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Not Giving Up Sovereignty: The British Labour Party’s Alternative Vision of International Cooperation, 1933–1951

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European Integration Beyond Brussels

Abstract

The British Labour Party’s troubled relationship with today’s European Union (EU) and its opposition to federalism trace their historical roots to its vision of international socialist cooperation in the interwar and post-1945 period. International socialist cooperation could only take place voluntarily between independent socialist parties. This proved that cooperation among European nation states was desirable, but sovereignty was not to be pooled into supranational institutions—especially when it could mean permanent entanglement with the troublesome French, Germans and Italians. A different vision for the institutionalisation of European unity thus emerged. In addition to showing as much, the chapter gives insights into transnational history by proving that transnational socialisation did not always result in convergence and cooperation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clemens A. Wurm, ‘Britain and European Integration, 1945–63’, Contemporary European History 7, no. 2 (1998): 249–61; Roger Broad, Labour’s European Dilemma: From Bevin to Blair (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 31; Michael Newman, ‘The British Labour Party’, in Richard T. Griffiths (ed.), Socialist Parties and the Question of Europe in the 1950s (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 177; Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics, Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2002), 30.

  2. 2.

    Matthew Broad and Oliver Daddow, ‘“Half-Remembered Quotations from Mostly Forgotten Speeches”: The Limits of Labour’s European Policy Discourse’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 12, no. 2 (2010): 205–22; Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics, 2.

  3. 3.

    Ettore Costa, The Labour Party, Denis Healey and the International Socialist Movement: Rebuilding the Socialist International during the Cold War, 1945–1951 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Talbot C. Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 263–308.

  4. 4.

    Labour Party, Feet on the Ground, A Study of Western Europe (London: Labour Party, 1948); Labour Party, European Unity: A Statement by the National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party (London: Labour Party, 1950).

  5. 5.

    Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Jessica Reinisch, ‘Introduction: Agents of Internationalism’, Contemporary European History 25, no. 2 (2016): 195–205.

  6. 6.

    Karen Heard-Lauréote, ‘Transnational Networks, Informal Governance in the European Political Space’, in Wolfram Kaiser and Peter Starie (eds.), Transnational European Union: Towards a Common Political Space (London: Routledge, 2005), 36–60.

  7. 7.

    Wolfram Kaiser, ‘Transnational Networks in European Governance: The Informal Politics of Integration’, in Wolfram Kaiser, Brigitte Leucht and Morten Rasmussen (eds.), The History of the European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950–72 (London: Routledge, 2009), 12–33, here 14–5.

  8. 8.

    Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Treating International Institutions as Social Environments’, International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 4 (2001): 487–515; Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change’, International Organization 55, no. 3 (2001): 553–88; Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘Transnational Socialisation and Community-Building in an Integrated Europe’, in Kaiser and Starie (eds.), Transnational European Union, 61–82.

  9. 9.

    Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Routledge, 1994), 15.

  10. 10.

    Kaiser , ‘Transnational Networks in European Governance’, 18–20.

  11. 11.

    Kristian Steinnes, The British Labour Party, Transnational Influences and European Community Membership, 1960–1973 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014), 24–5; Matthew Broad, Harold Wilson, Denmark and the Making of Labour European Policy 1958–72 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), 249–50.

  12. 12.

    Karl Mannheim, ‘The Problem of Generations’, Psychoanalytic review 57, no. 3 (1970): 378–404.

  13. 13.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 14.

  14. 14.

    Leonardo Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre: dall’organizzazione della pace alla Resistenza al fascismo, 1923–1936 (Roma: Carocci, 1999), 26–33.

  15. 15.

    Enzo Collotti, ‘Appunti su Friedrich Adler segretario dell’Internazionale Operaia e Socialista’, in Enzo Collotti (ed.), L’Internazionale Operaia e Socialista tra le due guerre (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985), 76–92; Christine Collette, The International Faith: Labour’s Attitude to European Socialism, 1918–39 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 87–93.

  16. 16.

    Ettore Costa, ‘The Socialist International and Italian Social Democracy (1948–50): Cultural Differences and the “Internationalisation of Domestic Quarrels”’, Historical Research 91, no. 251 (2018): 160–84.

  17. 17.

    Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre, 139–43.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 252–63.

  19. 19.

    Broad, Harold Wilson, 5; Villy Bergström, ‘Party Program and Economic Policy: The Social Democrats in Government’, in Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin and Klas Åmark (eds.), Creating Social Democracy: A Century of the Social Democratic Labor Party in Sweden (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1992), 131–73, here 140.

  20. 20.

    Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre, 260–3; Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 252–5.

  21. 21.

    Protokoll. Internationale Konferenz der Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Internationale, Paris, Maison de la Mutualité, 21–25 August 1933 (Glashütten: Detlev Auvermann KG, 1933), 7–9.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 79.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 203.

  24. 24.

    Rapone, La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre, 263.

  25. 25.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 253.

  26. 26.

    Leonardo Rapone, ‘La crisi finale dell’Internazionale operaia e socialista’, in Socialisti e l’Europa (Milano: Angeli 1989), 76–80.

  27. 27.

    Denis W. Healey, ‘The International Socialist Conference 1946–1950’, International Affairs 26, no. 3 (1950): 363–73, here 366.

  28. 28.

    Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester (hereafter LHASC), Labour Party Archive (hereafter LPA), International Sub-Committee (hereafter ISC), 1933, ‘Minutes of the International Sub-Committee’, 23 January 1939.

  29. 29.

    Rolf Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Darstellung und Dokumentation (Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, 1979), 15.

  30. 30.

    Collette, The International Faith, 91.

  31. 31.

    Labour Party Annual Conference Report (hereafter LPACR) 1939, 265.

  32. 32.

    Rapone, ‘La crisi finale dell’Internazionale operaia e socialista’, 67–70.

  33. 33.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1943, ‘Minutes of the International Sub-Committee’, 14 December 1943.

  34. 34.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1945, John Price, ‘International Socialist Action, Problems of Organisation’, February 1945.

  35. 35.

    Costa, The Labour Party, 149.

  36. 36.

    International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (hereafter IISH), Socialist International (hereafter SI), 235, ‘Stenogramme’, 8 June 1947; Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 52–7.

  37. 37.

    LHASC/LPA/International Department (hereafter ID), Denis Healey papers (hereafter DH), 03/09, Max Buset to Morgan Phillips, 9 April 1946.

  38. 38.

    Guy Mollet, Témoignages 1905–1975 (Paris: Fondation Guy Mollet, 1977), 60–2.

  39. 39.

    Bruce D. Graham, ‘Choix atlantique our Troisième force internationale?’ in S. Bernstein (ed.) Le Parti socialiste entre Résistance et République (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000), 157–65, here 165.

  40. 40.

    LHASC/LPA/ID/DH/03/09, Healey to Dalton, 12 February 1946.

  41. 41.

    ‘Britain and World Socialism’, Tribune, 7 June 1946.

  42. 42.

    Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 58–9.

  43. 43.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1947/Denis Healey, ‘Notes on the minutes of the Zurich conference’, undated.

  44. 44.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 290.

  45. 45.

    IISH/SI/535/Belgium 1946–1954, ‘Digest on Belgian Proposals on the Reconstitution of an International’, December 1947.

  46. 46.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Memorandum on international socialist policy’, undated.

  47. 47.

    Costa, The Labour Party, 290–1; Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 308.

  48. 48.

    Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 392.

  49. 49.

    LPACR 1957, 180.

  50. 50.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Memorandum on international socialist policy’, undated.

  51. 51.

    Broad, Harold Wilson, 5; LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, Henry Earnshaw, ‘Report to the International sub-committee on visit to German SPD Congress in Berlin, 8 May 1948, and the Swedish Social Democratic Party Congress in Stockholm, 9–14 May 1948 by Mr. Harold Earnshaw’, undated; LHASC/LPA/ISC/1949, Henry Earnshaw, ‘Report on the Congress of the Norwegian Labour Party, Oslo, 17–18 Feb. 1949’, undated; LHASC/LPA/ISC/1950, H. Douglass, ‘Report on Austrian socialist party congress, Graz, 2nd November, 1950’, undated.

  52. 52.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Memorandum on international socialist policy’, undated.

  53. 53.

    N. Piers Ludlow, ‘Us or them? The Meanings of “Europe” in British Political Discourse’, in Mikael Malmborg and Bo Strath (eds.) The Meaning of Europe (London: Berg, 2002), 101–24, here 108–15.

  54. 54.

    Collette, The International Faith, 76–82.

  55. 55.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1941, William Gillies, ‘German Social Democracy – Notes on its Foreign Policy in World War’, October 1941; William Gillies, ‘On the Eve of the Third Reich – The German Social Democratic Party’, undated.

  56. 56.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1941, William Gillies, ‘The International’, undated.

  57. 57.

    LHASC/LPA/LSI/26/6/4, Karl Czernetz and Oscar Pollak to Camille Huysmans, 19 April 1942.

  58. 58.

    LHASC/LPA/LSI/26/2/11, William Gillies to Camille Huysman, 1 April 1942.

  59. 59.

    Labour Party, The International Post-War Settlement (London: Labour Party, 1944).

  60. 60.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Memorandum on international socialist policy’, undated.

  61. 61.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1950, Denis Healey, ‘Visit to Germany – Report by Secretary’, March 1950 and Percy Knight, ‘Report on the German Social Democratic Party Conference, Hamburg 20–26 May, 1950’, June 1950.

  62. 62.

    Costa, The Labour Party, 175–205.

  63. 63.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1940, ‘Minutes of the International Sub-Committee’, 7 March 1940, Appendix, ‘Meeting of the British Labour Party and the French Socialist Party (SFIO), Paris, February 22, 1940’.

  64. 64.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Note on a conference between Mr. Morgan Phillips and Monsieur Salomon Grumbach on Friday, 9 January 1948’, undated.

  65. 65.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, ‘Memorandum on international socialist policy’, undated.

  66. 66.

    Harold Laski, ‘Problems of the French Socialist Party’, Forward, 17 July 1948.

  67. 67.

    Barbara Castle believed that Danton’s slogan ‘la patrie en danger’ was an invention of Leon Blum!

  68. 68.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1951, Barbara Castle, ‘Report on the French Socialist Party Congress, Paris, 11–14 May 1951’, undated.

  69. 69.

    Klaus Misgeld, Sozialdemokratie und Aussenpolitik in Schweden. Sozialistische Internationale, Europapolitik und die Deutschlandfrage 1945–1955 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1984), 199.

  70. 70.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1948, Wilfred Fienburgh, ‘Report on the socialist conference of economic experts on international control of European basic industries, Bennekom, Holland, March 14–20, 1949’, undated.

  71. 71.

    Denis Healey, ‘Power politics and the Labour Party’, in Denis Healey (ed.), When Shrimps Learn to Whistle: Signposts for the Nineties (London: Michael Joseph, 1990), 3–18, here 9.

  72. 72.

    Ben Pimlott, The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton: 1918–40 and 1945–60 (London: Cape, 1986), diary entry for 23 January 1952.

  73. 73.

    Broad, Labour’s European Dilemma, 33.

  74. 74.

    Ettore Costa, ‘Labour’s Euroscepticism and the Socialist International (1948–1952)’, in Guido Levi, Daniela Preda (eds.), Euroscepticism, Resistance and Opposition to the European Community/European Union (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018), 363–74.

  75. 75.

    Hansard, House of Lords Debates, vol. 244 c. 427, 8 November 1962.

  76. 76.

    Hugh Gaitskell, ‘The Common Market’, in Martin Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptical Reader (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 19; Iain Dale (ed.), Labour Party General Election Manifestos 1900–1997 (London: Routledge), 106–7.

  77. 77.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 293.

  78. 78.

    Costa, The Labour Party, 148, 265; Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 311–2.

  79. 79.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 321–2.

  80. 80.

    Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 141. Also Kevin Featherstone, Socialist Parties and European Integration: A Comparative History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 42–7.

  81. 81.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 323.

  82. 82.

    Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 155–9; Richard T. Griffiths, ‘European Utopia or Capitalist Trap? The Socialist International and the Question of Europe’, in Griffiths, Socialist Parties and the Question of Europe, 9–24, here 14–5.

  83. 83.

    Labour Party, Feet on the Ground, 3–5; Labour Party, European Unity, 3.

  84. 84.

    IISH/SI/235, Stenogramme, 8 June 1947.

  85. 85.

    John Price, The International Labour Movement (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 12. LHASC/LPA/ISC/1950, ‘Paper transmitted to Monsieur Guy Mollet, Rapporteur of the General Affairs Committee of the Consultative assembly’, undated.

  86. 86.

    Labour Party, Feet on the Ground, 22.

  87. 87.

    Ibid., 21.

  88. 88.

    LHASC/LPA/ISC/1950, ‘Paper transmitted to Monsieur Guy Mollet, Rapporteur of the General Affairs Committee of the Consultative assembly’, undated.

  89. 89.

    IISH/SI/59, Socialist International Circular no. 76/51, 14 June 1951.

  90. 90.

    Labour Party, Feet on the Ground, 20.

  91. 91.

    Ibid., 13.

  92. 92.

    LPACR 1948, 177.

  93. 93.

    Ibid., 179.

  94. 94.

    Radhika Desai, Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the British Labour Party (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1994), 54–60.

  95. 95.

    Costa, The Labour Party, Denis Healey and the International Socialist Movement, 56, 70, 276.

  96. 96.

    Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Penguin, 1990), 93–4.

  97. 97.

    Matthew Broad, ‘Ignoring Europe? Reassessing the British Labour Party’s Policy towards European Integration, 1951–60’, Journal of European Integration History 24, no. 1 (2018): 95–114, here 107.

  98. 98.

    Broad, Harold Wilson, 55–7. Jay took an uncompromising anti-European attitude and Healey remained sceptical towards the EEC throughout the 1960s.

  99. 99.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 336–7.

  100. 100.

    Marinus van der Goes van Naters, ‘European Unity, Report of the Comisco study group on European Unity’, Comisco Information Service, 17 March 1951; Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 274.

  101. 101.

    Broad, Labour’s European Dilemma, 203.

  102. 102.

    Marinus Van Der Goes van Naters, Met en tegen de tijd (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1980), 195–208.

  103. 103.

    Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism, 301.

  104. 104.

    Ibid., 329.

  105. 105.

    André Philip, Le Socialisme et l’Unité Européenne, Réponse à l’Exécutif du Labour Party (Paris: Mouvement Socialiste pour les États-Unis d’Europe, 1950), 13.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., 12.

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  1. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ettore Costa

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  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Matthew Broad

  2. Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Suvi Kansikas

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Costa, E. (2020). Not Giving Up Sovereignty: The British Labour Party’s Alternative Vision of International Cooperation, 1933–1951. In: Broad, M., Kansikas, S. (eds) European Integration Beyond Brussels. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45445-6_6

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