Suchergebnisse

This broad-ranging and accessible volume tells the story of a relationship rooted in a thousand years of British history, and of our sense of national identity in conflict with our political and economic need for partnership with continental Europe.

This is the story of how British governments have wrestled with policy towards the European Union, written by someone who worked closely with many of Britain's political leaders in shaping an often fraught but always full-frontal relationship between Britain and her European partners.

AbstractThroughout her years as British Prime Minister (1979–1990), Margaret Thatcher held ambivalent opinions of the European Community. She favoured it as a vehicle for peace and prosperity in Europe, but she was profoundly sceptical about the goal of ever closer union. To her also goes much of the credit for putting the creation of a genuine single market in goods and services at the forefront of European policy. But the background was not propitious. For almost half her time in office, Thatcher was at war with her EEC partners over the UK contribution to the Community budget, and often seen not as motor of but a block to progress. This article assesses how Thatcher's conflicting attitudes towards the EEC played out in the achievement of the single market and how, unintentionally, she laid the foundation for the single currency, which she so vehemently opposed.

Britain decided to join the European Community because its postwar, postimperial policies had failed and successive Governments saw no viable alternative. After ten years of being denied entry by De Gaulle, Britain joined on disadvantageous terms and with the British political parties, and the British people, deeply divided. Accession did not resolve the underlying issues and Britain's first year of membership saw an unprecedented oil crisis, bad relations between Britain and the United States and the demise of the British government led by Edward Heath. The underlying issues which had not been resolved in the accession negotiations were reopened by Harold Wilson and later by Margaret Thatcher. Some of them remain unresolved in British politics to this day.