Introduction: more power (the EP), less influence (the UK)

The United Kingdom was not “present at the creation” of the European Economic Community in 1957, but it was very much present when the first direct elections to the European Parliament (EP) took place on 7–10 June 1979. Indeed, the elections had been postponed from the 1978 date initially envisaged by the 1974 Paris European Council because of delays in the UK’s parliamentary ratification of the necessary implementing legislation (following on from the 1976 EEC Act). Characteristically, the delays were due, in part, to growing opposition within the governing Labour Party to the very principle of direct elections, but they were also due to an extended debate about the type of electoral system to be used. Because of Northern Ireland’s special circumstances, a broad agreement emerged about the use of the Single Transferable Vote for the province (to secure the representation of the Catholic minority). But for the mainland there were protracted arguments in favour of some system of proportional representation on the one hand, and an extrapolation of the Westminster-style, constituency-based, first-past-the-post system on the other. For example, Edward Heath, championing PR, argued that first-past-the-post would inter alia freeze out small parties and lead to widespread distortions (Huber 1979: 163). Proportional representation, argued others, “could endanger the British party system” and “allow minorities (or even extremists) to gain seats” (ibid.: 162). In reality, as this chapter will show, such arguments were two sides of the same coin.

In the end, parliament opted for STV to return three members for Northern Ireland and 78 constituencies for the rest of the United Kingdom, using the first-past-the-post electoral system. The European Assembly Elections Bill passed into law on 4 May 1978 and the other, disgruntled member states subsequently decided to postpone the European elections to June 1979. The United Kingdom would be the only one of the then nine member states not to use some form of proportional representation. As will be seen below, there was further disgruntlement when, as Edward Heath had predicted, the first direct elections in the UK produced a distorted result.

Of stable doors and bolting horses

So far, this book has shown how trends and/or their consequences seemed to creep up on UK governments and parties as though they were almost unawares although, in retrospect, it always seemed evident what was likely to occur. Regarding the esoteric issue of staffing of the EU institutions, a UK government did, finally, realize what was occurring and tried, belatedly to reverse the negative trend. But, as will be seen, by then it was too late and, anyway, the prospect of a referendum inevitably discouraged those who might otherwise have thought about attempting to launch an EU career. It is yet another sorry tale where statecraft seemed to be mainly lacking – or, if not statecraft, the typical behaviour of an important member state, making sure that the EU bureaucracy contained an appropriate or proportionate number of its own nationals. This chapter will first explain the basic concept of the European Union civil service and the member states, and then look at the importance of “representative bureaucracy” in general and, in the case of the EU institutions, geographic origin in particular. It will then show how the UK has, notwithstanding various limitations, traditionally been a “purveyor” of top-level EU civil servants, and will examine some of the reasons for this. The chapter will then describe the growing problem of staffing, the belated realization in 2010 that something was badly wrong and the various issues taken to try and correct the issue. The chapter will conclude with a general reflection on the cautionary tale of the not-so-mysterious case of the disappearing EU Sir Humphreys.

The European Union civil service and the (new) member states

The European Union’s institutions are primarily staffed by specifically European civil servants (though there are other, more temporary, types of agent) who enjoy their own special status, as opposed to being national civil servants or diplomats. The answer as to why there is a European civil service is bound up in the European Union’s origins.

The conundrum at the heart of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1981 novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is that, although the death of Santiago Nasar was foreseen, nobody thought it was really going to happen and so nobody tried very hard to stop it. A conspiracy of circumstances combined and the fates converged inexorably. Was that what occurred with the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum decision? If, as this study has sought to show, a longer-term perspective is taken, then there would indeed appear to have been a series of inexorable trends that were leading the UK away from fully integrated membership of the club, as it evolved. In that sense, the UK’s relationship with the European Union can be seen, in part, as a fraught accumulation of stand-offs, clashes, set-backs, vetoes, opt-outs, opt-ins and quixotic, stand-alone gestures punctuating the long, slow drift to which the title of this book alludes. Addendum 8.1 sets out some of the more significant entries in this story of the awkward partner; it is a long list, and it shows just how much the European Union was prepared to countenance to keep the UK in the Union – even at the high price, as the February 2016 New Settlement demonstrated, of accepting that, ultimately, there could be more than a single currency within the EU and more than one destination for member states to work towards within the overall European integration process.

But Addendum 8.1 only tells part of the story. In the first place, to concentrate only on certain negative events and developments in isolation is to obscure the many positive aspects of UK membership over the years. Successive British governments and Council presidencies have energetically and effectively championed such policy areas as the single market, trade, competition, the Lisbon Strategy, climate change, the environment more generally and enlargement more particularly to great and good effect. The UK has a good record (much better than some of the founding member states) in implementing directives and in respecting judgements of the European Court of Justice. And there have been a large number of influential British European politicians and civil servants over the years (as Chapters 3, 4 and 5 documented) who have made significant positive contributions to the European integration process.

Parliament versus the people

The Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, argued that, when writing a play, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” (Gurlyand 1904: 521). The United Kingdom acceded to the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973 through a parliamentary act, the European Communities Act 1972. Under the constitutional doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, the United Kingdom could also leave through a simple parliamentary act – indeed, that is precisely what the Labour Party promised to do in its 1983 general election manifesto. However, between 1975 and 2013 there was never any likelihood that a majority in the House of Commons would vote in favour of leaving the European Union, nor that any government would put such a proposal to parliament. If the UK were ever to leave the EU, some superior mechanism would be required, one to which parliament would have to bow. There was only one such superior force: the voice of the people, directly expressed. But the referendum was traditionally held to be against the UK’s parliamentary tradition of Burkean representative democracy. So where did the referendum, as a possible constitutional device, come from? How did the referendum pistol come to be hanging on the wall in 2013?

In Britain between 1867 and 1911 “it was still possible to believe that … the referendum would be introduced to resolve constitutional issues” (Bogdanor 1981: 5). In that period, following on from the third Reform Act of 1867, “there was no agreement on the shape which democracy should assume in Britain” (ibid.). The party system was only just emerging and the House of Commons was, increasingly, asserting its supremacy against the House of Lords. But the simultaneous emergence of party government and weakening of the checks and balances of a bicameral system made several constitutionalists apprehensive. That the will of the people should be expressed through a sovereign parliament was all very well, but “of what value was the sovereignty of Parliament if it turned out to be no more than the sovereignty of party?” (ibid.). Thus, “the referendum offered an opportunity to challenge this dominance through an appeal to the people” (ibid.: 7).

The 1950s – when the UK might (should?) have been in

During the 1950s there were several counterfactual (“what if?”) moments in the United Kingdom’s relationship with the emerging European integration process. In each case, public opinion, to the extent that it was felt to be a consideration, was assumed rather than gauged, let alone taken into account. This was perfectly normal at the time. Opinion polling was in its infancy (UK political parties would not start using opinion polls until the end of the decade) and expressions of the public’s opinion were largely limited to general elections. On 2 June 1950, for example, when the Labour Cabinet drew up its response to the 7 May 1950 Schuman Declaration, it declared that

Sir Oliver Franks, then head of the UK’s delegation to the Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), argued in his 1954 Reith Lectures that British popular opinion “did not have the sentiment of actively belonging to Western Europe” (Franks 1955: 43–7). A senior Treasury official, Sir Edwin Plowden, would later write that there had been “no possibility of persuading the British people or any British government at that time to enter into The Coal and Steel Community on the terms laid down by the French” (Plowden 1989: 93). Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison’s reported remark that “the Durham miners won’t wear it” suggests that, rather than public opinion in general, it was the opinion of one significant public actor – the National Union of Mineworkers, which would be viscerally opposed to any change in the new nationalized status of the coal industry and had direct control over 40 Labour MPs – which had concentrated minds.

A strategy for decline – and a vision for renewal

Why, then, did David Cameron grab the referendum pistol and fire it when he did? It is instructive to re-read the 23 January 2013 Bloomberg speech (Cameron 2013), in which his referendum pledge was made. There was not a single mention of migration and, although the prime minister did briefly argue that “power must be able to flow back to member states” nor was there a reference to “taking back control”. In fact, the one issue which, above all others, drove Cameron to make his 2013 pledge was the eurozone; problems in the eurozone, he argued, were “driving fundamental change in Europe”, and it was both urgently needed and yet carried potentially heavy implications for the United Kingdom and its continued access to the single market. Alloyed to that was Cameron’s firm belief that “democratic consent for the EU in Britain is now wafer thin” and had somehow to be reinforced. Eurozone reform was vital, Cameron understood, but the UK could only agree to it (especially if it took the form of Treaty amendments) if the UK’s rights were safeguarded and if the British people had given their consent. It was the culmination of a 50-year conundrum for the British prime minister. Of the nine prime ministers who have held office since the UK joined the EEC in 1973, only two – Edward Heath and Tony Blair – fully supported the idea of British participation in European economic and monetary union, but all of them were condemned to spend much political energy and capital in managing the frequently fraught and fractious relations between sterling and the British economy on the one hand, and European economic and monetary integration as it progressed on the other.

Taking the longer-term view (as prime ministers rarely can), European monetary integration and the development of the euro is only one aspect – albeit an important one – of the world’s evolving monetary system(s). Sterling and the French franc have played their parts in that evolution, their recent histories having charted the declines of the United Kingdom and France from once being great imperial powers to still-important economies, although now shorn of empires and the power and influence that comes with them.

Woods and trees again …

Most media coverage of the May 2019 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom was, understandably, concentrated on the domestic fortunes of the traditional political parties and the rise of the newly formed Brexit Party. These were elections that were not supposed to happen and that Prime Minister Theresa May had fervently hoped could be avoided. Not for the first time, European elections had a reverse effect, with low turnout and discontented and motivated voters using their vote in a way that sent a message to the domestic government (for or against Brexit) rather than for EU representation. Some election coverage examined the effects that the Brexit Party’s majority (29 MEPs), a sizeable contingent of Lib Dem MEPs (16) and the reduction in Conservative (down 15 to 4) and Labour (down 10 to 10) representatives might have on the dynamics of the European Parliament. A few articles in the “quality press” covered the likely impact of the redistribution of British MEPs for the so-called “lead candidate”, or Spitzenkandidaten, procedure for choosing the new president of the European Commission. The implicit assumption was nevertheless that the procedure and its outcome would be of little relevance to the UK, since Brexit was considered likely to occur at some stage in the not-too-distant future. As this chapter will show, were the UK to have remained an EU member state up to and beyond the next European elections (in 2024), then the procedure would indeed have been of great potential significance since on this issue, as on so many others, the UK’s mainstream political parties almost inadvertently isolated themselves. Their only way out of the dilemma this isolation created would have been either to be outvoted and accept the procedure’s consequences, or meekly go along with it. In either case, the UK would have had to live with a significant constitutional innovation that is gradually changing the institutional power dynamics in the European Union.

And yet, on this issue as on so many others, longer-term trends were increasingly discernible, almost inexorably leading on to the quasi-constitutional changes within the EU that are now under way (Westlake 2016).

I hope this study will be of interest to all sides in the ongoing Brexit debate, in the United Kingdom and on the Continent. I hope, in particular, that its analyses will be seen as a corrective or, at the least, an alternative to the current, shorter-term explanations about “what happened” or, for those on the “remain” side of the argument, “what went wrong”. It will give some comfort to those who argue that continued full EU membership was becoming practically and politically impossible for the UK while also comforting those who argued that the UK would have done better to have established and maintained a new relationship from the inside. While not an apologia for David Cameron and his ill-fated decision to promise a referendum, the study sets that decision and its consequences in the broader context of an EU member state that had, in retrospect, been slipping its moorings for some considerable time.

This is an academic study and I hope that I have been suitably objective in my analyses. But I would like, at the outset, to nail my personal colours firmly to the mast. I campaigned energetically for “remain” in 2016 and, if I had not long ago lost my vote to the 15-year-rule, I would have voted accordingly on 23 June that year. I believe the UK’s decision to leave the EU is bad both for the UK and the EU. And if, by some chance, the UK were to remain fully in the EU, I would be conditionally content. However, under those circumstances I would be the first to argue that the UK’s longer-term relationship with the EU would need to be settled satisfactorily for both sides. That would involve the UK recognizing once and for all that the EU is a progressive evolutionary process and not a fixed state. It would also involve the UK elaborating a proper strategy – perhaps in agreement with the EU – rather than reverting to the traditional unilateral policy of ad hoc tactical reactions and rear-guard braking actions. It would also involve the EU recognizing the UK’s continued exceptionalism in return for its continued sincere cooperation.

The introduction examines the way the 1960s, and 1968 in particular, have been interpreted, and argues that the explanation of the revolts of the 1960s has often remained trapped in recovering or puncturing the revolutionary mythology of the events. It argues instead that the most important implications of the student protests of 1968 may not be in their long-term consequences, but in the short-term possibilities they demonstrated.

‘We lost’, admitted Mauro Rostagno at the twentieth anniversary of 1968, ‘Thank goodness we lost.’ Another speaker agreed: ‘it doesn’t interest me if we were defeated at a political level. Who gives a damn? Rather I agree with those who say it is better that way. Who knows what success would have been? Ultimately the most beautiful revolutions have always been defeated.’ Among themselves, the protagonists of 1968 found the consolations of failure. At other times, to other audiences, they defended their experience, especially in the face of derisory accounts. The ironic retrospective self-assessment was only to be expected. Outside the revolutionary atmosphere of the late 1960s, other priorities prevailed. As has been seen in the preceding chapters, experiments dismissed as illusory or maligned as reformist in 1968 quickly recaptured their historic importance in the aftermath of the events. Conversely, political revolution, which appeared so imminent in ’68, could only elicit more cautious consideration in subsequent decades. For the historian, the important task is neither to romanticise the retrospectively ‘important’ aspects of the late 1960s nor dwell on what dated quickly even to the protagonists, but rather to explain how these two sides belonged together. The protests of 1968 proved far more capable of exposing the hypocrisies and inequalities of authority, both within the university and more generally, than they were in establishing alternatives. The failure of some of those alternatives can only elicit a ‘thank goodness’. Others are undoubtedly a source of regret. If nothing else, the protesters forcefully demanded a rethinking of political and cultural power, and exposed, via their own errors, the paradoxes of the search for more democratic forms of authority.