The white cliffs of Dover on the coast of the United Kingdom
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
The 1948 Gatow Air Disaster Monument is easy to spot in a city with more than its fair share of 20th century ghosts. A simple plaque in the Westend district of Berlin commemorates the plane crash that claimed the lives of 15 people during the early days of the Cold War.
The stone inscription may be barely visible, but its location in St George’s Anglican Church reflects a long British presence in the German capital, and the events it marks are a window into the UK’s key role in shaping the world. post-war European order.
With Brexit now real, the UK may discover that it is not so easy to launch a European identity so entrenched in history and geography. In fact, this reality — and a perennial political culture haunted by questions about its relationship with its European neighbors — seems destined to link Britain to the continent for years to come, for all the government’s efforts to change the brand as a champion. of the world of world trotting. free international trade.
The wreckage of the Soviet Yak fighter jet that collided with a Vickers plane near Gatow Airport, Berlin, on April 5, 1948.
Photographer: Henry Burroughs / AP Photo
After concluding a trade deal with the European Union on Christmas Eve, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was time to move on. The UK must leave behind “old, dried-up, tired, super-chewed arguments” and “keep Brexit done,” he told the House of Commons on Dec. 30 while inculcating the deal.
Given the post-war history of Britain, this purpose can be an illusion. In fact, the pro-Brexit camp has been guilty of undermining the European dimension of the country’s past, according to Helene von Bismarck, a historian of Britain’s role in twentieth-century international relations.
He presented “a very selective view of British history.” “This whole idea that we’re now free to go back to who we really are, history doesn’t really prove it.”
Britain’s role in post-war Germany gives an idea of the extent of these continental ties. Berlin, in 1948, was a nearby city when, in April, a Vickers plane from London via Hamburg was involved in a collision with a Soviet Yak fighter as it approached the British airfield. in the RAF Gatow and killed all 14 passengers and crew, as well as the Soviet pilot. Each side blamed the other for an international incident that contributed to the rapid deterioration of East-West relations.
Two months later, London was the scene for the declaration of Allied plans to create a West German state, infuriating Soviet leader Josef Stalin, who ordered the Berlin cut off from the rest of Germany. It was British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin who convinced the Americans to take the lead in air transport supplies and break the blockade, historian Tony Judt wrote in his 2005 book, “Postwar.” The continent would split until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The continent split until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Photographer: Gerard Malie / AFP / Getty Images
Washington and Moscow may have been key players in the Cold War, but Britain was the center of events that forged the new European reality, even if it wasn’t until the 1970s that the UK hit its destiny. on the continent. joining the forerunner of the region’s definitive political project, the EU.
In February last year, days after the UK did nothing in favor of the outcome of the 2016 referendum and officially left the EU, Johnson used a speech on Britain’s future post-Brexit to say that the UK United “resurfaced after decades of hibernation” and was willing to resume its historic role as the world’s leading advocate of free trade.
Recent research by the European Council on Foreign Affairs suggests that the UK will not be able to airbrush Europe so easily. A think tank study found that most UK policy experts, think tanks, academics and the private sector see the country’s future role in global politics as a close partnership with the EU. Leading a “resurrected republic” of nations was seen as the least realistic outcome, favored by less than 2% of respondents.
While the Brexit deal Sealed on December 24, the scope of future ties is defined, the study shows that there is room for closer collaboration, especially in areas such as climate change, EU-UK migration and politics outside, if London so decides.
Both parties should not leave it too late. A parallel study found that Ireland was the only one of the 27 EU members to consider relations with the UK a priority. In general, the United Kingdom ranked the priority of bloc members less than China, Russia, the US, or even the Western Balkans.
“There is some fatigue and I think that has an effect on the willingness to participate,” said Jana Puglierin, head of the Berlin office of the ECFR and director of the research project. “Those states that have traditionally been close to the UK have moved on.”
It is unlikely to be a luxury offered by the UK, which has been traumatized by issues of European integration since the war. As early as 1950, when plans were being made for the European Coal and Steel Community, Britain refused to participate due to suspicion of continental influence in its affairs.
It was also an economic decision: in 1947, the British economy was in much better health than that of its neighbors, aided by trade with the empire. But in late 1951, West German exports fueled a “European economic renaissance,” wrote historian Judt.
Edward Heath, center, at a “Keep Britain in Europe” press conference in London on May 13, 1975.
Source: AP Photos
In 1955, Britain had signed an association agreement and, in 1961, applied to become a full member of what was then the European Economic Community, a request famously vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle.
The United Kingdom under the Conservative government of Edward Heath was finally admitted to the EEC on 1 January 1973. But what followed was 47 years of on-off disputes that eventually led to the exit of the United Kingdom. in the EU on 31 January.
Accession was quickly followed by a membership referendum called by a Labor government persecuted by parties fighting for Europe. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s conservatives became increasingly Eurosceptic and Europe played a major role in its fall in 1990. Her successor, John Major, fought for control of his cabinet over the issue throughout the his stage at No. 10 Downing Street.
Prime Minister David Cameron tried to rip off the boil by granting another referendum on EU membership. The vote to leave him cost him the job and that of his successor, Theresa May.
All of this controversy “goes back in time,” Johnson said in February. “We have the opportunity, we have the newly recovered powers, we know where we want to go and that goes out into the world,” he said. His aim is to forge a “global Britain”.
Boris Johnson sets out his government’s negotiating stance with the European Union after Brexit on 3 February.
Photographer: Frank Augstein – WPA Pool / Getty Images
The UK’s dilemma is that it runs the risk of being on the wrong side of history, going it alone in a time of great power rivalry between the US and China that is unlikely to change under Joe’s administration. Biden.
Turning your back on a half-century economic and political alliance with Europe seems increasingly risky, especially when the president who supports Brexit, Donald Trump, leaves the White House and the Commonwealth countries, Australia and India joins Japan to better defend China’s challenge.
Meanwhile, the EU has its own challenges around leadership, according to Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent in England. With the British prerogative now to forge trade agreements with non-EU partners, the two sides “will increasingly move in different directions,” he told Bloomberg Television.
History suggests, however, that these paths are destined to converge again. Johnson even acknowledges that the United Kingdom is a European power “by irrevocable facts of history and geography, language and culture, instinct and sentiment,” not just “by treaties or laws.”
In 1948, the Labor government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee faced a historic decision on the country’s future ties to the continent and chose to break with previous British thoughts in favor of allying with Europe.
Again it was Bevin, its foreign minister, who pledged the country to “engage with its continental neighbors in a common defense strategy, a” Western European Union “, based on security needs. British were no longer separable from those on the mainland, ”Judt wrote.
This union became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, signed in April 1949 by the United States, Canada, and ten European countries, and which is still the basis of transatlantic relations.
The following year, the first stone of St. George’s Church was laid in the British sector of Berlin, replacing an old English chapel that was destroyed in a war bombing. The plaque for Gatow’s victims was added later.
For Puglierin at the European Council on Foreign Affairs, policy areas of mutual interest hold promise for future cooperation between the UK and the EU, despite the current British government’s desire to step aside. “Not everything is lost,” he said.