Centrepiece

Towards a new union

Colin Welch

Last week I described briefly the very liberal Europe, limited alike in area and function, which was envisaged and launch- ed by Adenauer, de Gasperi, Hallstein and Monnet. Even more briefly I mentioned some of their preoccupations, notably with the continuing problem of what to do with Germany. This was wittily expressed in an exchange in 1950 between Robert Schuman and Raymond Aron, recalled in a moving tribute to Aron, recently dead and sorely missed, by `M' in Encounter. The French had proposed a European Defence Com- munity, with a single army, partly to forestall German national rearmament. `It's a strange idea,' said Aron: 'you don't want the Germans as allies, but you accept them as compatriots.' Schuman smiled and answered: 'Why not?' According to `M', Aron for once missed the point: that alliances can be broken and national armies turned against each other, while a com- munity is supposedly safer, and for keeps — or so we hope.

Alas, the defence community has yet to be born, and the economic community has disappointed many of its godparents. For these and other reasons, not least the waning of the past, German nationalism and neutralism, sinister brothers, advance hand in hand, as Aron shrewdly noted and deplored. In assessing the dangers presented by them, we should never forget that, while the West has already given Western Germany all it had to give, Russia has still in her gift an enormous bribe — in exchange, say, for German neutrality, nothing less than the reunification of Ger- many, and perhaps even the restoration of territories lost to a Poland for ever restless and inconvenient to Russia. Another parti- tion of Poland can only be absolutely ruled out by the sort of people who thought the Hitler-Stalin pact impossible, and who forget how often peace between Russia and Germany has been secured by shared com- plicity in crimes against the luckless Catholics who separate them.

I also briefly characterised and lamented the very different Europe which is rising on the foundations laid by the liberal founding fathers — a redistributive, dirigiste and in- terventionist Europe, false to the spirit and, I believe, to the letter of the Rome Treaty, recalling in all its meddlings the ancien regime in 18th-century France as described by de Tocqueville: 'Sometimes the Council [of State] insisted upon compelling in- dividuals to prosper, whether they would or not. Ordinances constraining artisans to use certain methods and manufacture certain articles are innumerable... Some of the arrets du conseil even prohibited the

cultivation of certain crops... whilst others ordered the destruction of such vines as had been, according to its opinion, planted in an unfavourable soil. So completely had the Government already changed its duty as a sovereign into that of a guardian.'

All this de Tocqueville records with measured astonishment, as if to say to his enlightened contemporaries and peers: `Yes, incredible as it now seems, this is how it actually was!' We read him now without the slightest incredulity: for he is describing not a nigh unbelievable past but our own present, not as it was but as it is, or as in Europe it is before our very eyes becoming.

Of course I agree that a Europe so con- stituted and managed will soon be in- tolerable to all conservative- and liberal- minded people who are not prepared to pay any price for a united Europe. (My old- fasioned use of the word 'liberal' excludes, as always, David Steel and Co and American 'liberals', who are all socialists more or less extreme.) l posed the question: what is to be done about it?

The anti-Europeans snigger and sneer: `We told you so.' Get out' is their panacea. But we liberals must first recognise that left- wing anti-Europeans, so far from being repelled by what repels us in Europe today, wish to quit only to impose on us a yet more vexatious tyranny here at home, to create a siege economy and socialism in one coun- try, if not actually to take us into the 1984 prison house of Eastern Europe. With such people we can never agree; as Sydney Smith said of the two old women screeching at each other from their windows across the street, we are arguing from different premises. Nec tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis.

But if we find our club and its rules irksome, reform is as good a remedy as resignation, or better. We may find others who find the same rules vexatious or who, finding other rules vexatious, are ready to strike a bargain: you help us to be rid of what hurts us and we'll do the same for you.

Urgently needed now is a formidable and effective union of European conservatives and liberals, Christians and democrats. It

may be said that some such union already exists, at least informally, ad hoc, or in

embryo. But I suspect that many of its members are themselves 'good Europeans' in the interfering nanny-knows-best sense, inclined to favour every sort of meddling provided it is Euro-meddling. Others, less high-minded, may cherish or at least tolerate every Euro-abuse provided it can be turned to sectional advantage. They may be well aware, say, of the utter folly of

regional subsidies, but this awareness deserts them when subsidies are offered to their own region. Presenting themselves to the voters, indeed, they say much about what funds they have shamelessly managed to divert into local pockets, nothing at all about the high principles which should for- bid such douceurs. Certainly too many of our own Euro-MPs were much influenced by Mr Heath, drawn by him not only towards Europe but also towards a brisk, managerial, omnicompetent, arrogant,

high-spending, master-planning and perfectly fatuous style of statecraft.

The purpose of our new or reformed union would be to dismantle or greatly reduce or simplify all the machinery so of- fensive to European conservatives and liberals, to drag Europe back to the liberal letter and spirit of the Rome Treaty, and to sever the dire connection which is making Europe synonymous with bureaucracy. It would have to bring to Europe all the tested maxims and principles of traditional liberal statecraft, which have created prosperity and well-being wherever they exist. Its men- tors would be Burke and de Tocqueville. It would recognise that poverty and inequality are better tackled by the creation of new wealth than by the sterile redistribution and thus (inevitably) reduction of whatever wealth exists. It will be aware that, the more any supernational authority strives to level out inequalities between individuals, classes, minority groups, regions and na- tions, the more it will conjure up strains and tensions, illicit hopes and bitter resent- ments hostile to its own survival. If it is seen as a principal source of enrichment, a milch cow with a thousand teats, furious and damaging will be the struggles for control and possession of it. If it is seen as the engine of Robin-Hood-style despoliation, fierce and implacable will be the efforts of the despoiled to quit or destroy it.

The motto of our union would be the old one — he governs best who governs least, and taxes least. Against needless in- terference it would try to construct consitu- tional barriers. It would seek to restrain Europe from doing what it need not do. If it succeeded, it might hope to enable Europe to do what it may soon have to do: to provide for its own defence. Against all abuses, whether convenient and locally lucrative or not, it would wage war. In this war it would have to be inspired by a new Euro-patriotism, placing the general good above all sectional advantage.

All this is of course a counter-revolution against those meddling Eurocrats who have seized the European idea and made off with it. If it succeeded, however, it might achieve what the Eurocrats purport to desire. Europe could be built, not as they hoped, by their own bureaucratic activity, but by a constructive opposition to it. No Marxist, I yet see possibilities of a sort of dialectic working here, the right emerging from a fruitful reaction against the wrong.

The creation of our great union may be the task for 1984. 1985 could be too late.