A history of the Conservative Party in Europe

The Conservative Party and Europe (2011)

Former Conservative MEP, 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 shows a relationship with Europe 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.

The author 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. The book is a non-polemical and balanced history of the whole period since the 1940s 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.” The book will be welcomed as a sober and serious-minded history in a field where much of the literature throws more heat than it does light.

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

Publication Date: 25 November 2011

This book ships from the UK.

• ISBN: 978-0-9564508-7-6
• Publisher: John Harper Publishing
• Author: Ben Patterson
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback

Price: 25.00 €

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