1

The Royal Society of Edinburgh RSE MacCormick European Lecture Allan Little, BBC World Affairs Correspondent
Monday 26 November 2012 Report by Jeremy Watson To begin his journey into modern Europe, Allan Little took his audience to Warsaw on November 1 this year. He had been there on All Saints Day, the Day of the Dead, and the Polish city had closed down. At dusk, everyone had headed for the cemeteries; the graves were lit by a flicker of red and orange candle flames and the living were moving silently among the shadows. Nowhere else in Europe, Little said, do the dead speak more powerfully or reach out to stake a claim in the present. In Europe, history is the unseen guest at every table. And that would be his argument this evening; that we are all prisoners of our histories and that the story of the European Union since its inception in Rome in 1957 has been releasing us from the thraldom of history. Old loyalties, allegiances and enmities long thought consigned to history have the habit of re-emerging in new forms. The problem in Europe today, Little argued, is not the fact of a single currency but the manner of its construction. It has been driven by political imperatives flowing in the face of better economic judgement, and this has taught us lessons about democracy in Europe today. Politics are still national, while economics are increasingly global; somewhere in the middle is the European Union, which, for all it has achieved, faces a profound crisis of legitimacy. His perspective, however, was not one of a scholar but of an itinerant reporter, eyewitness and teller of tales. His personal starting point in understanding the value of the EU was 25 November 1989, when he was standing in a snow-flecked Wenceslas Square in Prague, along with a crowd of 400,000 Czechs. Vaclav Havel appeared on a balcony above the crowd and behind him stood a white-haired old man whose face was instantly recognisable to most people there, even though he had not been seen in public for 21 years. It was Dubcek and he uttered only one word: Czeskoslovenko the name of the country. Little had been struck by the thought that after two decades of enforced silence, the former leader had not chosen to speak of an abstract notion such as liberty or democracy, but of something more visceral the appeal of the tribe. Dubcek had articulated the real desire of Czechs and Slovaks the overthrow not just of a political system (Communism), but of foreign tyranny as well. It was a moment of national liberation and what chance did the Communist regime stand? Later that night, the Czech Politburo resigned. It was a significant moment for the people of eastern and central Europe who had, for the most part, long believed that an alien tyranny had stood between them and their rightful destiny for 40 years. And their rightful destiny was something easily expressed as something called The West. The revolutions of 1989 were all about becoming western. What they wanted was what the citizens of The West had and took for granted the right to vote governments out, the rule of law, freedom under the law, the right to property and its protection under the law, plurality of opinion, separation of church and state and free political and philosophical discourse. But these revolutions had effects on The West too. As the philosopher Ernest Gellner wrote just before he died in 1995, Little pointed out, it is only the rediscovery of this ideal in eastern Europe that has reminded the inhabitants of liberal states just what it is that they possess and ought to hold dear. So it was that those events became one of the hinges on which the history of the European continent turned. It also led directly to the predicament that Europe finds itself in today, Little said, kick-starting what many western European leaders dream of monetary union.

2 This goal was driven by Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, who believed German reunification might be short-lived and wanted to act before the Russian threat emerged again. But, Little contended, this brought back into play, for other European leaders, the German Question of how to contain a Germany that had twice used its size and weight to lay waste to the continent in the 20th Century; in other words, how to Europeanise Germany. Both Francois Mitterand in France and Margaret Thatcher in the UK were alarmed at the speed at which Kohl wanted to move. France, in particular, had been happy with a diminished Germany; the prospect of a reunified Germany with its capital in Berlin, drawing eastern European nations around it like a shawl, alarmed Mitterand. In the event, the French decided not to oppose reunification, but instead to accelerate the timetable for monetary union to bind Germany into a Europe in which French leadership would be preserved. Instead, Little argued, the opposite happened. Binding Germany in catalysed and compelled the emergence of its leadership of Europe, or, at least, of the Eurozone. The big fear in Germany following WW2 was of rampant inflation and the protection given against it by the might of the Deutschmark. Out of this desire for continued protection came the European Central Bank, modelled on the all-powerful Bundesbank, independent of government but with an all-important obligation to fight inflation. This, Little said, was the Germans doing for the first time what the French had done since 1957, using the emerging institutions of Europe as a way of projecting their values on the continent as a whole. The French did not like it they wanted a bank modelled on their own bank; that is, an instrument of economic policy in the hands of politicians. So, already in the early 1990s, the contours of future, and still unresolved, conflicts were being mapped out. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 set out the fault lines, when 12 of the 15 member states at that time opted to lock their currencies together, with entry governed by strict economic criteria. Britain, Denmark and Sweden opted out. Eventually, 17 nations from an expanded EU opted in. How was it, Little asked, that 17 nations would marry in such haste, only to repent so bitterly? How important economic union had become dawned on Little in 1992 when, he said, he was in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, reporting on the Balkans conflict. He had gathered stories of appalling human tragedy, but his reports were overwhelmed by economic news from home; it was Black Wednesday, when, under John Majors government, the pound lost 17 per cent of its value in a day and was ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, in a crisis triggered by Kohls attempts to fight inflation. Black Wednesday should have been an early lesson in the dangers of trying to bind different national economies into a one-size-fits-all currency union, Little said. But the Steamship Single Currency sailed on regardless. It betrayed a recurring theme; that at key moments the process was driven by political imperatives, not economic better judgement. So how was it that by the end of the decade, 12 nations were in the Eurozone, Little asked? Because Italy was allowed to disregard the Maastricht criteria because it suited German trade; Portugal and Spain were allowed to join even though Spains competitiveness ratings were woefully inadequate; and Ireland and Greece followed; all wanting to be at Europes top table, for political rather than economic reasons. So what has emerged, in addition to the tension between political and economic imperatives, is the tension between elected governments on the one hand and supranational institutions such as the European Commission on the other. But, Little said, his argument is that the lesson now being drawn across Europe is not that those centralised institutions are too strong, but that they are too weak. Even though those supranational bodies may be in a better position to act in the interests of Europe as a whole, their democratic legitimacy remains on a very shoogly peg. As an example of how matters can go wrong in a monetary union into which some countries should not have been allowed, Little recounted conversations with Greek officials who explained now huge budget deficits could be made to disappear under current EU financial

3 rules. But, he said, it was too easy for Europe to blame its southern flank and make it do penance. In that way, the argument about how to resolve the financial crisis takes on the character of a fight between rich and poor and, more alarmingly, a conflict between nations. Europe has been down that road often in its history, Little said. It doesnt often end well. So if the lessons of the past are to be learned, Little argued, the objective of many European politicians should now be, despite the difficulties, to persuade their electorates that EU member states should become more integrated and not less. He reminded his audience that the men and women who built the EU from the 1950s on were driven by the experience of the most destructive war in human history. They wanted to answer the German Question and make sure continent-wide conflict couldnt happen again. They have succeeded. But everywhere, at present, faith in European integration is being undermined and there is a retreat to national silos. There is disillusionment about the single currency because the perception in wealthy northern regions is that they are being asked to bail out the feckless south in perpetuity. But we have much to lose from this trend of thought, Little explained. He was recently in the beautiful Polish town of Wroclaw, which until 1945 was in Germany. The city of Lvov is the same, moving in recent history from the ownership of one country to another. To central Europeans, an end to all that is what they see in a strengthened EU, Little said. A former adviser to Chancellor Kohl had made the same point to him. After WW2, he said, Germany had made friends with its western neighbours through the EU. Now it is doing the same on its eastern borders. For the first time in our history, he added, we are encircled by allies. Little said he had seen for himself, close up, the reality of war in Europe. In 1991, he was sent to what was then Yugoslavia, where tension was rising between ethnic Serbs and Croats. He stayed for four years, during which time 100 people a day died, most of them in Bosnia, a country with the same population as Scotland. On one occasion, he had to carry to safety the body of a local cameraman and colleague, whom he had asked to help him carry out his work. He died on All Saints Day, Littles starting point for his lecture and a reminder of the power of the dead of Europes terrible 20th Century to shape what we do. It is our duty to try to do well by them to save future generations from their fate. Since the enlargement of the EU in 2004, Little said, the centre of gravity has moved dramatically to the East. The old ParisBonn axis belongs to a different age, when Europe was shaped by survivors of the Western Front. Now we have been joined by the survivors of the more brutal Eastern Front. They may be natural allies of Britain, Atlanticist in their thinking, inclined to free market economics and a second language that is English, not French. But Britain has been shaped by its history too, Little argued. Almost uniquely in Europe, it has not suffered the humiliation of military defeat and occupation; it has not had to turn the page on centuries of enmity. He said he understood why further European integration is a hard sell to the British public and this is one of the reasons why Eastern Europeans are looking instead to Germany for leadership. In October, he had met Radel Sikorski, Polands foreign minister, who was exasperated by Britains decision not to fully engage with Europe. In a recent speech in Berlin, Sikorski had described Germany as Europes indispensable nation. His subtext was, Little said: We Poles have got over the Nazis. So can you. We are no longer afraid of you. You must stop being afraid of yourselves. Little concluded that if Britain were applying to join Europe now it would be knocking on a door in Berlin not Paris. However, Britain looks to be heading in a different direction, with 56 per cent of the population wanting out of the EU. If that happens, he said, they will press on without us as the process that began in the 1950s to Europeanise Germany is having the opposite effect. It is now in the van and other countries, at least in their public finances, now have to become more like the Germany that has been utterly transformed from its darkest days.

4 Questions and Answers Q: Your prognosis is that the EU will go on and survive. But will there be fall-out? A: The EU will survive and the Euro will survive. Will Britain leave? We have heard the case across Europe for the EU, but that is not being articulated enough in the UK. The debate is being carried out here through the prism of Westminster government, but, as one German told me, the EU is all that stands between many European countries and darkness. That is not the UK experience. All the UK originally wanted was a trade agreement, but for many EU members, membership is much more profound than that. Q: Coverage of the European Union is often eclipsed by coverage of US politics. We do not hear enough of about what is going on in the EU. To achieve more integration in Europe do we need more information? A: Yes. What stands out very clearly is that civil servants from all governments and institutions prefer to act in secrecy. Officials say they cannot talk about what is really going on. Secrecy has run through the DNA of the EU almost since the Treaty of Rome, when the six original member states met in secret. Q: In your talk you made it clear there was antagonism between countries and between groups within countries. Behind this was politics. Will politics show us the way forward? A: Its all we have got. I have worked in countries where politicians are all powerful and simply wield power over their citizens. When you come back here (to the UK) you see we have a free press, the right to vote, and other benefits of democracy. When I lived in Eastern Europe, it came home to me that we do not live in a free society by accident. But even if Communism falls, it doesnt necessarily mean that the Liberal Democrat model takes its place. Q: The history of Britain in Europe is one of spoiling. I think we are still doing it. Wouldnt it be right for us to get out? A: I dont think that for the last 40 years Britain has been spoiling in Europe. Mrs Thatcher took us deeper into Europe than any PM has done since. The EU now wants greater integration for sound historical reasons and, because of this, for Britain, the crunch is coming. But look at a country such as Poland, which was wiped off the face of Europe for many years. They not only want to be in the EU but also to join the Euro!

VOTE OF THANKS The Vote of Thanks was given by Elspeth Attwood, a former MEP and colleague of Neil MacCormick, whom she said would very much have enjoyed Mr Littles lecture. As a speaker, Neil MacCormick was able to energise his topic and sprinkle it with humour in the same way as Allan Little. Mr Little had provided wonderful and insightful reporting from political upheaval in many countries, mixed with caring and compassionate humanity for his subjects. What we would like to see is Britain more positively engaged with the wider Europe and Mr Littles talk had shown why this is necessary. What Allan Little had brought to the debate tonight was a veritable tour de force of an argument.

Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the RSE, nor of its Fellows The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotlands National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470