The Conservative Party and Europe

By Ben Patterson
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Description

A serious-minded and balanced history of the making of Conservative Party policy on Europe over the last seven decades, written by a former MEP with views located in the Ted Heath – Ken Clarke tradition.

Ben Patterson, a former three-term Conservative Member of the European Parliament, looks at how and why the “party of Europe”, which led Britain into the Community under Edward Heath, has become one ever more influenced by Eurosceptic sentiment. He draws on more than five decades of personal experience in Conservative politics to explore not just the high politics but also the deeper currents of change among the party rank-and-file; and on his experience in European politics to make an unusual excursion into the resemblances and contrasts between British Conservatism and European Christian Democracy.

The book is non-polemical and balanced in style but with a clear perspective: as Ken Clarke MP puts it in the foreword, Patterson “writes… from the standpoint of a fair-minded participant and of someone whose views, like mine, represented the mainstream majority of the Conservative Party.”

Former MEP and EU official Ben Patterson explores the complex relationship between the Conservative Party and what started out as the Common Market and has ended up as today’s European Union. He describes a relationship with the embryonic Community that was always ambivalent – Churchill famously called for a “United States of Europe” but the counter-pull of Empire and alliance with America were strong in the post-war period – but ultimately led to Macmillan applying to join the EEC. Edward Heath faced down residual anti-Common Market sentiment in his own party and the country at large, leading Britain to membership in 1973, a result convincingly confirmed by referendum in 1975. The party’s relationship with Europe was frequently abrasive under Margaret Thatcher, but support for Britain’s actively engaged membership remained strong within Tory ranks, buoyed by Thatcher’s success on the British rebate and the progress to the single market, much favoured by all strands of opinion in the party.

Over the last two decades, however, there has been a steady erosion of the old mainstream centrist pro-Europeanism of the party as Euroscepticism has moved from the disruptive fringe, which so undermined the Major premiership, to influence ever more sections of party opinion. In the process relations with what would otherwise be allied centre-right parties in Europe have become frayed and Britain a more peripheral player in the formulation of EU policy.

Table of Contents

  • Foreword, by Ken Clarke MP
  • Preface
  1. The Churchill Legacy
  2. The Macmillan Application
  3. Finding a Role
  4. Preparing the Ground
  5. Membership and Referendum
  6. Direct Elections
  7. The Years of “Maggie’s Money”
  8. Towards the Single Market
  9. Bruges and After
  10. ERM and EMU
  11. The Battle for Maastricht
  12. Into the Cold
  13. No Longer the Party of Europe
  14. The Constitutional Treaty
  15. The Road to Recovery
  16. 1945 – 2010: An Analysis
  17. Conservative European Policy and the Future
  • Appendix 1: Conservatism and Christian Democracy
  • Appendix 2: Chronology of Man Events
  • Appendix 3: Tables
  • Bibliography
  • Index

About Ben Patterson

Ben Patterson’s first job was as a tutor at Swinton Conservative College in the early 1960s, lecturing on the Common Market. In his later career he had contact with all areas of Conservative opinion as, variously, a local Councillor, a European official and a three-term member of the European Parliament. He remains an active member of the party.

Product Details

Publication Date
25 Nov 2011
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780956450876