Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [463]
I began by doing what the Foreign Office wished. I pointed out just how much Britain had contributed to Europe over the centuries and how much we still contributed, with 70,000 British servicemen stationed there. But what was Europe? I went on to remind my audience that, contrary to the pretensions of the European Community, it was not the only manifestation of European identity. ‘We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities.’ Indeed I went on to argue that western Europe had something to learn from the admittedly dreadful experience of its eastern neighbours and their strong and principled reaction to it:
It is ironic that just when those countries, such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, some in the Community seem to want to move in the opposite direction. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
There were, moreover, powerful non-economic reasons for the retention of sovereignty and, as far as possible, of power, by nation-states. Not only were such nations functioning democracies, but they also represented intractable political realities which it would be folly to seek to override or suppress in favour of a wider but as yet theoretical European nationhood. I pointed out:
Willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states is the best way to build a successful European Community… Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.
I set out other guidelines for the future. Problems must be tackled practically: and there was plenty in the CAP which still needed tackling. We must have a European Single Market with the minimum of regulations — a Europe of enterprise. Europe must not be protectionist: and that must be reflected in our approach to the GATT. Finally, I stressed the great importance of NATO and warned against any development (as a result of Franco-German initiatives) of the Western European Union as an alternative to it.*
I ended on a high note, which was far from ‘anti-European’:
Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together, but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic Community — that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic — which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength.
Not even I would have predicted the furore the Bruges speech unleashed. In Britain, to the horror of the Euro-enthusiasts who believed that principled opposition to federalism had been ridiculed or browbeaten into silence, there was a great wave of popular support for what I had said. It was to become noisily apparent when I addressed the Conservative Party Conference the following month in much the same vein.
But the reaction in polite European circles — or at least the official reaction — was one of stunned outrage. The evening of my speech I had a vigorous argument over dinner in Brussels with M. Martens, his Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign minister. But perhaps that was only to be expected from a small country which thought it could wield more power inside a federal Europe than outside it.
From Brussels I flew to Spain on an official visit — the first by a British Prime