journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

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The Labour Party's Changing Relationship to Europe.
The Expansion of European Social Policy
Erin Delaney
In 1950, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party clearly
stated its attitude towards European integration involving Britain. 1 “The Executive
argue that no Socialist party could accept a system by which important fields of
national policy were surrendered to a European authority, since such an authority
would have a permanent anti-Socialist majority”. 2 Over the following forty years,
Labour’s ideological opposition to an integrated European community fundamentally
changed, so that by 1994, a Labour spokeswoman was able to claim that
“Europe is now part and parcel of our domestic policy in Britain”. 3
Traditional analysis has cited the reasons for this change as a combination of
numerous factors, including intraparty factionalism, economic pressure, tension
between the leadership and rank-and-file members and the role of the two-party
system. 4 The European Community itself is one factor that has been relatively ignored
in the explanations for this policy change, as has its potential to exert discreet
and discernible influence on policy in general. 5 Without disregarding the importance
of the domestic mechanisms, the aim of this article is to demonstrate that the
changing focus of the European Community - from an economically liberal organisation
to one concerned with social welfare - also influenced Labour’s evolving decision
to embrace the EC. As European policies began to merge with Labour’s domestic
agenda, ideological opposition decreased, and Labour saw an opportunity to
affect change on the European level, especially when barred from action in the UK.
As the European Community developed its social conscience, Labour began to
embrace it. The social democrats first saw the possibilities for socialism through
Europe in the 1960s, but the Labour Left was determined to achieve its aims
through national planning and traditional nation-state socialism. After the economic
hardships of the 1970s, and the political wasteland of the 1980s, the Labour Left
1. The National Executive Committee (NEC or Executive) of the Labour Party conducts the Labour
Party Conferences, and produces the Labour Party Manifesto which is ratified at the Conference.
The Parliamentary Labour Party, the leaders of regional Labour Parties, as well as representatives
from the Trade Unions make up the voting population of the Conference - and are the elected members
of the NEC.
2. R.W.G. MACKAY, Heads in the Sand, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1950, p.18. Mackay was a Labour
MP for Reading North who published his criticism of the Labour Party's stance at the time.
3. Quoted in D. BUTLER and M. WESTLAKE, British Politics and European Elections 1994, St.
Martin's Press, New York 1995, p.118.
4. See H. YOUNG, This Blessed Plot , Macmillan, London, 1998 for a detailed analysis of how these
factors influenced both the Conservative and Labour Parties’ relationships to Europe.
5. For a discussion of the process of Europeanization, and its relationship to the national political
process, see R. LADRECH, Europeanization and Political Parties: Towards a Framework for
Analysis, forthcoming, Party Politics, 2002.