Thatcher’s European Thatcherism

To which model of the enlarged Community did the protagonists of British post-accession policy wish to contribute? How far were they ready to fit in, or alternatively to pursue changes of the institutional set-up of the Community? Political transitions—from Heath to Wilson and Callaghan, and from the latter to Margaret Thatcher—left a crucial question open: did the UK struggle to fit into the EC because it wished to pursue an alternative project? Or because it lacked both motivation and experience to join a diplomatic game formed by 20 years of club rules and precedents? The answer to these questions defines what can be termed a European Thatcherism. Her leadership, beginning in 1979, did not ask if the UK would stay in the Community, but how. She wanted to make membership work, and her intent—following Labour governments showing little success in renegotiating the terms of entry—was to open a new chapter, aiming to revitalise the UK economy by dealing with domestic and European issues jointly. Among these issues was a real imbalance, which saw the UK pay more than the other members in import levies, while benefiting less from the CAP. This became her main concern, and her most famed engagement with Brussels. Her diplomacy showed the following characteristics: Given these differences, how did Thatcher balance her belief in membership with a rejection of any preset, long-term Community goal? As Giscard and Schmidt gave way to François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl in France and Germany, the Falklands War was transforming the image of the prime minister, creating a large public consensus around her in the UK: in the EC, she received backing for her resolution to impose economic sanctions on the Argentinian invaders. This was a key moment of consensus in the EC that became divisive, as it was not a blank check. She expected European solidarity to be offered to Britain for a just cause, not as a move that would soften the negotiating positions of the UK in the Community. Her partners saw their solidarity to Britain as ‘unprecedented’ and Thatcher as ungrateful. Two phases came to define her European journey. First was the slow-motion revelation of the incompatibility of Thatcher’s pragmatic commitment to membership with the style and goals of her European partners. The second phase was more complex: her ‘Ostpolitik’ was heavily invested in seeking the liberalisation of the Soviet-dominated central European states. She saw the single market in the EC as creating economic paths towards that liberalisation, rather than as a significant move towards political union. This divergence of paths emerged dramatically at the Milan Council in June 1985, when Thatcher was outvoted and a new project of institution-building leading to  the new Treaty of Union being approved. She did not, however, slam the door: the creation of what became known as the Single European Act (SEA) launching the single market months later mattered more to her than resentment. However, Thtacher held a grudge against her partners for using Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) against her at the Milan Council when another open clash, this timewith Jacques Delors, who took over from Roy Jenkins at the Commission, followed an equally slow-motion pattern leading to a final explosion. Yet she never wavered in her commitment to remain in; her speech, delivered in Bruges in September 1988, confirms this. Though the speech remains highly controversial, and inspired the Eurosceptic movement, the prime minister did not seek an early Brexit. But as time went on, her style, and inability to listen to her ministers and advisers, became more and more unbearable to her cabinet colleagues and international partners. Furthermore, the FCO favoured German unification, she feared it maintaining a negative view of the future role of a unified Germany in the EC. When the German question and deeper European integration converged, Thatcher opposed both.