Churchill and Europe

Abstract

In the period since Winston Churchill quit office for the last time in 1955, the question of Britain’s relations with the process of European integration has been a recurrent one for successive British governments, and a source of conflict between and within the principal political parties. Despite the many changes on the world political scene, including above all the disappearance of the British Commonwealth as a serious factor in international affairs, both sides of the argument have tried to enlist Churchill as a posthumous fighter in their cause. In particular it has been claimed that he was an early convert to the idea of a united Europe. This essay is an attempt to see what substance there is in that claim.

First published in Robert Blake and William Roger Louis (eds), Churchill: A Major New Assessment (Oxford University Press, 1993).