Conclusions

Abstract

In his study of Britain’s international policy David Reynolds considered membership of the EEC to be ‘perhaps the most profound revolution in British foreign policy in the twentieth century’. Yet in his book on Britain’s role in the EEC since 1973 Stephen George continually emphasised that, whether inside or outside the Community ‘Britain was pursuing its consistent view of how Europe ought to relate to the rest of the world. There was no conversion to the ideal of European union…’ Anyone who studies British attitudes towards European unity over recent decades is faced by the apparent contradiction between the ‘revolutionary’ change in Britain’s international policy represented by Community membership and the persistence of longstanding British aims, including the wish to maximise Britain’s own influence in world affairs, the determination to retain national control over decision-making, and to oppose all manifestations of federalism, and the desire to promote free trade and avoid a ‘closed’ European trade system.