From my Substack column - why not join for FREE updates?
I reply:
It was the Tories who got us into 'Europe' in the first place, starting with Macmillan and completed by Heath. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/eec-britains-late-entry.htm
But the background was how the US threw money into Europe (having abandoned the Morgenthau proposals to break the Germans down into rural earth-scratchers) after abruptly shutting off vital financial support to us in September 1945. That's why Macmillan wanted to catch up the Frogs and Krauts; the effects on Britain's industry and economy of joining the EU's card game are here for us to see.
Now, the Tories are split between patriots, wet-finger-in-the-air types like BoJo, and globalists (= supporters of the American Empire.)
The Labour Party has been split for sixty years and more over the EU issue. See Hugh Gaitskell's speech to the Labour Party Conference in October 1962, warning against the enthusiasm for membership of the Common Market. https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/speech_by_hugh_gaitskell_against_uk_membership_of_the_common_market_3_october_1962-en-05f2996b-000b-4576-8b42-8069033a16f9.html
He laid his finger on the tension in the socialist movement between international brotherhood and promoting the interests of working people at home; a tension that has never been adequately resolved and which has been clouded over with dreamy rhetoric from bloviators on both sides of the Commons debating chamber.
As for our influence in the EU - please Noel Coward, I have only so many ribs. Now if we chose to become the 51st US State, *then* we might have some influence.
We've been a damn sight poorer than we are today. I remember no fridge and an outside lavvy, but we managed. It's not about money; even now we live like kings and queens compared to past ages. If you want to see what life was like in the East End of London before the ‘damn socialists’ interfered, read Jack London’s 1903 book The People of the Abyss (free online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688 ) - this, in the heart of the world’s then richest and mightiest Empire. Every home should have a copy.
There's a hill to climb but it can be climbed, and I don't think re-entering the undemocratic EU would do us any favours. Surely we're not the only ones to feel that way: people in Italy, Greece and Hungary would be glad to exit, Macron has just pledged not to get involved in a nuclear fracas in Ukraine just to please NATO, even the Germans are tempted to look east and may feel more like it as they freeze this winter thanks to the bombing of NS1+2 by No One At All (because the Swedes won't say who.)
Does anybody else still believe in this country and its people? Or is that too Blimpish? I’m proud to be a Little Englander, i.e. an anti-imperialist. Our greatness is not in wealth but in freedom and sovereign self-government.
3 comments:
The America/Europe dichotomy goes back to 1945. I just finished a biography of de Gaulle's, and there is a great deal of discussion of the subject from 1945 to 1970.
A biography of Macmillan says the Americans were angling for someone from the outgoing Vichy administration to lead France because de Gaulle was considered too independent/patriotic.
And instead a number of the Vichy government members were executed.
Post a Comment