ABSTRACT
Thatcher's scepticism verges on open hostility of her premiership back to negative memories of her upbringing in wartime Grantham, where Europe is seen as a source of conflict and fear. Sir Geoffrey Howe concludes that she must have long concealed her hostility to the Community, giving vent to it only in her final years as Prime Minister. It is not too fanciful to see the robust response as foreshadowing Thatcher's opposition, in her third term, to the European Commission's Social Charter, which aims to entrench working people's rights across the Community as an unwarranted interference with the working of the free market. The personal antagonisms inflicts the damage on her government is an unresolved conflict over the part that Europe plays in the making of national economic policy. Her statement that the hard ecu was unlikely to be widely used, except for commercial transactions more than a tactical device to head off the introduction of a single currency.
