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The
Rotten Heart of Europe by Bernard Connolly-Part 2
IF AMERICA CAN BECOME A STATE - NATION WHY NOT EUROPE Of course, two great historical examples of the creation of state-nations other than by military subjugation are the forging of the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and the transformation of the United States of America by immigration in the final quarter of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. It is no coincidence that the ‘functionalist’ and ‘neo-functionalist’ theorists of European integration were born in America, where the US state department has been a tireless patron of the idea of ‘Europe’. If America could become a state-nation, why not Europe? What
the integrationist gurus of the State Department closed their eyes to (despite
repeated warnings from the US Treasury and the Fed) was that the sort of
‘Europe’ that was being planned within the old Continent was, from the very
first, a technocratic one (how else could it be, given the role of Jean
Monnet in building the foundation of ‘Europe’?) imposed from above instead
of being built from below by people voting with their feet. The
United States had been a meeting- point of many nationalities, all of them
fleeing poverty, economic oppression, ethnic discrimination or political
tyranny in their countries of origin, and all of them prepared to become
‘Americans’ and speak the American’s language in the pursuit of personal
freedom and economic opportunity. Europe
(that is to say, the democracies of Western Europe) was a collection of states
all of which not only had their own linguistic and cultural identities but
after the short period of post war reconstruction enjoyed reasonable economic
prosperity and popular legitimacy. For them to surrender sovereignty to
‘Europe’ could only happen as a reaction to external pressure that threatened that
happy state of affairs. For
forty years after the war, the greater perceived external threat was to
political legitimacy, and it came from the Soviet Union. That threat was
countered by the combination of the North Atlantic Alliance and the increasing
liberal, multilateral world economic system. The distinctive feature of the
arrangements for post war European security was that they avoided non-trivial
interference by any country with the rights of any other to order its own
domestic affairs. The limiting of free-world sovereignty-pooling to the defence
policy arena was crucial to its success. Further, the willingness of the
members of NATO to put forestalling Soviet expansionism above all other foreign
policy aims was , except perhaps in France, absolute. It
is worth recalling, given the deliberate misuse often made of it, the
circumstances in which Churchill’s 1946 call for a united Europe was made. Like
his offer of joint citizenship to France in the summer of 1940( an offer
rejected in favour of defeatism that led to , via Vichy, along the long road to
‘common citizenship’ in the European Union),
Churchill’s Zurich speech was a reaction to the most miserable of
prospects in which avoiding the worst was more important than achieving the
best. Europe in 1946 was an economic catastrophe area, totally dislocated. It
was also militarily denuded, with the Americans withdrawing . Britain
close to bankrupt, German rearmament- indeed the recreation of Germany- still
almost unthinkable, and a restoration of French power likely to bring risk of
revanchism. Mass starvation, internal Communist takeovers or Soviet pressure
were all real fears. Some sort of economic and political union in Europe seemed
to Churchill to offer at least the hope of avoiding the most immanent dangers,
whatever problems it might bring wit it. It was, even so, not Churchill’s
intention that Britain should form a part of a European Union . Clearly,
Britain would, in the world of 1946 have had to play a major part in shaping a
union. But there was no suggestion that Britain should be at its heart, even
though the country had much more chance of playing such a role than it does
now. In
the event, the happy combination of Harry Truman and Ernie Bevin produced
Marshall Plan and NATO instead, allowing Europe to prosper in a world of
interdependent, cooperating, separate democratic countries. Schemes for union,
with a very different motivation, were taken by technocrats and corporists
instead. The
contrast between French technocratic vision of ‘Europe’ as a state-nation on
the one hand and either the emergence of the multi-ethnic American nation or
the success of the North Atlantic Alliance on the other could hardly be more
marked. In
some important respects, the French vision corresponds more closely with the
Anglo-Scottish Union of the eighteenth century. England and Scotland( lowland,
Protestant Scotland at any rate) had sufficiently strong religious and
commercial interests in common, particularly among elites, to justify a fusion
of the two Parliaments. France
played an important role in this acceptance of fusion. Its existence across the
Channel represented religious antagonism, colonial competition and- In the
mercantilist world-commercial rivalry. In the same way, French perceptions,
still rooted in mercantilist thinking, see ‘Europe’ as a way of increasing
muscle in a series of struggles, primarily against the United States, over
culture, economic philosophy, ’spheres of influence’ and economic hegemony. But the conditions that allowed the successful development of the United Kingdom, after centuries of war between England and Scotland, do not exist in Europe. The
Union, via the British navy, allowed Britain’s technological leadership and
private sector capitalist spirit to dominate the world economy. The Union was not
an attempt to buttress and extend the power of a state technocracy- since
next to none existed- and would have failed if it had been. Europe does not
have technological leadership. ‘Europe’, if it came into being along the lines
shaped by French thinking, would certainly not have a private-sector capitalist
spirit. Moreover,
France would be neither willing nor able to play the role of Scotland in the
eighteenth century United Kingdom. Nor would Germany allow France to play the
role of England - apart from anything else, the economic philosophies of the
two countries are despite the protestations of the prophets of ‘Rhenish
capitalism’, still far apart. Moreover, the world really had changed, and
French attempts to recreate the global mercantilism of the eighteenth century
will fail. The opening-up of the world economy leads not to the hegemony of one
country but to a reduced economic role for the state. Next, as we argued in
chapter 3, the attempt by the French technocratic elite and their allies to opt
out of world capitalism would lead to the economic decay of the whole of
Europe. And ,perhaps most important of all, ‘Europe’ does not , except in the
eyes of the French technocracy and the griping Tory ‘toffs’, now have an enemy
to unite against as Scotland and England had France. The attempt of certain
Euro enthusiasts to create such an enemy in the shape of the US and Japan smells
nastily of 1984 [ as is the situation
today-20-1-04 ] How
does this intellectual excursion tie in with the story of the ERM and EMU? EMU
as seen by the French elite would be the single most important step in the
attempt to construct a European state -nation in the furtherance of their
interests in the world as a whole. But the ERM shows how the second
great preoccupation - the perceived risk of Germany hegemony within Europe -
would be tackled. The
ERM experience hardly went unnoticed in Germany. During the turbulence of early
1993, when the Bundesbank was under constant pressure from the French
government to cut interest rates, German resentment and suspicion were voiced
in explicit terms in The European by Klaus Engelen, the editor of Handelsblatt. The occasion, the author
and the vehicle were all significant. The article was written to mark the
thirtieth anniversary of the Elysee Treaty between France and Germany. It is
worth quoting at length: ‘Many
Germans, particularly the older generation, want to avoid sounding
nationalistic at almost any price . So they keep their uneasiness and doubts
about the troubling aspects of Franco-German relations under wraps… French
Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy has made it clear that the overriding French
goal of monetary union is to end Franc’s politically embarrassing dependence on
the Bundesbank. The implication is that the Germans must sacrifice their
currency so as not to damage Franco-German relations… There
is now French rejection and distancing when it comes to keeping the world
trading system open. France would rather wreck GATT than make further
concessions at the expense of its farmers. This stance spells disaster for
export-orientated Germany and is an ominous sign of where the EC is going under
French domination. There are many Germans who have not forgotten France’s
attempts to jeopardize German unification. As some said at the time: ‘with
friends like this, who needs enemies? There
is no doubt that Beregovoy’s franc fort policy gives the French
additional bargaining leverage in the development of the structures of the EMU.
He knows how to mobilize Franc’s capitalist system - managed by a tight-knit,
highly motivated grande ecole elite state elite - towards a
policy of containing the new Germany. The aim Is
to bind Germany to a politically, economically, administratively and monetarily
French dominated EC. It is through a strategy of German containment that
France’s grande ecole elite hopes to run and represent the new and
larger Europe… Professor
Gunther Ammon, an expert on Franco-German relations, explains: ‘In the
mid-1980s , the French grande ecole state elite put forward a new
political and economic order for Europe under the slogan of ‘’European Single
Market by 1992’’.’ He concludes: ‘With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the political
concept of EC’92 - which was basically the projection of the French idea of
nation-state to all Europe - became obsolete.’ France’s
strategy of containing Germany within the new Europe is perhaps their last
chance to save what is left of the original plans. The Germans are left
dwelling on the illusion that, by exporting the Bundesbank model through the
Maastricht Treaty to all of Europe, they will have protected their legitimate
interests. There are many open-minded Germans who will have an uneasy feeling
this week.(1993) * * * ‘The revelations by a
disaffected senior Eurocrat about the machinations in Brussels are a
bombshell…What Connolly says has all the power of sudden revelation. Daily Mail.
*
Words of a great Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, are much to the point:
‘’The finance of any country is ultimately associated with the liberties of the
country. It is a powerful leverage by which English liberty has been gradually
acquired. If the House of Commons by any possibility loses the control of the
grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very
little in comparison. That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as
the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure’’ (1891)
* *
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* * * Words of a great Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, are much to the point:
‘’The finance of any country is ultimately associated with the liberties of the
country. It is a powerful leverage by which English liberty has been gradually
acquired.
If the House of Commons by any possibility loses the control of the
grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very
little in comparison. That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as
the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure’’ (1891)
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[All underlined words have a separate bulletin MAGNA CARTA/ ****A Constitution millions died for/**** Bill of Rights of 1688 - OUTLAWS EUROPEAN UNION/****Almost everything which is most precious in our civilisation has come from small states/****Why We Must Remain A Christian Country/****England or European Regions/Provinces-You Cannot have BOTH!/GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT/****English Constitution-By It They Lived-For it They Died./**** A BETRAYAL OF OUR NATION -CONSPIRATORS NAMED/**** Our Loyalty to our institutions and country/****Liberties of Parliament -Birthright of subjects of England/****WHAT HISTORY TELLS US ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CONTINENT-Part 1-3/ ****The Heritage of England is a Whole made up of Many Parts/**** The Lives and Reputation of our Ancient Island's Defenders of Freedom now at Greater RISK./****Our basic Liberties and Freedoms - to be surrendered to a FOREIGN POWER/****TREASON A CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS by NORRIS Mc WHIRTER - Lest we Forget/****The Truth About A Federal Europe-Parts1-4/****A TIME TO MAKE A STAND/****COULD ENGLAND SURVIVE OUTSIDE THE EU?-YES!/****The Rotten Heart of Europe-by Bernard Connolly-Parts 1-4/****SAY 'NO' TO EUROPE! SAYS RODNEY ATKINSON/****So You Thought You Were FREE/****Empires have gone and most people in the world now live in Nation States said Lord Shore/****Freedom of Speech-A Freedom which cannot be abused - is NOT WORTH HAVING/****MAKING OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION/****England's place in theUNION?/****ENGLISH FREEDOM -WHY IT IS YOURS/****Our Loyalty to our Institutions and Country/ * [ Click HERE:There are hundreds of bulletins on ENGLISH FREEDOM listed within and at the end of the MAIN BULLETIN FILE]
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