British Exceptionalism and Future Challenges

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And this week it's European Union. Not the European Union. Because it's about the idea of a United Europe in all its forms, but obviously we will explain the treaties and institutions and such like, uh, because for years , I hasten to add, not this ended some time ago. But you know, when I was younger, I thought the European Council and the Council of Europe were the same thing. Right? What the script how do you how do you go out in polite society now? I mean this is like pre you know this is some time ago. But uh you know they do sound like the same thing. It was halfway through Romania. No, but I mean uh you know a lot there's a lot of uh bodies with uh very similar names. Yes. In we're doing this 'cause the tenth anniversary, the Brexit referendum is coming up, but it's not really about Brexit, is it? No. Do you have any do you have any particular feelings about Brexit? Do you think it was a good or a bad idea? I still think it was a bad idea. So you know I warn listeners. Uh have a little uh bias there. What did you want to find out? I mean it's it's it's odd, you know what going through this history, all the things that I've always thought about, this project seemed sort of utterly irrelevant while going through it now. The world has changed so much. You know, for a long period of my life, I would have called myself a Eurosceptic and just sort of thought you've got to be wary of centralizing power and boom. And so I would have thought that one of the things I wanted to find out was like just how to what extent does it centralize power, how valid are those concerns. But honestly, most of that stuff doesn't really touch the sides now, just because in the sort of era of populism, that is just like you know, when Trump's doing this stuff over here, like you know, is that your main concern? Oh, is the EU centralizing decision making on lawnmower noise regulations? You know, something like you'd have to be kind of mad. So are you are you a former Eurosceptic? Oh I I would have called myself throughout. Including technically now a Eurosceptic, but in the original sense, right? Rather than a sort of like not frothing at the mouth, Brexity type. sense that everyone uses it, but as in somewhat skeptical of but in my four in my sort of formats of years that was how p it was used. Like when you look at the sort of you know the British reaction to Maastricht and like, okay, so what are we doing here exactly? What's being handed over? You know, what's the check on decision making? How much democratic validity is this? What kind of obstacles do we have to the to decisions being over decentralized? That was kind of how it was used. And it was only really when the referendum took place that it turned into this kind of millennialist , almost kind of religious mission that had seemed to have lost any kind of sense of scepticism at all. One of the things that's important about what we're doing here is that in this country, we pretty much only talk about Europe through the pris m of Britain's relationship with it. In fact, the project to create a united Europe in its practical and its idealistic and even its philosophical sense is like one of the most ambitious, intellectually fascinating, brave ideas that you see of the 20th century and I think the twenty first century. And in fact, in in British terms, it's just almost never talked about in its own terms, only through reference to ourselves. And that's something that we'll be addressing here. The through line for me doing the research seems to be this tension between idealism and pragmatism, and that the people that really achieve things combine both. But actually, you know, at a certain times they seem very, very different and they seem almost opposed. And it's interesting which you prioritize in the story of the European Union. So in twenty seventeen European Council, not Council of Europe, President Donald Tusk, said that the European Union was built on dreams that seemed impossible to achieve. Which is true. But then the historian Robert Saunders in his book about the nineteen seventy five referendum says the European community was born out of a heady brew of ide alism, self-interest and fear, which is also true. Yes. So th there is always idealism in there, but there's also a lot of other things. And I think what's so interesting about looking at it through We are generally talking about sort of France and Germany's position. That's sort of the sort of the central dynamic of it. But just getting outside of Britain enables you to think about it in a much different way, which doesn't really yeah, just certainly didn't come up, obviously around Brexit because that was all about Britain. But you know, to actually understand why the EU became what it became. Britain is not the main event. No, not at all. It's a sort of act of profound idealism right up until the moment that it's created. And as soon as this form of idealism , which is basically that, you know, we're gonna share, um we're gonna essentially share sovereignty to become an international kind of structure, an international body, in order to increase peace and, you know, improve things for the lives of people all over the place, we're gonna try and get rid of like the jungle of nation-states all out for themselves. It's a really idealistic kind of utopian idea. But the second you implement, it becomes this remorselessly pragmatic project. Like that is that is defined by negotiations and mess y compromise outcomes and must be by definition. So it exists in this mad world of that really severe tension between idealism and pragmatism. And that and that tension always really revolves around sort of one central biany, which is international versus national. What are your national interests as a state, as a government, people, then what are the more international ones, you know, by continental? Well I should really say supranational, but I just find that too posh. Well we're really you know, we're not obviously not talking about the whole globe, we're talking about on a continental level, your international concerns. And that that fierce kind of cutting point between these two ideas, it's there from the very first second , it's right there right until the very end. It's it's battled through a series of basically sort of procedural issues, you know, and events and personalities. But ultimately always comes down to that core binary. And in it, in the people that are struggling to achieve it, you see people that are aspiring to all the most impressive things that can be achieved in the history of ideas. Aaron Powell Well one of the things that comes out is that, you know, the Brexit referendum comes at a time when the project has sort of it seems almost purely technocratic and has lost its idealism. And all the people that really get things done, like uh Jean Monet or Jacques Delors or Roy Jenkins are the people that give it this extra push, this sort of the dream big, and all of them realize that if it just stagnates, like it then it loses legitimacy. Like it has to keep moving. Which, of course, was one of the big problems for Britain, because Britain didn't really want it to keep moving. But if it doesn't, then it does just seem like this big, unwieldy, unlovable bureaucracy Aaron Powell Yeah. And yet you look at where we are right now in the world, you look at the people we're surrounded by, whether it's sort of Viktor Orban in Hungary or whether it's Donald Trump in the US , and you see the same burning moral need for Europe to work that they saw in, you know, basically well, picking over the corpse of the second world war. And just being like, this cannot happen again. Now you fast forward to where we are right now, and obviously the parallels are different and blah blah blah. But we're getting all those same memories, all those same shivers up the back of your spine at 2 a.m. And so then you come back to the point that they had in 1951 and onwards, like that cannot happen again. And the way that we stop it from happening is Europe, a united Europe. And so therefore the moral mission of it now, yes, there's all the pragmatism, all the technocracy, but the moral mission feels more urgent than it's ever felt in my lifetime. Well, because we're talking about ideas, we're going to start with the prehistory of the idea of a united Europe. Aaron Ross Powell Classic Origin Story. Oh, it may be sometime before we get to the start of something. So we're talking about as a concept as well as a place. The historian Tony Chuck talked about the Europe of the mind . So Europe uh is actually named after a myth, which seems quite suitable. It's the Phoenician princess Europa who was abducted and taken to Crete, you know, in in in mythology in the sixth century BC. And for centuries it's basically defined in opposition to the other, to would-be invaders. So Herodotus says Europe was born when the Athenians repelled the Persians , you know, in the fifth century BC. This was it was it was born in the moment of like kicking people back. The first attempt to unify the continent is course by force is the Roman Empire. We're not in really a Roman Empire podcast, but here we go. You got a little bit of Roman Empire. So the Pax Romana of the single currency. Prosperity, unity, um and the Emperor Caracalla in I always say this in a weird way when I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Not just that, but I'm not sure I've ever seen your mouth behave that way. It's kind of extraordinary. Uh In two hundred and twelve AD makes every citizen of the Roman Empire who's not a slave a Roman citizen. Um which is an expansion of rights and freedoms under a single identity that had never happened before. But the Rome's long decline has begun. We're not going to get into uh when the Roman Empire fell. This is why we're not Roman Empire podcasts. Don't wanna get into that. So then the next attempt, again, unified by force, is Charlemagne, the so-called father of Europe, or Euro dad in the eighth century . Uh who controlled most of Western Europe. Now at this point, Europe it used to mean Europe used to kinda mean like the Greeks, and then it means the Romans, and now it means Christians, specifically Catholics. Historian Roderick Beaton calls Roman Catholic Christendom a European Union of sorts. There's a lot of of sorts here. Now it seems like the first use of the word European, or at least the Latin version, is in a book called On Europe, fourteen fifty eight, by Pope Pius II. According to the OED, the noun enters English in fifteen seventy eight. So before then , there were other words that would be used to describe people on this continent. And of course we should say obviously the borders are always changing due to just war and religion and all of that stuff. So in the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ruled over forty percent of the population of Catholic Europe. Then the Reformation comes along and shatters it. It's basically a sort of series of pulling together and breaking apart . And then with the Enlightenment, Europe became synonymous with this more nebulous concept. So it's not defined by empire or religion, it's civilization. There's also I mean when you get to the Enlightenment period, you start, you know, you get philosophers, so you get Hobbes, you get Rousseau, you get Locke. Now, all of these guys have different ideas. But what do they all do? They all have this kind of core way of thinking about philosophy as if um coming from a state of nature. Right. That in the original sense, you know, it's just each individual out for themselves, getting in conflict, how do we fix it? You know, do we create a big state? Do we create contracts? You know, or maybe is the state of nature a preferred way for us to be rather than civilization. That's the kind of dominant way of thinking. And so that kind of enlightenment thinking in Europe then feeds into what will later turn into thinking around the European Union, which is well, okay, that can be the same for individuals. But then also we could think that way about nation states. That state, the jungle, the state of nature, it's conflict, it's chaos. Maybe we need a great overarching authority over the nation state in order to bring an So the phrase European Union was first used by uh Charles Irene Castel de Saint-Pierre, a name I will not have to say again. And the piece of Utrecht in seventeen fourteen, which is the first attempt at an international order uh to resolve conflict between nations. That's essentially I mean you say that coming out of nineteen forty five, stopping war is a major is perhaps the yes you know driving motive, same back then. Early Eurosceptic Frederick the Great uh wrote to Voltaire . You're describing a lot of people in a way that I don't think anyone's ever described before. Starting with EuroDaddy and now going to early I love this though. He says he says the idea was very practicable. All it lacks to be successful is the consent of all Europe and a few other such small details. That could have been written by any British diplomat between nineteen 1951 and 2026. Exactly. So following the Romans and the Holy Romans, obviously Napoleon is the next person to try and unite Europe through force. What's interesting here is this military union inspires its opposite an anti war union. In eighteen fourteen, Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia sign a treaty of union concert and subsidy for a concert of Europe, with quote the salutary purpose of putting an end to the miseries of Europe once Napoleon is defeated, and then once he is defeated, France gets to join as well. And this is a real breakthrough in international relations where there's a system of conferences to resolve disputes in the name of Europe as a whole. And this includes Russia , very complicated, but in the nineteenth century, the first uh half of the nineteenth century, Russia really wants to be European . And then it starts to develop a more anti European identity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is obviously where where it is now. But there is a bit of back and forth, and obviously Lenin and Stalin were not seeing it as European. But it was was at this point . So you keep finding these two contrasting ideas of Europe, one is idealistic and pacifist, or at least trying to avoid war, the other is aggressive and exclusive. And one of the idealists is the writer Victor Hugo. So interesting. He first talks about a united states of Europe uh modelled on the Swiss canton system in eighteen forty nine to ensure the liberty of Europe and the peace of the world. And almost thirty years later he responds to the Ottoman massacre of the Serbs by say ing Europe needs a European nationality, a single government, an immense brotherly arbitration, democracy at peace with itself. I mean, so many of these phrases just seem so ahead of their time. Yeah, yeah, they thought very modern. At the same time, we should say European identity is becoming racialized by eugenics and colonialism. Uh and so on. This is when the word Aryan becomes popular. Um anti-Semites decide that Jews are alien to Europe. They're not fully European. So there's obviously this kind of um dark side to European European identity as well, um, which entitles you to um both expel people and go around the world taking the bits that Yes . Bismarck does not believe in Europe as an idea at all. He says whoever speaks of Europe is wrong. It is a geographical expression. Thatcher . Yes. So I mean he does revive the concert of Europe uh after the Franco Prussian War, but but he you know, he's a nationalist. He wants harmony rather than unity. You can you can have a lot of reasons for wanting to not go to war , but that doesn't mean that you want to um throw your arms around your brother nations, you know. Aaron Powell We should also mention that Franco-Prussian war, you know, when we talk about the relationship between France and Germany after the Second World War, it's not just that they've been fighting in the Second World War and the First World War. It's also that in eighteen seventy they were fighting in the Franco-Brussian War, right? So you're go you're looking at quite a hefty basically eighty straight years of a pretty intense, very emotional conflict. Well I think it's about Prussia versus Napoleon, you know. Yeah, exactly. But but it's also really defining their attitude as nations. I mean, you know, Bismarck's Germany is partly defined by virtue of the animosity towards France and uh you know and on we go. So that it's a really deep sense of conflict that's motivating what's happening and that's therefore even more impressive when they decide to get over it. So obviously I kind of sort of whizzed through time there. The point is that most of these ideas are not really about a united Europe. They're more about a Europe that finds ways to resolve disputes without killing each other. Victor Hugo is not the typical figure there, Bismarck, probably more so. So just as in seventeen fourteen and eighteen fourteen, in nineteen fourteen, it takes a war to make European unity emotionally resonant. Enter count Ricard Aaron Powell I'd just like to say you're doing very well with these names. I really thought you had to in this episode. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm glad that you're going into it with that attitude. I personally, for my part, want to apologize in advance for everything that 's about to happen. Oh no . For the diplomatic incident about to happen in your mouth . So I'm just gonna call him Kalage . Great. In future. Uh one of the most fascinating characters I think I've ever come across in research. The so-called grandfather of the European Union. Um are you familiar with him? No. Uh hopefully you're in for a tree. I I think he's just amazing and he anticipates so many of the things that happen later. He almost tells the story of the I'm gonna tell the story here basically between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War through this guy. So Kalagay is born in Tokyo in 1894 to an Austrian diplomat of French-Greek heritage and a Japanese I was not expecting you to say that. One of the first Japanese women to uh to live in Europe, literally. Educated in the Austrian Empire, multilingual, cosmopolitan aristocrat, his father high They live in a castle, obviously. And Kalagay in his memoir describes the family castle as an oasis of international spirit visited by people from all over the world and it's literally like, you know, Hindus from India and Muslims from Turkey and you know, there's just kind of every kind of nation and religion passes through um his house. After graduating in philosophy, he lives in pre-war Vienna, Europe's most international city. One of your faves, isn't it? Pre-war Vienna. I think for both of us, right? Like if we had the chance, we would probably just we can't justify it on origin story terms, but we just want to hang out in Vienna. We definitely think we'll find a way one day. So he meets and marries a Jewish actress called Ida Rowland. He's a very handsome, dashing, charismatic man. He sees himself as a citizen of the world . Thomas Mann, the author, called him a Eurasiatic type of noble cosmopolite, giving the average German the feeling of being somewhat provincial, like just like the most international guy anyone had ever met. And also like mixed race, which is quite unusual at this point. Said to be the inspiration for the Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo in Casablanca. Oh wow. On account of being both brave and hot. This has sort of been disputed. Other people have laid claim to the inspiration, but there's certainly like a credible case given what he got up to in the second time. So I'm not surprised that they're laying claim. Yeah. Someone said I was the model for Victor Lazlow and Castle Blanc, or I would take that. Kalagay sees the First World War as a tragedy of nationalism and emerges from it, quote, striving toward international peace, personal liberty, national equality and social justice, which is very woke. He becomes a citizen of the new nation of Czechoslovakia, but actually what he wants to do is solve the problem of all these new post-war borders with the breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by abolishing borders altogether. So initially he's very excited by President Woodrow Wilson and his 14 points about self-determination, which leads to the setting up of the League of Nations, is meant to be the blueprint for peace. Obviously, that doesn't work. I mean the Treaty of Versailles kind of breaks the 14 points before the League of Nations has even got going. He writes in his memoir: only after I realized that the establishment of a United States of the world had become impossible did my ideas crystallize Right. And like Victor Hugo, he's looking at the Swiss cantons. That seems to be a kind of model where it's a na it's a it's a federal nation, right? Yeah. And it's it's funny, people from people that grow up in that background or that refer to it a lot, they always have this like Russo is the same, they always have this sort of view of politics as profoundly fixable. I think because it's just this sort of microcosm political community where things are just Yeah, where people are from becomes so important in this story. So the idea is becoming quite fashionable. He's not the only person who thinks this. In 1922, this uh influential Anglo-German businessman, Sir Max Vector, publishes a book called The United States of Europe : How to Make War Impossible. And this is the same year that Calagay founds the Pan-European Union and follows it with his manifesto Pan-Europa , with a membership application in every copy. It's really similar to Theodore Herzl when he was trying to Zionism off the ground. Right, right, right. And he later writes As long as thousands believe in pan Europe it remains a utopia. As soon as millions believe in it, it becomes a programme. But once a hundred millions believe in it, it is a reality. This could be pure hurts. Right. If you listen back to our Zionism episodes, this this is pretty much exactly how it all starts. So he's ahead of his time in many ways. Firstly, he sees Europe as a third force between Russia and America. He says neither the West nor the East will rescue Europe. Russia wants to conquer it. America wants to buy it. So Europe needs to form a political economic union by creating a customs and defense union. Jesus Christ, this guy is on point. And he proposes that the European anthem should be Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Holy fuck. Decades before this happens. Wow. And it's not on the basis of him saying it that they later decided that's a vision. I mean he must have. Yeah, it must have been his influence, yeah. I think he just didn't . I mean he lived until 1972. Oh wow. So he was he was around for a lot of the a lot of this. So much like Herzl with Zionism, he travels around Europe looking for powerful supporters. Recruits include Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Ricard Strauss, and the president of Czechoslovakia. I'm saying that's not bad. That's not bad. And he's the first to realise in his travels that the British aren't interested in Europe as long as they have the Empire. But he does suggest that English should be the language of pan Europe anyway, which of course it is what it became about 80 years later. So Kalege is very influential, very well connected, especially in France . This is where he seems to get the s the best hearing. So in the twenties, the economist Charles Gide launches an international committee for a European Customs Union. Prime Minister Edouard Herriot tells the Chamber of Deputies, it is my greatest wish to live to see the realization of the United States of Europe, and writes a book which basically describes the common market. And in nineteen thirty, the former Prime Minister Aristide Briand, who is the honorary president of this pan European Union, publishes his memorandum on the organiz ation of a regime of European federal union. Could it have been shorter? I think it could have been. Committee on European Union. But then two things happen. Brian dies and Hitler rises . Now, in an unfortunate uh diary catastrophe, Kalerge is booked to deliver a lecture on European Union in Berlin on the thirtieth of January nineteen thirty-three. Right. The day Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. It's not the most compelling circumstances for the argument, really. No. So after his talk, he watches the Nazis marching past with their jack boots and torches and he writes on the evening of january thirtieth the peace of Europe was doomed. Hitler personified everything I had been fighting all my life. So yeah, j just to explain, Kalagay, he's anti-nationalist, anti -fascist, anti-racist, anti-anti-Semitic, anti-totalitarian, and feminist. Really very much on the opposite end of things to Hitler. So obviously Hitler hates him back. Hitler writes that he is a rootless cosmopolitan and elitist half-breed, proposing a pacifist democratic, pan-European hodgepodge state. But you take out just a c you don't have to take out many of those words, and you can put it pretty much in like Theresa May's mouth, you know, during the Brexit era. Like it's not a million miles. No, you just remove the obvious racist half breeds. Yeah, okay. But but the rest of it you could pretty much put in their mouth. And so it's incredible that that kind of anti pan European response still has not only like the same ideas, but a lot of the same rhetoric. Well, are you aware of the Kalerge plan conspiracy theory? Uh no. Right. So he had been a Freemason, but he quit the Freemasons because there were so many anti-Monasic consp iracy theories that he didn't want that to uh affect pan-European movement. Right. That doesn't help. Because in another book, practical idealism, he had theorized, uh predicting rather than advocating, just sort of thinking this is what I think the future will be like. The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian So this is unfortunate phrasing but it's important for the conspiracy theory. The Eurasian Negroid race of the future will replace the diversity of peoples with the diversity of individuals. So the Nazis pick this up and turn it into a Jewish conspiracy. No way. Kalerge is not Jewish. His wife is. He's obviously very, you know, cosmopolitan and very pro-Jewish. Called the Kalerge plan, it is revived in the 2000s by neo-Nazis as a as a version of the Great Replacement Theory. And you still see it now like on the online right. Oh wow. On the online right, he at Kalaga is only famous for this misreading of this one sentence essentially. So what a collect as few prominent British Mirers is Winston Churchill. I think throughout Origin Story, we have good Churchill and we have bad Churchill. And today is good Churchill time again. Today is Good Churchill. It's pretty much is it no, it's not always one for one. We have whole periods where it's like four or five nine years. Normally it's Bad Churchill. Yeah. Didn't we have Bad Churchill in general strike, didn't we? We did just have bad Churchill in General Strike. Yeah. So here we go. This balances it out. He writes a nineteen thirty article called The United States of Europe. He says the form of Count Kalerge's theme may be crude, erroneous, and impracticable , but the impulse and the inspiration are true. And he sets out the classic British position of supporting European Union as long as Britain isn't in it. Yes. The famous line, we are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. Although you see, this is the thing. I mean, we're going to come on to this throughout, but that last part, interested. We're interested. Yeah. That's where the pathology lies. Because if really the British response was that's fine, we don't need any part of it, you'd be fine. But as soon as the Europeans start talking, the British response is always like, fuck are they talking about over there? I really think we need we need a seat at that table. And that's when the cycle begins and off you go. And there's a surprisingly large grassroots constituency in Britain for European Union. This this organization called the Federal Union gets started. Unfortunately just before the Second World War. And just a progressive boarding school headmaster called W. B. Curry writes a book called The Case for Federal Union, which sells 100,000 copies. Okay. Which is a lot for a book of that nature. He argues individually we should be richer, happier, healthier, and freer. Collectively we should have lost only the martial elements in national pride. What should we have lost that is worth preserving? Just very proto-Europhile language . So then we get to the Second World War. It's not the end of the episode. Don't switch off. So do you remember Boris Johnson said in 2016 about European unity, Napoleon, Hitler, various people tr ied this and it ends tragically. No, it's such an ir ritating thing for someone to say. Yes, but anyway, yeah. So it's very crass misleading. It's not entirely wrong, because Napoleon, indeed, like Charlemagne, like the Romans, people And Hitler did want to unite Europe under the Nazi Jack. Yeah, I mean, as long as you suck up any sense of actual meaning and just go for the most literal and superficial interpretation of events, yeah, it's it's a But they use the language. What surprised me was the language, right? So nineteen forty he declares a great European New Order. He launches a European Congress in Berlin with a song for Europe and commemorative stamps reading European United Front Against Bolshevism . And a Nazi newspaper declares the United States of Europe has at last become a reality. So it's interesting that they were specifically using that language and the idea I mean it's obviously a very it's a very dark and perverse version of it, but it was just strange to see United States of Europe in that context. It's the it's it's basically the kind of the upside-down version of Calegates pan-Europe. Aaron Powell Well it's isn't it that thing they said about like Norman like you know William the Conqueror, which is, you know, he he like just creates murder and calls it peace. Sure you say this is peace, because you've killed everyone. You know what I mean? No one's left. This is the equivalent of like, you know, if you just if if your project is we're just going to invade all these countries and set up puppet states, you can then go, oh, it's it's a union of states, you know, for whatever it's like. But of course, what it is is really just like rank and period. But it's interesting seeing these concepts, these phrases and and and and sort of institutions appearing in their kind of like dark side versions. Oh yeah, that's nice. So like there's a fascist plan for a customs union and single currency proposed by Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer. Oh, Speer. And Pierre Pichot, uh, who is a Vichy administrator, who is later executed by the Free French under foreshadowing Charles So I don't think he was executed for advocating a customs union. That would be the next one. That would be extreme even for uh even for uh Nigel Farage. And then of course at the same time there are the anti fascist blueprints. It's almost you know, it's that thing like Napoleon also in Napoleon's idea of Europe united under him inspires this idea of a more voluntary uh federation. So Churchill tells his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in 1942, Hard as it is to say now, I trust that the European family may act unitedly as one under a council of Europe in which the barriers between nations will be greatly minimized and unrestricted travel will be possible. Well very into the whole Schengen freedom of movement thing. I found it amazing in nineteen forty-two that you could be looking ahead. Also looking ahead in, really dire circumstances, in one of uh Mussolini's internment camps is uh an Italian former communist called Altiero Spinelli, who writes a document called For a Free and United Europe, which is also called the Ventatene Manifesto, which is named after the internment camp. And he writes feelings today are already far more disposed than they were in the past to accept a federal reorganization of Europe. It's quite a remarkable thing to say in a Second World War intern ment camp. And this is the foundational document of the European Federalist movement. And again, there's something wonderful about people with long lives. This would just be some weird little footnote, right? Like the W. B. Curry's book. Right? He did not become an important figure. It's a curious thing. Spinelli ends up becoming European Commissioner, an MEP, and a pioneer of the European Union. It's also the case though I think the whole social character of Europe relies on Italian agitation. Basically, that dream of a federal Europe with social dimensions is pursued primarily by Italian delegates and that's the case from the very, very beginning. So really that that whole side of thing doesn't surprise me you have a figure like this talking about it in this context. And that movement for a federal Europe is much stronger in Italy than it is in other countries with really quite important consequences. So what's interesting, of course, these are different visions, right? Churchill is a conservative imperialist, uh Spinelli is a democratic socialist, but they're all thinking about this post-war order and a united Europe. And meanwhile Kalogay is in New York, because he's had a flea Europe, drawing up plans for a European army, currency and bill of rights. And he actually gets the neoliberal von Mis es to work on his single currency plan. Wow. Quite early doors of Von Mises. And there's a great line which sort of predicts what the post war mood. The Europeans will feel like a group of personal enemies meeting after a disaster in a lifeboat, they will have to get on somehow whether they like it or not, and they will certainly dislike it. Attention all passengers. The Uber ride for Mark and Jamal's romantic weekend will depart in four minutes from platform six. Your ride comes with a rolling countryside sunset view and a table seat ideal for playing footsie bene ath. Thank you for booking your tickets on Uber . Trains on Uber . Some follow the noise. 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Okay, so Calegay is the grandfather of European Union and then the father, although he's six years older, is uh Jean Monnet. Shall we meet him? He's gonna play a very important role in this narrative, in fact, probably the most important role. Just amazing character. Jean Homer Marie Gabrielle Monet, born in Cognac in eighteen eighty eight. Because where else would a man of this vintage be born? And of course his father was a brandy merch ant. And he was uh describing his approach to politics, he went, I can wait a long time for the right moment. In cognac they are good at waiting. It is the only way to make good brandy. Very good. Very extre mely French explanation. So after school, he goes to Canada to sell brandy, doesn't go to university. And then just has the most amazing career. During the first world war, he's France's representative on the Allied Supreme Economic Council in his 20s. He becomes Deputy Secretary General of the League of Nations at the age of 31. Then he returns to family business and keeps getting hired as an advisor by like Poland, Sweden. He helps build the Chinese railway system. And an even more remarkable war. In June 1940, he drafts a plan which I had not come across before, uh, maybe I'm ignorant, for Anglo French unity, a federal union between Britain and unoccupied France, literally joint citizenship. And he gets both Churchill and de Gaulle on board with this extremely radical idea. Trevor Burrus I mean the thing is Churchill, as we covered in the Churchill episode, was like an extreme francophile. Like he absolutely loved France. And obviously the Gaulle at that point hasn't quite developed his Anglo skeptic notions that we're going to come to later on in this story because he's, you know, sat in London enduring the war. But did you know that for about a week they were talking about a federal union? I've never heard of it. I mean Churchill Churchill's dreams of uniting France and Britain were always re like unlike the European stuff that was keep it over there, with France, it was like come on guys, let's just go all in. Like he he's really quite committed. So anyway, this plan collapses with the Vichy regime. Obviously you don't want to unite with them. So Monet spends the rest of the war in America with the British Supply Council negotiating armed supplies to the UK and de Gaulle's Free French. So it's Monet, who conceives the idea of lendlees? It's Monet who coins President Roosevelt's famous slogan, we must be the great arsenal of democracy. Keynes says that Monet's work on arms production shortened the war by a whole year. Jesus. If he could literally have died in nineteen forty five and he would be this extraordinary figure. So in nineteen forty three, Roosevelt sends him to Algiers to negotiate a new committee for the liberation of France, i.e. the Free French, a government in exile with de Gaulle and Britain's Harold Macmillan . Very different people. De Gaulle is a proud nationalist, Monet is an idealistic internationalist. Macmillan writes in his diary, Monet still finds it difficult to make up his mind as to whether the general is a dangerous demagogue or mad or both. So Monet is already looking ahead beyond the war. So he worries that there's going to be this post-war return to nationalism and protectionism. This idea that we have that kind of second world war so discredited nationalism that nobody would sort of think of it again, is not what people felt at the time. People felt that it could quite easily come back, that fascism could come back very, very quickly. So he sees the flashpoint, foreshadowing, as the steel plants of Lorraine and the coal fields of the Ruhr very reliant on each other, very contested. And thinks they should come under joint control, leading to a single economic entity with free trade and he wants to bring in Britain as well. Says for without England the concept of a unified Europe turns all too quickly into a Germanized Europe all over again. Very not keen on Germany dominating Europe He's got a real he's he's clearly Well I let me just give you this quote from Theodore H. White, the American journalist. He calls him Monet was a businessman by origin, cool, calculating, caustic. But he did love ideas and could sell ideas to almost anyone. Ideas were his private form of sport, threading an idea into the slipstream of politics, then into government, then into history. He talked about how and when to plant ideas like a gardener who coaxed people in government to think. And you sort of get that impression of like, you know, he he is the big sort of blue skies, you know, dreamer, idealist type. He almost kind of personifies that, you know, the pragmat ism and the idealism of the story. He has those ideas, but ultimately he's not someone who just sits there or campaigns or pontificates about it. It's about you find the people, you plant the idea, it's the right place, the right time, you make it sort of tolerable. I'm not surprised that Keynes really liked him. Because both of them seem to be motivated by how do you sell it, you know? I was just writing something the other day actually about Monet and Keynes being of a type where they're that perfect mix of the kind of big picture and the kind of the steps that you know it takes together. And Mona actually looks really like Clement Hatley, this sort of balding moustache, this very unassuming bureaucratic vibe. But what he built up, and he was never a politician, right? Um what he built up was this really unusual uh experience in large organizations, lots of different ones, and international collaboration because of you know all that thing going over to America and and and so on. So his method is that the end goal is quite radical, but you build towards it steadily. Roy Jenkins said that Monet had told him there was a distinction between being someone and doing something. And he wanted to do something. Oh wow, that's lovely. Isn't it? The synthesis of the demagogue. And um even Dominic Cummings considers Monet a genius. Oh wow. Comparing him to Sun Tzu, Bismarck, and Steve Jobs as somebody that just like got things done. So um well done, Dominic Cummings. No, but it amazes me that obviously a an art Yeah . So we enter the post-war world. Paris is this extraordinary sort of center of thinking about a united Europe after the war ends. You've got these groups, sort of artists, novelists , philosophers, composers, actors, poets, playwrights, but I could the most famous of which would be sort of like Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir, his sort of partner Arthur Koisler . These figures that are outside of any real political tribe. I mean they're mostly associated with the left, but gradually you get sort of like pushed away by the Catholics , rejected by the communists, hated by de Gaulle's followers. Right. So quite lonely. In this window in time, because of course, yeah, Sartre becomes very much a communist and Kursler becomes like very right wing. Yeah. But that's a brilliant kind of moment of like I don't know what to describe, but just fluidity, like the kaleidoscope's been shaken. Well there is an interesting period for the left. They're almost passing each other. You know, there's periods where Kosler and Sartre are working together. I mean, they're having fights. I mean, but also in Seleni, everyone is sleeping with everyone else's partner, and that's like not an irrelevant part of why their relationships are all quite fraught. Like almost, I mean, of these people that I'm mentioning, I mean, almost every single one of them has slept with every single other person and on they go. They're also just pounding through alcohol, you know, and amphetamins and sleeping pills. It's quite fraught. And it has that sense that we forget now, that late 40 sense that you just alluded to, of this sense , it's not like everyone's celebrating in triumph. Everything feels tenuous. You know, it feels tenuous about a return to fascism, and then very quickly it feels tenuous about a war between the US and Russia. A nuclear war . So this idea starts growing of a third way, neither Washington nor Moscow. You know, nine rejecting the form of communism that you go , you know, mostly these guys are sort of either in Camus' case and Sartre's case considering themselves sort of socialists, but quite alienated by what they're seeing, you know, from the Communist Party. In Koisa's case, you know, associating with what he hopes to be a kind of left-wing movement within Gaulism that eventually gets extinguished pretty quickly, actually. Oh right, yeah. Trotskyist possession of it, is it? In nineteen forty eight, Sarch was approached by David Rousset, who's the author of um The Days of Our Death, which is a sort of detailed book about ma thechinery of the Nazi death camps. He wants to set up a political party with him called the Democratic and Revolutionary Alliance. Sartre says the idea was to unite the non-communist left under one banner and to promote an independent Europe, a bridge between the USSR and the US. Launch with a press conference, absolutely thousands of people, journalists from all over the world, Camus supports it . But again, attacked by all sides, by the Catholics, by the Gaulists, by the communists, starts to fall apart. Um, Aruset becomes sort of vehemently anti-communist, and then after a while, the members sort of launch a vote of no confidence in him and it dissolves. Shortly afterwards, same year 1948, a man called Gary Davis comes to Paris. He's an American. Do you know this guy? No, it's just I was thinking of the radio one DJ Gary Davis. Gary Davis . Not that Gary Davis. Okay. See, I think so highly of your internet that when you chore to I think I was thinking of his uh his uh 80s lunchtime show, Gary Davis Bit in the middle Uh a twenty-seven year old American veteran living in Paris uh who's committed to the idea of a world government goes outside of the UN building and destroys his American passport. Now he is instantly arrested as being undocumented. But like it just triggers this extraordinary spasm of press interest because basically that document at that time is like the most desirable document on earth. Camus absolutely loves it. He's like a real opportunity there that's not being pursued through the political through Sarch's political party. Goes to join him. He sort of sets up camp opposite the UNHQ in Paris. It doesn't last long, this sort of spasm of interest, but intellectuals absolutely flock to him. They go on November the 18th, they go to a UN afternoon session and interrupt proceedings and start throwing leaflets down from the balcony about the need for one government for one world. The police arrive and arrest them, Camus thrown in jail for the night. Einstein writes him a cable gram. The worst kind of slavery which burdens the people of our time is the militarization of the people. The well intentioned effort to master the situation by the creation of the United Nations has shown itself to be regrettably insufficient. A supranational institution must have enough powers and independence if it shall be able to solve the problems of our international security . Again, that craze sort of event dies down relatively quickly, but Camus permanently impacted by it. These ideas, that sense of like you give up a bit of sovereignty, a world government, a world organization, that's the pathway to peace. In the same year that President Truman signs the Marshall Plan in on April the 3rd. Just to sort of expand on that kind of like just I mean it's such a fascinating period, the kind of mix of ideas immediately after the Second World War . You've got Orwell in his essay towards European Unity. He says a socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worthwhile political objective today. Then you've got Oswald Mosley , who says that the union movement advocates what he calls Europe a nation, and he thinks Britain's destiny is to lead a united Europe. Obviously his is very, very different to Orwell's idea. And then Kalerge, meanwhile, he thinks that the end of Nazism has left a hole in Germany, and you have to fill it with the idea of Europe, otherwise the nationalists will come back. Yeah. All these people are think ing something very, very different. And then Churchill is thinking something else again, right? Where Britain, you know, he doesn't want um Britain to be to be leading Europe. He says, look, the United States of Europe must be spearheaded by a partnership between France and Germany. That's the theme, I suppose, of of a lot of this story, is that relationship. In nineteen forty eight, Churchill presides over the first Congress of Europe in The Hague, organized by what is now called the European Movement, still still going strong, led by his uh son-in-law. And that leads the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and the European Convention on Human Rights, and then the European Court of Human Rights in nineteen fifty-nine. So that's not part of the European Union. Different body, far more members, forty-six members in the Council of Europe. Yeah. And which is I mean, I I know it's I know for for most Brits have now sort of clocked, because when Brexit happened, you know, there was this constant thing of like this does not mean that we're leaving the European Convention human rights and blah blah blah which is all birthed from that. However, for for lots of people around the world that it's not that clear cut. It's not clear that these are different organisations and that you could leave one and stay in the other, but indeed you can, and Britain so far has, although it is worth pointing out that all the people that told us that Brexit would be such a good idea now insist that we could leave the European Convention of Human Rights and that would be a fantastic idea. The big difference there is that the UK was a founding member. Yes. You know, it did take the lead on that because it didn't mean, you know, sort of trade agreements and federalism. It was more just it was more like a vibe, but based on values, which produced well it starts off as more of a kind of vibe, obviously fewer, you know, treaties, not c do not comparable to what becomes the European Community. But what an incredible legacy. Trevor Burrus Well, the convention, you know, like sort of UN declarations, but just starts becoming part of this global sort of net of international human rights law. Yeah. That becomes, you know, one of the great civilizing projects of the twentieth century. Trevor Burrus, Jr. So you were talking about the Marshall Plan. Yeah, so the Marshall Plan, which, you know, as most listeners will know, is the project by which the US pumps money into European economies, partly to repair them and partly to create markets for its own benefit. You may remember that there was a period where America used to think in terms of its own benefit being aligned with that of other a country's interests, not really the place that we're in right now . This almost becomes sort of the the embryo of what later becomes the European Union. Because uh for a start, it defines Europe geographically. So Stalin coerces Eastern European countries into rejecting it. So it creates almost a sort of border on one side The Marshall Plan Administrators set up the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which manages the distribution of the funds. Which is we mentioned, the GDP episode is really what starts people talking about GDP as a as a policy goal. Aaron Powell Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So the core thing, the most important thing that takes place, is that the Americans want the Europeans to organize it. This could have been very, very different. This, you know, you you would intuitively assume that a country giving away money wants to have full control of how that works. They don't do that. The American journalist again, Theodore White says this The Americans took a simple tact. Let the Europeans first diagram their own problems, deciding who could physically supply whom on the continent with what they needed for each other, ignoring the payment difficulties in European currencies. Then all should bring to the Americans, dispensers of the Great Purse, what the net margin of their need was in dollars and supplies from the outside world, which the Marshall Plan would cover . Now that's what he's just basically described is a European common market . That is what is taking place in those negotiations. That is l Europeans being forced for their own benefit to look at the continent as a whole and not as an abstract concept anymore. Suddenly, all the stuff, you know, whether it's George Orwell or Sartre or Cameron, all of that's gone. Suddenly it's operational logistical real ity. And that right there, that model really becomes the model by which these dreams start to be processed into objective reality. Aaron Powell But do you think it's ironic that so many people talked about Europe as a th ird force to resist the domination of either Russia or America. And yet and America is constantly going, come on guys, get it together. We want you to kind of have a economic federation, NATO was meant to bring Europe together under America's military umbrella. Like America basically up until Nixon is is going, We're rooting for you guys. You know, so it's sort of like that th they don't obviously see a United Europe as some kind of like threatening . They don't love They don't love army proposals. European army proposals. Usually that's the point where the Americans are like, Oh, hang on a minute, I'm not so keen about that. But even then, they're not trying to sabotage them. They're just not as keen as they are on the other parts. The other part, you basically want like a big, big market over here that you can work with. You also want an outpost, sort of not an outpost that's too diminutive towards Europe, but you basically want like a continent that shares your values, that's going to be working with you collegiately in international institutions, in trading networks, and international law. Like why would you not want it? You know, it's more the question has to be the other way. When you see someone like Trump obviously hate it, you think why would you hate it? You know what I mean? You don't want a kind of big mess of rival nationalisms anymore, do you? And the better Europe works, the less likely America for its own strict self-interest is gonna likely become militarily embroiled in another conflict, for instance of the type that Trump himself claims to hate. Wanna know the real story of how Oasis made Britain mad for it? How friends turned us on to coffee culture and super layered hair? The secrets of nirvana, train spotting, gay hookups, Diana's revenge dress, and what it was really like to be a spice girl? Plunge back into the decade when the world fell for Cool Britannia, Bumster Jeans, and Lemon Hooch with Talk 90s to me. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you use Spotify, you can watch the whole show too. That's Talk 90s to me. Out every Monday . America's war on Iran has made one thing absolutely clear . It's this. Under Donald Trump and his ideological friends, America will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. And former friends and allies just have to suck it up. What does the world look like when America is no longer a dependable ally and for some looks more like a predator? I'm Gavin Esler, and in a brand new mini-series from This Is Not a Drill, I talk to experts, diplomats, and analysts about this harsh new reality. Do democracies have what it takes to protect themselves? And who, if anyone, can step into the void that America has left? That's America against the Wldor, a new four-part series. Search This Is Not a Drill on your favorite app for twice-weekly episodes, or get the complete series right now when you support us on Patreon. Search Patreon, this is not a drill to find out more . So Europe has emerged from the war with these three new emotions that favor union, and I think that's as important as the kind of economics here, right? They they've got this fierce desire for peace and stability, which they definitely have not had. Uh they've got a more relaxed attitude towards central planning because they've all experienced it during more and they can see it often works. And this desperate need to look to the future and forget the past. Which obviously takes place particularly uh in Germany. So the German question is the big obstacle. Everybody is worried about what Germany is going to do. So it starts with you know the Marshall Plan is explicitly a way to avoid repeating the mistakes of Versailles. And you allow Germany to recover because you see what happens when it doesn't. President Truman says, you can have vengeance or peace, but you can't have both. Lovely. Which I think is applicable in so many situations, right? So many. But most European countries are still understandably quite scared of Germany. So they want it to be economically strong, but politically and militar ily weak. And especially France would like this . But there is pressure again from America. In October 1949, the US Secretary of State Dean Aitchison urges the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann to bring West Germany, which has now become a nation, into the fold. So Jean Monnet, who has been working uh on economic planning with de Gaulle, he realiz es that actually the economic planning isn't going to work unless you've sorted out this issue, right, of Lorraine and the Ruhr. So you've got the steel plants of Lorraine, they need the coal from the Ruhr . There has to be this collaboration. So Monet proposes what becomes the Schumann Plan, where you put Franco German coal and steel production under a have to say the word supranational high authority. That just can dire cts production and pricing and the idea is other European countries can join in future, just starts with with France and Germany. And German Chancellor Konrad Edenauer se es this as the route back to the international community. And he echoes exactly what Kalerge said. Perhaps unintentionally, I don't even knew that Kalerge said this. The people must be given a new ideology. It can only be a European one. Oh wow. It's a way of replacing Nazism, of stopping Nazism flooding back. Because I'm actually terrified because obviously there are an awful lot of Nazis in Germany in the late 1940s. Tons of the fuckers. Um and there is a real concern that they're going to rally again. And this this happens, there's local elections. This this blows my eye. There are local elections where basically fascists are winning significant percentage of the vote in certain parts of Germany in the late 1940s, a time when you would think fascism um had been shown uh to end badly. It's just incredi this period, specifically the late 40s is so interesting because all like the mythmaking that we build, right? It hasn't happened yet. No. And so everything is much more hazy and chaotic and counterintuitive than you would expect it to be. So Schumann writes in his declaration on the 9th of May 1950 that in the 1930s a united Europe was not achieved and we had war. Remember, a lot of his colleagues in France in the twenties and thirties would have been these people like Briand , um, who would have been a re in the in that kind of collegae school of thought, and it failed. So his aim is to make war between France and Germany not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. If they're bound together in this cr you know by coal and steel in these crucial border regions. So he sums up Monet's strategy. So he says Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solid arity. I mean that that's ex that's exactly the way they were to do it. This is a first step in the federation of Europe. It's a long term vision, but it's sold as a short term fix. Yes. Which by the way , will not be the first disingenuous piece of communication that we see emerging from this project. You say disingenuous, I say canny. Italy and the Benelux countries, that's Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, also signed up and form theedck of Blo Six that signs the April 1951 Paris Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community. And funnily enough, I think I got this from Tony Jutt. The Six, the territory of the Six map s pretty well onto the shape of Charlemagne's empire eleven hundred years earlier. Holy fuck. There's some differences because you did Charlemagne didn't have the south of Italy and he did have the north of Spain. But basically it's like France , Germany, Benelux, Northern Italy. Yeah. And this is it, I mean this is basically you know the moment of birth of a formal project for European unity. Monet becomes the first president of the high authority. It's a very game of Thrones, the high authority, isn't it? Yeah, it's fantastic. Also, by the way, I mean he's he's a f just a couple of years later he's handed a European passport. There's a reminder that the guy's always an idealist. He's handed a European passport fundamentally ceremonial for administrators so they can move around without it being too much hassle. And he just passes his aide his French passport and just says you can burn that now. It's like you know like he envisions you know, for him, this is the creation of a new type of Well he proclaims the ECS C Europe's first government which for something which literally clues in the name is meant to be just about managing the production and price of coal and steel . He's really saying the quiet part out loud. This is my disingenuous bit. Okay, so I think you see you we will see this all the way through. Just that basically the project is of a level of ambition that is almost unheard of in the history of man. And yet it scares the shit out of people because it's one of the most ambitious projects in the history of man. So every time it scares the shit out of someone, whoever's trying to get it to the next goes like, oh lads, nothing to see here, lads. It's just it's just coal and steel. Oh, and by the way, there's a government for Europe fucking never happened before and you know. But off they go. And so you constantly get that refray of you push for this very ambitious way, and as soon as there's pushback, you just gotta be like, Oh don't that's that's just a tiny thing over here, nothing for you to fret about. Yeah, no, I want to I want to talk about more about that when I talk about sort of Britain's uh response to this. But but tell us about the ECSC . Well I mean first look this is this is the moment the the idea this is like the moment of change of like of the magic potion where what was idealistic becomes pragmatic. As uh Luke van Middeldaer said, at foundation, this project ceased to be a utopian mission and became a practical construction site, the workplace of six states . There's a fundamental ambiguity there, I think, right, in this early moment. You can see actually, I think stretches all the way back to you talking about is is it a Europe that's about peace and unity or is it a Europe that's about force and style ? But already at this early stage it's not strictly clear what this is. Is this a peace project? Is it an attempt to make war impossible by uniting coal and steel, abolishing states, you know, maybe getting rid of uh sovereignty, competition, taking a step towards world peace? Is that what it is? Or is it a power project? Is it we're fusing nations together to make them larger, to make them stronger than they would otherwise be, to defend joint interests, you know, to be able to stand up against the US, against Moscow. You know, the Sartre Cameroon thing sounds like it was world peace, but also had a pretty heavy dose of, you know, actually, this is a force project, this is about power. Those things don't have to be contradictory, but they are distinct from each other, and they kind of get muddled up in the way people talk about it and the way that people continue to talk about it now . There is the sort of beginning form of what looks like and continues to look like the institutions of a state. And we're going to go through them. They're not going to have these names right now, but it will ultimate in in the end, it'll be the commission, which is kind of sort of a civil service, um, the council, which is kind of sort of a senate , a parliament, which is the legislature, and a court, and then the government function is shared between the commission and the council in a perpetual tug of waright where they f for domination. That's going to be one of the core themes that we'll see throughout this year. And this is already there in the ECSC. And you can already see the starting of this process take place. So and of course it freaks people out quite quickly because what they should be is like a treaty for coal and steel. You know, treat the way treaties are set up is like two countries make a deal, they might have some kind of, you know, adjudication system if there's a dispute. So there's some kind of judicial function. But it's a very limited idea. It's just two stat es. They're not signing up to a whole new project you know experiment in political society. And yet that's not the way it looks. From quite early on, it looks distinct. So the power to decide on coal and steel is handed over to the higher authority, as you said, which will later become the Commission. And governments relinquish a bit of their sovereignty to it. It is functioning as a sort of government, but only within the scope of the treaty. It's only for bits of your law that are concerning coal, you know, let's say coal prices or conditions in steel. Everything else continues as before. Um, the court is set up in order to oversee compliance with the treaty. Of course. And you would have that. You would have a kind of, you know, some place to solve your disputes. You would have it now for a trade deal that you do, a bilateral trade deal. And yet it's very much court with a capital C, and the way that this court starts behaving in the, you know, five, ten, fifteen years from now is quite extraordinary and quite revolutionary. What's unprecedented is that the people in those two institutions no longer represent their national government or parli ament. They represent continental interests. Right. And that is a completely new thing. So Robert Schuman says, from now on, the treaties must create not just obligations, but institutions , which is to say supranational organs with their own independent authority. Within these organs there will be no confrontations between national interests that need arbitration or reconciliation. These organs are at the service of a supranational community with objectives and interests that are distinct from those of each of the participating nations. This is really where you get that sense of the rhetoric being way to wards the international end rather than the national end. Yeah. Monet basically just wants members to write the rules, member states, to write the rules and then hand it all over to the higher authority that he's in charge of. And it's like I will do implementation. And the Dutch pretty quickly raise an alarm and be like, no, hang on, that's that's like a political that you can't just have basically civil servants. You can't have bureaucrats deciding all that. There there's got to be some kind of political element there. So money gives in. And in 1950 they create the council of minist ers . This represents national government. So you just have ministers from a national government, the foreign secretary, you know, et cetera, sitting in this in this body. Uh it's advisory . It doesn't really have executive power. But quite quickly, it's clear that that's like a very different way of looking at things to what the higher authority does. Higher authority is looking at things with this continental institutional view, completely distinct from the nation-state. The council of ministers is composed of ministers of national governments who are looking at things almost like an old school summit, you know, where you get together and have a conversation. So you're getting almost these two different visions of Europe that coexist all the way through when later on we see people like Margaret Thatcher being like, Well, I didn't think this is what Europe was about. It's because their experience is Council of Ministers type, you know, where it's a forum, essentially, for a bunch of sovereign national states to have a chat, rather than, you know, a whole new experiment in political society. And then the third part, the assembly, created in nineteen fifty-two. There's originally no plan for a parliament. Like the original plan is just to have a domestic parliamentary ratification process. Nothing in the back of the band, mate, it's just coal and steel. Like France is looking at it and being like, well we need to be able to exercise control over the high authority. You can see over and over again, nation states, look at this high authority, then go. For a start, that's quite a fucking name you've chosen, quite a role you've given yourself. How are we going to exercise some kind of control ? Most of them think that would be national governments, but Germany is the country that suggests national parliaments should be the way to do it. So they established the common assembly, the precursor to the European Parliament. 78 appointed parliament arians, drawn from the national parliaments of member states to keep a check on the authority . Well, no one gives a fuck what these guys do. They turn up, they're just going to talk about coal prices , steel production, no one's covering in the newspapers, nobody gives a shit. But weirdly, as you know, institutions create incentives, and as soon as those parliamentarians meet, they start behaving in this extraordinary way . Like they sit, they meet for the first time in 1952, they sit alphabetically to prevent any tendency to sit according to your nation-state. Right. They set up political groupings that are cross-continental, Christian Democrat s, Social Democrats and Liberals, in other words, basically the kind of political groupings they used to at home, but now on a continental level, they essentially unilaterally establish a European polit ical realm . Then on the background to this, this is the last thing I think to say on it, is as a sort of colliery of the coal and steel element, you start to see the creation of a social Europe. And as I said before, that's primarily due to the Italians. So the other five are mostly just concerned with institutional setup. The Italian delegation is concerned with social rights for miners and steel workers. Why? Partly it's idealistic, because they have that tradition of a large sort of federalist movement for Europe within the trade union movement in Italy. And partly it's very practical, which is that Italy has a very large labour surplus for export. And so it's thinking, how are our guys going to get treated when they go work in France? So they put this idea forward, basically, that skilled miners and steel workers can work in any member state and receive the same pay as native workers . Now, Germany and the Netherlands, very happy with it. Belgium and France are anti because they've got a bunch of Italian workers coming over, but the Italians succeed. And that moment, that success, is the start, not just of the concept of freedom of movement in Europe, one of the most beautiful achievements of the project, but also of Europe's entire social dimension. So just to look at the politics and the psychology of the ECSC There's an argument that Europe starts off in easy mode, because the six foreign ministers who signed the treaty, they're all Christian Democrats, all Catholics, which makes Britain and Scandinavia quite suspicious. This is something we don't think about so much. The difference between Catholic and Protestant Europe. It was quite big then . They're very committed to social cohesion, collective responsibility . Also, some of the key statesmen, Schumann, Konrad Edenauer from Germany, the Italian Prime Minister , Alcide de Gasper, they all grew up in contested border regions that had been part of other countries and empires in their lifetime. So they all have a sense of the f luidity of national borders and identities. They're multilingual. They've moved in and out of like the Austro-Hungarian Empire or between Germany and France. Belgium and Luxembourg, they're bilingual. They're not so obsessed with sovereignty. Plus, they're all relatively wealthy nations. I mean, obviously, you know, we're talking post-war recovery, but they are all relatively wealthy nations. The poorer countries in Europe, they're conveniently either they're behind the Iron Curtain or they're being run by authoritarians. Spain, Portugal, Greece. So you start off with with quite a lot of it, a real sense of you saying Europe is an idea. It's not that there's you're not trying to bring together too many different things here, notwithstanding the the old sort of hostility between Germany and France. A lot of cultural similarities. So who's missing Britain under Labour's Clement Atley . We've mentioned this um in in previous episodes, but you know, you just have to kind of remember that back then uh Labour was more Eurosceptic and the Tories were more Europhile . So the Tories are denouncing the government for not joining in the talks on the CSC. In the 1950 Commons debate, Anthony Eden warns that if Britain stays out, then Germany and France will shape Europe. Which turns out to be very, very true. Churchill, of all people, accuses Labour of jingoism. Wow. Can you imagine? Jesus God. And this debate sees the maiden speech from ultra-europhile Tory Ted Heath, who becomes a very important figure in part two . So the uncharitable reading, almost like the post-Brexit reading, is that it's all British exceptionalism and Europhobia. And there is some evidence for this. Labour's Herbert Morrison tells Aidenauer. I love this quote though. It was a fact that Britain was an island and that was not the fault of the British. That was the way God had ar arranged things and the British had to make the best of it. But actually I rethought this because there are these really solid reasons not to join at that point. So one, Britain does have commitments to the Commonwealth. What remains of the Empire, which at that point is quite a lot. Two, Europe's economies are much weaker with lower wages, so the trade unions won't accept it. And senior civil servants conclude in 1949: there is no attraction for us in long-term economic cooperation with Europe. At best, it will be a drain on our resources. At worst, it can seriously damage our economy. That would be a mad thing to say in 1959. In nineteen forty-nine, some rationale to that. They don't know the recovery that the Marshall Plan is going to sort of bring about. And as we said in our Thatcher episode, it wasn't really until Delors, I mean we're talking in the eighties, that British trade unions are convinced of any kind of case for being involved in Europe. Aaron Powell Yeah, the unions are really not very friendly towards this . Three, it might get in the way of the special relationship, though in fact as we explained, the Americans are furious with Britain's refusal. Like there's a constant misunderstanding that America is down on European unity . Four , it has been spotted by uh Labour politicians. This is not just about coal and steel, but the nucleus of a future union. Front Secretary Ernest Bevan, one of the greatest mixed metaphors in political history . If you open that Pandora's box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out. No. I mean he's never that elegant, but that is fucking atrocious. Churchill, of course, he wants it both ways . He says we could not accept full membership of a federal system of Europe, but we could get something out of it. So it's with Europe, but not of it. So you can argue that Attlee had a much clearer sense of Monet's intentions and the implications of the European project than Churchill and the Tories did, who thought they could do oh, a little bit of this but a little bit out. Yeah. And I think the Europeans listen to Churchill's rhetoric and they kind of expect when he comes back into government that Britain's gonna have a close relationship. And it doesn't. You know what I mean? Ultimately, you know, it is just pretty words to him about something going on pretty far away. Monet is quite sympathetic. He says UK felt no need to exorcise history. He understands the European project as his response to trauma, humiliation, the complete failure of the status quo. Yes. Britain hasn't experienced those things. Yes. Doesn't feel the status quo failed, hasn't been humili ated. But Monet said, even though he understood the emotional impulse and the calculations about the Commonwealth and so on, he did think that Britain had missed its chance to take that leadership role, and it is France that gets to take that role for decades. Yeah. You know, as as the leader of Europe. And it, you know, I I say this is a Francophile and I bow to no one in my Francophilia, but it doesn't do a great job of it. Well, just to just to wrap this episode, just an example of kind of the problems of France, Germany, Britain, this kind of awkward triangle of fucker y. The German question is still not resolved. There is still fear of what happens when Germany gets its uh weaponry back. So Manet, again, drafts a plan for a European defense community with a joint army under the command of NATO. America is very keen on this. And his former assistant during the war, René Plavon, is now Prime Minister of France, which would be great. If you're a work experience that is Prime Minister. Great. So this becomes the Plavon plan, which would have led to political and defence union. But the French voters aren't having it. There's various reasons. Uh France mem is having a war in Vietnam. The other war in Vietnam, uh that people outside France don't tend to think about that much. Yes. But traumatic event. Quite neurotic about sovereignty and their own defence. So the Nationalists and the Communists in the National Assembly team up to reject it. They say it's before. It just like it was just this kind of mad combination of ide ological muddles. But the debate just explodes in front. One observer says between January nineteen fifty three and August nineteen fifty four, the biggest politico ideological quarrel broke out that France has known since Well because it's so weird because France initiates the project and then France kills the project. So Monet is heartbroken, probably a little fed up with France. So he resigns from the high authority and forms a new action committee for the United States of Europe. Um, and that becomes a project for the rest of his his life. He's just ultimately, this is a good lesson as well here. The French have totally shot themselves in the foot with this by rejecting the uh defense community. Because Anthony Eden comes up with this alternative defense policy, the Western European Union, which turns out to be more generous to Germany than the Plavon plan was. So West Germany joins NATO, and after ten years, the Allied occupation finally ends. I mean, this is essentially the end of the Second World War. In Germany and Austria, Austria becomes neutral. Of war are released, the last financial settlements are made, war crimes investigations are dropped. Yeah. Which seems bad, obviously, but there was really a sense of like we have to move on. It's like, do you want vengeance or do you want peace? And it's not about this anymore. It's about the Cold War. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, we're looking over here and we need Germany to be up and running and functioning, Western Germany to be up and running and functioning if the Cold War is what we're involved in right now. Right. And the Warsaw Pact, which when I was younger, had a su I'd assumed was a direct response to NATO. It wasn't. It was in nineteen fifty five as a direct response to the Western European Union. No. Six years after NATO, that was what it objected to, the idea that Western Europe was getting this military alliance. The suspicion lingers and there's this brilliant image of America again being guys, guys, like some marriage counsellor literally wants them to have a joint European nuclear deterrent so that like they didn't have to have you know we're now saying with God we rely too much on the American nuclear umbrella. And they were saying, you should have your own guys. And Britain and France, who the the two nuclear powers at that point. Well they go, well then the Germans would have a say over nuclear bombs. Yeah. And we're not having that. So it's sort of like you've got this let's move on from the war , and yet obviously it's not that long ago. And people are like, yeah. The thing is , if you remember what Germany did, and so there's this constant fear. So everybody 's you know, Germany and France don't really want Britain involved too much. Um France is very scared of Germany getting too strong. Germany is resentful of France being in the driving seat . America's getting increasingly exasperated. We've literally pumped billions in here. We've got our troops stationed there. We don't want our troops stationed indefinitely in Europe . And that's maybe that's a good place to leave it with just the the incredible complexities of trying to set up international or supranational bodies when you've got all these deep national psychodramas and grudges in play. Yeah, exactly. But at this point we have solid foundations for the organizational reality of European unity. And they will grow. You know what I mean? The thing is, one you have all of these problems, you have all these restraints, but it's set in place. And once it's set in place, it beds in and it begins to grow. And now, after having slagged off Bevan for mixing metaphors, I have just managed to do precisely the same thing. But nevertheless, I'm sure our audience will be very generous and forgive me. It's very hard not to mix uh metaphors. Thank you for listening and supporting our work. All our sources are in the show notes. We'll be back for part two of European Union. If you want to help us tell your friends and race us on uh iTunes, and you can go further by backing us on Patreon for just a few pounds a month. Lots of benefits, advanced episodes, exclusive QA episodes, merchandise, cut price priority tickets to uh the next live shows. And you're enabling us to dive into the research, which hopefully it was evident in this episode that as usual we've done an awful lot of reading to try and tell uh a different kind of story. But this is really how the new economy sort of works, really, which is that you support the things that you want to see more of and hopefully in a world where everything is just tremendously shouty and know nothing, we're providing something that's a little bit less shouty and a little bit more know something. And all of that takes like an awful lot of words. 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