ABSTRACT
This chapter presents several debates concerning Britain’s attempts to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1960s, from the 1960 suggestion that Britain ‘take notice’ of greater unity on the continent and the announcement the following year that negotiations would open, to the French rebuff in 1963. Several important points about Island Race identity and ontological security-seeking are demonstrated: Mackinder’s ascription of British geopolitics as being both insular and universal in character; how the two concepts constitute one another (British foreign policy-makers still find it discursively difficult to reckon with the idea of being strongly engaged with Europe and having a worldwide role); and the extent to which NATO and Suez had been assimilated into the Island Race narrative. These debates involved thorough negotiations of what insularity and universalism really meant: Euro-enthusiasts argued that British universalism could be ensured by being part of the EC; sceptics regarded Britain’s involvement with Europe as constituting insularity.
