ABSTRACT
The attitudes and policies of the Labour party towards Britain’s participation in supranational European integration cannot be understood in isolation. The paradox of Britain’s membership of the EEC/EC/EU 1 is that it is an issue about which many, even most, MPs have been relatively agnostic, and yet, it has caused constant disagreement and it has also split the party. That paradox only makes sense once participation in European integration is seen in wider context. That context is both internal and external to the Labour party. European integration was one element in struggles to define Labour’s mission, it connected to questions of Britain’s economy, state, and role in world politics, and it has also divided the Conservatives. As one commentator observed in 1975: ‘European policy occurs, to put it another way, at the blurred interface between foreign and domestic politics and … penetrates to the heart of the political system’. 2
