ANOTHER VOICE
Why those on the right side of 50 are worried about Europe
CHARLES MOORE
Ikeep on being told, always by people older than myself, that the young are in favour of Europe. It is never very clear what this statement means (what is 'Europe' in this context?), and therefore it is hard to know how one could test its truth. What I have noticed, though, is that if you ask the much more specific question, 'Do most young people who take an inter- est in these things favour the federalisation of Europe which is proposed at Maas- tricht?', the answer is no. At the Tory con- ference last month, it was the young who were most vociferous in their opposition to federalism. Most notable was a 17-year-old from Tunbridge Wells who attacked the single currency from the rostrum, and earned the best basilisk glare of an elderly gentleman from Old Bexley and Sidcup on the platform behind him.
Last week, I spoke at a meeting of the Association of Conservative Graduates. Almost all of the graduates were under 35, and not a single one of them had a Euroen- thusiastic word to say. Among those newly selected to fight Conservative seats at the next election, the most prominent — peo- ple like John Whittingdale, Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin (I apologise if I do any damage to their prospects by saying so) — are decided in their belief that Britain should continue to govern itself.
Take the people who are paid to com- ment on these matters. Among the Euro- sceptics are Noel Malcolm, Simon Heifer, Andrew Gimson, myself, and, defending the left flank, A.N. Wilson and Julie Burchill. Our average age is about 35. The great supporters of the European Idea are men like Peter Riddell, Hugo Young, Auberon Waugh, Peter Jenkins, Joe Rogaly. Their average is the wrong side of 50.
I suspect that this is not mere chance. For those who became voters in the 1950s or early Sixties, the future role of Britain must have seemed a great question, because Britain was a great power. How was a suitably grand role to be found if there was no longer an empire? The solu- tion seemed to be that Britain must cast off old delusions and become the leader of Europe. Europe really meant the EEC, and it seemed pedantic to argue about the details of how the EEC should develop when the overall notion was such a positive one.
It seems different to my generation. We only knew the British Empire as a thing of the past. When I was eight or so, I asked my mother whether the Roman Empire was the largest that had ever been. No, she said, the British Empire had been larger. That was the first I had heard of it. By the time we came to vote (the first General Election for which I qualified was 1979), Britain was so obviously a fairly unimpor- tant nation that the question of its world role and what we would all do now that we could no longer go out and govern New South Wales did not seem particularly important. We did not have great expecta- tions, and therefore were not looking for visionary schemes to fulfil them. Besides, we were familiar with the EEC not as one of those visionary schemes, but as a work- ing, or rather, a functioning institution. Its chief manifestation was the Common Agri- cultural Policy. It was not at all glamorous. It was boring and bureaucratic. It has become only more so as its powers have grown.
The other great reason for wanting 'Europe' was the need to live at peace with Germany. Those who remember the war were naturally preoccupied with this, and many of them concluded that the EEC was the best way of meeting it. To my genera- tion, the issue is less important because it seems more settled. We are at peace with Germany and have been so all our lives. Possibly we should be frightened of it, but we are not. We may differ about whether it was the EEC that achieved the reconcilia- tion of Germany with the rest of Europe, 'What spelling error?' but to us this is a historical question, not a current one, and therefore not urgent. It does not drive us towards Euroenthusiasm, nor, as it does some old people, to Euro- phobia. It does not drive us at all.
So people of my generation are disposed to look at the question of Europe rather practically, and here, perhaps, we are get- ting at what older people mean when they tell us that we are 'in favour of Europe'. The Continent, for us, is not a dangerous place with bad regimes and alien religion and poisonous tap water, but a place which we know quite well, where some of us work and almost all of us go on holiday. We are, in that sense, in favour of it, and we would be against anything which stopped us work- ing there and going on holiday there, par- ticularly going on holiday. The isolationist side of anti-Europeanism has no appeal for us at all.
But by what logic do familiarity with and affection for the Continent of Europe lead to approval of Economic and MonetarY Union or a common foreign policy or co- decision powers for the European Parlia- ment? You might as well say that because you love the English countryside you have to be in favour of the first-past-the-post sys- tem of election to the House of Commons. The link just is not there.
So as the Maastricht summit approaches, it is not good enough to say that Britain must sign a treaty because otherwise it will be left behind, or because the young are in favour of Europe, or because we must all be in favour of the future. Someone has to say exactly why it is that exactly what is pro- posed in the Dutch drafts is a good idea. But this the fifty-somethings seem strangely reluctant to do. Instead of arguing for pan- European federal government, which Is what the drafts, almost in so many words, provide for, they say that the critics are alarmist or romantic or that this is not the right time for the party (whether Labour or Conservative) to have a painful discussion on the subject. Well, if you are old and geY and full of sleep it is understandable that you do not want to perplex your brain with rebarbative detail and disagreeable argu- ment. You may not, after all, have to live with the practical consequences of your decisions and evasions. For us, the young' the matter is more worrying. We are the heirs. If the will is not properly drafted now, we shall have to spend the rest of our lives contesting it.
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