The Balancing Act: National Identity and Sovereignty for Britain in Europe

The Balancing Act

National Identity and Sovereignty for Britain in Europe

Atsuko Ichijo

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Preface by Dr John Hutchinson

In their own eyes, the British are a singular people within the European Union. As Dr Ichijo outlines, they are out of step with other members in dichotomising national and European identities. The British glory in a unique history as a self-governing island, separate from the benighted peoples of the European continent, and as a global imperial power that established with the USA a world Anglophone civilisation. It is a sense of the superiority of their parliamentary institutions that frustrates the British in their dealings with their European neighbours. Britain was a late-comer to the European project, converted to its necessity by its precipitate decline as a world power, its loss of empire and its growing consciousness of economic weakness. The British joined reluctantly and largely for instrumental reasons, with little understanding of or sympathy with the goals of political harmonisation embraced by populations fearful of the destructive legacy of nationalism on the European continent. In the eyes of their neighbours, they have wished to enjoy the economic benefits of the union without paying the political price. In this well-crafted and incisive study Dr Ichijo illuminates why the British perceive their relationship to the European Union as so problematic, by demonstrating how their national identity is historically linked to a concept of sovereignty that is at variance with their membership of the Union.

She does so by a careful examination of the historical formation of Britain as a conglomerate state and of key moments in its interrelations with the European powers. She relates this effectively to the governing discourses of politicians, the mass media and of the British people. What comes out is the centrality of the rhetoric of sovereignty to political elites and to the population at large, one that conceives of Britain’s engagement with Europe as a zero-sum game. A second related theme is the power of geographical images - of Britain as an island, in giving sustenance to this idea of the British nation as by nature separate and autonomous. It follows then that the European Union is seen as ‘other’ and that involvement in European decision-making tends to be viewed in terms of threat rather than of possibility. As Dr Ichijo argues, the concept of sovereignty that underlies this is somewhat naive, since nation-states are not autonomous, economically, militarily or politically, in an increasingly interdependent world. Only by pooling sovereignty can states maximise their national interests in the contemporary world, and the European Union is one instrument by which this can be managed. This, she shows, is understood more among British political elites than the general population, for example by the government of Tony Blair who, using the opportunity of European enlargement by inclusion of more market-oriented post-Soviet states, has sought to transform the corporatist consensus.

Although alienation is expressed by the general population at times as fear, a more pervasive reaction is that of indifference, an interesting finding that is somewhat surprising given the vehemence of so many media campaigns. This supports the value of a micro-analysis that does not automatically read off press reaction as indicative of popular attitudes. As she suggest, this indifference might in part be explained as part of a general disengagement from politics. But it is also explicable by the perception that she documents of the arcaneness of the Union, so easily represented as an inaccessible bureaucracy, remote from the people. This, one might also add, is enhanced by the incoherence of the institutions and their justifications. For some (particularly the big nation-states), the Union is primarily intergovernmental in character, designed to maximise the powers of nation-states; for others (particularly the Commission and the European parliament) it has more of a statist character, designed to create a federal union that will rival the USA and will absorb ever greater powers from the nation-states; and for still others (particularly nations without states and the regions) , it is sui-generis, a postmodern entity exemplifying the multiple sovereignties where authority is located appropriate to the problem at hand.

These different European visions impact on the constituent nation-states, particularly a Britain which is being transformed by the devolution of power to the Scots and the Welsh and by its increasing multiethnic, if not multicultural character of its population. Dr Ichijo, because of her earlier work on contemporary Scottish nationalism, is particularly well qualified to identify the English core of Britishness: how the yoking an older English mythology of Anglo-Saxon liberties to what is essentially a modern political community, has given a ‘primordial’ character to British parliamentary institutions. This deep-seated defence of British political institutions, however, is not shared by Scots who view ‘Europe’ in much more positive terms.

As she also shows, the discourse of sovereignty has had real consequences. It has prevented the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, from committing Britain to the euro, and political elites both on the left and the right have used their relationship with the USA in a balancing act with the EU in order to maximise British autonomy, on the one hand seeking prestige in Europe by presenting themselves as Europe’s lever of influence on the USA, the global hegemon, and on the other, finding influence with the USA as a principled advocate within the EU of the Atlantic alliance. This supports her contention that sovereignty is increasingly exercised by participation in international institutions. The question for many in an unpredictable and fast changing world is whether the European Union, as presently constituted, is well suited to advance national interests or whether with its increased membership, unreformed processes and yet expanding ambitions it has become too unwieldy an instrument. The results of recent referendums on the constitution indicate a growing disillusion with the project and even fear among founding members, France and the Netherlands, of a developing gap between the interests of European elites and popular interests. May Dr Ichijo’s enterprising study inspire others to undertake a sustained study of the relationship between the other European nation-states and the Union, the discourses through which it is portrayed, and the interelationships between political elites, mass media and the general population. She has provided an excellent model of how this should be done.

John Hutchinson

London School of Economics and Political Science

Acknowledgements

I would first of all like to thank all of the interviewees who willingly and amiably co-operated with my interview work, and especially Dr Jessica Jacobson, Dr Roger Humphry and Simon Jacobson for facilitating the interviews. I would also like to thank Dr Gordana Uzelac (London Metropolitan University) for carrying out the statistical analysis for Chapter Five. The original report on the survey data was written jointly by Dr Uzelac and myself, but the chapter in this book has been extensively re-written by me with a view to addressing the issue of sovereignty. I would also like to thank Dr John Hutchinson who has not only been a source of encouragement but has also kindly contributed the preface for this book. I have received further support and encouragement from a number of people, including Professors Bo Strath (European University Institute) and Anna Triandafillydou (Democritus University of Thrace), and I would like to express my gratitude to them. Steve Mock has done a great job getting my clumsy English into shape. And, last but not least, my husband, Dr Hayo Krombach, deserves mention for his tireless campaign to lift my often sagging mood.

The book is based on the research reports written by myself for the EURONAT project funded by the European Commission Research DG (contract no. HPSE-CT2001-00044). An earlier version of Chapters One and Two has appeared as ‘A balancing act: British state and nation formation and Europe’, in Atsuko Ichijo and Willfried Spohn (eds) (2005) Entangled Identities: Nations and Europe, Aldershot: Ashgage, pp. 19–36.

Needless to say, all errors are mine.

Atsuko Ichijo

London, July 2007

Introduction

Britain’s relationship with Europe has been a perennial question in Britain in the early twenty-first century. The vast number of publications on this topic reflects the importance, or at least recognition of the importance, of this question in the United Kingdom today. Perhaps one of the best known polemics of recent times is Hugo Young’s This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, published in 1998. The problems of Britain’s relationship with Europe has continued to excite both politicians and academics into the twenty-first century, and policy proposals by the Fabian Society, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Institute for Study of Civil Society and so on, as well as academic studies of the historical dimension (Keith Robbins) and foreign policy dimensions (Mark Aspinwall), just to name but a few, have been published.[1] ‘Europe’, or more precisely, Britain’s relationship with it, is surely an issue that cannot be wished away in the contemporary United Kingdom (Stephens 2005).

There are many aspects to the question of Britain’s relationship with Europe; historical, economic, geo-political, intellectual, cultural, and even psychological. There is no doubt that these various aspects have become intractably intertwined throughout the long history of the Anglo-European relationship. Britain’s relationship with Europe is a complex issue, perhaps not exceedingly more complex than many other phenomena in the world, but just as much. In order to launch an investigation into any such highly complex issue, one has to find a small opening through which an overview of the whole can be obtained. In the current volume, the concept of ‘sovereignty’ serves as the guide to this intertwined story of Britain and Europe.

Sovereignty is usually seen as a legal or political concept which is by and large detached from everyday experience. However, Britain’s relationship with Europe is more often than not framed within the context of sovereignty, or debates about sovereignty, not only by politicians but also by the press and sometimes by ordinary people. Most notably, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), in its 2001 General Election Manifesto, depicted the European Union as a threat to Britishness because of its supposed imposition of a uniform set of rules and regulations:

Not only is our currency under threat, but our entire legal system, our British nationality, our right to free speech and freedom of association, our police, our armed forces, our own agricultural policy, our right to trade freely and the parliamentary system that underpins British liberty.

Britain’s involvement with the EU is therefore a matter of substance. According to the UKIP, it is about what makes Britain Britain. Discussion over the euro often takes place within the framework of ‘sovereignty as national identity’. For instance, a female shop assistant in Inverness explained why she was against the introduction of the euro in the UK as follows:

Because I think it’s nice to keep your own identity. I do think I am not a royalist. I am not saying it because the Queen’s head is on the coins or whatever. It is nice to keep your own identity. I don’t know about when it comes to working in an international way then you have to obviously work in euros. ... I think it’s nice for everyone to have their own currency (R24).

This response illustrates a situation in which the issue of a single currency is immediately translated into a question of national identity and the right to remain different without interference. The external dimension of sovereignty, that is, the right to be free from outside interference and to be treated as an equal, is clearly reflected in this response even though the respondent is not claiming to deliver a profound judgement on the issue of sovereignty. Obviously, this is only one of the ways in which Britain’s relationship with Europe is pondered over and talked about in Britain today, but it is one that can be found in different sections of society and is therefore an influential one.

Sovereignty in Britain in the twenty-first century is therefore not a mere abstract notion but something that penetrates even the views of people in the street. In fact, sovereignty is often depicted and described as the very essence of British national identity. Because the concept of sovereignty is widely used at various levels in contemporary Britain, it can serve as a unifying thread towards understanding different views and ideas about Britain’s relationship with Europe as expressed by different sections of British society. The current volume therefore aims to achieve an integrated understanding of the relationship between Britain and Europe by treating sovereignty not as an abstract concept, but as a lived and experienced reality.

Incidentally, this approach to sovereignty is best suited to respond to recent developments in the wider theoretical debate surrounding this concept. It has now become a truism to argue that one can no longer take what had previously been understood as sovereignty at face value. According to scholars participating in the sovereignty debate, sovereignty has changed due to globalisation, European integration and the end of the Cold War. Some would go so far as to argue that the very nature of sovereignty itself has changed, and have proposed a wide range of new terms to capture these changes such as ‘complex sovereignty’ (Grande and Pualy: 2005), ‘late sovereignty’ (Walker 2003), ‘post-sovereignty’ (Keating 2003) and ‘reconfigured sovereignty’ (Ilgen: 2003). This line of enquiry contests the idea that sovereignty is indivisible and questions its taken-for-granted link to the state. Sovereignty has now been transformed into something qualitatively different from what was previously known as the basis of the Westphalian system. Although the central idea to the existing international order - sovereignty - has changed, the reality - the political or international system - has not accommodated this change sufficiently and we are now in the middle of the process of adaptation.

Others, in contrast, would argue that the core ideas about sovereignty have in fact changed little, but rather the context within which sovereignty is interpreted and exercised has changed so as to make sovereignty as an institution more complex (Holsti 2004: 141). Some focus on more empirical issues and argue that the emergence of pragmatic compromises over sovereignty between political actors indicates a change in the way that sovereignty is understood and translated into political programmes (Doyle 2004). Addressing this question of whether or not sovereignty itself has changed is beyond the scope of this volume. This is not a book about sovereignty but rather one that uses the concept of sovereignty as a means to gain access into an equally, if not less, complicated issue. What these recent developments in the debate about sovereignty suggest to the current study is that ‘sovereignty’ can be employed as a mirror that reflects changes in the modern world.

Another meeting point between this study and recent trends in the scholarly discussions of sovereignty lies in the area of methodology. Many theorists now propose to regard sovereignty not as ‘essence’ but as ‘resources’ or an ‘instrument’. Neil Walker defines sovereignty as a ‘claim’, a ‘speech act’ that aims at ordering power (Walker 2003: 6). In a similar vein, Ulf Hedetoft argues that sovereignty should be understood as form, not as content (Hedetoft: 1998). These claims appear to corroborate Jens Bartelson in his assertion that ‘the relationship between the very term sovereignty, the concept of sovereignty and the reality of sovereignty is historically open, contingent and unstable’ (Bartelson 1995: 2). In other words, sovereignty has not