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<E>
European Union
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★ European Union

By the spring of 2011, Ireland and Portugal had also needed bailouts … Now Spain and Italy were heading the same way.  ibid.  

 

Italy was the biggest of the economies with a bad track record.  ibid.

 

 

In the middle of the night the Italian coastguard had received reports that a boat carrying migrants from Africa was in trouble … More than 800 people were feared dead.  Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil III: Unstoppable

 

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants on Europe’s shores threatened to tear the continent apart … Fences went up across Europe.  ibid.

 

The European Council agreed a plan to share a limited number of migrants around Europe but it would only be done on a voluntary basis.  ibid.

 

Civil war was now driving millions out of Syria creating the biggest wave of refugees to hit Europe since the Second World War.  ibid.

 

 

The Euro has not only not made the Europeans better off but it has inflicted an historic defeat upon European capitalism; secondly, rather than proving helpful in the crisis that followed 2008, what the Euro has done, the Euro’s architectural design amplified massively the tsunami that hit the continent of Europe … and consequently led to the current political disintegration of the political centre.  Yanis Varoufakis, Oxford Union 2015, Youtube 55.42

 

The fragmentation of the Euro zone is at an advanced stage.  ibid. 

 

The stronger it [Euro] is, the weaker the population living under it.  ibid.

 

It has not just been a failure, it has been pointless … It was less than pointless, it was destructive.  ibid.

 

We [Greece] were the apple in the eye of German bankers.  ibid.

 

There was a deluge of credit cards that people were receiving in the mail.  ibid.

 

They shifted the gigantic losses of the idiotic banks on to the shoulders of the taxpayers  it’s called austerity.  ibid.

 

This is malice by design.  ibid.

 

Deflation begets monsters.  ibid.

 

 

Messina in Sicily is where the Common Market began.  It was a moment in history that Britain missed … Time and again that’s been the story of Britain’s adventures in Europe: never quite on time, never capturing the spirit of things.  The Poisoned Chalice I: A Kind of Betrayal, Michael Elliott reporting, BBC 1996

 

European unity has been a poisoned chalice for two generations of Britain’s politicians.  In its time Europe has split both main political parties and been a graveyard of political reputations.  ibid. 

 

As soon as the War was over, Churchill took up the cause of European unity again.  ibid.

 

May 1950: The Schuman Plan would only work if France and Germany, the old enemies, were locked in a lover’s embrace.          

 

‘As six European nations including Western Germany meet for the first working session on the Schuman Plan for pooling steel and coal, but Britain, notable absentee, has not yet made up her mind.’  ibid.  Newsreel

 

Sure, the Europeans wanted Britain in but they weren’t going to wait around for ever.  ibid.

 

Now they dreamt of linking their economies together in a common market.  Britain thought it was pie in the sky.  ibid.

 

The six pressed ahead and naturally reached agreements to suit themselves.  ibid.

 

MacMillan’s silent agony finally boiled over.  ibid.         

 

In Brussels the dogged Heath and his team refused to give up … To this day Heath will not admit the negotiations failed.  ibid.  

 

 

Edward Heath  of all politicians the most committed to getting Britain in … He knew that the country was deeply divided on the issue.  The Poisoned Chalice II: Fool’s Mate

 

Secret talks started in Paris.  The task of Soames was to ensure that France would not veto British membership again.  ibid.    

 

Britain started to hear a word that had hardly been mentioned in France and Brussels  sovereignty.  ibid.     

 

In 1967 the Labour government had tried to join the Community; now in opposition, the majority of Labour MPs were opposed, though some senior members of the party remained passionately devoted to the European cause.  ibid. 

 

At the third attempt, and eight years after Heath himself had been rebuffed, Britain was in.  ibid.

 

Anti-Market protesters accused Heath and his supporters of betraying Britain.  ibid.

 

It may not have been pretty but the Bill went through.  ibid.

 

‘It was a coup d’etat by a political class who didn’t believe in popular sovereignty.’  ibid.  Benn

 

Schmidt and Wilson met at Chequers and did a deal.  Wilson would campaign for staying in; Schmidt would give Wilson just enough concessions to claim the renegotiations had worked.  ibid.

 

The date of the referendum was now set for 5th June 1975.  ibid.  

 

By a majority of 2 to 1 Britain had voted to stay in the Community.  ibid.  

 

 

Within seven years of our new start in Europe the issue had as usual had claimed its victims.  The Labour Party had split and Europe had been one of the key matters on which passions ran high.  The Poisoned Chalice III: Summit Bloody Summit           

          

In effect this cash was the fee Britain was paying for late entry into the European club.  ibid.

 

It was her [Thatcher] style that really upset the others.  ibid.

 

The benefits of membership of the Communist were escaping most Britons.  The voters were fed up with the Common Market’s waste.  ibid.

 

The sort of place Kafka would have loved.  ibid.

 

The Single European Act: On a wide range of issues Westminster’s sovereignty  was taken away.  Most MPs didn’t even notice and it scarcely made the news.  ibid.

 

 

The Tory civil war had its roots in what was called the Single European Act of 1986.  Fairly unremarked at the time, the Act revived the dream of a federal Europe, which in turn swelled the ranks of the Eurosceptics.  The Poisoned Chalice IV: Nemesis                  

 

From now on the most fervent opposition to Europe would come from the Right.  ibid.

 

The old order was breaking down: Germany was now dictating strategy.  ibid.

 

She [Thatcher] was isolated.  She had no friends in Europe and had been weakened by Cabinet resignations at home.  ibid.       

 

Major still regards Maastricht as a triumph.  ibid.  

 

In June 1992 The Danes voted narrowly to reject the Treaty in a referendum.  ibid.

 

The blood just continued to flow.  In 1994 Major withdrew the Conservative whip from eight rebel MPs.  ibid.  

 

There’s a paradox: the further we get away from real war, the harder it is to find the will to make Europe work.  ibid.

 

The European issue keeps coming back to wreck their little games.  ibid.           

 

 

All the mythologies that were created about Europe have disappeared very quickly and are disappearing even as we speak.  Tariq Ali, lecture Zagreb 15th May 2012, ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe’

 

Greece: The old decaying president of that republic has failed to get a pro-Euro government going.  ibid.

 

Essentially a co-Europe, a federal Europe, a political Europe that could be an independent entity in the world … The idea which finally gained currency was Margaret Thatcher’s Europe  an idea of Europe of the bankers, Europe of the markets.  ibid.    

 

Many of these ideologues went crazy when the French, the Irish and the Dutch rejected the European constitution.  ibid.   

 

At this point the European elite panicked and cancelled all other referendums.  ibid.

 

Yugoslavia: The break up in my opinion has been a disaster story.  It’s not been a good thing.  And as the crisis deepens it could be felt more.  ibid.

 

This blackmailing of Greece not to quit the Euro zone … An atmosphere of fear.  ibid.

 

This extreme centre exists in European countries … It preaches austerity, it punishes its own people … and it is in favour in most cases of occupying countries.  ibid.

 

The alternative has to be some form of socialism.  ibid.

 

The symbiosis between the politics of the extreme centre and big money, and big corporations, and big banks is so huge that democracy itself is under threat.  ibid.  

 

Uncritical satellites of the United States of America.  ibid.

 

A parliament  it looks very nice, it has quite a lot of money, its members of parliament are paid quite a lot, but they have no power at all.  All the decisions are made in that little office called The Council of Ministers.  ibid.

 

 

The British people have only ever had one chance so far to vote directly in a referendum on our relations with Europe.  That was exactly 30 years ago this weekend.  Michael Cockerell, How We Fell For Europe, BBC 2005

 

To start with two-thirds of the public wanted us out; but by the end, the figures were exactly reversed.  So how did this remarkable transformation come about?  It’s a tragi-comic tale of high politics and low cunning that yoked together the oddest of bed-fellows.  ibid.  

 

The Tory MP Enoch was the leader of the right-wing anti-marketeers and he was a hate figure for the Left.  ibid.  

 

Wilson had committed himself to a referendum on whether or not we should stay in the Common Market … His ministers were still deeply split.  ibid.      

 

The well-heeled Yes campaign had no such problems.  ibid.  

 

The various anti-market groups have a long history of mutual antipathy.  ibid.

 

After months of secret preparations, the Yes campaign emerges at The Dorchester to present its face to the public.  ibid.

 

Leading anti-marketeers included such figures as Enoch Powell, Tony Benn and Dr Ian Paisley.  ibid.

 

Tony Benn had a point: The Sun owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph were all in those day enthusiastically pro-European and was almost all the rest of Fleet Street.  ibid.

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