In But Without the Fireworks

This book argues that accession of the UK to the EC was not an act of pure necessity. Heath had a plan to deliver change, both inside the Community and in external relations. The success of this plan depended, first, on whether the UK, France, and Germany could effectively achieve their national and common interests within the new EC framework of nine members engaging in bilateral or trilateral diplomacy, and second, whether the transformation of the original Community along new lines, from the harmonisation of foreign policy decisions to the coexistence of communitarian and intergovernmentalism approaches, would be successfully implemented by successive British governments and their European partners. ‘Second Europe’ was never an official definition of the EC after the first enlargement, but the Paris Summit of October 1972 promised transformative change of the nine-member Community by the end of the decade. Heath signed up to the Paris declaration of intents that included the commitment to Monetary Union: but he expected to negotiate this far-reaching and radical move each step of the way, and in doing so, to build on his trilateral partnership with Willy Brandt and Georges Pompidou. And indeed, the first British-German example of tandem diplomacy between Heath and Brandt in 1973, revolved round a common Community float of currencies. Building on what we now know, Heath’s ideas of Britain in Europe were not elusive but his post-accession goals became so. Membership did not reverse national decline swiftly, and British prominence in the Community came at the price of commitments on long-term goals. Very unfavourable domestic economic and political conditions in the UK, and transformative events, from the end of the dollar era to the impact of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, impacted negatively on the implementation of British membership from the very beginning. As early, after accession, as 1974, Heath, Pompidou and Brandt were out of government and the first experiment in trilateralism aborted. With the return of Labour to government, the revision of the terms of accession and a referendum on membership were on the agenda. This chapter explores the scope and methods of the Labour renegotiations, and whether a comparison between Harold Wilson’s and David Cameron’s renegotiations can contribute to the understanding of the results of the two European referendums of 1975 and 2016. The choice in favour of or against the Community divided society in Britain in 1975 as it did in 2016, but along different societal lines. The themes at the core of the two referendum campaigns played in favour or against EC/EU membership and leading to opposite outcomes, reflected the strengths of the arguments on the two sides and were commensurate with the meaning of union as perceived at these two pivotal times of the UK membership.