This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair by Hugo Young
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Great Britain’s relationship with Europe is the classic approach-avoidance conflict. Britain initially supported European union as much as a way to prevent a return to war as anything. As the various countries of Europe recovered, economic union became more attractive to foster British trade, particularly in a post-colonial commonwealth. The sticking point, however, grasped from the very beginning but never resolved, was how to enjoy the advantages of the European Economic Community, which Great Britain entered in 1973 under the Heath government without surrendering its sovereignty and parliamentary power, and the British pound. That is true to this day. In January 2013, the Cameron government promised a referendum if they remained in power beyond 2015 on whether Great Britain would remain in the European Union. Euro-skepticism is alive and well.
Hugo Young’s book is a chronicle of this history from Churchill’s post-war government up to the beginnings of Tony Blair’s Labor Movement in 1999. Young gives us a detailed account of both the international and internal political maneuverings around Union, including de Gaulle’s pre-emptive refusal to vote for Britain’s admittance during the 60s, the successful entrance under Heath followed by the fall of his government, the MacMillan referendum in 1975 in which the British people voted to stay in and the ambivalence of the Thatcher and Major regimes which negotiated Maastricht which took further steps toward the euro while leaving Britain with an opt-out. He concludes with the beginnings of the Blair government and a much more warm-hearted embrace of Europe. It is plain in the conclusion that Young hoped this would succeed in overcoming the ambivalent relationship. Sadly, it appears he was wrong.
I suspect that the 500 pages of detail would be interesting for those fascinated with Britain’s relationship with Europe. A briefer account that didn’t give every tortuous detail would have been fine with me. All the detail is probably valuable as a historical record but it didn’t add to my understanding.