General De Gaulle speaking on BBC Radio during the war.BBC Broadcasting House/ Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.Britain’s history in post-war Europe is that of a rocky relationship. It stood on the side-lines when the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created in 1951, and chose not to join the six states founding the European Economic Community in 1957. “I never understood why the British did not join the European Community, which was so much in their interest” the ECSC’s architect Jean Monnet once said. “I came to the conclusion that it must have been because it was the price of victory – the illusion that you could maintain what you had, without change.”
They eventually changed their minds. But although five of the six founding members supported British participation in the European project, French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed it twice. It took political change in France and a major effort in British diplomacy to make way for a third and finally successful attempt.
“Letting England in (…) would be for the six members to pre-emptively agree to all kinds of tricks, delays, and pretences that would attempt to mask the destruction of a structure that was built through so much hardship and on so much hope” Charles de Gaulle replied to a reporter asking for the motives of his veto. And: “For the British Islands to truly moor themselves to the continent, they will have to undergo another very vast, very deep transformation.”
