The Written Word
for November 1, 2000

Today I interviewed Sir Andrew Burns, the British High Commissioner to Canada. He is not the ambassador, of course, because Britain and Canada share the same Head of State. But for all that it amounts to the same thing.

During our conversation we got onto the question of Britain’s reluctance to join the common currency of the European Community which brought on a bit of nostalgia.

It all began back in 1946 when Churchill, in one of his two famous speeches – the other being his "iron curtain" speech in Fulton Missouri – started by saying "I’m going to say something that will astonish you…" And it did. For here we were barely a year after the end of the Second World War hearing it’s victor suggesting that France and Germany get together economically leading, he hoped, to an eventual United States of Europe. This was more than astonishing – it was statesmanlike farsightedness of the first order. Churchill is rightly seen as the founding father spiritually, if not politically, of what is now the European Community.

The path of Britain toward the "Common Market", now the EC, was scarcely strewn with roses. Rejected by De Gaulle Britain only came in after a hard fought referendum in 1974 which split both major parties. But when the "yes’ factions of both parties claimed Churchill as their inspiration they were more than just a bit disingenuous for Churchill, in that speech and indeed throughout his life, rejected the notion that Britain would be part of the European Community. Churchill saw Britain’s destiny with the English Speaking Peoples, about whom he wrote his wonderful history and while he saw much closer ties to Europe than had traditionally been the case, his heart and mind was with the United States and Canada.

Whether Churchill was right or wrong can be argued interminably – I happen to think he was right. The fact is that the reason Britain has had to be dragged kicking and screaming through every progression from the Common Market to a United Europe is because many people on all sides of the political spectrum think that Churchill was indeed right.

In the Thatcher/Major years the Tories self immolated over the question of Europe and though there were plenty of other catalysts, the landslide victory of Tony Blair in 1997 was because the Tories split so badly.

Now guess what’s happened! Labour is split on the question of the common currency, the next slide down the slippery slope to political unity.

I believe Churchill was right because Britain could have had the best of both worlds. There was still lots of room to trade with a growing European Community and who’s to say how big or fast it would have grown if Britain had simply been a friendly trading partner instead of a member? And while it is indeed hindsight, within less than a decade of Britain entering the Common Market the Canadian-US Free Trade Agreement was coming into being and had Britain chosen the Churchill path Britain would surely have been a charter member of what is now NAFTA. Never mind that it is separated by the Atlantic Ocean from North America – that is more than offset by the traditional ties that exist. Moreover, the computer has made distances irrelevant.

Who knows but that, in the not too distant future, Winston Churchill will be proved right once more?