Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions Into a Populist Narrative: UKIPs Winning Formula? It was those aspects of the speech that were briefed to the press by Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's Press Secretary (Wall 2008, 79). Despite being notionally independent from the Conservative Party, the Group provided a platform for Thatcher's supporters to mount sustained attacks on the European project at critical junctures (Lamont 1999, 10; Crines, Heppell, and Dorey 2016, 100101). It occupies pride of place in the historical lineage of modern Euroscepticism (Geddes 2004, 195. Europe, it suggested, was changing the role of the state, allowing the expansion of liberty against might of member-states. Moreover, Thatcher's formative role in negotiating the heavily British-influenced (Von Bismarck 2016) SEA the first significant alteration to the 1957 Treaty of Rome seemed to confirm the view that integration was primarily an economic project and a bulwark against continental statism. The UK Ambassador to the EC, David Hannay, passed the letter of invitation to John Kerr, Assistant Under Secretary in the FCO responsible for EC relations, accompanied by a recommendation to accept from the then President of the European Parliament, the UK Conservative Henry Plumb (Member of the European Parliament 19791999). Flanders wool trade with England was referenced early, not only as a nod to historical ties with the host region, but to suggest that the longevity of this connection was more legitimate than the novel protectionism of the European Community. The British Empire was not mentioned explicitly, partly as a result of those critiques from the FCO, although the reference to imperial Rome served to underscore the point about the mission civilitrice of empire that was made at the outset of the address. Europe Open To The World was just a few lines about Europe's role in the global political economy emphasizing that Europe should not be protectionist by removing barriers to trade and promoting the ideal of liberalization to developing countries. The third section tells how the speech was written to show how intra-government fault lines began to surface in its earliest incarnations. We therefore contribute to three overlapping domains of inquiry: Thatcher's foreign and European policy decision-making; the Conservative Party and European integration leading to Brexit; and finally, speeches as tools for policy-making and agenda setting. This line was part of a general attack on federalism, evidently reflecting Thatcher's soundings with Hugh Thomas, described in the previous section, which was embodied in the supranational institutions of the Community, namely the Commission and European Court of Justice. Process tracing from the pre-history of the Bruges speech to its final contents permitted us, first, to confirm a lot of what is already known about the address, and, second, to take the analysis in new directions by showing how the government's European policy skirmishes were taken from backstage to front-stage in a sustained assault on Delors's vision for European integration. In an indication of the inextricable interplay between structure and agency in the practice of politics, Powell later recalled (2017) it was a case of the opportunity creating the speech rather than the speech representing a long-planned strike at the heart of European theology. Thatcher struck an initially conciliatory tone by saying that Too often, the history of Europe is described as a series of interminable wars and quarrels. Second, Britain had historically fought against the uniting of Europe under a single power. Next, the article explains why and how we use the address as a prism through which to see Thatcher's European policy-making in action. In setting things up in binary, oppositional terms, Thatcher's team had gained the upper hand on Howe and the FCO's more Europeanized inclinations, even though elements of British history told through the lens of its European past did make their way into the final address. Including references to the past scattered throughout the remainder of the speech, we calculated that fully one-third of the speech was given over to outlining a version of history that would support Thatcher's preferred view of the best future course for British European policy. Only miles from here, in Belgium, lie the bodies of 120,000 British soldiers who died in the First World War. What follows is a piece of interpretivist (Yanow 2000; Finlayson 2017) foreign policy analysis centring on the ways in which leaders use political rhetoric to agenda-set in an ongoing national conversation about a given policy dilemma. First, it became the source of the policy battles that erupted between Thatcher and the FCO covered in the following section of the article. There are three things article is not. Thatcher also reflected on the connection between national borders and national sovereignty, saying we cannot totally abolish frontier controls if we are also to protect our citizens from crime and stop the movement of drugs, of terrorists and of illegal immigrants. Second, Wall received some defence and security themes for consideration from Paul Lever, Head of the Security Policy Department. This had been a consistent Thatcher refrain throughout her time in office. Kerr, however, was undeterred: Worth a run, I think he wrote laconically (Wall 1988a). At this time, the EC/EU's democratic deficit was an argument more associated with Europe's parliamentarians rather than outright critics of European integration. Such a framing imported a dominant English view of history into nascent right-wing Euroscepticism, only weeks after Thatcher's Sermon on the Mound in Edinburgh on 21 May 1988 and just months before the controversial and short-lived introduction of the Poll Tax in Scotland, which re-energized Scottish nationalism in both its unionist and secessionist guises. The Bruges speech was a powerful intervention in the emerging conflict over the direction of the second wave of integration from the SEA onward (the first wave being Treaty of Rome to SEA). She evoked an idealized America, such as that on offer in Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (2010), constructing it as a place where people went to avoid intolerance and constraints and to seek liberty and opportunity (Thatcher 1988, 4). The language in the speech surrounding America's relationship to Europe constantly sought to bind the West through common ideals from outside as well as inside Europe. The magnitude of the Bruges speech was certainly not lost on her team and she put it in the hands of her Private Secretary Charles Powell who became its prime architect (Millar 1993, 319; Powell 1988a). In contrast, state power was conceived in terms of a European tradition of dirigisme, which constrained market freedoms. English traditions of individualisms, of freedom under the law and of common sense (Powell 1988b, 14) were emphasized, whilst the imperial legacy was summoned in order to challenge European inwardness: Yes, we have looked also to wider horizons and thank goodness we did, because Europe would never have prospered and never will prosper as a narrow, inward-looking club (Powell 1988b, 15). 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. In short, Thatcher's account of international history at Bruges was designed to persuade audiences of the achievements and merits of the English-speaking peoples. Tellingly, Kerr wrote that the criticisms of European federalism were based on a non-sequitur because if anything federalist theory implies decentralisation and economic liberalism: look at the US (1988b, 25). The Europe's Future part reiterated that Britain's future was inside the Community but highlighted the dilemmas the speech sought to address: the practical means by which Europe could remain the preserve of all its members and how the organization could, as Thatcher saw it, forestall becoming ossified by endless regulation. In this sense, the draft should be read as a direct political intervention attacking Jacque Delors, Commission President, and his agenda for further integration (Gowland 2017, 102). By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. The fourth section explores the battle over policy direction, centring on Thatcher's disagreements with Howe and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

It put the case for a major speech setting the seal on the reforms we have secured in the Community, looking forward to the Single Market in 1992 and bringing Britain's economic success to the attention of a wide European audience. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. It focused on the rediscovery of the spirit of enterprise in the UK and how this should be applied in Europe, via liberalisation within [sic] Community framework. Powell replied in short order, the next day, that Thatcher was willing to commit and asking for a very good draft for the speech by the second half of July (Powell 1988a). The revival of the Bruges speech by prominent Leave campaigners such as Boris Johnson (rehearsed in Johnson 2014, 30) during the 2016 UK referendum on European Union (EU) (Ross 2016; Green 2018; Helm 2016), its 30th Anniversary commemorations in 2018 (The Bruges Group 2018), the continued witting and unwitting allusions to Bruges by top members of Theresa May's team during the UK's withdrawal negotiations from the EU (see Foster 2018), and the surge of interest in the long-term origins of Brexit (Von Bismarck 2016; Contemporary European History 2019) make this a timely moment at which to look again at this explosive but much misunderstood address. The article was written while Oliver Daddow was an Affiliate Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge and he would like to thank Michael Kenny, Diane Coyle and the team for their generosity and support during his time there. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. (Wall 1988c). Once returned to the FCO, John Kerr attempted to tone down some of the more critical language, crossing out references to the Commission's attempts to extend its powers and create European super-state (1988b, 30). Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? Hannay duly reported that ukaszewski saw the occasion as a chance for Thatcher to spell out her own vision of the future of Europe rather than leaving the field clear to others to propagate the myth that her attitude was an entirely negative one. So what was the relevant pre-history of the speech? It is important to reflect on the contingency that the Bruges speech may never have been delivered had Thatcher's diary not permitted. Deregulation and fewer constraints on trade (the Thatcherite model in Britain) should be the focus for the Community she said, not the establishment of a European Central Bank. In explaining the Conservative splits on European integration, Baker, Gamble, and Ludlam (1993) have argued that the upper echelons of the Conservative Party, Cabinet Ministers, in both the Thatcher and John Major administrations, were firmly committed to interdependence in terms of external policy, of which EC membership was a central plank. The following section explains how we used the inside of a speech to investigate how Thatcher made foreign policy decisions. It was part of the Europe open to enterprise principle of Thatcher's vision for Europe and an implicit agreement from the FCO drafters that she go with tide of deregulation (Harrison 1988).