over the confederal one. There’s no way the British Empire could have joined a federation.
At the Convention of Human Rights:
P. 47:
“Churchill and his fellow Conservative delegates made a lasting and positive contribution in their advocacy and support for the admission of the West Germans, representing the return of the pariah to the diplomatic fold. […] Acutely aware that Germany was the most immediate of Europe’s problems, and that with the intensification of the Cold War in Europe the spectre of a revived and remilitarized Germany was already rearing its head only four years after the defeat of Hitler, Churchill made the question of Germany the main and almost sole theme of his speech, ‘shocking some and almost bullying others’ by his insistent ‘Where are the Germans?’. Only Churchill could have done this: his question caused initial deep offence among those delegates from former occupied lands, but the validity of his message was recognized by even the most reluctant.
Thanks to Churchill’s initiative and Macmillan’s subsequent work in the political committee, at the end of the meeting the Assembly passed a final resolution for the discussion of the admission of new members to the Council of Europe – in other words, the whole German question.”
This, however, caused some problems, because Churchill’s party wasn’t in power, and he was conducting foreign policy, as he was the face of Britain in the eyes of Europe.
P. 48:
“There were, however, limits to the influence of Conservative delegates, who played such a prominent part in the first Assembly's proceedings. The Labour Government did not regard their contribution as benign. Churchill ‘was the spirit of Europe’, but he – rather than the elected Labour Government – also symbolized Britain in the eyes of the Continentals. Churchill’s party-political behaviour at Strasbourg infuriated Labour delegates and Government alike. […] Despite impassioned speeches, the Conservative Europeanists failed to convince Attlee and Bevin that ‘Europeanism’ offered a viable alternative to the Government’s pursuit of ‘Atlanticism’. […] Nor did the Conservative Europeanists persuade the bulk of their colleagues that the emerging links with Europe were complementary to, or even could strengthen, ties with Empire and Commonwealth.”
The author provides three bullet points (with detailed explanations in the book) for how by the end of 1949 Conservative advocates of closer links with Europe were fighting:
Within the European Movement against the federalists.
Within their own party.
Against the Labour Government.
Next, the Conservatives had to confront the Schuman Plan, designed to control occupied West Germany’s coal and steel production.
P. 56:
“Before the advent of the Schuman Plan, Conservative spokesmen had called on the Government to study the political and economic implications of possible integration of Europe’s heavy industry. Eden publicly had supported the argument for closer collaboration between the Ruhr and its competing industries in both France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and had advocated integrating the heavy industry of Europe as a whole.
[…]
There was a widespread Conservative belief that a return to ‘cut-throat international competition based on free nondiscriminatory multilateral trade’ would be a return to economic anarchy. Although not all pro-European Tories endorsed the view that the future lay with creation of larger economic blocs, with the Empire and Western Europe as a natural bloc and a potentially powerful counterpoint to the American economic leviathan, those who favoured increased European economic cooperation were concerned that a Western economic bloc which excluded Britain would sabotage the sterling area. And despite concerted attacks on the preferential trading system from the United States, the Empire was still very much a going concern.”
Churchill did not want to confront this issue and said that he welcomed:
“the Schuman proposal cordially in principle but we must nevertheless consider carefully the way in which Britain can participate most effectively in such a larger grouping of European industry. We must be careful it does not carry with it a lowering of British wages and standards of life and labour. We must, I feel, assert the principle of levelling up, not of levelling down.”
Do the British have some special expertise in trite sloganeering or what? “levelling up not levelling down” sounds exactly like a modern slogan; in fact, “Levelling up” was literally a Tory slogan in 2019.
P. 58:
“Conservative politicians recognized and appreciated the motivation of the French plan as ‘primarily an invention to resolve the dilemma of Germany rearmed’. If the German army was not reconstituted, Western Europe would be at the mercy of Russia; if it was, France would again be at Germany’s mercy. But if the steel industries of the two countries were merged, it would be impossible to make war.
The problem was the manner proposed for integration. Although Britain had accepted supranational functional institutions in two World Wars (these had, of course, been for a limited duration), Churchill’s own preference remained British sponsorship of Europe, short of actual membership; his fellow Europeanists favoured closer cooperation, but along intergovernmental lines. Schuman’s initiative was specifically a supranational scheme.”
While the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman certainly was thinking of leveraging French advantage against Germany while it could still be done, this sort of economic integration was exactly what Europe needed, and the British in retrospect ought to have joined wholeheartedly; Britain was to be “levelling down” (and still is) regardless of which path it took. The question was only how bad the levelling would be.
Cited correspondence between Sue Onslow and Peter Smithers indicates that “most serious thinkers would have admitted that some dilution of sovereignty was necessary if we were to have the advantages of togetherness.” The author also writes that:
P. 59:
“[T]he political implications of Jean Monnet’s functional proposal were of supreme importance. The Schuman Plan was not limited to an arrangement governing coal and steel; it was a commitment to federate Europe. As such, it was unacceptable and, it was felt, would be unacceptable to the British people. Bolstered by their knowledge that ‘the British steel industry were against it, as were the French steel industry’, others argued ‘the common unity implicit in the Schuman Plan was an artificial aspiration’.”
Hm, there was a guy a few years before 1950 who knew how to deal with the industrialists, but they got rid of him. This should definitely have been a case of “screw your economics, I’m going in.”
P 60:
“Thus, the Schuman Plan was seen as a slippery slope: once Britain had set foot upon it and subordinated two key industries, ‘it would [be] inevitable that we are entering on the path of political integration as well’. There were powerful emotional arguments involved: it seemed a case of either Empire or Europe, and ‘if the Conservative party is now to take a further deep plunge into Europe, it must not be surprised if the countries of the Commonwealth are not prepared indefinitely to tag along like a gaggle of Strasbourg geese’. In addition, ‘many backbench Tories felt they were choosing between France and the USA. Looking back to the War, America had been a more secure and satisfactory ally than France.’”
It’s quite clear that the sixty or so Europeanist Conservative MPs understood what was at stake; it is worth quoting the section on this at length:
P. 60:
“Keen to seize the political initiative, the Conservative Europeanists on the middle benches swiftly undertook a series of manoeuvres to counteract their colleagues' reluctance. Macmillan used a constituency speech on 17 May 1950 to urge a positive British response. The British Committee of ELEC (whose Conservative Parliamentary members included Julian Amery, Eccles, Macmillan, Thorneycroft and Lady Tweeds-muir) similarly urged:
“The Schuman proposals to create a European steel and coal organization as one of the foundations of a new Europe may prove to be as momentous as General Marshall’s offer at Harvard . . . It is not enough to applaud it . . . [The Schuman Plan’s] political and economic implications are of great importance, but the details remain to be worked out. It is therefore very much in Britain’s interest that we should take an active part in its elaboration from the beginning . . . We cannot turn our back on Europe at this critical moment.”
Beaverbrook issued a broadside on behalf of the Tory imperialist anti-European wing the following day when this letter was violently, and predictably, attacked in The Daily Express; this at least had the merit of airing the debate.
Boothby followed up the Europeanists’ opening salvo with a letter written from Paris, describing the ‘prevailing [French] impatience . . . with the timidity and insular selfishness of British foreign policy [which] is widespread . . . We might have led the movement for European union and moulded it according to our desires. We have chosen instead to obstruct it at every turn. What is now quite certain is that we cannot stop it. If we continue upon our present course we shall find ourselves in a position of total isolation.’ The same day speaking to a group of industrialists in London, Macmillan referred to the possible consequences of failure of the Schuman plan: Europe could never revert to the situation which existed before the proposal was made. If the plan was not successful, the situation created might be the turning point. It would create one of two hideous results – either people would lose confidence in Western Europe as a whole, or the plan would operate under a Germany not controlled by Britain, or America, a Germany of the wrong kind. Britain might see a German Schuman Plan in the next five years which might be akin to a Ribbentrop-Stalin pact. (This persistent fear was to colour Macmillan's attitude towards Eden’s treatment of European Defence Community (EDC) in the 1950s.)
For these Conservative Europeanists there was a vital principle at stake in the Schuman Plan: it was nothing less than British leadership of Europe. They recognized the Plan as a bid by the French, with America’s blessing, to direct emerging European institutions down the desired federal path, preventing the British (Conservative and Labour alike) from merely relying on the genuine European wish to ensure British participation to limit the scope of the relationship. Thus it was imperative that Britain attend the forthcoming talks in Paris to direct the emerging institution down acceptable intergovernmental channels to protect British and Commonwealth interests.”
However, Churchill, ever the problematic figure, did not seize upon the moment to wrong-foot the Labour Government and champion European integration through the Schuman Plan.
P. 63:
“Churchill’s reluctance compared markedly with Eden’s determination that Schuman’s overture should not be ignored […] However, Eden had no time for the political goal evident in Schuman’s proposal.”
Once again, a mixed bag. Eden was right to seize the moment, but was still overly concerned with the fates of the Commonwealths and the Empire.
Churchill was eventually cajoled into putting a motion forward in Parliament. The debate on the Schuman Plan was intense. Labour MPs said that “after vehemently opposing the nationalization of British iron and steel, the Tories were apparently implying their willingness to ‘run half-way across Europe’ to give control to a body outside British control.” In voting on the attending Schuman Plan talks, the Tories lost, with six of their members abstaining.
P. 68:
“These six MPs represented ‘the other wing of the Conservative party who believe . . . that any supranational authority must be totalitarian if it is successful and chaotic if it is not, and in any event Britain will be robbed of her nationhood and her powers of defence’. It is interesting that all six later opposed Eden on his Egypt policy. […] Politically, the most remarkable rebel was Enoch Powell, ‘intellectually and morally one of the outstanding backbenchers on either side.”
Conservatives had argued for the rearmament of Western Germany before the Korean War, their concerns over the Soviet military were ignored.
P. 73:
“The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 heightened existing fears of the Russian military threat to Western Europe. There was a strong feeling among the Europeanists that the Council of Europe was entitled to, and should, discuss defence an area which the Committee of Ministers jealously guarded as their prescriptive right. Undaunted, Churchill seized international attention with his demand in August 1950 at the second Assembly in Strasbourg for the immediate creation of a European army under a unified command with a single Defence Minister. As with other aspects of his European ‘policy’, Churchill had no well-defined plan; the details were to be provided by his worker bees, in particular Sandys. Insofar as Churchill had conceived the structure of such an organization, he imagined something akin to the Allied Command of World War II. ‘His purpose was to throw out general ideas and give impetus towards movements already at work. It was for others to find detailed solutions.’ But as Churchill commented, there was a method in his approach: ‘I am sure it would be a mistake to get involved in details. The Council of Europe can never at this stage in affairs deal with problems that belong to executive governments. It may point the way and give inspiration.’”
Having to deal with such wretched Churchill apologia is tiresome. It’s quite obvious that Churchill never had any idea what he was doing—just throw out ideas and let other people figure it out—sure, like at Gallipoli, right? Since the beginning of his career, the oaf has been utterly incapable of anything but provocation.
P. 73:
“Although this did not enjoy the same success as Churchill’s earlier suggestions and Churchill and his fellow Europeanists were not successful in persuading Bevin of the merits of the idea, it was thanks to the Conservative leader that the idea of German rearmament through a European army entered international debate. America had indicated in the first NATO staff meetings in 1949 that she did not intend to commit any further ground troops to Europe. Washington’s change of position in September 1950 was conditional upon the rearming of Western Germany: this increase in American troops in Europe was temporary until 12 German divisions had been raised and ready to take up their position.”
It was a mistake. The Americans were not ready to send troops to Europe, and encouraging them to do so on the condition of German rearmament undermined the role German rearmament served in the defense of Europe.
The new Conservative government in Britain failed to offer military commitments to Europe. The author writes that the “events of November 1951 proved to be a watershed.” These events must refer to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden telling the Europeans in Rome that Britain wouldn’t provide troops to a European army but would be interested in participating in other ways. “Thereafter there emerged three lines of approach in Conservative backbench attitudes to Europe:”
Thanks to the twin distractions of German rearmament (and the political form this was taking through the European Defence Community/European Political Community) and imperial preference, only a hard core of MPs within the Strasbourg delegation and in organizations such as the British Committee of ELEC, worked to counter Eden’s indifference to the development of ‘Little Europe’, and sought to promote alternative military and economic arrangements. These MPs were Amery, Smithers and Boothby.
The ‘centrist line’, favoured by those Conservatives who wanted a British lead within the Council of Europe and a closer association with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and who were profoundly discouraged by the Foreign Office’s indifference. These MPs included Beamish, Sir Edward Boyle, Lord John Hope, Jack Maclay (after 1954 when he returned to the back benches), Nigel Nicolson, Gilbert Longden, Kerr and Roberts; and Hay, Foster, Reader Harris, Hughes Hallett, Pitman, Cyril Black, Hugh Fraser, and Tilney who were closely connected with Federal Union or its parliamentary group.
the ‘Eden thesis’: Eden’s unwillingness to join moves towards European integration was the obverse of his desire for Britain to continue to play a world role. The Foreign Secretary preferred association with Europe not participation – Bevin’s Atlantic approach, which ignored the Council of Europe. The bulk of the Conservative party endorsed this attitude.
P. 82:
“For the Conservative Europeanists, the debate over the most desirable arrangement for German rearmament was part of the wider debate over the question of British leadership of Europe. They appreciated the need for a strong Europe to earn Washington’s respect, to forestall American dictation or abandonment. The unspoken question was ‘Who is to be America’s principal ally in Europe: Germany in the Six, or Britain in the Fifteen?’”
What is the Fifteen? The fifteen member states of the EU at the time of the book’s writing. The Six were the six founding members.
P. 83:
“After November 1951 continental Europe was ‘no longer comforted by assurances of Britain’s “close association” or “warm welcome” or by any other euphemisms for no direct participation’. Rudely disabused of the illusion that only Labour’s ‘selfish’ refusal to participate had prevented the Federal Union of Europe, and that a Conservative government could be cajoled into changing policy, henceforth the idea of ‘Little Europe’ dominated. Eden’s acceptance of this, through his support of the French throughout the tortured progress of the EDC treaty towards ratification and his persistent refusal to support the Council of Europe despite appeals from the Europeanists, left the stage free for the Six, and for the Germans to become the Americans’ favoured Continental allies through US loans and aid to the EDC. The work of those dedicated Conservative Europeanists who strove to ensure that Britain’s voice was heard in the forum of ‘Big Europe’ was relegated to the side lines.
For the Conservative Europeanists it was ‘a black period’. Struggling for Britain to regain the political initiative in Europe, a battle which Eden was content not to fight, they were immensely frustrated at the Foreign Secretary’s refusal to exploit an inter-governmental, pragmatic institution which ‘was tailor-made for British interests’. They repeatedly urged Eden to demonstrate the value Britain placed upon the Assembly’s deliberations in a vain attempt to counter the development of the Six and the corresponding exclusion of Britain. They feared German domination of the emerging entity, particularly once the issue of German reunification resurfaced as the Soviet Union sought to woo West Germany from the Western camp.”
Conservative backbenchers did manage to pressure the government enough to get Anthony Eden to put forward the “Eden Plan” which would try to influence the Six through the Council of Europe, which Britain was a part of; the Europeans were immediately suspicious that the British were trying to direct the Six without actually being a member.
P. 85:
“The principal division in the Conservative European camp came in the economic sphere: between the ‘anti-GATT’ MPS and the ‘pro-GATT’ MPs (such as Hope, Longden, Tilney and Nicolson) who favoured ‘Atlantic Union’. To a very great ex-tent, the battle within the Conservative party over Europe in the 1950s has to be seen in tandem with the internal struggle over imperial preference.”
Churchill did not take the lead on the Europeanist cause for two reasons: one, the European Defence Community was not his ideal of European cooperation and he primarily sought a close relationship of the English-speaking peoples; second, his chosen successor, Eden, was not a Europeanist and already disagreed with Churchill on Middle East policy (as we might recall from the Suez Crisis).
P. 91:
“To the ardent Europeanists, Eden was the villain. ‘I am sure that there was a sharp division between [Churchill] and Eden on this subject. The latter thought the whole European “thing” was insubstantial . . . The fact that the first meeting of the Consultative Assembly after the Conservative election victory was ignored by Anthony and that the negative position was stated immediately at it by Maxwell Fyfe, suggests that this had all been definitely settled in opposition. Eden had indeed already indicated there should be ‘no Europe nonsense’ When the Government was formed in 1951 Churchill spoke to Eden, saying, “I want you to have a Minister of European Affairs, and I suggest this should be Duncan.” Eden was adamant. He said (a) there was no reason for having such a Minister, and (b) he did not want Duncan. He wanted Selwyn and me.
The pro-European Tories were insufficiently important to counteract Eden’s and the Foreign Office’s influence. From the outset, Eden was determined ‘not to become involved [in European union] and his decision was vital’, Eden’s exceptional knowledge of foreign policy conferred an extraordinary supremacy in the Government on such matters. Eden’s position was quite clear:
“He intensely disliked the idea of European Union in any form other than the Concert of Europe . . . He did not believe that there was any political substance in the movement on the Continent. His view of Europe was that of a skilled diplomat – a ‘concert’ – shades of Metternich. If I sat next to him in the smoke room he would say, ‘Now, old boy, any-thing but Europe.’ His prestige within the Foreign Office was immense. He was indeed a marvellous negotiator. His hostility to any engagement by Britain in the European process was translated into (i) the Maxwell Fyfe speech (November 1951) and (ii) the appointment of a minor official named Gallagher as British Permanent Representative in Strasbourg. In the Committee of Ministers’ Deputies Gallagher systematically obstructed every constructive move: he was the most hated man in Strasbourg.””
This reminds us of an interesting difference between the American and British governments that came up in the last book I reviewed—in America, the President (allegedly) commands the Executive branch. In Britain, the elected members of the House of Commons form the government, and additionally, the ministers control their respective domains. Churchill couldn’t simply command Eden to do what he wanted or fire him. The Party controls the government, not the Prime Minister.
Eden was not against cooperation with Europe, but for cooperation with the nation states rather than a supranational organization. Today we would call this “based,” but that the time it was the wrong play. Eden believe the Europeanists “were not just a policy pressure group, as much as a scheming policy pressure group.”
Lord Carr in an interview with the author stated on Eden:
P. 93:
“The Council of Europe gave them platforms to make speeches with no government backing at all. It was not commonplace then for politicians other than ministers to go abroad to speak in a formal international forum such as the Council of Europe and thereby appear to obtain an international importance for what they said. He had fairly old-fashioned ideas that it was up to the Foreign Secretary to make policy and there should be no free enterprise efforts which made life difficult for him. Even if he had agreed with the content of what they were saying, he would have been tetchy because it was out of his control. People buzzing about on the periphery pretending more influence than they possessed were not welcome. He could not appreciate them, although he could understand them only too well, or at least their motives. Eden was inclined to think it was all much more of a plot than it was, but underlying this was the majority view, which he shared with the Foreign Office, that none of this would come to fruition . . . He thought EDC would fail, and that Britain’s proper role was to stand back a bit and to use her diplomatic skill to pick up the pieces, knock heads together, generally get all concerned to see sense and moderation.”
Once again, Eden fell back on a British arrogance about their diplomatic skill, blind to the fact that these diplomatic maneuvers were not as relevant after the destruction of British power in both World Wars, and could be ignored.
P. 95:
“Another part of the problem was that the Council of Europe was ‘less frequented than formerly by great parliamentarians of weight’ and its method of work – meeting for one month – meant that it was not easy to develop at once into a forum for adequate discussion of large issues of foreign policy. The work of the Conservative delegates was also considerably hampered by the poor view party managers and most Tory MPs took of the Strasbourg Assembly, reflected in the lack of debating time made available to the Council of Europe proceedings at Westminster. Going to Strasbourg was regarded by many as nothing more than a jolly or gastronomic jaunt. Trips to the Council of Europe were certainly regarded by Conservative delegates as most enjoyable: ‘It was rather like a Christmas game, only this game was called “Foreign Secretaries”. You played the role, pontificated on policy, without power and responsibility. [But] it was not a great honour. The Minister and the rest of the party saw it as a joke, and the constituencies did not understand it at all. We were very frustrated by having so little influence and knowing we were regarded with a certain degree of contempt.’ ‘As to the value placed on the work and recommendations of the Council of Europe, the House of Commons in the 1950s seemed to pay little, if any attention nor, I suspect, did Whitehall and Ministers. After all, if you sent people to Strasbourg . . . you’d think they were probably just having a good time there and you needn’t take their reports, etc, particularly seriously.’”
The British basically regarded the MPs sent to the Council of Europe as a C-Team participating in something between pretend politics and a vacation.
P. 96:
“Given the pervading Conservative scepticism towards the Council of Europe and the Government’s desire to forestall any freelance promotion of closer links with Europe, the selection of delegates to the Assembly in the 1950s cannot be taken as a guide to enthusiasm for Europe. Indeed, Strasbourg was seen as a distraction from an MP’s work at Westminster, Recommendations were made by the Whips’ Office on several grounds: support for closer relations with Europe and a facility for European languages. The delegations always included a member of the Ulster Unionists, to counter any accusations of Conservative neglect of the province, and criticism from the Irish Republic over the north; and a Whip. It was a method short of office of rewarding and encouraging promising back-benchers, who might show with Strasbourg experience that they were worthy of junior office. It was also an assessment of the MP’s reliability not to get swept away by the heady (and ‘unrealistic’) rhetoric of the Continentals. Ability and suitability for some area of the Council's work was considered, and there was also an element of ‘widening the horizons’ of some Conservatives, to cultivate their interest in Europe: as Chief Whip, Heath once asked Ursula Branston, the secretary to the Strasbourg delegation, for suggestions on the composition of the next group.
“I myself was not very enthusiastic about how things were going, and pointed out that the Europeans themselves were disappointed because . . . our delegation was rather piano politically, with no sign of it having much clout back home. Heath thought this was rather naïve of me and replied, ‘The more people we can send who are not stars but likely to become interested in Europe in the future, the better.’ He persisted in sending [people] with orders to observe and learn; they were to make up their own minds but understand they were to do as directed. Therefore he was a strong force in the Whips’ Office for Europe behind the scenes . . . Those who went to Strasbourg learnt an enormous amount, and the seeds of the future were sown but they did not come up to the extent that Heath hoped. It was very much an uphill struggle. None of the British delegates to Strasbourg were very prominent politicians back home. They had no drawing power. Television was not as powerful as it is now. Rippon, Martin Madden, David Price, etc. were all excellent people but Westminster was the only place they could secure an audience. It was no good their going round the country.””
The author more or less repeats a paragraph but I suppose the repetition marks the importance.
P. 97:
“The struggle for Europe in the 1950s must also be seen in tandem with the internal party conflict over imperial preference,as the reverse of Conservative pressure for the maintenance and extension of imperial preference was stout opposition to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), sponsored by America. Once this cause had been defeated by the President of the Board of Trade, Peter Thorneycroft, at the 1954 party conference, with his successful attack on a critical motion on the GATT, the party was free to look beyond the immediate horizon of the Empire and Commonwealth to closer economic links with Europe.”
The previous book review I did on The Special Relationship covered GATT extensively, although I didn’t cover the technical minutiae in the review.
Again emphasized is the opinion on whether or not Empire and Europe were contrasting or complementary decisions.
P. 98:
“This cause echoed the moves of those who placed greatest emphasis on Britain’s links with her Commonwealth and Empire over and above Britain’s commitment to NATO and ideas of Atlantic Union. Some ‘enthusiasts for the Empire [thought] of Imperial unity and European unity as contradictory causes’; others argued, ‘There was no cleavage between the two’. Empire and Europe ‘were compatible, indeed complementary’.
“It is difficult to realize today [1993] just how powerful [the idea of Empire] was right up to the early Sixties. Many of us thought, including myself, that the concept could be revived and indeed could take on a new and greater dimension in the form of the Commonwealth. This would give Britain a part more in keeping with her post-war capabilities, would free rein to the political aspirations of the Colonial Empire and the Dominions, and would give us a distinctive position in the modern geopolitical scene. It was attractive from every point of view . . . No one said and I doubt anybody thought that the Commonwealth was a dead duck from the start.””
The British government became even more complacent regarding Europe.
P. 99:
“The British Government had confidently anticipated that, thanks to Eden’s success in rearming Germany through WEU in 1954, the British preference for intergovernmental cooperation had triumphed and the French bid for European leadership had been foiled; henceforth there would be no nonsense about supranational structures. The rélance following the meeting at Messina in June 1955 thus came as a disagreeable surprise.”
The Messina conference was where the aforementioned European Coal and Steel Community because the European Economic Community, the EEC or what is also called the “Common Market.” Eden, as Prime Minister, still believed that British participation would be a “a mad scheme” that was “doomed to failure.”
P. 102:
“Britain’s relations with the Commonwealth and Europe were an increasingly popular political topic in the autumn of 1956 and, apart from the Suez question, represented the main concern at the party conference at Llandudno in early October. The plan for a free trade area – Plan G – which had begun to take shape in early 1956, was paraded before the party at Llandudno, following Macmillan’s and Thorneycroft’s proposals to Commonwealth Finance ministers gathered in Washington for the IMF meeting in September 1956. This free trade area plan offered ‘the way out’ between the emerging European Economic Community and the Commonwealth, with the proposal for British ‘association’ with the Six by means of a free trade area. This preserved ties with the Commonwealth by guaranteeing the continued free entry of goods into Britain.
Most Conservatives favoured a free trade area. By the mid-1950s ‘more and more people recognized that the old pattern of trade with the Commonwealth was breaking down, and this involved the exploitation of the European market’. ‘The Commonwealth is still our biggest market, [but] it is not the market which is expanding the fastest.’ There was a feeling among younger MPs, with the signs of the eventual break-up of Britain’s colonial empire, that Britain could no longer have a captive market. But ‘we wanted to keep the sterling area: we attached enormous importance to this’.
This backbench support was a welcome prop to the moves initiated by Macmillan and Thorneycroft, ably supported by Frank Lee and other civil servants at the Board of Trade. It was generally felt a free trade area would ‘open our export trade to the most rapidly expanding major market in the world’, ‘prevent the exclusion of the UK from European trade’, ‘pre serve the spirit and substance of imperial preference’, be advantageous to the Commonwealth, ‘both as a growing market . . . and a source of capital’; and British association in the early stages would ‘enable us to shape and influence the detailed planning’.”
The British in 1955 began this shift towards Europe, still believing that they would “shape and influence the detailed planning;” although some Conservative remained uneasy about a free trade area due to their commitment to Imperial Preference.
P. 103:
“[O]ne effect of the Suez crisis was to increase Conservative support for participation in a new West European community. The assumption that ‘America would never stand aside if British vital interests were at stake’ had been rudely dispelled. ‘As a result we must now turn urgently to consolidating our relations with Europe, for example the creation of a free trade area in association with a common market. By moving closer to Europe we stood the best chance of improving our relations with the United States.’ Typically, Amery looked beyond this, suggesting a concerted common European policy could be pursued in the Middle East, if possible with America, and without her if necessary. This was not to be: Guy Mollet had ardently hoped that if Britain and France could ‘win through; against Egypt and Russia, he would ‘make a good European of your Anthony Eden yet!’ The failure of the Suez military intervention struck a tremendous blow to the emerging Anglo-French axis as the basis of European progress, instead of a Franco-German axis. Treated like naughty school-boys by the United States and Russia, thereafter Britain and France went their separate ways.”
“Naughty school-boy” is an understatement. It is not 1945, but 1956 that was the pivotal year for Great Britain in the post-war order.
P. 104:
“However, the ‘feeling of well-founded backbench support’ bolstered government moves towards the Community through a free trade area. The ‘greater eminence’ of Macmillan and Thorneycroft after January 1957 confirmed the government’s commitment to this policy, although in his first months as Prime Minister Macmillan was too busy ‘picking up the pieces with America’ to concentrate on closer European integration. It was not until after the signature of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 1957, that the Government took the idea of EFTA seriously. The greatest concern now centred on the decision of the Six to include their overseas territories within the EEC tariff boundaries: this put both the principles of excluding the Commonwealth and agricultural products into question which immediately raised Tory backbench hackles. Faced with this unwelcome development, the Government determined to try to negotiate an industrial free trade area excluding all overseas territories, rather than to expand the new European grouping to include the whole of the Commonwealth. The Defence White Paper of February 1957 which proposed the withdrawal of 13 500 British troops from West Germany had had ‘unfavourable repercussions’. ‘It was imperative for Britain to continue to show maximum interest in Europe and in case the EEC and EURATOM treaties were not ratified, to have a “crash wagon” ready’.”
The British face the danger of a Western European economic bloc forming without the formation of a Free Trade Area alongside it, which was necessary for British goods to remain competitive.
“This burgeoning British official enthusiasm […] was matched by the perennial Continental suspicion that British initiatives were intended to undermine their projects.”—Well, in short, that is the entire history of British policy since at least the Napoleonic Wars.
P. 105:
“For the Tories in the 1950s, Europe was the dog that did not bark. Contrary to the Europeanists’ hopes and Continental expectations, Churchill’s peace-time administration adhered to Bevin’s foreign policy on Europe and Conservative backbench attempts to foster more positive attitudes to intergovernmental cooperation through the Council of Europe were marginal and very largely ignored. For most Tories, the developments of the Six prior to 1954 were merely a ‘temporary emotional aberration’; Eden shared this conviction that there was no need for Britain to strive for leadership in Europe to divert attention from federalism.
Although there was no broad policy change when Eden became Prime Minister gradually, the tide turned in favour of the pro-Europeans, thanks in large part to the defeat of imperial preference and the 1955 intake of younger MPs, which provided a welcome prop to Macmillan’s and Thorneycroft’s moves to associate Britain with the emerging common market in a free trade area. ‘Eden’s resignation in January 1957 did seem to mark the departure of a generation within the Foreign Office itself, and the arrival of people like Donald Maitland [who went on to help Edward Heath negotiate Britain’s entry into the Common Market] who were strong Europeans.
Thus the EEC provided the catalyst for the shift in the balance within the Conservative party on Europe: from sceptical front bench vs individual committed backbenchers, to committed front bench (with prominent Cabinet sceptics) vs sceptical and hostile backbenchers, vocally supported by The Express Newspapers’ claim that the Government had no mandate. This pattern has endured to this day.”
Now we get to the chapter of the book on the Suez Group and Anti-Suez Group, which was really the point of reading this. The Suez Group, unlike the Europeonist backbenchers, were both effective and not a cross-party group.