Britain will remain in magnificent Europe

In 1999, on the eve of the millennium, a book came out by the Dutch journalist Geert Mak with the evocative title, In Europe: Travels through the twentieth century. Eight-hundred-and-fifty pages long and taking in just about every country in Europe, from Ireland to Latvia, and from Finland to Greece, it was a genuine tour de force, described by Reaction’s own Allan Massie as “a wonderfully rich journey through time and space” and “a splendidly panoramic picture of our common European home”.

Mak’s modus operandi was simplicity itself. He would turn up in Paris, or Berlin, or London, or Rome – or Sarajevo –  and talk to people, young and old, about what it meant for them to be citizens of the world’s most diverse and fascinating continent. They all had tales to tell. They spoke a bewildering range of languages and followed a variety of faiths, or none. Each generation among them had experienced great hardship as well as years of plenty. They had known absolutism, fascism, communism, anarchy, nationalism, total war and the slow, steady decay of certainty. They had endured the most momentous hundred years in all of human history and come out the other side as survivors, still loving their homelands and still, however dysfunctional it seemed, aware of a common identity as Europeans.

As Mak put it from his vantage point on the cusp of the millennium: “Every one of us, whether we like it or not, carries within us the amazing twentieth century. The stories will continue to make the rounds in whispers, generation after generation: the countless experiences and dreams, the moments of courage and betrayal, the memories full of fear and pain, the images of joy.”

That was twenty years ago. Today, with the twenty-first century almost one-fifth gone, what is the shared experience, or apprehension, of Europe? Mak said Berlin could not be understood without Versailles, or London without Munich, Vichy without Verdun, Moscow without Stalingrad, Bonn without Dresden, Vásárosbéc without Yalta, Amsterdam without Auschwitz. But what do any of these places mean to us today?

Berlin, to younger generations of Brits, means dirty weekends, stag dos and Angela Merkel. Paris is rugby, wearisome visits to the Louvre and food that isn’t as good as it’s cracked up to be. Vichy is a bottle of water that tastes of sweat – best avoided. Moscow is prostitutes and oligarchs, ruled by Vladimir Putin. Bonn is nothing at all, much like Dresden (did we bomb that?). And where’s Vásárosbéc? Never heard of it (I have to admit, I’m with them there – it turns out it’s a village in Hungary). And Amsterdam is prostitutes, drugs and canals.

I could go on. In the nineteenth century, when the original version of open frontiers was in operation and you didn’t need a passport to travel, Europe was visited mainly by the wealthy and their offspring, or by soldiers fighting the latest war. The Grand Tour was a rite of passage for anyone with cultural pretensions. Those who could afford it would rent villas for the summer in Como, or Biarritz, or Geneva, or Rome. They would visit sanatoriums or spas for a month to “take the waters”.  Statesmen, of course, went back and forth to draft treaties or attend peace conferences, while generals would establish their headquarters in Portugal or the Somme, or the Crimea for the duration of the latest campaign.

It was a different story for the poor. They rarely went anywhere. In Ireland, where I come from, escape meant America. Most ordinary folk never travelled more than 10 miles from the home or hovel in which they were born. Europe was “over there”. They had heard of it, of course. And sometimes what was over there came over here, usually in the form of an invasion: the Vikings in the ninth century, the Normans in 1169, the Spanish in 1601, the Dutch in 1689, the French in 1798, the Germans (by submarine) in 1914. But almost as soon as they came, they went again, leaving the field, as usual, to the English.

It was not all one-way traffic. Ireland’s devotion to Catholicism meant a general awareness of the power of Rome, and of the Popes in particular, whose remote moral authority was rarely disputed. Twelve-thousand “Wild Geese” fought for the French in the seventeenth century. Thousands more Irish troops took part in the peninsular wars, helping to free Spain and Portugal from Napoleon. World War One saw the Irish fall in droves at the Somme and Loos. Less gloriously, Ireland’s Blue Shirts took up cudgels for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, while during the global conflict that followed Dublin, both officially and through the IRA, maintained a close relationship with Nazi Germany.

Similar stories can be told of every small country in Europe. My friend Askold Krushelnycky, whose forebears came from the borderlands between Ukraine and Poland, had a grandfather who fought at different times for the Poles, Russians and Austrians, depending on who was in power at any given time. Jean-Claude Junker’s father was drafted into the Wehrmacht after the Nazis occupied Luxembourg; Donald Tusk’s grandfather, a Pole born in Gdansk, then known as Danzig, was similarly conscripted, only to defect later to the Free Polish forces.

The point is that Europe is all around us. It encompasses us. It defines who we are at least as much as the lure of the open sea. Even when we are ignorant of what is going on on the other side of the Channel – which is most of the time – we still regard it as having a bearing on us. The whole Brexit drama would be like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark if Merkel, Macron,Tusk and Juncker didn’t exist to remind Britons of the peceived threat to our liberties. Those who most resent the claims of the EU are the first to recall the glorious dead of the Somme, Ypres, Dunkirk, Normandy and Arnhem – all those “foreign fields that are forever England” – at which ordinary Tommies fought to free the Continent from tyranny.

But of course there is Europe and there is Europe. The European Union did not inherit the legacy of two thousand years of history on the day that the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957. The French are still the French in 2019, not Unit Two of the New European Territories. Germany is still Germany, Italy is still Italy and Spain is still Spain. And each of these great nations, together with all of the rest, the UK included, will continue to argue with each other in the centuries to come over who makes the best beer, the finest wine or the most succulent cheese. In much the same way, the chancelleries of Europe have not abandoned their rivalries. Paris still wishes to outshine Berlin. Rome remains convinced that it is one of the great European capitals, and the claims of Madrid and Warsaw can no longer be ignored. There may be a single market, but there will never be a single mindset.

As Britain withdraws (foolishly in my view) from the European Union, neither the lure of Europe, nor its importance, will diminish. Calais will still be 20 miles from Dover. If the 27 do ever get round to creating a European Army, what role should the British Army play? Will it, perhaps inevitably, join in, or will it remain outside as an élite force, ready to bolster the front line in the event of catastrophe? What about the Navy? Should it become once more a blue water fleet, closely allied to the Americans, or should it, while showing the flag in Asia and the Gulf, look primarily to the defence of Western Europe and the Atlantic approaches? These are questions for a future that is drawing nearer with every day that passes.

On the economic front, we have to assume that the present impasse on trade with Europe will be overcome and that goods and services will continue to flow. The regulation of such trade, including investment, will require us to have good relations not only with Brussels – though that will be essential – but with each of the 27. We will need to beef up our embassies with men and women untainted by resentment who know what they are doing and literally speak the language. Our mission to the EU in Brussels will have to grow. Our diplomats and trade experts must be of the highest quality, respected by the Berlaymont hierarchy and ready, now that we are set to lose our representation on the Commission, Council, Court and Parliament, to work closely towards shared goals.

The same has to apply to cultural and academic institutions. Exchanges are the currency of the mind. Students, scientists and artists must not feel that they have been cut off from their European patrimony. Instead, new schemes and new avenues must be opened. If we cannot be part of the mainstream, we should at least ensure that our tributaries continue to help feed the flow of information and ideas.

In other words, we need to start looking ahead to the future that begins as we become the biggest and most important country in Europe operating outside the confines of the EU.

But I will give the last word to Geert Mak, writing in 1999. “Europe’s weakness, its diversity, is also its greatest strength. Europe as a peace process [has been] a resounding success. Europe as an economic union is also well on the way. But the European project will surely fail unless a common cultural, political and, above all, democratic space is soon created alongside the rest. For let us not forget, Europe has only one chance to succeed.”