 Well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen it's very good indeed to welcome you here to the latest cells lunchtime seminar and I'm delighted to introduce Sir Stephen Wall who has been one of the most influential players on the European circuit in the various capacities in which he has occupied and he has recently published a book called The Reluctant European and the details are on the chat. Now all his CV is available for you to see on the cell's website and I think what would be a good use of time is instead of me introducing him and saying how lucky we are to have him and to benefit from what he has to say to let him talk and the plan is that he will talk for about 20-25 minutes and then we'll open the floor to questions if you could ask your questions via the Q&A box on the Zoom call and we'll try and read as many of these questions as we can and we aim to be finished by about 10-2 so that you can go on to your next activities. So Stephen the floor is yours and thank you very much for joining us. No well thank you for inviting me and thank you to those who are giving up their lunch hour to to participate. Yeah I spent a lot of my career in the British Foreign Office in and around the European Union and the Britain's ambassador for five years to the European Union and I wanted to write a book which really set out not so much the details of the whole Brexit process itself but how would we got there what was it about our relationship that had made it not inevitable but had certainly created some of the conditions in which it happened and I say not inevitable because well Dominic Cummings himself said this would not have happened i.e. they believe that would not have happened had it not been for the immigration issue that's one factor had Boris Johnson decided that his political career was better served by campaigning to remain or had Jeremy Corbyn decided that his political career was better served by actively campaigning for remain it might have been different so it's not inevitable but there are a number of factors and I called the first chapter in the book a thousand years of history because when in 1961 Harold Macmillan the then Prime Minister applied not so much to join but to explore whether the conditions were there for Britain to join Hugh Gatesfield the leader of the Labour Party said in a speech at the party conference this would be joining the common market as we called it would be the end of a thousand years of history and most of the audience would have had a feeling about what that meant not necessarily an accurate feeling because of course you know we are a country like all countries of immigrants my own forebears on my father's side came over with the Norman conquest and all that and of course our history has been mixed up with that of our continental neighbors forever nonetheless I think there are certain defining things one of which is geography I mean the fact that we are an island is different I mean it is different obviously than having a land frontier I think your horizons are different you get into a sailing boat on the south coast and you can sail to Calais or you can sail to China you do see the world differently and that's certainly been a a factor and I think if there are defining moments in our earlier history one of those defining moments is the Reformation which is even more it seems to me a political act a political act of establishing separate English identity English identity not under the control of a foreign power in this case in particular the Pope but not just the Pope and that identity politics really seems to me to be a big feature for quite a long for quite a long time after all in the revolution of 1688 we got rid of the legitimate king James II and brought in a foreigner William of Orange because we wanted a Protestant king rather than a Catholic king I mean this is very anecdotal but it's illustrative in 1931 my father who was not a Catholic got engaged to my mother who was a Catholic and his aunt in in those days if you a non-catholic married a Catholic the Catholic church insisted that the children be brought up as Catholics and my father's aunt wrote to him from Derbyshire where he came from saying do not forget that in the churchyard in Dalydale are the remains of generations of the Wall family yeoman stock the breath and backbone of England and do not allow your children to be put under the yoke of popery this is 1931 not 1531 and she's not talking about transubstantiation or whatever she's talking about about identity and not and and the power of resisting the power of foreigners and that sense of our identity of course was massively reinforced by the outcome of World War II whereas our continental neighbors that either had their democracy laid low or in the case of Germany and Italy disgraced ours was kind of validated and vindicated and we felt we had a place in the world which was based around empire or the end of empire was of course imminent and about our uniquely close relationship with the United States so Winston Churchill's great speech a year after the war in Zurich in which he said that the future piece of Europe had to be based on combined Franco-German leadership of the continent was an extraordinary revolutionary idea then these are after all two countries that have been to war with each other three times in less than a century but it's I mean there's been a ridiculous argument what would Churchill's view have been about brexit I mean Churchill's view in that speech is very clear he basically says we want this to happen and we and the Commonwealth and the United States and hopefully Russia will give it our benign blessing but we won't be we won't be part of it and that was the instinctive reaction not just of him but of the then Labour government who's foreign secretary Ernie Bevin was not a kind of little englander Bevin was the one of the principal authors of the creation of NATO and had a very strong sense of the need for unity in terms of defence of of western interests but for the but for the British politically and economically Europe was not significant what was significant in trade terms as well as politically was the empire and the Commonwealth and as late as 1955 Britain's largest export market was Australia not not any country of Europe of Europe elsewhere in Europe not the United States but Australia then a country of only 10 million 10 million people and officials and so on who were involved when first of all the European Coal and Steel community came in in 1951 and then the negotiations began at Messina 56 leading to the Treaty of Rome in 57 a journalist called Michael Charlton interviewed lots of the people who'd been around during that period in later years in the 1980s and published a book called the price of victory and almost all of them said we simply did it simply did not register with us that what was going on on the continent was going to be significant and important the other thing that happened I think was that Britain put too much emphasis on its relationship with the United States the Suez debacle of 56 was a shot across our bows in the sense that the mission failed partly because the Americans pulled the plug on the pound but more significantly I think what we failed to appreciate in Britain was that once it became clear that the next war was not going to be started by Germany but if it was going to happen it would be started by the Soviet Union then the front line of western defense became the German frontier because it was across the West German frontier that Russian tanks would roll and Russia's aggressive intent was very clear by their efforts to basically isolate and bring Berlin under their control and of course what they're done in bringing under their control the rest of East Germany and much of Central and Eastern Europe so for the United States the front line of their defense became the German frontier and therefore they had a really strong interest in seeing a strong wealthy West Germany rise up after the war and therefore they were prepared to make some economic sacrifice of their trade interests by encouraging the common market the European community which after all is based on protectionist principles and British leaders at the time failed to see that and it was only really when the economics began to change i.e. that the prosperity of the new community at six was outstripping our own prosperity that was combined with a realization certainly on McMillan's part that we had no could no longer have any pretensions to be a superpower. McMillan wrote a pamphlet when we started negotiating with the EEC which was sent around to households in Britain that made the point that there were only two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union with China coming up fast as well and that for Britain to have influence with the world it had to combine with like-minded countries so that and the economics were the rationale behind the decision to open negotiations and those negotiations proceeded and looked although there were difficulties by the end of 1962 as if they would succeed when in January 63 President de Gaulle of France vetoed the application all kinds of reasons why that was done the then French agriculture minister said to Christopher Somes his British office at number about a week before of the veto of course de Gaulle doesn't get going to let you in one dung hill with one cockerel what's what's to like one cock one dung hill with two cockerels as it would be if you come in that's not so good and that was certainly a factor more importantly i mean the although de Gaulle was no lover of the european institutions the european commission and and and so on this was this new organization was the vehicle for franco german reconciliation and a vehicle through which france could clasp germany of whom in the french were still afraid to its bosom and in a sense exercise a degree of control over germany as well as leadership of europe as a whole and the structure of the european community policy was based around agriculture 90 percent of the initial budget went on the so-called common agricultural policy which massively suited france's economic interests and of course de Gaulle drew his support from that sector of a french society what de Gaulle also saw very far sightedly was that britain would would actually transform the nature of the organization because we were outward looking we were not protectionist we wanted a free trade and that if britain joined a island uh uh uh danmark norway it was foreseen um would uh would come in with us but he beyond that he foresaw that the european community would increase in numbers over time he thought to maybe 50 or 18 or 18 members so uh the veto took place the conservatives lost office in 19 uh in 1964 labor came in having been hostile uh to the taurian negotiations but harald wilson came to the same conclusions of the millen had come to and uh once again uh an attempt by the british government to join was vetoed by uh de Gaulle second time in 1967 when labor lost office in 1970 they were about to embark on negotiations and those negotiations fell instead to the conservative government of of edward heath with labor opposing so labor opposed the terms of membership and the only way that wilson could keep his party from turning into an anti-european party was by promising to renegotiate the terms if labor was reelected and put them to the people so when labor came back in 74 they renegotiated and we had the first referendum a referendum that was won by a 66 vote in favor of staying for reasons connected i think with a number of things first of all the european community was seen correctly by people in britain to be a success story as compared with the british economy and one feature of the whole of this of this story i think up until the time of margaret thatcher is that of a british economy in decline really compared with that of our european uh partners the vast majority of the british press were solidly in favor uh of membership uh there was respect for uh certain politicians uh i mean the the leaders of the of the yes campaign were on the whole respected politicians the leaders of the no campaign were not and that resonated with people in a way that probably uh it wouldn't uh it wouldn't today but the referendum didn't didn't settle the divisions uh within the labor party and didn't actually achieve it very much in substantive terms and in particular because we joined late uh heath had had to accept disadvantageous terms particularly as regards the budget into which britain uh in per capita terms one of the poorer member states was the only net contributor along with with Germany and the labor government uh callahan uh the prime minister in 79 had signaled that this was going to be a big issue for renegotiation and when margaret thatcher became prime minister she took this on uh with the vengeance and effectively uh spent uh the first almost the first five years of her terms prime minister uh renegotiating the financial terms of membership so we uh we joined um instead of joining six years after the treaty of Rome we only joined 16 years after the treaty of Rome uh and effectively uh spent 10 years in renegotiating the terms of our membership and part of the terms of that membership were a commitment formally made publicly made by heath just before we joined to economic and political uh union and yet this was something which the british political establishment and to an extent public opinion found hard to swallow because our sense of national identity very much rooted in the sovereignty of of uh of parliament divisions within both parties including even then in the uh in the conservative party so although the british government had signed up to these uh commitments it actually hoped for something different it hoped really for a union that would be governed by the large by the three biggest member states uh britain france and uh uh and germany but in practice we found that difficult to do for two main reasons one the relationship between france and germany was very well established and they had a very much clearer motivation for making a success of that bilateral relationship and that that relationship was more important to them than the relationship of either uh with the united kingdom and we did you know we we did from the inside we did try and in some respects uh succeeded in changing uh the nature of the organization in ways in which the french certainly uh didn't like and the helmut schmidt the the german chancellor at the time who although of a different party from margaret thatcher liked her and admired her and she liked and admired him in a way that she didn't with his conservative successor coel schmidt uh in very about a year after thatcher came to power in 79 had a private conversation with the british ambassador in bonn and said what are you guys playing at we all hope that when you joined you would make a significant difference you would bring something that we didn't have yet what have you done you're behaving like italian shopkeepers he said uh i hope there if there are any italians in the audience they will aim off for schmidt's view you're not you're all you're doing is doing something negative and okay you're paying too much in the budget it needs to be settled but it's minuscule and you're preoccupied by these petty issues and you can't see the british the bigger picture and you're not doing anything to uh provide leadership and so there were uh opportunities missed jim callahan while he'd still been uh prime minister had been the first person approached by helmut schmidt when he proposed for the exchange rate mechanism which was the precursor of the single currency he then approached president she's got this now france who signed up uh for political reasons more for economic and callahan couldn't do it understandably economically it was very difficult for britain at the time we were in the appalling economic situation and politically within the labor party he was fighting a battle within the labor party against uh the anti european so he didn't have the he didn't have the strength uh uh to do it so it was uh an opportunity missed and when later on uh new treaty changes were proposed because of all our difficulties over the sovereignty issue and the so the perception of ceding sovereignty um that too was a real problem the paradox is that the biggest single change made uh since the treaty of rome was the single european act of 1986 uh signed by margaret thatcher uh in which there was a big transfer of articles of the treaty from unanimity to majority voting in order to complete the single uh the single market and i i would i would say that there are kind of three big achievements really of the european union one is the one is that the second is enlargement and the third obviously is the single the single currency and two out of those three are ones where britain was in a leading role uh margaret the single market is there on the the face of the treaty of rome it's on page one of the treaty but very little had been done uh apart from one of two findings by the european court for 30 years until margaret thatcher really put this on the agenda it suited her to do so because it reflected the kind of liberalization of economic policy that she wanted but nonetheless she was prepared to uh make the the big switch in terms of accepting that there would be more majority voting and even after she became a convinced sceptic in her older age she never she never denounced uh what she had uh what she had done similarly on enlargement if you if you when i was working for tony blair uh he asked me to show him a copy of the bruise speech made by margaret thatcher in 1988 and regarded as uh at the time by our partners as an outrageous denunciation of everything that they held dear and tony blair said to me well she said the speech isn't this a rather a good speech she said and if you read it uh i mean it's a reflection on quite a lot of things that if you read that speech today it looks like a commonplace the first thing she said was you know we've not rolled back the frontiers of the state in britain to have them reimposed from a centralizing brussel's authority and secondly she said and remember we're talking about countries that were then behind the uncurt and let us not forget that war saw prog and budapest are great european cities and even that was regarded like spitting in church and there was a deep suspicion that the only reason the british were motivated to propose enlargement was because we wanted to dilute the whole project and in fact if you look at the documents that's not the case the motivation i mean starting with greece after the fall of the kernels progressing through spain and portugal after fascism and then to the countries of eastern and central europe after the fall of the berlin war the main motivation of the british government was to promote democratic values now it's a fact is as well they hoped that a larger organization would dilute some of the uh intensity of the desire for political and economic union uh of uh of our partners but that wasn't uh that wasn't the main motivation and then of course the third big issue where we which we didn't take the lead and indeed absent it ourselves was the single uh currency i was working for john major at the time and i think it's now forgotten that is as big a preoccupation as opting out was ensuring that we had the right to opt in uh generation really of civil servants and and politicians had been scarred uh by the fact that we'd had to accept bad terms if you like for joining the european community because we joined late and and there was a determination to ensure that if one at some point we did want to join the single currency we wouldn't uh face any uh any obstacles but i i mean i didn't myself see at the time just how significant our non-participation was because i think basically we absented ourselves from something that became self-evidently this sort of core existential policy really uh of the european uh union and i think we then became on a divergent path uh which made it uh easier if you like to get to the point where we got to uh in uh in 2016 and i think that if you look at the negotiation that david cameron conducted as as prime minister um had he won the referendum and the various concessions that he secured come into come into place uh you you're left wondering almost what would have been left of british uh membership you know when you spend a lot of time negotiating away from the the opening lines of the treaty of Rome ever close a union among the peoples of europe you can't can't even sign up to that and it was always ever close union of the peoples uh not governments you've gone uh a very a very long way um i think we know we now we now have to look to our future and assuming big assumption that we get an agreement with uh our former partners on what basis can we rebuild uh a positive uh relationship how do we use uh such strengths as as as we have and we do have um to establish a collaboration which won't happen automatically i don't think geographical proximity makes it happen automatically it has to be worked on there has to be the will to do it even within the european union i was very struck is my last thing before i shut up um we had bilateral summits each year with the french president with the german chancellor and having those summits made us sit down on both sides of of the channel particularly in the case of the french and think what are we going to do to make this a success what initiatives can we can we take and so quite a lot of positive impetus came from that that's no longer there i mean you know the the the phone lines now between uh brussell between brussells and other european capitals and london uh will by and large be silent for 90 percent of the business of the european union they will have no particular motivation for for wanting to the british view so as one of my french friends uh emailed me recently um you the british will have to make yourselves want it again uh if that uh if that relationship is to be rebuilt anyway that's enough from me thank you