Making waves

I have just finished a rather good book.

Written by journalist Tom McTague (The Atlantic, UnHerd, and now the New Statesman), Between The Waves: The hidden history of a very British revolution (1943-2016) covers Britain’s post-war relationship with Europe, and the events that led up to Brexit.

A couple of years ago I would have happily never read anything about Brexit ever again, and I say that as someone who voted to leave and would vote to leave again, if I had to. What makes Between The Waves interesting however is the historical context. Beginning the story in Algiers in 1943 was a masterstroke because anyone who has seen the film Casablanca can picture the scene.

Thereafter the book covers an enormous amount of ground from the original gang of six (aka the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951) to the creation of the European Union in 1992. En route we are introduced to the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (or ‘Common Market’) in 1957, and every subsequent development, many of which tested the patience of politicians and public alike. In particular, McTague explores how the Conservative Party went from being predominantly pro-Europe to eurosceptic, while the Labour Party went in the opposite direction.

Between The Waves begins however with secret meetings (and an assassination) in Algiers in 1943 that were designed to create a ‘new’ and peaceful Europe after the war. Thereafter, the book features an extraordinary cast including politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, academics, student activists, philosophers and historians. They include Churchill, de Gaulle, Eden, Macmillan, (Enoch) Powell, Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Blair, and, more recently, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings, and Boris Johnson. The most influential figure in the whole story, however, is arguably Jean Monnet, the French politician and diplomat, an anglophile who worked for Britain and America during the war, and who is now referred to as the ‘father of Europe’.

The book is both serious and hugely entertaining (I read it over three days) and, although there’s a tonne of information (a lot of which I didn’t know), it never overwhelms the reader, something that can’t be said of several other books about Brexit and 20th century British history which I’ve started but failed to finish because the level of detail quickly becomes exhausting. McTague, however, writes like the top journalist he is, so this is a real page turner.

Philosopher Sir Roger Scruton features throughout the book, and there are multiple references to Peter Young, a friend from university. In 1978 Peter founded the Aberdeen student newspaper Campus which we co-edited for two years before I relaunched it nationally in 1983. And here I must declare a personal interest in the book because on page 186 of the hardback edition there is an anecdote about Campus that feels somewhat random in this context but still makes me laugh. Indeed, I’ve written about it myself. But here is Tom McTague’s version, describing an incident at the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool in 1984:

On another occasion, a group of libertarian activists dropped 200 copies of the right-wing student magazine Campus from a balcony onto the heads of delegates below. The magazine featured a front-page cartoon of a nuclear warhead called ‘Willie Warhead’ shaking hands with a tampon under the headline, ‘NATO guarantees peaceful periods’. The stunt caused ‘pandemonium’, Peter Young remembers.

However, the main reason Peter features in the book is because of his arrest when trying to smuggle illicit literature out of communist Poland in 1980, and his subsequent chairmanship of the Federation of Conservative Students. Described as a ‘friend and protégé’ of my old boss Michael Forsyth (now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean), Peter’s election as chairman of FCS was at the expense of a certain Anna Soubry, and it probably wouldn’t have happened without the incident in Poland, an episode that was widely reported and is said to have inspired Douglas Smith, who later became a close confidante of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

Taken out of context, you might be wondering what FCS and even Campus have to do with Britain’s post war relationship with Europe, but the point, I think, is that the influence of Thatcher’s children (which is what we were) is part of a long narrative arc that explains, in part, how significant elements within the Conservative Party, and Britain, eventually embraced Brexit (a term unheard of until the 21st century).

Part of that narrative includes the war on communism, hence another character in the book, whose name should be familiar to readers of this blog. George Miller-Kurakin was born into a Russian emigre family that had fled to Chile, and later England, after the Russian revolution in 1917. He died in 2009 having devoted the best part of his 54 years to defeating communism. I would like to think George’s efforts were not in vain but, as I wrote here (Reflections on the death of a friend), the sad truth is that George became disillusioned after moving his family to Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The post communist utopia he had spent decades dreaming about didn’t exist and when it became clear that the former communists were back in power he returned to London.

Likewise, the story told in Between The Waves will probably never end. After all, it’s less than 30 years since another book, covering similar territory, was published, and at that time Britain’s future within the European project was considered by many to be assured for all time, with no going back. As McTague writes:

To many observers of British politics, it seemed only a matter of time before the country accepted the euro. From the moment Robert Schuman had proposed a European Coal and Steel Union in May 1950, Britain had been slow to accept its fate, but always did so eventually. This sense of inevitability was promulgated in an influential history of Britain’s relationship with Europe, This Blessed Plot, written by the respected Guardian columnist Hugo Young, first published in 1998. In it, Young set out the Blairite case that Britain’s destiny was European: ‘This is not an opinion,’ he wrote, ‘but surely incontestable fact … proved by the outcome, Britain’s presence inside the European apparatus.’

The point is, Britain may have left the European Union, but that’s not the end of the story, far from it. Our relationship with ‘Europe’ remains fluid and unsettled and it’s not hard to envisage the day when a future government - influenced by a new generation of activists and academics - leads the country, tail between our legs, back into the arms of Brussels and a federal Europe. I hope I never live to see it, but if there’s one life lesson I have learned it’s never to take anything for granted because nothing is permanent.

Finally, I must emphasise that although Tom McTague is editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, this is no hit job on the ‘right wing’ politicians and campaigners who ultimately delivered Brexit. Instead, and without taking sides, he has written a pretty neutral account of the many events that led to the referendum in June 2016, and the chaotic aftermath, which he covers in a concluding chapter.

In short, if the subject interests you, do read it. It’s available in hardback or as a Kindle edition. See also:

Between the Waves by Tom McTague review – the long view on Brexit (Guardian)
How the seeds of Brexit were sown by four men in 1943 (Telegraph)
Remainers and Leavers will enjoy this Brexit history (The Times)

Between The Waves: The hidden history of a very British revolution (1943-2016), published by Picador (£25)