The late 1940s saw a ferment of activity as European governments sought to shape the post war world, coming together to manage economic recovery and seek ways of preventing another conflict. In 1948, the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) brought together 18 countries to manage the Marshall Plan funding for economic recovery. In the following year, the Council of Europe was founded to develop a common framework of democracy, law and human rights. In 1951, the Coal and Steel Community was founded in the hope that integrating those industries across Europe would make future wars impossible. Six years later that Community morphed into the European Economic Community, and in due course into the EU.
It is striking how many of the issues which the OEEC discussed, in August 1949, are still with us. Do we want European government, or a loose association of sovereign member states. What kind of European democracy do we want, especially bearing in mind that the divided post war Germany might send ‘the wrong kind of Germans’ to the table. Already they were discussing a common currency, and a European passport (which implies free movement).
At the time, Picture Post was a very popular magazine, with a readership of around 9 million. It says something about the state of democracy at the time that they thought they had readers for 2,500 words on the OEEC (it is doubtful that they were attracted by all the pictures of smiling men in suits)
We thought that our readers might be interested to see their account of the OEEC meeting in August 1949, and the issues they discussed.
Europe: dare we face real union?
A real Union. Not simply a continuance of the present loose co-operation in economic affairs, in which the sovereign States need only co-operate while it suits them. But a real political Union, leading to a real European Government, to which all states would surrender some of their sovereign rights. Who is for such a Union? Who is against? And could any such Union be any good at all without Germany? And – without which Germany?
We stood at the reception desk of the hotel, fiddling with our Travellers’ Cheques and looking round at the transfigured pictures – the innocent water-colours of Strasbourg – on the walls. “What have you been up to with The General?” we asked the hotel.
When we were last here, in May, the unforgettable face of General de Gaulle had come at us from every wall and alcove of the hotel. De Gaulle standing and de Gaulle sitting; de Gaulle fulminating and de Gaulle sedating; de Gaulle serious-to-grim and de Gaulle giving his formidable impersonation of a merry old soul. And now he was nowhere to be seen.
The hotel changed the subject. “What have you been up to with the Pound?” they asked, eyeing our travellers: cheques without love. “We haven’t touched the Pound,” we said. “Then why is it being devalued, Monsieur?”
“But it isn’t being devalued.”
“In France,” said the hotel, “the physical pound-note sterling is already invested with the aroma unmistakable of devalorisation.”
“Well, fancy,” we said, and tried not to smile. All the same, these two pieces of dialogue had once more forced upon our attention the fact that it is still, even now at this late stage, impossible for any one partner in the European firm to know which way any other partner in the European firm is going to jump next, either politically or economically.
In other words, the sovereignty in these two matters of all the States involved is still absolutely intact. In OEEC the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, the Western Nations cooperate ‘by consent’ – that is, for as long as, and as far as, it suits their own sovereign economic policies; but the first stage of the qualitative change from European co-operation by consent-so-long-as-it-suits, to European union by obedience-to-majority-decisions-even-when it-doesn’t-suit, has not yet begun. It’s impossible to understand what has really been happening at Strasbourg, unless one is absolutely clear about this. We have started to cooperate; but we haven’t even started to unite.
But, then, one reminded oneself, that’s more or less what we are all here present in Strasbourg for. ‘More or less’ – because, as will appear later, there are present quite a number of advocates of ‘European Unity’ who simply don’t want to unite, but who would just like to go on quietly ‘co-operating’, until such a time as the informal Socialist International or the informal Tory International – as the case may be – looks to be certain of a permanent majority in any future legislative Assembly of Europe.
Still, here we are. But who exactly – in this epoch when the constituent elements of this diminished thing called Europe seem to change from year to year – are ‘we’? From the number of flags on the flagpoles near the University building, you can conclude that, on the first day of this first session, we are ten. And if you are one of those Europeans who can tell one national flag from another, then you will know that ‘we’ consist today of Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
On the following day, ‘we’ shall be thirteen; because we shall have expanded our democratic borders to embrace Greece, Iceland and Turkey. The Swiss, who are busy with their own neutrality, will not be with us. But, at some later date, we may conceivably be joined by the Germans – always provided that some of the French don’t continue to press, successfully, for the inclusion of a delegation from the Saarland.
If that happens, Dr. Schumacher has declared in his usual challenging tones, then Germany simply won’t play. The joke about this, if you can regard it as such, is that any future delegation from the Saarland would very probably vote along the same lines as any future delegation from Germany. And yet it is the Germans who passionately oppose the idea of a Saarland delegation, and it is some of the French who passionately advocate it. In such farcical knots as these have the strings of nationalism tied-up the sovereign organs of Europe.
However, here we are; and these thirteen are, for the moment, who we are. Well, then, what are we here for? The Statute which created the Council of Europe lays it down that the aim of that Council is to achieve “a greater unity among its Members for the realisation of their common ideals and for the facilitation of their economic and social progress.”
That is the allotted job. The tools allotted for that job are a Committee of Ministers and a Consultative Assembly. The Assembly is consultative, advisory, deliberative only. It can deliberate on such political, economic and social subjects as the Committee of Ministers approves. It cannot discuss questions of defence at all.
The aim is greater unity for the realisation of ideals and for economic and social progress. It is the fact that there are at least four main schools of thought and feeling as to how this greater unity can best be achieved. That accounts for the friction – both the destructive and the creative friction – which animated the early meetings of the Assembly.
Members of the first school of feeling want to start off by procuring agreement on one or two pieces of practical European symbolism. They would have liked to begin with a European Charter of Human Rights; but, failing that, they would go for a European passport, or a European flag, or a Channel tunnel or a tunnel under Mont Blanc, or any other symbolic tunnel. If they got any of these, a fair number of European Conservatives and Liberals would not ask to see the distant scene; one step would be enough for them.
Members of the second school of thought include a number of European Conservatives and Liberals for whom one such step would certainly not be enough – if only because it could hardly have the slightest bearing on the sick economy of Europe. These people – having studied the present wasteful and unprofitable system whereby the industries of a dozen miniature European countries are all trying to make themselves self-sufficient by 1952, instead of dividing the labour among themselves and concentrating on producing the things that they could produce best – would now be prepared to advocate a supranational authority which should direct the integration and expansion of various essential European products : for instance, coal, steel, transport and food.
What! Do you mean to say that it’s some Conservatives, rather than most Labour people, who are in favour of a supranational planning authority? That is so: for the reason that the Conservatives calculate that, as 80 per cent. of Europe’s industry is still privately owned, the supranational planning authority would have largely to be directed by private enterprise.
The third school of thought consists of people who calculate that that is, indeed, exactly how any supranational authority would be directed at present, and who, therefore, shy away from the idea of any supranational authority. Most prominent in this school are the orthodox Labour members of the British Delegation. These are the advocates of the ‘functional’ approach to greater unity in Europe. That’s to say, they will continue to ‘co-operate by consent’ in the OEEC, and any other similar industrial organs that may emerge, but they will not, if they can help it, abandon any portion of their economic sovereignty. In other words, they will cooperate; but they won’t unite – or not, anyhow, until the informal Socialist International looks like having a majority in the Assembly, which could then be safely transformed from a Consultative Assembly into a legislative one.
The fourth and last school of thought includes most federalists, many continental Socialists and one or two British Socialists like Mackay, who say, in effect: “That’s fine, that last argument. But how about if the Socialists don’t look like having a majority before the next war starts to arrive?”
These people argue that one of the things most likely to postpone or prevent the next war is the economic integration of Europe : that this cannot be achieved by the functional approach, because no-one, certainly not OEEC, can compel one nation to revise, e.g., its steel programme, if it doesn’t want to consent to; that it cannot be achieved, either, by any supranational economic planning authority unless that economic authority is backed by a supranational political authority – in other words, a European Government, whose first job, in Mackay’s view, should be the introduction of a common European currency.
The instant that currency was introduced, each of the dozen hitherto boxed-up countries of Europe would find that, for its best products, it now had a market twelve times the previous size; competition, in this new kind of free trade area, would become a real thing once more; and the two essentials for the economic life of Europe – increased productivity per man-hour and lower costs and prices – would follow.
Such were the four main groups of midwives who were standing-by for the delivery of the infant Europe. During the first few days, it seemed at least possible that the impassioned natterings of the midwives in the corridors might actually drown the first life-signalling yelps of the new infant. However, there was one thing about which practically all the midwives could agree: the fact that the new infant Europe could never grow into anything economically sound – or, as some whispered, militarily respect-worthy – without Germany.
But the life-or-death question which, at the time we had to leave Strasbourg, had not yet been asked, much less answered, is: ‘Which Germany?’ Up till now, national delegations to the Council of Europe have either been elected by, or appointed from, the national parliaments concerned. Which Germany are we going to clasp to the European bosom? If the majority of all-party nationalists in the German Parliament – themselves elected on the basis of competing nationalist appeals – are given the opportunity of ‘democratically’ electing their own delegation to the Council of Europe, they will hardly be so stupid as to go and elect democrats and anti-nationalists to that delegation.
Leave aside the case of the virulently nationalist Dr. Schumacher, and take the case of Dr. Adenauer, who sometimes claims in private to be lifelong supporter of democratic European Union. A couple of months ago, Dr. Adenauer went to Switzerland. While there, he received an invitation from some eminent French supporters of European Union to visit Paris and discuss ways of bringing Germany into a United Europe. Adenauer replied that he could not come to Paris before the German elections, because the Germans would think he was quisling.
Then, to demonstrate how very far from being a quisling he really was, he proceeded to sound off, there in Switzerland, a speech that was a perfect bugle-call to German nationalism. Immediately after making this speech, he explained privately, to two local supporters of European Union. that he was obliged to do this in order to get a majority over Schumacher, who was gaining support by his resounding nationalist appeal; and that, unless he, Adenauer, went one better in nationalism, then he and his Christian Democrat followers, who deep in their hearts were the only genuine German supporters of anti-nationalism and a democratic United Europe, would be beaten. Well, well.
Which representatives of which Germany are we inviting into European Union? If the peoples of Western Europe want to be sure that the first German delegation that arrives is composed mainly of the democratic representatives of all that is best and most anti-nationalist in Germany today, they had better see that the Council of Europe hand-picks that delegation themselves from among the proven German apostles of Europa Union, few of whom are members of the German Parliament, and many of whom are not even members of any German political party. Undemocratic procedure?
Gross interference in the internal affairs of another country? It was exactly that argument which gave Hitler his long start. But if the Council of Europe is going, in the name of democracy, to permit the German Parliamentary nationalists to choose and send their own most nationalistic representatives to Strasbourg – well, then, imagine, if you can, that there was already a Council of Europe in 1928, and that its Credentials Committee accepted without demur a duly-elected, unknown German delegate called A. Hitler, of the respectable-sounding National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party. And then work that one out for yourself.
But, someone will say, if we non-Germans invite a delegation of certain hand-picked Germans to Strasbourg, then those Germans whom we invite will be looked upon as quislings by a majority of Other Germans? That is deadly true – unless, in absolute reality, the invitation goes out from the Europeans of one parish to the Europeans of another parish : in which case there can be no question of quislingism.
The Proof of a European Reality
What could convince a sufficiency of Germans that this as-one-European-to-another business is a reality, and not just a trick of words? Could a European passport convince them? Or agreement on a Channel tunnel? Or a functional extension of the activities of OEEC? I doubt it. Personally, I believe that the only thing that could both convince and work, would be ‘one spasm of resolve’ on the part of Western Europe’s peoples and parliaments, resulting in a declaration by the Council of Europe that European political union – not simply continuing co-operation, but union: in fact, a European Government with legislative and executive power – was the goal; and that the first step ever towards European Union would be taken before the end of this year.
But … “that’s so difficult to arrange. Certainly. Nevertheless, the true political Union of Europe does seem to be the one great beneficent and magnetic counter attraction capable of drawing a sufficient number of Germans away from the malign magnet of a resurgent Nationalist Germany. If we don’t like the idea of a United European Government, or if it seems too difficult to arrange politically, then – for the German reason, if for no other – I’m inclined to think we’ve had it. Which last is something that is not difficult to arrange politically, at all.
By LIONEL BIRCH
Lionel Birch was a journalist for Picture Post in 1930s. He later worked for the Sunday Telegraph. He died in Kew on 18 February 1982.
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