ABSTRACT
The writing of the first edition of this book was completed in 1981. Any historian who writes about the recent past is well aware of the difficulties of perspective and periodization. In 1981, however, a case could be made for what was then the final part of a book which did not attempt to go beyond 1975. It was in the summer of that year that two out of three British voters registered their desire to remain within the European Economic Community (see p. 259). This vote appeared to bring to an end decades of uncertainty about the relationship between Britain and that Community. It was surely now clear that for the foreseeable future Britain would be a member. In that sense, British history was coming to an end, if that history was seen as self-contained and distinct from ‘Europe’. The Community to which Britain was now apparently committed was not, however, a static entity. It was itself in evolution, though its ultimate shape and structure were far from clear. Its development was not steady and constant, but moved in fits and starts. There was, however, a momentum towards ever closer union, whatever that precisely entailed. It was a momentum which left British governments and a substantial section, perhaps a majority, of the British people, distinctly uneasy(284).
