Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

French President Georges Pompidou, released by De Gaulle’s death from the mortgage of his patron’s disapproval—and more than a little perturbed, as we have seen, by the strategic implications of Willy Brandt’s new Ostpolitik—made it clear that he would welcome Great Britain’s membership of the EC. In January 1972, in Brussels, the EC formally approved the accession of Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway, to take effect a year later. The successful British application was the work of the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, the only British political leader since World War Two unambiguously and enthusiastically in favor of joining his nation’s fate to that of its continental neighbors. When the Labour Party returned to office in 1974 and called a referendum on UK membership of the Community, the country approved by 17,300,000 to 8,400,000. But even Heath could not make the British—the English especially—‘feel’ European, and a significant share of voters on Right and Left alike continued to doubt the benefits of being ‘in Europe’.