Big question for the UK on EU

The British have a problem. A referendum continuing membership in the European Union scheduled for June may lead to Brexit — Britain heading for the exit.

Anybody with any knowledge of Europe’s war-like history knows this would be totally self-defeating.

Writing in 1751, Voltaire described Europe as “a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some monarchical, the others mixed but all corresponding with one another. They all have the same religious foundation, even if divided into several confessions. They all have the same principles of public law and politics unknown in other parts of the world”.

But they also had a lot of war.

Fifty years ago, in a way that Charlemagne, Voltaire, William Penn and William Gladstone, the early advocates of European unity, could only dream, a united Europe became a reality.

War, time and again, interrupted the pursuit of that objective.

Continued civil war across the continent, across the centuries, pitted French against Germans, British against Italians, Czechs against Poles, Serbs against Austrians and Spaniards against Spaniards, reaching dreadful climaxes in the two world wars.

As Jan Morris wrote in her “Fifty Years of Europe”, “great cities lay in ruin, bridges were broken, roads and railways were in chaos. Conquerors from East and West flew their ensigns above the seats of old authority, and proud populations would do almost anything for a pack of cigarettes or some nylon stockings. Europe was in shock, powerless, discredited and degraded”.

Over the ages, no other continent has been the scene of so much war.

Many, if not most, of that generation wondered in 1945 if they would ever see Europe again in any state of grace or glory, much less unified.

The fact that the urge to bury the hatchet and forge common institutions has come so far in such a short time against such a background is, arguably for the world as a whole, the 20th century’s greatest political achievement. (Following the Declaration of Independence, it took the US nearly 90 years to establish a fully mature common currency; Europe has travelled the same course in 40 years.)

Yet, this astonishing and triumphant success begs questions: What is the glue that holds it all together? After all what is Europe?

Geographically, it is no more than a peninsula protruding from the land mass of Asia.

Culturally, it has always been a potage of languages, peoples and traditions.

Politically, it is a moveable feast of the 35 sovereign states in post-Iron Curtain Europe — nine have been created or resurrected since World War II.

Indeed, it is religion, not politics nor the single market or monetary union, that through the ages has made Europe one, held it together through its vicissitudes and bloody wars (many, tragically, of religious origin) and provided the common basic morality and common identity that made the EU, makes a single currency workable, the Schengen agreement making passport-free travel possible inside most of Europe today and political union a tangible, if still hotly debated goal tomorrow.

Broadcasting to a defeated Germany in 1945, poet T.S. Elliot reminded his audience that despite the war and “the closing of Europe’s mental frontiers because of an excess of nationalism, it is in Christianity that our arts have developed, it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe — until recently — have been rooted. An individual European may not believe the Christian faith is true; and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will depend on the Christian heritage for its meaning”.

Of course, today one can ask what do contemporary European cults of finance, sports, TV, pop culture, eroticism and Ryanair flying wherever it wants have to do with a Christian heritage.

Nevertheless, the fact is that through changing fashions, through wars big and small, the idea of Europe that persists is essentially Christian — unity of principles and peace in relationships.

On its own, economic self-interest would never have created the EU and, more recently, monetary union.

Economic, legal social and monetary union have been driven all along by men and women who were essentially idealistic and visionary.

From Jean Monnet, the founder of modern Europe, to Helmut Schmidt, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Francois Mitterand and Helmut Kohl, the founders and creators of the EU and the euro, the urge to remove the causes of belligerency and to form institutions that would further the development of a common democracy has been a central purpose.

Europe is not first and foremost a political concept or a financial convenience. It is an ideal.

Thus, it will never be complete. We will work at it all our lives, as will future generations.

The Britons’ decision not to pull out now can only happen if the university-trained elite together with the leadership of the pro-European trade unions (most of them) educate the public on the history and the ideals of Europe.