Euroscepticism and history education in Britain

Government and Opposition

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 64-85

  Daddow, Oliver J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33645127743     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2006.00171.x     Document Type: Review

References (77)

1. The workshop took place on 21-2 May 2004 at the European Union Center at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, New York. Papers were delivered by Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, Leonard Ray, Christopher Andersen and Braden Smith, Oliver Daddow, Robert Dewey, Charles Lees, Craig Parsons, Christopher Flood, Nick Sitter and Nicole Lindstrom.
2. An issue that emerged from the workshop paper by Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, 'Supporting the Union? Euroscepticism and Domestic Politics of Integration'.
3. Taggart and Szczerbiak, 'Supporting the Union?', p. 23.
4. H. Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998, p. 3.
5. A phrase coined in 1990 by Stephen George, An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community, New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.
6. John Young, dates the switch in Britain's policy towards continental schemes for integration from benevolent neutrality to active opposition to them in the period 1955-58, when Whitehall developed 'Plan G' for a Free Trade Area across Europe. In Europe this seemed like a blatant attempt to kill the EEC at birth. Mistrust of London's goals with respect to integration has been a major feature of the historiography of Britain's relationship with Europe since.
7. John W. Young, Britain and European Unity, 1945-1999, 2nd edn, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, p. 217.
8. For analysis of the historiography of this era see Oliver J. Daddow, Britain and Europe Since 1945: Historiographic Perspectives on Integration, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 157-84.
9. Attitudes to Europe obviously influence, and are obviously influenced by, attitudes to America. The American dimension of Euroscepticism will not be considered in this paper, but for a critical deconstruction of the myth of the special relationship as it pertains to the Europe question see Oliver J. Daddow, 'America, Britain and European Integration: Exposing the Cracks in the "Special Relationship"', in Agnès Alexandre-Collier (ed.). La 'Relation Spéciale'Royaume-Uni/Etats-Unis: Entre mythe et réalité, Nantes, Éditions du Temps, 2002, pp. 66-82.
10. I would also include in this category the Sun but for reasons of space I have decided not to explore any of the many potential articles here. One such is an article by George Pascoe-Watson on the Constitution, published in the Sun in April 2004, where he compared the EU project with a Napoleonic drive by the French to unite Europe, which I examined in my paper to the Syracuse workshop, 'The Politics of European Discourse in Britain'.
11. Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945, London, Routledge, 2002, p. 116.
12. Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945 Ibid., p. 71.
13. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart, 'Opposing Europe: Party Systems and Opposition to the Union, the Euro and Europeanisation', SEI Working Paper 36, Opposing Europe Research Network Working Paper 1, October 2000, p. 5 and also p. 10.
14. See also Leonard Ray, 'Mainstream Euroscepticism: Trend or Oxymoron', paper presented to the Comparative Euroscepticism Workshop, Syracuse University, 21-2 May 2004, pp. 3-6.
15. The latter category is in turn split in two for the purposes of analysis: 'policy euroscepticism' and 'national-interest' Euroscepticism. 'Policy interest Euroscepticism' entails 'opposition to measures designed to deepen significantly European political and economic integration and is expressed in terms of opposition to specific extensions of EU competencies', while 'national interest Euroscepticism' 'involves employing the rhetoric of defending or standing up for "the national interest" in the context of the internal debates within the EU',
16. Comparative Euroscepticism Workshop Ibid., pp. 6-7.
17. Taggait and Szczerbiak, 'Supporting the Union?', p. 4.Emphasis in original.
18. Forster, Euroscepticism. For a succinct analysis of his core arguments,
19. see Anthony Forster, 'Anti-Europeans, Anti-Marketeers and Eurosceptics: The Evolution and Influence of Labour and Conservative Opposition to Europe', Political Quarterly, 73: 3 (July 2002), pp. 299-308; 299-301 .
20. Translated: 'Euroscepticism indicates therefore a particular attitude, which fluctuates between simple hesitancy and open hostility towards Europe'.
21. Agnès Alexandre-Collier, La Grande-Bretagne Eurosceptique?: L'enjeu Europeén dans le débat politique Britannique, Nantes, Editions du Temps, 2002, p. 8.
22. The same goes for expressions of sympathy for the integration project and/or specific elements of it, variously called 'Europhilia', 'Euroenthusiasrn' or 'pro-Europeanism'. This phenomenon is not the focus of this article and I will not devote as much attention to it as a consequence, but I will briefly take up the definitional problems with these words below before analysing the contrasting uses of history by sceptics and enthusiasts.
23. Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, 3rd edn, London and New York, Routledge, 1991, p. 129.
24. See also publications such as Christopher Booker and Richard North, The Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must Get Out of Europe, London, Duckworth, 1996, pp. 203-15.
25. Daily Telegraph, 24 August 1998, p. 1.
26. The overlap between domestic politics and the conduct of British European policy comes through strongly in David Baker, 'The Shotgun Marriage: Managing Eurosceptical Opinion in British Political Parties 1972-2002', paper presented at the 8th EUSA Biannual International Conference, 28 March 2003.
27. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/13/neui13. xml.
28. Daily Mail, 9 December 2000, pp. 12-13.
29. See the 'Britain and the EU' section of the Guardian Unlimited, http//politics.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,9061,669387,00.html.
30. Quoted in George Wilkes and Dominic Wring, 'The British Press and Integradon', in David Baker and David Seawright (eds), Britain For and Against Europe: British Politics and the Question of European Integration, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998, pp. 185-205; 197-8.
31. For more information see http://www.democracy-movement.org.uk.
32. 'Perhaps Whitehall keeps tests and conditions on its mantelpiece, like cooks keep jelly moulds, there to be used for any purpose', Baroness Williams of Crosby, foreword to Oliver J. Daddow (ed.), Harold Wilson and European Integration Britain's Second Application to Join the EEC, London, Frank Cass, 2003, pp. x-xiii; xi.
33. On Monnet, Camps and the historiographical legacy bequeathed by the 'founding fathers' see Daddow, Britain and Europe, pp. 70-6 and 91-5.
34. Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London, Routledge, 1992, ch. 6.
35. Taken up in John Gillingham, European Integration 1950-2003: Superstate or New Market Economy?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 16-18.
36. For a fuller treatment of the federalist and other ideological weight behind 'missed opportunities' interpretation, see Daddow, Britain and Europe.
37. The Times, 24 November 2001, p. 6.
38. For a full transcript of the speech see http://www.phoenix-tv.net/ ubirmingham/eriscript.htm.
39. See also his interview on BBC 2's Newsnight, 15 May 2002, an edited transcript of which is on the Foreign Office's website, http://www.fco.gov.uk/ new/newstext.asp?6225.
40. Nora Beloff, 'What Happened in Britain after the General said No', in Pierre Uri (ed.), From Commonwealth to Common Market, Harrnondsworth, Penguin, 1968, pp. 51-88; 73.
41. Perhaps the most significant work in this respect, certainly one of the most often cited, was by the American diplomat Miriam Camps, published in the aftermath of Charles de Gaulle's first veto on Britain joining the EEC: Britain and the European Community 1955-63, London, Oxford University Press, 1964.
42. Alice Prochaska in Juliet Gardiner (ed.), The History Debate, London, Collins and Brown, 1990, pp. 103-7; 103.
43. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (eds), Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society, London and New York, Routledge, 1999.
44. On the British history debate under Thatcher see also Peter Mandler, History and National. Life, London, Profile Books, 2002, pp. 127-9.
45. Mandler, History, pp. 1-4 and 98.
46. Forster, Euroscepticism, p. 51. Bryant was apparently the favourite historian of Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson. How did this impact on their worldview and their European policies?
47. Anne Deighton, 'The Past in the Present: British Imperial Memories and the European Question', in Jan-Werner Muller (ed.), Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 100-20; 103.
48. Forster, Ewoscepticism, p. 72. On the formation and policies of UKIP see its website: independenceuk.org.ukindex.php?-menu=theparty&page=thepartytop.
49. Observer, 25 April 2004, p. 25.
50. Stefan Berger with Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore, 'Apologias for the Nation-State in Western Europe since 1800', in Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800, London and New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 3-14; 3.
51. Mandler, History, p. 7.
52. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Britain Faces Europe, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969, p. 2.
53. Martin Marcussen, Thomas Risse, Daniela Engelman-Martin, Hans Joachim Knopf and Klaus Roshcer, 'Constructing Europe?: The Evolution of Nation-State Identities', in Thomas Christiansen, Knud Erik Jørgensen and Antje Wiener (eds), The Social Construction of Europe, London, Sage, pp. 101-20; p. 112.
54. The Social Construction of Europe Ibid., p. 113. Emphases in original.
55. Jeremy Paxman, Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain?, London, Penguin, 1991, p. 243.
56. Deighton, 'The Past in the Present', p. 120.
57. The Past in the Present Ibid., pp. 103-4.
58. Michael Howard, 'Military History and the History of War', Strategic and Combat Studies Institute Occasional Paper 47, Contemporary Essays, Shrlvenham, SCSI, 2004, pp. 45-55; 47-8.
59. For a compelling overview of the history industry, without calling it that, see Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, London, Arnold, 2000.
60. Mandler, History, pp. 1-2.
61. On the important distinctions between reconstructionist, constructionist and deconstructionist approaches to the practice of history see Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 36-75 and
62. Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow, 'Introduction', to The Nature of History Reader, London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 1-18.
63. Their work draws on a transnational array of critiques of reconstructionist history going back several decades.
64. For instance Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith, New York, Pantheon Books, 1972;
65. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975;
66. Roland Barthes, 'The Discourse of History', trans. Stephen Bann, Comparative Criticism, 3 (1981), pp. 7-20;
67. Keith Jenkins, On "What is History?': From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, London, Routledge, 1995;
68. F. R. Ankersmit, Historical Representation: Cultural Memory in the Present, Stanford, CT, Stanford University Press, 2001.
69. A short overview of the implications for debates over the nature of history can be found in Oliver J. Daddow, 'Debating History Today', Rethinking History, 8: 1 (2004), pp. 143-7.
70. For instance Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, 2nd edn, London, Gran ta, 2000.
71. An opinion confirmed in the study of disciplinary cultures by Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd edn, Buckingham, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 2001.
72. Oliver J. Daddow, 'The Ideology of Apathy: Historians and Postmodernism', Rethinking History, 8: 3 (2004), pp. 437-57.
73. Michael Portillo writing in the Daily Mail, 31 December 2001, p. 22,
74. in an article containing much of the sceptical discourse explored in this chapter, and Ashley Mote, Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty, Petersfield, Tanner Publishing, 2001, p. 49.
75. On recent national and European efforts to bring a Europeanist flavour to British education see Daddow, Britain and Europe, pp. 24-5.
76. Andrew Gamble and Gavin Kelly, 'Britain and EMU', in Kenneth Dyson (ed.), European States and the Euro: Europeanization, Variation and Convergence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 97-119; p. 107. See pp. 108-13 for analysis of the implications for the debate of the key terms 'Keep the Pound', 'Join the Euro' and 'Wait and See'.
77. Marcussen et al., p. 116.