Uninvolvement

What European integration meant in Britain in the first place, and in continental political cultures after 1945 on the other, is the inevitable and necessary starting point for this book. Even before the creation of the EC, the lack of convergence in the UK and on the continent towards goals of integration was apparent. During the first two decades after World War II the UK remained uninvolved with ‘Project Europe’. This project had many facets, different degrees of idealism and pragmatism in looking at the political integration of Europe, both as a long-term aspiration and as a spin-off of the contingency plan of European reconstruction set up by Marshall Aid. The European project resembled a symphony composed of multiple variations on the central theme of continental union. This integrationist plan—as a symphony—varied deeply in interpretation or performance, both on the continent and across the Channel, but it remained a constant theme, decade after decade, among Europeans. In this early stage, Britain listened to the symphony and encouraged its diffusion, but continued to play its own tune, and later played only selective movements of the European symphony. On the continent, defeat, and the subsequent experience of receiving, sharing and co-managing Marshal Aid, firmly fixed the conviction that integrated economies coupled with national modernisation represented the answer to the devastation of 1945. Victory set Britain on a path of continuity and change in foreign policy, mainly tending away from the continent, and of massive transformation by a Labour government in domestic policy. At the core of the historiographical discussion in the early years of European integration is the absence of Britain from the initial stages of continental integration, and its relations with France that would never be the same after the new communitarian approach to cooperation began to operate.