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The Labour Party's Changing Relationship to Europe 131
Divided over Europe – 1967-1987
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Labour Party was weak and riddled with
infighting on the issue of entry, and later, of remaining in the EEC. The Conservatives
orchestrated the successful entry of 1 January 1973, and Labour remained
opposed to entry, refusing to participate in Community institutions until after the
1975 referendum on remaining in the EEC. Renegotiations and the referendum
failed to unify the party as was hoped, and the anti-Europe faction continued to
voice concerns similar to those of the party in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, in
1983, after a bitter Conference debate, Labour advocated in its election manifesto
complete withdrawal from the Community.
The division within the Labour Party, forged during the 1967 application under
Wilson, critically impaired the Party’s ability to get elected. In fact, Party membership
was in decline, and within the last two years of the Wilson government, the
party lost over ten by-elections. 49 Even after losing the 1970 election to the Conservatives
by a large margin, Labour remained unable to unite on the subject of Europe.
Tom Nairn, on the Labour Left, rearticulated the question asked in 1962 by
the TUC in his 1972 essay ‘The Left against Europe?’. He wrote:
“We know, indeed, that the Common Market is intended to strengthen the sinews and
the world-position of European capitalism and its various ruling classes. What we do
not know – and on the basis of this analysis, cannot ever know – is whether, or in
what ways, it may also strengthen the position and enlarge the real possibilities of
the European working classes and European social revolutionaries”. 50
He also framed the European discussion in relation to the deeper debate within
the Labour Party – that of the nature of socialism. The revisionists in the Labour
Party identified themselves with the social democratic movements of the Continent
and were in favour of entering the EEC, based on arguments of promoting socialism
through the Community. 51 Those on the Left of the Party did not accept the
type of socialism promoted by the revisionists, and thus refused to accept their related
views on the positive social aspects of European integration. 52 This debate of
ideas and ideologies would continue throughout the 1970s and the 1980s and cause
a severe split within the Party.
The Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath brought Britain into the Common
Market in 1973. In the vote, 69 Labour MPs, led by the pro-European revisionist Roy
Jenkins, voted for membership, flouting the demands of the Labour leadership who im-
49. K. JEFFREYS, The Labour Party since 1945, Macmillan Press Ltd., London, 1993, p.71.
50. T. NAIRN, The Left Against Europe?, op.cit., p.111.
51. Alan Day credited the European social democrats with becoming “the pace-setters of European integration”.
He also claimed that Continental, and by extension, British social democrats believed
that there was time and opportunity to mould Europe into a socialist concept. See A. DAY, Socialists
and European Unity, in: Socialist Commentary, August 1971.
52. Byron Criddle commented in Socialists and European Integration that “the socialists’ espousal of
the European cause has gone hand in hand with retreat from traditional socialist ideology into social
democratic revisionism”. As quoted in A. DAY, op.cit., p.7.