ABSTRACT
The contractors’ handover of the Tunnel on 10 December 1993, a celebratory luncheon held in the Tunnel on 26 February 1994, and the official opening on 6 May, were all lavish affairs, though the celebrations were constrained by the fact that full commissioning of the rolling stock had not been completed. 1 The lunch, organised by Eurotunnel, was held in a crossover chamber of the Tunnel. Echoing the promotional events organised in the nineteenth century by Brunel (Thames Tunnel) and Watkin (aborted 1880s Tunnel), the event was attended by former Prime Ministers Baroness Thatcher and Pierre Mauroy, and 800 or so British and French guests who tucked into scallops, seafood casserole, British and French cheeses, champagne, and an indeterminate, late 1980s claret. 2 ‘After two centuries of dreaming and eight years of labour’, the British and French heads of state, Queen Elizabeth II and President Mitterand, were able to meet for the official opening without travelling by sea or air. They were joined by the two Prime Ministers, John Major and Edouard Balladur, the Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, the EC President Jacques Delors, former Prime Minister Thatcher, Transport and other Ministers, and Bénard and Morton of Eurotunnel. 3 Although the European Parliament’s idea of naming the facility the ‘Winston Churchill – Jean Monnet Tunnel’ had clearly fallen on stony ground, 4 there was much merrymaking, the Louis Roederer champagne providing a distinguished alternative to the Pommery served at TML’s handover party in December. With visits to both the Coquelles and Cheriton terminals and the sampling of both the ‘Eurostar’ train and Eurotunnel’s ‘Le Shuttle’, there were brass bands and fireworks, and much pomp and ceremony. As the Observer noted, ‘No blows were exchanged, no abuse uttered. And there were no nasty jokes about Waterloo, the Second World War, British cuisine, or the sexual predilections of British male politicians’, though it was rather fanciful of Le Figaro to imagine that the link would ‘abolish, psychologically, all the divorces and quarrels through the centuries’. 5
