Abstract
The United Kingdom is often depicted as the ‘odd one out’ in the post-war European integration process, as the one country most reluctant to follow the Franco-German lead from the Treaties of Rome in March 1957 right up to today’s European Union (EU). What such teleological narratives often overlook, however, is that non-membership of the EC was hardly an unusual sight during the 1950s, as not only Britain but also many other European states were either unwilling or unable to join the nascent European Communities (EC) built around the founding member-states France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. In fact, Nordic countries like Denmark often shared British scepticism over the EC’s institutional structures and wider ideological underpinnings, instead preferring a bigger but also politically much looser European Free Trade Area. Why and how both Britain and Denmark then changed their attitudes towards the EC during the 1950s and 1960s so quickly and dramatically is one of the key underlying themes of Matthew Broad’s excellent new study, which compares Britain’s and Denmark’s paths towards EC membership from the collapse of the Free Trade Area negotiations in 1958 to their eventual membership in the early 1970s. Using the prism of interactions between the two countries’ respective Socialist parties, the British Labour Party and the Danish Social Democrats (SD), Broad shows how their twisted paths towards EC membership were in fact inextricably intertwined: both countries applied simultaneously for membership in 1961–63, both countries found themselves locked out by the French for almost a decade, and both countries eventually ended up joining the EC together on 1 January 1973.
As Broad shows, the British Labour Party and the Danish Social Democrats shared considerable similarities in their somewhat ambiguous outlook on post-war Europe during the 1940s and 1950s: whilst they both appeared sceptical about the EC’s supranational concept and professed goal of eventual political union, they were also acutely aware of the potentially grave economic disadvantages of being permanently excluded from a powerful and likely protectionist European trading bloc. As a result, the two parties worked together closely in trying to devise alternative schemes for European cooperation as early as 1958–59, not least as regards both parties’ somewhat sceptical approach towards the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). Indeed, one of the main findings of Broad’s book is the sheer scale of transnational cooperation between Labour and the SD throughout the period under investigation, which throws light on the activism and intellectual diversity in which European cooperation was debated in both Denmark and Britain at that early stage already. As the possibility of British and Danish EC membership then gathered momentum during the 1960s, the two parties both developed joint tactics and eventually pushed each other towards an eventual acceptance of the need for EC membership, each subtly influencing the other in various bilateral and multilateral dealings or even intervening directly in each other’s domestic politics.
Yet, the book not only tells the story of similarities and cooperation, but also highlights manifold differences and at times profound disagreements. These were due largely to the two countries’ rather different structural positions in post-war Europe: given Denmark’s strong dependence on economic links with the EC, particularly as regards agriculture, it evidently had a much more pressing interest in securing early access to EC markets than Britain, which still clung onto the prospect of Commonwealth trade for much of the decade. As a result, SD politicians frequently ended up pushing their more reluctant Labour counterparts towards an eventual acceptance of British EC membership, be it through subtle persuasion or by floating less gentle alternative plans for a Nordic union or even a unilateral Danish EC application without Britain. Strong links between Labour and the SD may occasionally have served to ease or diffuse such conflicts, but they were clearly insufficient to overcome the larger strategic gap and conflicting national interests driving the two countries apart over EC membership. Here, Broad does an excellent job in revealing the complex interplay between transnational dynamics and factors firmly tied to the national realm, resisting the historiographical temptation to prioritise one analytical level over the other.
Overall, Broad’s impressive study offers a thoroughly researched and well-written history of Britain’s and Denmark’s comparative paths towards eventual EC membership. It also constitutes a timely contribution to a rapidly evolving historiography that increasingly stresses the plurality and essential openness of the post-war European integration process, something that comes out clearly in much of the book. At the same time, however, the main impression the reader gets is still one of inevitability. ‘[T]he successful fruition of the British and Danish [membership] bids,’ Broad states in his conclusion, ‘marked the ultimate acknowledgement that the path of integration embarked upon by the Six had essentially been the right one’ (p. 237). This may well be the case, but it nonetheless leaves the reader wondering about the many roads not taken, about the many alternative schemes and tactics so hotly and frequently debated amongst and between the Labour Party and the SD for much of the 1960s. It also raises some bigger questions about the two countries’ initial decision not to join the emerging EC from the outset: were their European policies not always poised to be essentially reactive ones afterwards? Thanks to ‘Brexit’, it is question with considerable contemporary relevance, as Britain now seems poised to look for alternative schemes of European cooperation once again – not a particularly easy feat, as Broad’s findings from an earlier period suggest.