Toby on Tuesday 

‘Our common European destiny’

Last week I wrote about the 1972 trade agreement between the European Free Trade Association, of which Britain was a founding member, and the European Community (now Union). Put simply, Edward Heath’s government deceived the electorate when it claimed that, to trade with Europe, we had to be part of a political union. With the EU referendum now looming, the time has come to explore the roots of this whole dysfunctional project.

Now, it needs to be recognised that one important strand was the Europe a Nation movement, begun in the 1950’s by Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana, one of the fabled Mitford sisters. After their failure with the British Union of Fascists and incarceration in Holloway Prison during the Second World War, they moved to Ireland and then to France. There they launched “The European” magazine, which formed part of their Europe a Nation movement. Following Germany’s defeat, they claimed that the nations of Europe should be subsumed into a European entity but still run on pre-war corporatist lines with governments and large corporations colluding for their mutual benefit. Free trade should be opposed at every turn in favour of economic micro-management, which effectively is what we have now 70 years after the end of the War. And if you think that this is all old hat, I suggest that you google www.oswaldmosley.com and look up Europe a Nation. There you will see that the “Oswald Mosley Directorate” and “The Friends of Oswald Mosley” are still hard at work, with their project now in sight of its final fulfilment.

And looking back after 45 years or so I recall a surreal private dinner to which I was invited to meet the Mosleys in I think 1970. My hosts were generous, cultivated people of the very sort to be dazzled by their charisma, as so many were in the 1930’s. As a young man, what struck me most about them was their eyes, his dilating with intensity, hers completely motionless and with the colour of cornflowers. The conversation was bizarre as he exclaimed, “There have been three great men in my lifetime, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Hitler I knew, Stalin I met and it is a great sorrow to me never to have known Mao.” Then Diana Mosley spoke of their wedding in Berlin in 1936 declaring, “We were married in Goebbels’ drawing room. Goering was our best man. He wore a powder blue uniform. The Fuerher could not be there but we called on him the next day.” Then they spoke of our common European destiny, of the new Europe that was in the making and how vital it was the Britain should play a leading part in it. He had written about it in his 1947 book “The Alternative” and had sought to build a National Party of Europe. Two years later Edward Heath achieved his, and their, goal.

At the end of the evening, I drove them back to the Ritz Hotel where they were staying. They talked more about our shared European destiny. After saying goodbye to them I felt distinctly queazy, to put it mildly, just as I have always felt queasy about the whole European project. What used to be called English liberty is a precious trust, to be nurtured and protected, and the memory of that evening has always stayed with me as compelling evidence of this!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby