Does Europe exist?
Christopher Booker
Quiz question: what world-shaking event was celebrated six and a half years ago with the aid of a concert given in York Minster by the Great Universal Stores Silver Band, another in Lincoln's Inn played on Irish penny whistles and sheep's knucklebones, the display at the Victoria and Albert Museum of a corpse dug up from a Danish bog and an exhibition of sweet-wrappers at the Whitechapel Gallery? The answer of course — it could be nothing else — is that all these events were part of the so-called 'Fanfare for Europe', the now totally forgotten jamboree staged by Lord Goodman in January 1973 to add an unconvincing air of national jollity to the great moment of Britain's incorporation into the European customs union.
In fact it was only last Monday morning as I gazed in wonder at those extraordinary election results — the 'Marquess of Douro' takes 'Surrey' with 113,786 votes, 'Sir Frederick Warner' wins 'Somerset' with 120,057, 'Lord Bethell' triumphs in somewhere called 'North West London' with a mere 87,596 — that I at last perceived the true nature of Europe's importance to Britain over the past twenty-five years. Of course — this whole idea of 'Europe' has never been anything other than a gigantic act of make-believe, a harmless fantasy to entertain us with strange travellers' tales of butter mountains and wine lakes, and to provide our politicians with temporary relief from the boredom and neurasthenic distress of their empty lives.
Consider the three main phases through which our political fascination with 'Europe' has run. First, in the Fifties, was what might be called the 'Eccentric Idealistic' phase, almost entirely confined to members of the Liberal Party. Indeed that time is most vividly recalled for me by the memory of a Liberal meeting at the Gloucester by-election in 1957 (when one of the speakers was a young man called Peter Bessell, inveighing against the Conservative candidate, one David Napley). The high spot of the evening was an hourlong, deeply emotional and moving speech on Europe by Mr Clement Davies, which might have been delivered in some Montgomeryshire chapel. To Davies 'Europe' was like a distant vision of Beulah, some celestial vista of eternal peace and brotherhood which had miraculously emerged after centuries of bloodshed. He recalled how, in 1959, when the Schumann plan had first been mooted, he had gone to the Prime Minister and implored him, almost with tears in his eyes"Go in Clem," I told him, "we must go in" — like a man exhorting his brother to take the chance of stepping up into heaven.
Stage two — what might be called the 'Cold Bath Pseudo-Realism' phase — came in 1960, when the Macmillan government began looking round for some dramatic new means whereby to prop up Britain's flagging economy and political prestige. The 'economic miracle' of the Market had now caught the imagination of the world, and the growing supposition was that if only we could get into this magical club, the 'icy blasts' and 'harsh winds' of 'ruthless competition' would somehow sweep away all inefficiency in British industry, and that we too should have a booming dynamic economy, like those of West Germany and Italy.
It was only then, as the newspapers dutifully began to fill with enormous 'Common Market Supplements' and Mr Heath began regularly to appear on television droning on about his tremendous negotiating triumphs over sugar and kangaroo meat (thus earning the sobriquet 'Grocer), that we began to see that other, even more fantastical side to the Common Market — that it was in fact the most wonderful, absurd parody of meaningless bureaucratic activity ever devised. Macmillan's bid to get us in came and went, as did Wilson's in 1967 (`The Great Debate Begins' as the Private Eye cover had it, showing a group of old-age pensioners fast asleep in deckchairs).
There was only one man whom history, personality and everything else had cast as the true hero, utterly appropriate to get us into this remote fantasy realm, this enchanted castle piled high with VAT forms, and surrounded by wine lakes.When, Edward Heath finally carried the beautiful Princess Britannia yawning and snonng down the Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée and into the clutches of the monster, we saw the beginning of the third phase when, instead of being looked on as in the Sixties as a day-dream solution to all our problents, Europe modulated into being the excuse fur them. This was the phase of 'Bureaucratic Confrontationism' when it began to become clear that the sole purpose of the Market was to ensnare the stolid British people ,0a ludicrous web of VAT regulations, put tlf. the price of their food, fill their roads WO vast juggernauts labelled 'Antwerpen,' ley)? astronomically unreal sums from them f°c something which nobody understands called the 'Common Market Budget', finally, to add injury to insult, filch all their fish from the North Sea (and probablY, eventually, their oil as well).. But the suspicion cannot help intruding that most of these typical late-twentiethcentury evils might well have been inflicted on us anyway, Europe or no Europe. Food prices would have gone up. Fish stocks would have run short. Any government capable of reorganising local government the way Mr Heath did would have been perfectly capable of introducing the absur' dities of VAT just for the hell of it. And at this point one cannot help wondering whether belonging to 'Europe' has actuallY touched the reality of our everyday lives at all. Is it even possible that 'Europe' actuallY, doesn't exist, that it really is an enchant°, Sleeping Beauty-style castle full ul superannuated politicians and bureaucrat,s who have long since fallen asleep on their fairy-tale salaries and fairy-tale expense accounts? Does one not have the feeling that in a very real sense Roy Jenkins buds actually ceased to exist since he disappeare off to Brussels? Did Mr ChristoPhel Tugendhat ever exist at all? If it is true that The Times still exists on some other plane' then it was appropriate that the rumour should have got about that it was being published in 'Europe' (though no one eve! saw a copy). My conviction that Europe ° nothing more than a place of fiction Was confirmed on Monday by reading tbet result of the Euro-election in 'Wes Yorkshire': Seal .H l (Labour) 76,552 Lord St Oswald (Conservative) 73,555 T.M.S. Cherry (Liberal) 15,460 Obviously none of these characters is real att all. The winner must be Basil Seal, 'Lord! Oswald' is presumably taken from P.'"' Wodehouse and didn't young Cherry feature in those school stories Orwell Nvas.s° keen on? 'Europe' is clearly somethingo devised purely for our entertainment, e pleasing phantasmagoria, and we should b grateful in these dark times that anY°11e should take the trouble.
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