I was very upset by David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union and even more upset by the decision to leave. Many commentators at that time described the decision as “tragic”. In order try to make some sense of all this, for the first time since I left University, I decided to write a “proper” essay analysing whether this description was hyperbole or whether the decision to leave really was a “tragedy” in the classical sense of the term.
Tragedy: (esp. in classical and Renaissance drama) a play in which the protagonist, usually a man of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he cannot deal. (Collins English Dictionary)
In this essay, I will examine the evolution of Britain’s relationship with the countries of continental Europe, since the war, and seek to explore whether the vote to leave the European Union was indeed a Tragedy. To this end the definition above can be adapted to read: a real life drama in which a country of importance and outstanding national characteristics and achievements falls to disaster through the combination of national failings and circumstances with which it cannot deal.
The birth of the European dream
After the war, Churchill favoured a coming together of European nations to avoid future conflicts. There is an unresolved argument as to whether he intended that Britain should be part of it. The United Kingdom (UK) took part in the discussions that led to the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, but declined to join. Throughout the fifties negotiations continued on the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958, of which the members were Belgium Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The seeds of the Brexit tragedy were sown in that decade. As Britain took no part in the EEC negotiations, the Treaty of Rome was based on a sharing out of interests between the different founder Member States. As a gross simplification, Belgium and Luxembourg got most of the institutions, Italy got support for its poorly developed Mezzogiorno, Germany and the Netherlands had the benefit of a wider market for their goods, Germany footed the bill, while France swept the board. Not only was the whole project based on a largely French legal, economic and social philosophy, but the way it was designed brought huge benefits to France’s inefficient agricultural sector, as well as having the European Parliament, situated, at enormous expense, in Strasbourg. Although all four languages were equal, French was the working language. Using the Roman law of countries such as France as the basis for all EEC law is at odds with the common law in most of the English speaking world. The Anglo-Saxon (a French denomination) liberal, free-market economic philosophy is quite alien to traditional (i.e. 1950s) continental economic thinking. (However, one of the ironies of the present situation is that this philosophy now dominates European Union (EU) thinking, to the extent that French critics often criticise the EU for being too Anglo-Saxon.)
With hindsight (or even at the time), it is not surprising that Charles de Gaulle vetoed the British application to join the EEC in the sixties. He accused Britain of a "deep-seated hostility" towards European construction. Nothing (other than de Gaulle’s departure) changed significantly between then and 1973, when the UK joined, accepting all the provisions of the Treaty of Rome after a transitional period.
The political arguments for the UK to join the EEC were strong then and have not altered significantly since. At the time, the economic arguments were more evenly balanced: again as a gross simplification, the choice the UK faced seemed to be between a focus on Europe or on the rest of the world, in particular the Commonwealth; it was not clear where the advantage lay. (Forty years on the economic arguments are overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU, but the destructive forces examined in this essay have trumped those arguments.)
An issue, which influenced the thinking of some of the Brexit campaigners, was the role of the European Court of Justice. This Court exercises considerable power and has a teleological approach to its decisions, i.e. many of the judges have considered that they have a role in the development of Community law. This, combined with the fact that it is extraordinarily difficult to repeal or limit an EU law once it has been enacted, means that there is, indeed, an acquisitive aspect, or ratchet mechanism, to the development of Community law (l’acquis communautaire). [1]
[1] This means that once the EU has acquired competence in a particular area of policy, there should be no reversion to national competence.
The issue which most soured the UK’s relations with other Member States in the late seventies and early eighties was the Budget issue. As I have said earlier, under the terms of the original contract, Germany was the only net contributor (whatever their motivation was for doing so). In political circles, the French promoted the idea of solidarity between the rich and the poor and gained acceptance for the idea that a juste retour (fair return) was contrary to the spirit of the Treaties. However, the way the financial arrangements had been devised meant that, after a transitional period, the UK became one of only two net contributors to the EEC budget, in spite of not being one of the richest (in terms of GDP per capita). This problem was already causing concern to the Labour Government and was a major preoccupation of Margaret Thatcher throughout the eleven years (1979 to 1990) that she was Prime Minister. The £360-million-a-week figure became the main feature of the Brexit campaign.
Though it is not often mentioned, either by Brexiteers or by Europhiles in continental Europe, Margaret Thatcher was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Single European Market (SEM). This is the main success story of the EU and is based very largely on Anglo-Saxon free-market principles. Of course, it brings with it a whole raft of detailed regulation, which is probably necessary to ensure a level playing field, but which provides ammunition for the Eurosceptics.
In 1990 under the Presidency of Jacques Delors, the Commission developed a Social Action Programme. This fuelled Euroscepticism in the UK. Michael Howard was Secretary of State for Employment. Both Michael Howard and Jacques Delors agreed with the principle of subsidiarity. Unfortunately, they had very different interpretations of what it meant in practice.
From 1991 to 2000 I worked in the unit in the Commission responsible for implementing most of the Social Action Programme and in particular the Working Time Directive. It is worth pausing for a moment to examine the differences in approach between the UK and France to industrial relations policy, or what the French call “social policy”. When I joined the Ministry of Labour in 1962, apart from health and safety, there were only a few Acts of Parliament covering employment matters. The Employment and Training Act gave very general powers and duties to the Minister to promote employment and training.[2] The Wages Councils Act protected the wages and conditions of employment of workers in industries and services where trade unions were weak; there was similar legislation covering agricultural workers. The rights, such as they were, to public holidays were covered either by common law or by the Banking and Financial Dealings Regulations. Everything else was covered by common law or by collective agreement between employers and workers or their representatives. At that time, these arrangements suited both employers’ and workers’ organisations. The Trades Union Congress, in particular, was opposed to Government (legislative) interference in these matters, both within the UK and within the International Labour Organisation.
[2] The Minister of Labour and National Service was to provide: “Such facilities and services as he considers expedient for the purpose of assisting persons to select, fit themselves for, obtain and retain employment suitable to their age and capacity, of assisting employers to obtain suitable employees, and generally for the purpose of promoting employment in accordance with the requirements of the community.” (Careers Services: History, Policy and Practice in the United Kingdom by David Peck, Routledge Falmer, 2004).
The French, by contrast, had a diametrically opposite approach to these matters. The Code de Travail regulated everything to do with contracts of employment from minimum wages to hours of work. (The French, at least since 1936, have been obsessed with working time – hence the 35-hour week). The French have also had legislation on Works Councils, which provided the foundation for the European Works Council Directive.
Independently of the EU, the British Governments, over the first fifteen years of my career, began to “interfere” in employment and industrial relations matters under both Labour and Conservative governments. As well as stricter and more comprehensive laws on health and safety, there was legislation on contracts of employment, redundancy payments, industrial training, equal pay, prices and incomes, industrial relations, sex discrimination and race relations.
One might have thought that this convergence of approach would be helpful, but in fact at a detailed level, it gave rise to further conflict. For example, the phrase where reasonable and practicable, dear to UK Health and Safety legislation, is incomprehensible to most continental lawyers.
Jacques Delors was French and the Social Action Programme was French in concept. However, the Commission’s proposal for a Working Time Directive was a timid affair. Nevertheless it was sufficient to raise the wrath of Michael Howard, who was Secretary of State for Employment at the time, and, I think, a contributory factor to his growing Euroscepticism. The proposal was, however, unacceptable to the French who insisted, successfully in the course of negotiations, on the inclusion of limits on Working Time. Although the UK obtained an opt-out from these provisions, that Directive is one of the bêtes noires of the Eurosceptics.
The next milestone in European development was the Maastricht Treaty. This created the European Union and the euro. It is perhaps worth remembering that the French voted only narrowly in favour of the Maastricht Treaty. Had they not done so, the tragedy of Brexit might have been avoided. It was with the opt-out from the euro that the UK began to distance itself from the central European project. This set the precedent for other opt-outs, including from some aspects of the Social Action Programme. In particular, the UK opted not to sign the Schengen Agreement (not an EU agreement), which abolished (most) border controls between the signatories.
The arguments for and against joining the euro were finely balanced. I was certainly in favour. I poo-pooed the arguments of a retired British civil servant that joining the euro would inevitably lead to closer harmonisation of fiscal policy. Obviously I was wrong about that. So now there is a significant and increasing divide between those countries that are within the euro and those that are not.
The debate in the UK over the last six years, in particular, has essentially been about how much of “Europe” can we get out of or prevent from happening. Some of the reasons for that attitude are outlined above.
There are a number of other powerful forces in the UK that have undermined the British membership of the EU. Some of these are unique to the UK; some are shared by some or most other countries.
One is economic. The UK has always been an open and outward-looking economy. In particular, London is an international financial centre. A British economist in 1991 described the UK as a mid-Atlantic economy. With hindsight, it is difficult to see how the UK economy would have coped with the pressures of euro membership.
A second is cultural. While Britain’s heritage is European, modern popular culture is dominated by the United States, where they speak (a sort of) English. There is also a strong influence from other English-speaking countries, particularly Australia and, increasingly India. The pop music, film and television industries are so inextricably interconnected that I, for one, am usually hard-pressed to know whether the actors or performers are European or American. Many of the films that we watch are based in America, so that we imbibe, sub-consciously, a feeling for the American way of life. Similarly, many popular novels are written by non-European authors.
A most important element is the Press. Most of the British daily newspapers are foreign-owned. As far as I know, none of these foreign owners were born in the EU. Most of them are opposed to Britain’s current membership of the EU. The Daily Mail has for many years run stories ridiculing or trivialising the EU. The Daily Express campaigned successfully for a referendum. Most of the others were condescending, at best, towards the “Brussels bureaucracy”. Only the FT, the Guardian, the Independent (and i) and the Daily Mirror were not Eurosceptic. In a similar vein, successive British Governments, in particular Conservative ones, returned from negotiations as if they were returning from a battle. We have won concessions, we have got our money back, we have resisted Brussels’ attempts to do us down or to waste our taxpayers’ money, etc. Unpopular legislation is portrayed as being required to comply with EU Directives. (This practice is common to most EU governments).
Next, there is immigration, which almost certainly swung the referendum in favour of Brexit. There is not room here to analyse the issue in any depth. Rightly or wrongly, immigration has been an issue in British politics at least since the early sixties. Immigrants have been blamed for many of the perceived problems in the UK: crime rates, housing problems, national identity, the National Health Service, unemployment, low wages etc. This issue is shared with many other countries and is, if anything, more acute in France than in the UK. Throughout Europe, over the last few years, there has been popular concern about immigration from outside the EU. In the UK this concern has been compounded by a large increase in immigration from within the EU. The Labour Government (and most informed commentators, including me) grossly under-estimated the numbers involved. Handled differently, this could have been seen as a windfall bonus: an influx of generally well trained and dynamic young European workers to a country with an ageing workforce and an ageing population. But insufficient measures were taken for the reception and integration of these people, who tended to gravitate towards towns, many of which were unused to large numbers of immigrants. In particular, there were problems in schools, where teachers were not trained to teach children with limited English. This problem was compounded by the Conservative manifesto promise to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands – a promise which was impossible to achieve without limits on EU migrants.
Finally, there is the referendum itself. It may be argued from the above analysis that the holding of a referendum was inevitable. But, if the Labour Party had had David Miliband as leader instead of his brother Ed, if the Liberal Democrat vote had not collapsed, there would not have been a Conservative government – though the problem might have been only postponed for another five years. In addition, the British sense of fairness prevailed over common sense. Normally, when there is a move to change the Constitution, the onus is on the proponents of change to make their case. With a club or association, a two-thirds majority is often required. But, in this case a simple majority was required. Furthermore, the Electoral Commission considered that a Yes/No vote was unfair and insisted on changing to Remain/Leave. Although the elected government of the UK was in favour of Remain, the BBC and ITV were bound to be neutral. Thus, whenever a Remain campaigner made a comment, the BBC was obliged to give space to a counter-argument. Furthermore, referenda are unreliable means of resolving a specific issue. I have two examples from a very small sample of people who told me they were voting or had voted to leave. One was a Green Party Councillor, who saw a leave vote as a means of getting rid of David Cameron (the British Prime Minister). The other was a retired miner, who said: “They’ve given us six years of austerity and then they expected us to vote for them!” Neither of these motivations had anything to do with the EU. The referendum was not binding. However, few politicians have been ready to challenge the result and there is even a debate about whether the UK Government has to consult Parliament before invoking Article 50 of the Treaty. Thus, a referendum that was partly about the sovereignty of the UK national Parliament appears to override the wishes of the members of that Parliament, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU! As Enoch Powell[3] (quoting Prometheus) said in a different context: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad”.
[3] Enoch Powell was a senior Conservative Member of Parliament, who made a speech in 1968 criticising British immigration policy, which attracted a great deal of attention.
When looked at from the French perspective, the story looks rather different. The UK did not want to join in the first place. When it did join, it agreed to abide by the rules, but was always griping about them. Although it had agreed to the budgetary arrangements, it refused to comply with them, refused to accept the concept that the Community was about solidarity and banged on about “getting [their] money back”. The French have often stressed the need for deepening rather than widening. The UK, on the other hand, favoured enlargement of the EU in the (mistaken) belief that it would make deepening more difficult. The French lost the argument on enlargement. In many areas of economic policy, Anglo-Saxon free market principles have prevailed. Agricultural policy has been reformed (though, probably, not enough) so that it is no longer as beneficial to French farmers as it was. In the labour market area, the main concern in European circles is for greater labour market flexibility, rather than protection of workers. In France criticisms of Europe are often voiced along the lines that it is too Anglo-Saxon or that L’Europe Sociale has been forgotten. Last, but by no means least, the beautiful French language has been displaced by English has the main working language in the EU.
There are strong anti-globalisation factions on both the Right and Left of French politics, which have restricted the room for manoeuvre of successive French Governments. The French are a most egocentric (or, more accurately, national-centric) nation. The world is seen through the French prism (perhaps even more than it is in the UK). But, whereas in the UK the knee-jerk reaction to events tends to be to distance itself from Europe, in France, paradoxically, the call is often for a deeper European involvement: Europe should be built on the French model; where it has deficiencies, it is because Europe has deviated from that model!
Of course, Europe is not just about France and the UK. Germany is now, indisputably, the most powerful force in Europe. But France has managed to forge a close bilateral relationship with Germany to the extent that most important EU meetings are preceded by a meeting between France and Germany, where, very often, they agree a common negotiating position. It could be argued that the UK has more common interests with Germany than France has: if successive British governments had played their cards differently, the UK would have had a closer relationship with Germany than France.
I may have been guilty in this essay of reinforcing the myth that the UK is the only Member State that is different from the other 27 Member States. The reality is that each Member State is different from the other 27. Some 25 years ago, I set out to demonstrate that the UK was fundamentally different from the other (eleven) Member States in relation to wages and hours of work. It was not possible to do so. On such basic issues each country has its own unique system which is based on traditions which date from long before the EEC came into being. Though I have not studied this issue in relation to other matters, it is likely to be true in many policy areas that there are widely divergent practices in each Member State.
A Tragedy?
For Brexit to be a tragedy, in the sense that I have used at the beginning of this essay - a real life drama in which a country of importance and outstanding national characteristics and achievements falls to disaster through the combination of national failings and circumstances with which it cannot deal – I would need to demonstrate first that the outcome was disastrous and then that it was indeed the result of a combination of national failings and circumstances with which it cannot deal.
It is too early to say whether the final outcome will be disastrous, merely economically disruptive, or, as some of the Brexiteers claim, provide the opportunity for a healthier relationship between the UK and the rest of the world.
Under the extreme tragic scenario, Brexit would fuel anti-EU and racist sentiment in other Member States, leading to the collapse of the euro and the EU. It could lead to economic protectionism and be exploited by Russia (or Donald Trump’s USA) to foment rivalries (and even war) between the countries of Europe. At a less extreme level, Brexit could well give rise to the break-up of the United Kingdom, a hostile relationship with the rest of Europe, a significant diminution of Britain’s influence in the world and confidence in its currency, widespread unemployment and increased budgetary deficits, all of which were predicted by the Remain campaign and supported by most economists and international organisations. That, to my mind, would also be a disastrous outcome.
That element of the analysis must, however, remain unproven for the time being. It can be hoped that our drama turns out to have been not a tragedy, but a farce with a not too unhappy ending. What we can show from the above is that, if the outcome is indeed disastrous, the other ingredients of a potential tragedy are present: national failings and circumstances with which it cannot deal.
So what were the national failings? The first one was indecision: the failure in the 1950s to get fully involved in the shaping of the European project. Then, since the fall of the Heath Government in early 1974 – one year after accession – nearly all UK Governments have had an ambivalent attitude towards Europe. To this can be added the tendency of successive governments (in common with most EU governments) to portray negotiations in the EU in terms of victory or stout defence of national interests. The role of the foreign-owned popular press in the constant denigration and ridiculing of the misnamed and misunderstood Brussels bureaucracy has been, in my opinion, the single most important factor in the promotion of anti-EU feeling in the UK. Combined with this the British sense of fair play meant that the odds were stacked against the Government’s policy: the referendum question itself; the 50/50 vote; the fact that, whereas the popular press could present one side of the argument (and lies) unchallenged, the BBC was always obliged to supply a counter-argument to every point made by the Remain campaign.
More important than any of that were the circumstances with which it cannot deal. The French have dominated the European project intellectually from the outset. Much of the philosophy is based on an idealistic notion of Europe, which often feels quite alien to most British politicians, commentators or members of the public. The notion of “ever closer union” is central to the thinking of mainstream politicians in the original core Member States, whereas most British politicians of all persuasions are uneasy with this concept. This notion led to the creation of the Single Market – the jewel in the crown, based on free-market principles. It also led to the creation of the euro and the Schengen Agreement (not strictly EU) both of which caused the UK to distance itself from the mainstream. In the present day there are many European politicians, including Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission (neither of whom is French!) for whom the notion of “ever closer union” is sacrosanct and who look upon any attempt to deviate from it as heretical or treacherous (or both!). This is the powerful force with which successive British governments have been unable to deal.
Hence the tragedy of Brexit!
Jim Mackley
August 2016