Almost all Liberal Democrats agree on the EU. A remarkably high number give the same reason for their support – Peace. Securing peace was the primary goal of the Founding Fathers of the European Union. Making war unthinkable and impossible through economic integration and prosperity were the means to the end. Peace and Prosperity.
The debate so far has focused on the economic arguments. After years of political debate and endless studies it’s no surprise that the impact on the economy and our jobs is the top concern of most voters.
But polling shows peace is a decisive argument in favour of remaining in the EU.
It does not rate as highly and is mentioned only by those who are already supporters and some therefore draw the conclusion it is not useful to talk about it. I disagree.
I conclude the opposite – that it has not been talked about enough! The facts are indisputable – we have had more than seventy years of peace – unprecedented in European history despite our common Christian teaching of “Love thy Neighbour”.
The Leavers try to dismiss the claim by saying it is not the EU but NATO that keeps the peace – but this is wrong. NATO was powerless to stop the military junta in Greece deposing Makarios in Cyprus which provoked the Turkish invasion to prevent the imminent ethnic cleansing of the island. It is the UN that now patrols the border not NATO. It was the European Union that brought Greece along the path to democracy and membership when the junta was itself deposed and it was the EU that offered Turkey a “privileged partnership” and a customs union to promote trade.
Under Franco, the military dictator of Spain the border with Gibraltar had been closed for years. Even water supplies were cut off. After he died Spain too was brought along the path of democracy to EU membership. But before being admitted the objections of the nationalists had to be overcome. Now 10,000 people cross the border every day to work in a Gibraltar transformed from naval base and dockyard to a prosperous economy built on tourism and financial services.
The EU has provided billions of Euros to implement the Good Friday Agreement, bringing peace not just to Ireland but London, Guildford and Warrington too. It could only be an aristocratic English Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and MP for Chipping Barnet that could seriously think it was in ‘Britain’s’ best interests to leave the European Union and hats off to Catherine Bearder for outing her and calling for Theresa Villier’s resignation.
It is only an English MP and Leader of the House of Commons, Chris Grayling that could honestly believe it would be “disastrous” for ‘Britain’ to stay in the European Union. Right-wing nationalists are belligerent and sow discord. We need to call them out, to name and shame.
We must make peace the argument for remaining in. We must remind every voter why the EU was started and continues to be important. We know this a message which will inspire and motivate our members so let’s go out and shout about it.
* Mike Biden is an Executive ordinary member in Winchester. A lifelong supporter of the Liberals, he has become an activist since his retirement. His career saw him in senior corporate positions in Sales & Marketing and as a Chief Executive.
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15 Comments
I completely agree with the promoting peace as an important reason for staying in the EU but we will have to convert a lot of our members as well. I recall a recent contribution to a conference debate when someone who was clearly old enough to remember WW2 said exactly this and his contribution was received with only lukewarm applause.
Unfortunately the devastation in mainland Europe as a result of war doesn’t seem to be appreciated by many in the post-1945 generation ( which includes me).
Hi Kay
Winston Churchill’s speech in Zurich in ’46 gives a pretty good summary of the post war situation:
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html
“We must build a kind of United States of Europe”
Yes, that’s Churchill: UKIP’s poster boy.
The EU is good for settling some continental territorial disputes. If the borders mean a lot then populism is more likely to occur. It is also handy for the UK’s land-border with Ireland too.
However I think for the UK it is a bit different. It is not like if one day Germany decides they want more land that they are going to invade Britain. Although in this day and age wars are more likely to occur with language identity, such as Russian speakers in eastern Europe being dissatisfied with the EU and maybe some overzealous EU federalists alienating them further.
In an ideal world we wouldn’t have any borders, but they are fine for now. I support the EU, but I suppose I am of the mentality that most voters most of the time vote for self-interest and any proposals for EU integration or arguments to maintain membership need to be along these lines, which the peace one is too.
@ Tony – “We must build a kind of United States of Europe”
And, as ever, the great man is selectively quoted to act as advocate for their cause, britain as part of a federal europe. Something he never supported.
From your link:
“Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America, and I trust Soviet Russia – for then indeed all would be well – must be the friends and [[[sponsors]]] of the new Europe and must champion its right to live and shine.”
Kay, we have to make it relevant, hence the more up to date British and Commonwealth examples. And we need to talk about the consequences of re-instating land borders in Ireland and Gibraltar. If we leave the EU we endanger the whole project and if France follows then we are back where we started – a bunch of selfish nations all fighting for their own narrow perceived interests rather than working together. The only person celebrating apart from the Leave campaign will be Vladimir Putin. He will seek to take advantage with even more or bigger military adventures. And if there is not peace what price prosperity? Peace is In more immediate danger than the economy.
For me the EU peace dividend was one of the main issues that drew me into the ‘Britain In Europe’ referendum campaign in 1975. I will be forever grateful that I have been of the generation, that never had the letter through the door calling me up for yet another war in Europe. We should be making more of that.
One of the controversial aspects of potential European co-operation is defence and the armed forces. It is generally considered unlikely that anything resembling an overall EU military command will take place and it is not currently being contemplated. Given this, it is fascinating to read this extract from Hansard dating back to October 21 1971 when the decision whether or not to seek membership of the “EEC” was being debated. Here was a Conservative Prime Minister openly advocating a major degree of European partnership in defence matters. By the way this gives the lie to the constant mantra from the “leave” campaign that in those days only trade co-operation was on the agenda –
“Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)
I appreciate ……that we shall have a veto on political developments. The implication of that is that we do not want political development….. Are the Government saying that they would resist and oppose political developments in Europe?
Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Not at all. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman can possibly have interpreted that from anything that I have said. I said that the political processes in Europe would evolve, and that they would evolve by consent, because if one tried to go too fast and impose too much the Community could break up. The change will occur by evolution and by consent…..”
[to be continued]
Here is the remainder of Sir Anthony Douglas- Hume’s statement which the LDV system would not allow me to include because it was “too long” –
“….Finally, there is security, with all the problems which that poses for Western Europe, whether in the context of defence or détente. All the way through our history events in the centre and west of Europe have conditioned our foreign policy. The balance of power is achieved through a European contribution, and the omens that the Western Europeans will have to carry a greater share of the responsibility for Western defence and the defence of their continent are very strong, stronger than they have been since the war.
I am not one of those who believe that the United States will ever desert Europe. I have no doubt that they will retain a military contribution by land, sea and air, and the nuclear deterrent, but, nevertheless, the chances are that they will reduce their deployment of conventional forces, and that the future will have to be organised with a more distinctively European contribution, embracing within it the strength of France.
It will take time, and it will take great patience, to work out the design, but when Germany, France, Italy and the rest sit down to talk about their problems of security, and their attitude to world problems….. it is vital that we should be in their councils. Matters are talked about there which concern the defence of Europe and the defence of Britain. Matters are talked about—for example, the Middle East—which have the greatest implications for our country. It is essential that we should be in the councils when these questions are discussed, and that a decision should not be taken without us.”.
Europe does not look very peaceful now. The open borders are causing chaos. It has created civil unrest through one woman deciding on what everyone should do as the unelected ruler of the whole EU. Why anyone wants a 1984 scenario is beyond me. A Federal Europe? No, no ,no. A few elite manipulating us all for their own profit? No, no, no.
Dennis. Of course in 1971 Sir Alec was Foreign Secretary, not Prime Minister. However, I believe that he was correctly interpreting the views of his Prime Minister, Edward Heath.
‘Unfortunately the devastation in mainland Europe as a result of war doesn’t seem to be appreciated by many in the post-1945 generation ( which includes me).’
Not only mainland Europe. My grandmother, aunt and uncle were driven out of their home in Belfast by Luftwaffe bombing. I remember no buildings left standing in Bridge St. Belfast and whole blocks missing in High St. Likewise devastation in Ludgate Hill and around St. Paul’s in London. In Belfast bombs damaged the City Hall. In London, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s and Broadcasting house all suffered damage.
Here In Romford, the house I now own lost its roof, windows, WC and most of its ceilings.
@jedibeeftrix
You’re right, of course, that if I were to have quoted Churchill in support of Britain being part of the EU I would have grossly distorted his position. I quoted Churchill as a reply to Kay’s friends about the peace benefits of the EU and the situation that was faced at the end of WW2.
It was not pretty. Churchill could describe, without a word of hyperbole a situation where “over wide areas a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, care-worn and bewildered human beings gape at the ruins of their cities and homes, and scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new peril, tyranny or terror”.
(Anne, compared to that Europe does look peaceful now. We live in times and a continent that Churchill and his contemporaries would have thought a blissful utopian fantasy. Put it this way, in 1946 no one fled to Europe).
I agree with Churchill about “a kind of United States of Europe”.
I disagree with him about Britain’s role or otherwise in it.
When Churchill made that speech the “British Commonwealth of Nations” he referred to was, more or less, an Empire with bits of home rule. We had just fought in a war were we could count on troops from our Empire/Commonwealth. We could count on resorces from them. When we declared war, they declared war. It may well have made sense to stay within that, to build an “ever closer union” with the former colonies. Or, indeed, just to maintain the existing union: the “British Commonwealth” could be spoken of as a unity acting in international affairs.
But, for good or ill, in the remainder of that decade, the fifties and then the sixties the Empire disintegrated and the “Commonwealth” disappeared as a candidate for a meaningful trans-national unity. The Empire, the empire-lite commonwealth, has gone.
And so we looked to Europe. In my view perfectly sensibly. In Churchill’s under the same circumstances? If he had won the election in 1945 would he have kept India? Could he have kept Suez? Hong Kong?
It’s all academic.
We have to ask ourselves if this is a sensible argument.
Are countries like Norway and Switzerland, which are outside the EU, more likely to find themselves at war than say Sweden and Greece, which are inside it?
Does peace in Africa and South America depend on the smaller countries there forming similar political unions to the EU possibly complete with common currencies?
Wars are much more likely to be civil wars than international wars since WW2. There are too many changes to say there’s been no major international war in Europe because of the Common Market/EEC/EC/EU.
Wars tend to be caused by economic issues in the first instance. So if we do want peace we’d better make sure that the economic conditions in Greece, Spain , Portugal and elsewhere start to improve – and quickly. No-one wants to see a disaffected younger generation resort to a military struggle against perceived economic oppression.
Thank you, Ian Sanderson, for putting me right on Alec Douglas-Home’s status in 1971 but as you acknowledge this takes nothing away from the remarkable quote.
As to the Churchill controversy, I am inclined towards the view put by Roy Jenkins in his magisterial biography of the great man – that he had a full sense of of Britain’s participatory European vocation but saw the Commonwealth as a part of the deal. Indeed Jenkins suggests that if we had moved to take a leading position in the early moves in the 1950s “it might be that “Britain could have imported the Commonwealth bag and baggage and secured as favourable access for Australia or New Zealand products as France did for the exports of Senegal or the Ivory Coast.”
It is certainly arguable that British dilatoriness in the early stages of European harmonisation significantly impaired our chances of getting the best possible deal and has continued to do so ever since.
David Cameron has told Tory MPs that Turkey will not be joining the EU for decades. Every country has a veto and France will have a referendum. Therefore people should not vote to leave in the referendum for this reason.
William Hague previously said the same thing in an article in the Daily Telegraph, at greater length.