ABSTRACT
Relations with the European Community (EC), which later became the European Union, have been a consistent challenge for British Governments since the late 1950s, when the Europe of ‘the Six’ emerged as a political and economic bloc that questioned Britain’s own position on the world stage. Whether outside or inside the Community, Labour and Conservative administrations have found it difficult to shape the main developments in the process of European integration and European issues have provoked deep divisions within both the main British political parties. Aside from the premiership of Edward Heath in the early 1970s, when the country actually entered the EC, governments have widely been seen as reluctant Europeans, first dithering about the principle of entry then generally adopting a sceptical approach to new developments. The negative image is not entirely justified and sometimes British Governments could be found at the forefront of efforts to make Europe pull together. The post-war Attlee administration had taken a lead in welcoming the Marshall Plan and four decades later even Margaret Thatcher, for all her supposed ‘Euro-scepticism’, was a driving force behind the creation of the single market.1 Yet even Heath found it difficult to march in step with his continental partners in his paltry thirteen months as an EC premier, as the October 1973 Middle East War, the oil price rises that accompanied it and differences of view on the way forward for the Community ruined bold schemes for a fuller union.2
