Taking a global and historical view of Britain in Europe

THE USA pulls the strings and David Cameron, like every Tory PM before him since World War Two, bends his knee.

Immediately after the war, in pursuance of the anti-socialist crusade that began with the 1919 Wars of Intervention, it imposed economic sanctions on us and brought down a Labour government. We bled men and money to defy the wishes of Korean unification Nationalists. Were it not for Harold Wilson, we would have done the same in Vietnam.

Pre- and post-World War Two, British Socialists shared a US aim; the dismantling of the British Empire. Our motivation was, however, not hypocritical; we actually believed in freedom and democracy. The US aim was, is and ever will be to extend its capitalist, market (not even free) economy and protect it from competition – especially if it is socialist. The transformation of Empire into Commonwealth must have been a great disappointment.

Beginning with the Marshall Plan and the Iron and Steel Community, Europe (under its many acronyms) was yet another Cold War construct. The US desperately wanted us in because it would damage the Commonwealth. When Ted Heath took us in on a pack of lies, we perpetrated a shameful act of betrayal of our Commonwealth trading partners; New Zealand and Australian lamb and butter exports were devastated.

American anti-socialism is still remembered in Vietnam and China; Korea and Russia stand as testimony to its destructive consequences.

As long as it persists with its predatory capitalism, the US will be an ideological foe of Socialist and Communist regimes and most of the potential, democratic governments of the East. The Americans know how close Commonwealth relations are and how powerful a competitor we would be in the East where our future prosperity remains.

We can only flourish if we return to our Commonwealth roots. Australia is already a US stepping stone but, as republican referenda demonstrate and those of us who have family there know, may still forgive. Canada’s Western seaboard is as full of potential as the USA’s. India still has a fund of affection for British culture; Indian English is its lingua franca. International financiers in Shanghai speak Singlish (Singapore English).

The greatest wish of the USA is to keep us in our European chains. A future referendum will pit the young’s fear of the unknown against the proud memories of the old. Unless the old begin to educate the young, Britons ever, ever, ever shall be American slaves.

From: Maxwell Laurie, Victoria Terrace, Cockfield, County Durham.

I, AND doubtless many more, must have lost all patience with the perennial honking from the gaggle of your anti-European correspondents and others with little if any knowledge of Europe’s history – or, indeed, world history.

Have they ever wondered why home ownership in the UK is so much higher than in the rest of Europe? We are the only country which has enjoyed freedom from invasion for 946 years; elsewhere during that period, when every household has been aware that its country could expect to be invaded next year if not this year, why bother investing good money in your own house simply to lose it to the next invader?

The last 250 years began with almost innumerable jealous and fractious independent states in a Europe which saw two German emperors, some Austrian emperors (when not arguing the toss with Turkey), a Corsican megalomaniac and even an Austrian house-painter embark on efforts to weld the whole continent under a single heel. The last of these very nearly demolished our freedom record.

Our chance geological isolation from the European maelstrom enabled us to gallivant all over that maelstrom’s global sidelines, taking over and asset-stripping other countries between them boasting a quarter of the world’s population until as recently as 65 years ago – well inside my own lifetime.

After the last world war wise and far-seeing persons like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman launched supra-national co-operative “plans” which might constrain or even frustrate future dangerous ambitions in individual states. A United States of Europe was mooted, perhaps to be constructed on the foundations of the commercial co-operation rising from the repairs to the war’s industrial damage in each country – damage which, for once, included the UK.

This brings the essentials in Europe more or less up to date, except that Britain no longer has an empire. A Commonwealth (now there’s an interesting word!), yes, but not an Empire. And one more thing: there are now trading blocs in South-East Asia, Australasia, Latin America, North America, Africa, Arab States – some stronger in themselves than others, perhaps, but all to be taken into consideration by politicians everywhere.

Much progress has been made in European co-operation over the last 56 years. Even after our early hesitations, Britain has been fully accepted as a major partner. To be sure, not all things are yet as perfect as one might like; perfection would be a miracle.

The world, like every marriage, is always changing – for better 
or worse.