' Centrepiece
A different Europe
Colin Welch
T defended recently as best I could the 1 Metropolitan Police against their niggl- ing detractors. With grief and pride, though, alas, without surprise, may I remind you, did you need reminding, of those dead and hideously injured in the pre-Christmas IRA outrage? Mortal danger threatened. It was not social researchers who were called at once to the scene, but ordinary Chelsea police men and women. They turned up prompt as ever, and some paid the supreme price. Were they perhaps drunk, racist, foul-mouthed? We should be ashamed to ask such questions about those of whom we unthinkingly expect so much. They are dead that we may live; there is no more to say. Or, if a few words, only of gratitude, respect and sympathy for the Met, as also, a fortiori, for the heroic and steadfast Royal Ulster Constabulary, in general the sure guardian of all that is decent (and it is so much) in that tragic province.
It was my intention, to which I now revert, to write this New Year about the unseemly squabbles now vexing the Euro- pean Economic Community. A refund of £457 million due to Great Britain is, I understand, to be withheld by the Euro- peans as 'punishment' for our 'intran- sigence' at Athens. And we, it seems, are in consequence to withhold all payments to the EEC until the wrong is redressed. I don't doubt that some accommodation of this hideous wrangle may be reached; nor that, if it is, it may be of an extremely salutary sort. But meanwhile, to veteran Europeans like myself, it is a source of great unhappiness,
This is because every enormity, folly and extravagance of the EEC is automatically deployed by anti-Europeans against Europe herself rather than against what Europeans do. This is very unfair. When Westminster does something naughty or silly to the Scots or Welsh, or when the Celtic fringe imposes upon us at the centre, as it may, some rascal like Kinnock , we do not at once auto- matically call the Act of Union into ques- tion. The occasional follies of the central government are balanced by us against the blessings whi&I) flow from union, and which far outweigh them. If Westminster governs badly, the proper course is not to sever con- nection with it but by united political effort to strive to mend its ways.
Moreover, mutatis mutandis, the non- senses imposed upon us by Brussels are by no means dissimilar to the nonsenses imposed by Westminster on its stibjecIts. If the latter have not dissolved the United Kingdom, why should the former sunder Europe? Dissolution is not the only,
best or most obvious remedy.
Many of us, 40 years ago, moved in ways which time cannot efface by the shattered cities and countryside of Europe, by all the misery and filth, by the death and destruc- tion, moral and spiritual as well as material, resolved that never, never again, could we prevent it, should such a civil war ravage our beloved continent, the mother of our civilisation. Confronted by bewildered hordes of German prisoners, we resolved too, if we could, to find a fruitful outlet for energies which had produced so much suf- fering. (And we note now with a special dis- quiet the first new stirrings of German na- tionalism in a Europe still disappointingly incomplete.)
In the churned-up soil of our hearts the European idea took root. What form it took in other minds I cannot say. In my own, it was the idea of a 'liberal' Europe, as united as possible, but this in no rigid or dirigiste way, a Europe from which all ar- tificial and arbitrary barriers would have been removed, but in which the great historic nations of Western Europe could remain themselves, flourishing in their own way and bringing their own precious con- tribution to the common well-being. My Europe would have been limited in area as in function, learning as much as it needed from the prudent modesty and sagacity of America's founding fathers. Some form of developing federal or confederal structure was implicit in this idea, as also the power to tax for common and essential purposes — defence not excluded. But as a liberal (or conservative) European I hoped, perhaps naively, that taxation would be used only to raise essential funds, and for no other pur- pose whatever. It should, according to the classical principles of taxation, leave every individual and class (and in this case every member nation) where it found him or them. Any more active or 'redistributive' Europe seemed to me not only undesirable but impossible or unendurable, thus destructive of itself.
This liberal Europe was more or less what was envisaged and launched by such great and good men as Monnet, Hallstein, Adenauer and de Gasperi. Yet it is, I must admit, a rather different Europe which now rises on the foundations they laid. It is a redistributive, dirigiste, interventionist Europe, not to my taste, Here it protects, there it penalises, everywhere it gratuitously interferes. From these it takes, to those it gives. Vast sums of money are shovelled about, often from the deserving to the undeserving: yet even so imprecise a state- ment may be misleading, in so far as the
whole process appears capricious and whimsical.
The Europe now burgeoningbefore us I call Shanks's Europe, not after the ad- mirable sanitary engineers but after the Eurocrat Michael Shanks, who was typical of the numberless busy meddlers who flock- ed to Brussels as bluebottles to a cowpat. In the writings of these energetic publicists it appears as if the institutions of Europe, as perhaps of any other union or state, can ac- quire life and reality only by interfering and redistributing, and of course by offering lucrative posts to interferers and redistributors. They exist and can flourish only by satisfying certain specific material needs, and this not by the time-honoured method of permitting and encouraging the general creation of wealth but rather by the sterile ploy of robbing rich Peter to pay poor Paul. By the machinery of regulation and redistribution will Europe be con- structed, the Shankists hope, and render herself loved as fairy godmother by all her needy children.
To me this machinery seems more likely to weigh Europe down to the ground, or even to shake it to bits. Excessive taxation is bound to awake resentment among the so- called rich, many of whom think they have got rich by their own efforts, many others of whom are not rich at all, but merely unlucky enough to be poor in a rich nation. Much redistribution is plainly unjust, damaging or fruitless: where is the region which aid has transformed? Once the cake is up for grabs, ferocious squabbles arise about who gets the biggest slice and, more important, whose hand will control the distributing machinery. Unity dissolves in an unholy welter of conflicting appetites.
This disintegrating process can only be reinforced by the reckless admission of new members, relative paupers whose democratic institutions are relatively unstable. A good club cannot be formed ex- cept out of members of more or less like minds and tastes, and with incomes at least like enough for all to be able to participate without embarrassment in the club's ac- tivities. If there were still any chance of blackballing the latest three, or of inducing them to blackball themselves, should it not be grabbed? Any club which has France and ourselves among its members has pro- blems enough already; enough bureaucrats and translators,, too, without adding Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards and Turks to the prevailing babel. In the same way excessive regulatory powers cause little but fuss, frustration and fury. A Europe which tells its citizens how to make kippers, and whether or not to whack their children, is bound to seem officious. The word Europe becomes synonymous with vexatious interference, the 'good European' degenerates into a tiresome nanny.
What is to be done? I hope to make some suggestions later in the New Year, which hope will be very happy for Europe and for all of us.
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