ABSTRACT
The Labour Party has had a famously difficult relationship with Europe, or at least with the Europe of the Europeans.2 Singling out Labour’s discomfiture for special attention, Donald Sassoon (1996, 339) observes in his magisterial history of the West European Left that: ‘No party of the Left has exhibited such profound uncertainty on the question of Europe’ (see also Featherstone 1988, 41). This judgement is only partly fair. Labour opposed the supra national model of integration that emerged from 1950, but it played an important part in the development of Europe’s post-war architecture – a contribution that is often forgotten. As with its counterparts on the Continent, European integration proved, however, to be an intensely problematic issue for the party. The issue of membership was deeply divisive across the labour movement and at all levels (Broad 2001; Featherstone 1988; Newman 1983; Robins 1979; Young 1998). Like its sister parties, Labour eventually abandoned its hostility, though not all its reservations, but, in contrast to them, it never had its Bad Godesberg moment (see Egle, this volume). Its European journey has been complex, tortuous and often contradictory, and, even as Labour has become Britain’s main pro-European party, it remains circumspect about integration.
