 Dyma'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod i chi'n amser. Fy enw'r amser i'n ddweud i chi'n gael i chi'n gweithio'r ystafell ar y OU History Lecture Series, a mae'n ysgrifennu newid yng Nghymru ar y OU History Department i'ch gael i'r gweithio ar y cwmdeithasol yr oedlaethau cymdeithasol yng Nghymru ar y gael i chi'n gweithio ar y oedlaethau. Ond mae'n gweithio'n gweithio ar y oedlaethau i chi'n gweithio'r ysgrifennu ar gyfer cyfnod. Ac mae'n mynd i wneud o'r hollwch gwybod yw'n ysgrifftau yma ar y gyfer hynny. Mae'n gwybod i'r cyfnod yn dysun o gyntaf, ac mae'n bwysig i'r ysgrifftau i wneud, ac mae'n gyfnod i'n meddwl i'r dyflawn oedd yn gweithio'r gwybod. Yn gweithio'r Llewc yn gwybod, ac o'r ffordd yw mae'n gweithio'r adroddau i ddiweddio'r hwnnw, felly mae'n cymaint gweithio yw'r adroddau. The procedure, if you are watching live and you like to send a question in, is to send it to the email address which is next to the to the kind of the video window, but I'll give it to you again, just in case, it's FAS FAS sorry F-A-S-S rogue dash lectures at open.ac.uk. Please feel free to send your questions in if you are watching online. If you're in the room, the procedure is to put your hand up. I hope that's not too technical for everybody. So with no more ado, it's my very great pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague, Luke Andre Brunet, who is a history lecturer in the history of 20th century Europe, and Luke is going to be talking to us today. With Europe, but not of it, why Britain joined the European community. Over to you, Luke. Great. Thanks very much, Richard, for the introduction. And hello and thank you to all of you who are joining us today in Milton Keynes and to those of you who are joining us online. So I'm delighted to be giving the first lecture in this series, which is organised by Richard, and part of the events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Open University. And as Richard mentioned, I think the subject of tonight's lecture could hardly be more topical, as you know, this evening, just after this lecture, I think, the House of Commons, the MPs will be voting on the proposed deal of Theresa May on the terms of Brexit. Now, given that the future relationship of Britain with Europe could well change quite significantly by the end of the evening, I think I'll refrain from commenting too specifically on the Brexit deal currently being debated in Westminster and any musings on the imminent future of Britain's relations with the European Union. So instead, this evening, I'd like to focus on Britain's initial relationship with the forerunner to the European Union, namely the European community and before that the European coal and steel community. And I'm interested especially in exploring a specific puzzle around Britain and Europe. So when the European community was first set up in the 1950s, Britain was invited to join as a founding member, but the British government decided against it. So the European community was set up in 1958, but within barely three years, by 1961, the British government had come to the opposite conclusion that it should belatedly seek membership in the European community. So this was a dramatic U-turn in British policy and one whose consequences we're still grappling with today. So in today's lecture I'd like to delve into this and I'd like to look at two related questions in particular. So first, why did Britain decide to not join the European community in the 1950s? And then second, why did the British government reverse this decision by 1961 and apply to join so soon after the community was set up? Now before we dig into these two questions, I think it would be useful to contextualise this discussion just with a very quick overview of the history of European integration since the end of the Second World War. So for that we go back to May 1950 when the French government proposed the so-called Schumann Plan. As this was written by Jean Monat, we see in the photograph who was the head of French economic planning at the time, and it was put forward by the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schumann. And the idea, effectively, was to pool the coal and steel industries of several countries of Western Europe, really whoever was willing to sign up, and that these industries would be placed under the authority of a supranational body known as the high authority of the coal and steel community. And by supranational I mean that specific agreed upon powers would be delegated by national governments to this European high authority whose decisions in these areas would be binding. And this led in 1952 to the creation of the European coal and steel community. Later on in the 50s this was expanded to other areas of the economy, and in 1958 we saw the creation of the European community or the European economic community as the full name. Now in both cases six countries agreed to participate. France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were collectively usually referred to as the six for obvious reasons. Though in Britain the favored term tended to be the somewhat derogatory little Europe to refer to this grouping of six countries. Now in 1961 the British government led by Macmillan belatedly applied to join the community. Now unfortunately for Britain the road to membership was a bumpy one as we can see from this German cartoon from the period. Now in 1963 the French president Charles de Gaulle, pictured here with Macmillan vetoed the first British application to join. Four years later Harold Wilson and his Labour government applied to join yet again and once more the French stalled that application. In 1970 the Conservative government led by Heath applied yet again or reactivated that 67 application which finally was successful and Britain joined the European community in January 1973 along with the Republic of Ireland and Denmark. Finally 20 years after this in 1993 the European community became the European Union of which Britain is for the moment still a member. So this gives us a potted history of the process of European integration over the past few decades and this is hopefully should serve to contextualise our discussion and specifically it allows us to tackle the question so why did the British government choose to not participate in the Coal and Steel community and then the European community? Well the traditional explanation in much of the historiography is that this was a catastrophic choice by the government led by Clement Attlee. So it's argued that Britain overestimated its strength following its victory in the Second World War and believed that Britain remained one of the big three alongside the United States and the Soviet Union. The British government is also criticised for effectively favouring its empire even as it crumbled around them in the years after the Second World War over cooperation with their closest European neighbours who were in the midst of an economic boom at the time. So to use a phrase coined by the Conservative politician Anthony Nutting Britain missed the bus by not joining in the 1950s. Now there's certainly some merit to this explanation and in hindsight the British decision not to join the European community at its creation meant that Britain missed the opportunity to decisively shape Europe's first institutions during this time and the UK had it joined in the 1950s might well have emerged as the leader of this block of six or seven or potentially even more European powers which Britain might have been able to use to further bolster its position as a great power on the world stage. But rather than retrospectively dismiss this decision as a missed opportunity I think it's more interesting to go back and try and understand why the British government at this time made this decision based on the information available to it at the time. I think we can focus on three main factors to understand that decision. So one factor of course was the importance of the Commonwealth. Now in hindsight it's clear that Britain backed the wrong horse in favouring trade with the Commonwealth over trade with the European community but in the early 1950s this was by no means clear. First of all the economies of the other European powers were not particularly impressive in the early 1950s. They were still recovering from the Second World War where unlike Britain the six had all experienced the ravages of military defeat and occupation and far more of their infrastructure and their industrial base had to be rebuilt than was the case in Britain even with the damage sustained from the Luftwaffe over the Second World War in Britain. Now it's also important to remember that the economic boom in Western Europe associated with this period came later on in the 1950s indeed partially as a consequence of the process of European integration. So in 1950 when Britain received the invitation to take part in the Schuman Plan Britain's industrial output was roughly equivalent to that of France and West Germany combined. In terms of trade meanwhile the importance of the Commonwealth still significantly outweid Britain's trade with its continental partners. So in the early 1950s the Commonwealth accounted for just under half of both Britain's exports and imports. The corresponding figure for the six during this period is about 12 and 19 percent so significant figures but markedly less important than trade with the Commonwealth. So based on the existing economic situation in the 1950s it made more sense to the British government to maintain and protect its existing trade with the Commonwealth than sacrifice this in favour of the highly uncertain gains that joining the community might bring. Now the second consideration had to do with the supranational architecture of the community and the pooling of sovereignty which was made a precondition of joining the community. Now in the Brexit referendum campaign of 2016 of course this pooling of sovereignty came under attack as the leaf side called on the British electorate to take back control. Now these days we typically think of this argument as one on the political right maybe associated with figures from Nigel Therodge to Boris Johnson to Michael Gove and so on but in the early 1950s it was a decidedly left wing argument that focused on opposition to sharing control of British industry. So at the head of Labour's first majority governments elected in 1945 and then again in February 1950 Clement Attlee had succeeded in the long held Labour objective of nationalising key industries. In 1946 we see the nationalisation of coal mining followed in 1949 by the Iron and Steel Act. From the perspective of the Labour government the invitation in 1950 to share control over these industries which had only just come into public hands in Britain led to concerns that membership of the community would compromise Labour's economic priorities. Indeed this left wing argument that the European community and later on the European Union is effectively a capitalist club that would thwart democratic socialism at the national level is a concern that we see raised intermittently from the left ever since. Now the third factor informing the British government's decision to not join had to do with Britain's role as a world power. So unlike the six of course Britain had not suffered military defeat and occupation and regime change during the Second World War it had been one of the victorious powers and it had influenced the shape of the post-war international order. By the early 1950s of course it was clear to the British government that they were not a superpower in the same category as the United States and the Soviet Union but it nevertheless remained an important international power. It was an ally of the United States through its empire it had an important string of strategic naval bases throughout the world and from 1952 onwards Britain became the third nuclear weapon state joining the two superpowers and following the London Conference, the Commonwealth Conference of 1949 it seemed that the Commonwealth now including the Republic of India had a bright future ahead of it. So all of this dissuaded the British government from pooling its sovereignty and its industry with its Western European neighbours and it's also important to remember that this idea of Britain with its Commonwealth and Empire as being separate from the rest of Europe was certainly not a uniquely British view. Jean Monnet, for example, the brains behind the European Coen Steel community and the Schumann Plan had suggested in the 1940s that alongside the United States and the Soviet Union that a united Europe could stand as an important international player on the world scene but alongside these three he identified a fourth player, namely Britain with its Commonwealth and Empire which Monnet acknowledged was distinct from a united Europe founded mainly on a Franco-German axis. De Gaulle's veto of Britain's application in 1963 was also justified at least partially on the grounds that in his view Britain was not fully European. So to sum up, while the British decision to not join the European community meant that the UK missed its chance to shape the first European institutions in a way that may have been more to Britain's liking this decision was not simply the result of delusions of grandeur in the aftermath of the Second World War rather based on the situation as it appeared to decision makers in Britain in the early 1950s it was a perfectly rational policy on its own terms and the government concluded that the national interest would be best served by not joining the community. The problem, however, is that the conditions that informed this decision deteriorated rapidly in the years following. So while Commonwealth trade had been far more important for the British economy than trade with the rest of the Europe in the early 1950s this was no longer the case by the early 1960s. So 1950 for example the year of the Schuman Declaration the Commonwealth took roughly half of Britain's exports. By 1960 just ten years later this figure had fallen to 30%. Moreover the members of the European community were enjoying a sustained economic boom outpacing Britain in economic growth year after year and as a result by the early 1960s Britain was now doing more trade with the six members of the European community than it was with its Commonwealth. So if rational policy making dictated that Britain should ensure the greatest possible access to its main markets then this meant saying no to Europe in the 1950s but from the 1960s onwards yes to Europe. Now even more important than these changing economic realities I would argue is Britain's rapidly diminishing presence on the world stage. In 1956 of course we have the Suez crisis in which Britain was forced into a humiliating reversal of policy as a result of the threat of US economic pressure leading to the resignation of the Prime Minister Anthony Eden. The late 1950s also saw the acceleration of decolonisation in Africa and this along with the exit of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961 under its apartheid regime highlighted the fact that the Commonwealth had become a much more diverse organisation than it had been and one much less susceptible to bending to Britain's will than had been the case earlier when it was a small group of the so-called old dominions or white dominions. Furthermore the influence of the US on Britain's decision was crucial. The success of American administrations had supported and encouraged the European integration process led by France from the early 1950s onwards and were consistently supportive of Britain applying to join the European community. It was also feared that with Britain's relative political or strategic decline during this period and with Britain being outpaced economically by the members of the European community that the United States might come to favour another European power, specifically West Germany as its preferred European partner rather than Britain. So in this sense joining the community far from being at the expense of Britain's so-called special relationship with the United States would actually be a means of strengthening it and making Britain an even more valuable partner to the United States. So in short against the realities of Britain's economic weaknesses and ongoing decline as a great power the European community was seen as a means for Britain to bolster its power internationally. Seriously despite Britain's weakening position the Macmillan government never really doubted that Britain would be able to set the terms on which it would join the European community. So as a result the UK's first application to join in 1961 came with a long list of special arrangements and exemptions ranging from protection of British farmers to commonwealth links to relations with other trading partners and so on what we might describe today as wanting to have one's cake and eat it. The rejection of this application in 1963 was perhaps predictable and only when Britain reapplied largely on the community's terms rather than trying to set the terms itself was Britain ultimately successful. Now this discussion of Britain's reasons for applying to join I think brings out two key insights. So first Britain's motivations were largely defensive. The government wanted to curb Britain's economic and political or strategic decline and saw membership in the European community as a means of doing this so there was very little enthusiasm within the government for the European project as such. Rather it was simply seen as less bad than the alternative of being shot out of the community altogether. We can see this in the political cartoon published in August 1961 just after the Macmillan government applies and we see Macmillan very hesitantly dipping his toe in the water without much enthusiasm. Second, there never seemed to be any doubt in the minds of the members of the British government that once Britain was part of the community that it would emerge naturally as the bloc's leader. Indeed the political argument behind Britain joining was largely that the community could take the place of the Commonwealth and so Britain's role rather than being ahead of the Commonwealth would be the leader of this Western European bloc. It was never seriously entertained that this might not happen for example that the French or German governments may not be so eager to be placed under British tutelage. So by means of a conclusion then I'd like to return to the puzzle that I set out at the beginning of this evening's lecture. Why did Britain not join in the 1950s and then apply to join in the early 1960s? Well despite the apparent inconsistency in British policy I would argue that there was in fact an underlying consistency in the British government's pursuit of what it thought would be best for Britain. Specifically throughout this period the government followed the policy of maintaining or securing the greatest possible access to Britain's main trading partners. Although in hindsight it's clear that Britain backed the wrong horse in opting for the Commonwealth over the community in the 1950s it was nonetheless a rational policy in the pursuit of the national interest. So too was the decision to apply to join in 1961 even if that application was handled rather poorly. So I think this marks an important contrast with today where Brexit effectively means adding barriers to trade with Britain's most important trading partners. Similarly the decision to join was informed by Britain's declining international position and the diminishing role of the Commonwealth in the hopes that the booming European community could be the means of shoring up Britain's standing in the world. We can see this depicted in yet another cartoon where the Commonwealth is presented as a sinking ship but Europe as a rather promising alternative but today however it's not at all clear to possibly take the EU's place. And I think the most likely result is a decline in Britain's international position and influence in the world. But this is in part explained by a crucial difference between the decision to join and the decision to leave. Now the decisions regarding British membership in the community that we've been discussing this evening in the 1950s and the 1960s tended to be taken by a small group of ministers and policymakers unlike the choice to leave in 2016 which of course was decided by a national referendum. So the outcome of the referendum suggests in part that voters are more concerned with questions of immigration or such as the funding of the NHS rather than the rather more obscure questions of trade flows and Britain's international prestige. In other words arriving at a cabinet decision and winning a national referendum require two decidedly different strategies. Throughout the 1960s and in many ways ever since British governments concluded often reluctantly and half-heartedly that it would be less bad for Britain to be a member of the European community or later the European Union than to be outside. And we can see this attitude reflected in a slogan from the remain side in the 2016 referendum, better off in. This reflected the sober but somewhat unenthusiastic assessment that things would be worse for Britain if it were to leave. And this ultimately proved to be less appealing to the optimism reflected in the message of take back control. Now at this very moment in the House of Commons of course MPs are struggling to define precisely what taking back control actually means. Whatever the outcome it's clear that the consequences of Britain's decision to apply to join the European community back in 1961 continue to shape British politics today. Thank you. OK thank you Luke for a fascinating talk which provides some really useful historical context I think ahead of tonight's votes in Parliament. So it's just a reminder to people at home if you have any questions you can email them. Richard will be manning the email and looking out for questions from people at home. In the meantime though I'll be taking some questions from people in the room so do we have any questions to kick things off? Yes. OK a couple of points. When the ECSC was set up the whole idea of that was to combine the steel industries of France and Germany because it's very difficult to go to war if you didn't control your own steel industry. But obviously Britain must have rejected that idea for whatever reason. The second point I can't think can you answer that bit as the first point? Sure. Great. You're absolutely right. In the Schumann Declaration Robert Schumann highlighted the symbolic nature of Colin Steele saying that these were the necessary industries to wage war and that by pooling them it would make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible. So I think at the heart of it the Schumann plan was effectively a French proposal focused squarely on western Germany and there were all sorts of other reasons behind France's strategy for dealing with Germany at that time to explain why that was the case. But it was also open to all countries in western Europe. Italy joined largely for other reasons for both west Germany and Italy. Part of the appeal was that of course they had been the Axis powers in the Second World War they remained to differing degrees international pariahs on the world stage whereas by joining they were able to be rehabilitated effectively and stand as equals to France. For a country like the Netherlands for example they didn't really have much of either a Steele or a coal industry but they found that it would be politically advantageous to join. So I think you're right that it was founded primarily on this question of ensuring Franco-German peace in the post-war era but it was certainly open to Britain and it might well have joined as the other four countries chose to. The second point if you don't mind as a young teenager I can remember going round the streets with posters of Edward Heath etc extolling the virtues of the EEC as it was then and if you looked into it you knew that the whole point of the EEC was in the end a United States of Europe which I thoroughly agree with. You've never heard this extolled during the debates and you certainly hear very little about that now because personally I don't think the British people have ever been truly European. Right, so I think that you've touched on a really important debate not only within Britain but across every member state of the European Union today which is just how federalist should the European project be is the ultimate aim to create more or less a single political entity, the United States of Europe or is it rather much more effective cooperation, economic efficiency and so on. And I think even amongst historians is an important debate of well was the European colon steel community really primarily motivated by this idea of the first kind of the founding step of what would ultimately become the United States of Europe or was it purely about national self-interest of the countries that joined. But I think you're right that in Britain that I think the federalist voice is much quieter or finds much less resonance than certainly in France or Germany although even today that's problematic in those political environments as well. I think we have a question from someone at home watching online. Okay, Stuart is asking whether Luke would like to say anything about the impact of EFTA on the 1961 decision to apply for membership. Would you like to say something about that, Luke? I would. Thank you, Stuart. And Richard for that question. Yes, so one thing I should say was in a draft version of this talk which ended up being an hour long. So the 20 minute version EFTA got cut out unfortunately. But yes, so in the mid 1950s after the European community was set up, Britain tried to create its own free trade bloc, the European free trade area or EFTA with the members of Scandinavia, Switzerland and slightly controversially, the sort of fascist regime in Portugal. And this was meant really as an alternative to the European community. But in the end it didn't really succeed for a number of reasons. But it was never envisioned as anything more than simply a free trade area unlike the European community which had this super national element which set it apart. And so I'd mentioned that the UK had wanted a number of exemptions when it applied to join the European community in 1961. Among these was that it wanted to keep all of its privileged economic relations with its partners in EFTA and the European community effectively said no. But by the early 1960s even Britain had abandoned hopes that EFTA would amount to a real alternative to the European community. So I think it shows that Britain was engaged with its European neighbours if not necessarily with the sixth, with the seventh as the EFTA was known. But ultimately that Britain was unsuccessful in mounting a challenge to the European community. Do we have any more questions in the audience? Can I first of all thank you very much for a really interesting talk. I certainly would have been happy to listen to the hour long version. I think you did really well to condense that into 20 really interesting minutes and I just wish that both the people at Westminster and indeed everybody who turned up for the referendum knew a little bit about this background and so striking particularly a lot of the parallels you talked about having your cake and eating it and the idea that the Macmillan Government went into these negotiations thinking we can really make demands, we're so impressive and clearly the same things happening now and it's not really necessarily the case so I think it's really food for thought but I wondered whether at the time that these negotiations were made rather than the negotiations which follow the decision that's being made yes we will go in whether anyone gave any thought to how one would possibly in future get out as is clearly where we are now. Did anyone think ahead? What if it doesn't work out? What if actually eventually there will be other trading partners even more promising which is of course one of the arguments we're hearing did anyone think ahead? It's a very good question I'm inclined to say that it wasn't really top of mind I think the idea was well how do we protect as much as of what we already have in terms of things with the Commonwealth and so on and have all of those advantages and the advantages of community membership and then I think the idea was that if Britain couldn't get a good enough deal that it could simply walk away and rely on the Commonwealth to my knowledge there wasn't any escape hatch built in to that strategy but when Britain finally does join of course in 1973 the first thing that they do rather than try to emerge as the leader of the bloc or fit in as good Europeans is that they immediately try to renegotiate all the things that they just agreed to to get in they try and reopen them from the inside and so this is the renegotiated package which is then put to the British people in the 1975 referendum asking them do you want to remain part of the European community or not which of course had a very different outcome from the 2016 referendum And one more question over here I was just curious to know in terms of what people expected at the time we joined how far did they expect the European community to have control over not just our trade but other aspects of life our legislation and immigration what was the expectation in terms of how far we would give up control to Europe So that's a good question I think so initially I think there wasn't much in the way of fears of this building over into other areas because it was a gradual process and I think the idea was that Britain as a member would be able to put a break on certain sort of the more federalist tendencies with which the British government might be less comfortable and we see this particularly during the Thatcher period and the negotiation of the single market and so on and actually as touching on migration initially the British fears were that with the greater freedom of movement of people that the issue wouldn't be migration into the UK it would actually be migration out as all these Britons that fled Britain with its economic problems and instead stampeded to the dynamic economies of France and Germany and so on and certainly in the 1975 referendum for example migration didn't feature at all food prices did but migration was virtually absent I think we've got one more question from someone at home do you Richard? Thanks Neil Okay so Malcolm is asking and this is a tough one for you Luke so Gerdjialoins are there statistics regarding the demographics demographic comparison between the 1975 referendum to join and the 2016 referendum to leave no pressure By demographic I mean almost certainly somebody has crunched these numbers but it just I don't know if I can ask a follow up question to clarify but by means of who backed sort of remain and leave in the the pro Europe and anti Europe I'm not entirely sure about the demographics of the sort of age groups and so on but certainly the support for Europe was much broader in 1975 and even amongst the political classes and we have a figure like Harold Wilson who of course was Prime Minister in 75 in the early 1960s he was opposed to community membership by the mid 1960s he'd come around to the idea that yes Britain is better off in than out and of course applied in 1967 of the second application to join and in the 1975 referendum he was able to remain somewhat neutral he tended to prefer or he believed that Britain would be better off in Europe than out of Europe but he didn't take on a lead role in the campaign that was left to other cabinet colleagues notably Roy Jenkins but really on among the leading political figures who actually campaigned against British membership in the 1975 referendum they tended to be not fringe politicians but the people on the extreme right or left tended to be the most prominent supporters so people like Enoch Powell on the right, someone like Tony Ben on the left who were on the right and left wings of their respective party, Powell of course by this time had been ejected from the Conservative party I think the only newspaper backing the anti-European side in the 1975 campaign was the Morning Star on the grounds that it didn't really suit the communist agenda to have a strong European community whereas the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and so on were all fully in favour of Europe and obviously things changed a bit since then so I'm not sure Malcolm that answers your question OK time for another question from the audience Ian's got one here I was intrigued by the fact that when you were discussing economic matters the trade changes and so on your juxtaposition was always between the European community and the Commonwealth but of course there's another player which is the United States which isn't just a strategic military whatever connection for Britain it's also been a very important trading partner and I think I'm right in saying off the top of my head that even now remains the largest by individual country remains the largest single trading relationship with Britain and certainly in terms of investment relationships I think is significantly the largest so I wonder if it's quite as clear cut as you were making out that in the 1950s it was self evidently the national interest that the Commonwealth was the way to go and by the 1960s things have flipped in the sense that there's always been this additional thread about Britain's relationship with the United States which happens on a multi level including the economic that's an excellent point and something that I would have happily gotten into in the lectures I'm glad we're able to address it here so of course the US is a crucial partner economically but also militarily politically and so on of the UK throughout this time and I think the US matters especially for a couple of reasons first of all Britain wants to maintain its economic relations with the US though that doesn't particularly affected by its relations with the European community I think Britain sees the community not as a kind of closed autarkic grouping to join but they want to ensure that they can continue trading with the United States and also it's important to note that the United States in this period is partially responsible for the declining trade relations between Britain and the Commonwealth because the US in the post-war period is eating into traditionally British zones throughout the Commonwealth so it isn't simply a matter of dynamic European economies and a declining Commonwealth the US certainly has a hand in the latter tendency and of course as I mentioned in the lecture I think the US was quite supportive of Britain joining the European community because they expected that it would contribute to prosperity across the North Atlantic which is very much in the US interests so they certainly did play a role and it is a little bit more complicated than in my simplified version of the lecture and another question from someone at home Margaret in London is asking would it have been consistent with the aptly government's policy to nationalise Colin Steele to then have ceded that area of policy to a supranational authority? That's an excellent question I think that was one that was debated within the aptly government itself and the aptly government came to the conclusion that no having finally brought control of these strategic industries into public hands that it couldn't really surrender it to a supranational body a key part of that objection, which I didn't get into in the lecture had to do with the issue of democratic accountability and representation so for the aptly government during these discussions there was this idea that the high authority it was unelected, undemocratic at the time at nine officials I would later turn into the European Commission and so these were simply people who were appointed yet were given very significant powers over British and other countries strategic industries so for the aptly government it was much more a question of democratic accountability and really having effectively the people having control over the industry rather than a distant, unelected representative Any more questions in the audience? Gentleman over here I was just thinking we're a full nation university and we're talking about Britain's response is there any sort of sense of what the different were their different views in different parts the different nations in the periods that you've discussed? So that's an excellent question and I should probably apologise at this point I keep referring to Britain where of course I'm referring to the UK to the 124 nations so I think we see this especially in the nationalist movements that emerge so the Plaid Cymru, the Scottish Nationalists tend to oppose British membership in the European community in the 1975 referendum they campaign against it on the grounds that they're trying to win greater effectively greater sovereignty and so surrendering or transferring sovereignty from the UK to somebody else isn't really in their interests which contrasts of course with the SNP's policy notably today I don't think within cabinet level or the grassroots level that there were any very significant differences at least to the point that it informed cabinet decisions at this time which may simply suggest that these were taken less importantly at the time and we have another question at home I think so this is from Harriet she's asking if Luke could expand a little bit on the socialist position regarding the EEC given that you said that the left wing of the day weren't very keen on closer integration and she says she's curious to know if looking at that period can shed any light on why anti-EU sentiment these days has become more of a right wing position than a left wing one and I I don't have a ready answer to it I suppose one important factor during the period that we're looking at in the 1950s and 60s onwards is that this initial objection this fear that belonging to the European community meant that democratic socialism couldn't be pursued at the national level and this was one of the great fears of the Adelaide government I think throughout the 1950s and 60s we do see socialist governments in other members of the community who are able to pursue this with the steel and or coal industries which had similarly been nationalised in the early post-war period and so we don't see this level of interference it's not as if the high authority is intervening and saying no that policy is too left wing and so on and I think that puts a lot of those anxieties or puts those with those anxieties at ease within the Labour Party in the UK and as for why it's more associated with the right than the left that's an excellent question I think the question may be more about why it has come to be why is it that so much of the British right has come to latch on to this idea of national sovereignty and euroskepticism whereas on the left that existed but it's largely subsided since then I think it's very much a minority position within the Labour Party at least that the EU is a negative force for Britain Pardon? Yes Okay, do we have any more questions in the audience here? Yes, just a gentleman over there then Chris afterwards My question is in two halves and I say from a leave point of view and from a remain point of view what would you say is the main lesson from history for both sides, one pro leave and one pro remain That's a fun mental exercise The remain lesson I think is very clearly that I suppose throughout this period as I said the British policy and I think it was a rational policy to pursue at the time was preserving access to Britain's main trading partners and I think today it's like 53% of imports and 44% of exports are with the EU so erecting new barriers and tariffs are singularly not in the national interest and I suppose I could build on that for if a to take more of a pro leave position on this I suppose pointing to the fact that in the early 1950s Britain did about half of its trade with the Commonwealth comparable to the amount currently done with the EU today yet it was able to effectively well wasn't purely a decision of the British but those trade flows did change over time and they were able to find prosperity with other trading partners which had a much lower initial share of British trade initially although I personally remain unconvinced I thought by that lesson I had a question from Chris as well extra factors to what extent does the sort of British experience of Sue is and the millions perhaps at the time shocking embrace of African independence movements and the wind of change speech how much of that was part of an overall package of the foreign office deciding posts with wind of change that a reorientation of Britain's or the UK's place in the world was necessary an excellent point and you're absolutely right to situate it in that context that when Britain succeeds in 1937 there is a broad re-evaluation of Britain's foreign policy its overseas engagements, its empire and so on and from this comes a couple of years later a thorough assessment of effectively should Britain join the European community once it's set up in January 1958 and the results of that report come back in 1960 it's very clear that it's in Britain's interests to join the community rather than out, than remain out and that if Britain were to remain outside then its decline as seen in various examples would accelerate and continue Do you have any more questions in the audience here? We've got a few more minutes left. Yes, Neil. Can I just sort of pick you up on some of the comments you've made in other answers relating to the issue of sovereignty vis-à-vis the UK population I mean, why do you think it is that I mean, I guess you can sort of see that the sovereignty argument and the sort of limited nature of democracy within the EU structures is a plausible argument even if you don't find it completely persuasive it has persuaded quite a lot of people in this country I mean, why do you think, though, that that has been so much more persuasive to the UK population than it has to the 27 other populations of the EU? That's a very good question I'm one of my instincts is that Britain is the only member of states to have had an exit referendum and despite talks of a potential Brexit and Grexit and so on and I think at different points in time actually leaving seems to be a more popular option within individual member states and I think in the case of the Brexit referendum a number of factors notably the time it was held how the two campaigns were run of course were decisive but I think it was a number of factors which contributed to this outcome I would suspect that notwithstanding Britain's distinctive history as a member of the European community and the European Union I think if all the other 27 member states were to launch exit referendums I'm not entirely convinced that all 27 would necessarily result in votes to remain Any more questions from our audience over here? It's more of a comment really it was interesting when the Scots tried to break away the headline was better together the same people are now saying better apart I don't understand that but another thing I don't understand, a lady behind me I don't know who it was was talking about handing over this, that and the other from our country to them people don't seem to realise that we are them we are part of the European Union at the moment but it's always to them it's never explained that we are them I think there are a number of long term understandings of what Europe is that have evolved over the years in Britain such as that that Europe is over there and we're over here and we send money over there and so on that in some cases were encouraged and indulged by politicians for various reasons over the years and that all contributed to the referendum results in 2016 We've got time for one quick question from Annika before we wrap up Thanks but it's possibly also just a comment but I'm just struck by the importance of the second world war in all of this and how differently it impacted on this country and I think we talked earlier about learning lessons from history or in this case I think forgetting lessons from history and it just seems so much easier in this country to forget about the second world war whereas that is pretty much still impossible to do in France or in Germany so I think it is how Britain relates to its continental neighbours to the history of the 20th century and it is just fundamentally very different Absolutely and just a comment on that comment really but certainly when I was preparing for this lecture I didn't explain but the quotation of course with Europe but not other it comes from Churchill and I was doing a search around that and there seems to be a whole cottage industry so Churchill arguing and placing op-eds in various newspapers in the UK arguing what would Churchill have thought about Brexit and I mean there are, you can read these by the meter and various arguments about how Churchill of course would have backed to remain he would have backed no deal Brexit and everything in between so yeah I think that's an oversimplification of the lessons from history I think you can look at the same historical figure and draw radically different and mutually exclusive lessons from it Okay I think we're going to have to leave it there I know Richard has an announcement now about our next lecture in the series so I'll hand over to Richard again to finish for today I think we've grilled Luke enough Luke I've booked you an appointment tomorrow morning with the OU counselling service thank you all for coming again our next lecture is on the 6th of February it is making this realm of England an empire, the Tudors in Europe my colleague down there Neil Younger will be delivering it can I ask you to show your appreciation for Luke one last time he's done a great job, cheers