Britain and the European Union by David Gowland

Author:David Gowland [Gowland, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138825109
Google: Wzf9oQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 30011643
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Pro-EC/EU opinion has also attracted criticism for failing to instill into the population at large any sense of a common European culture. The essentially negative, if valid, case presented by government and Europhiles alike, that Britain would be worse off outside the EC/EU, has rarely aroused popular support (Wall, 2008: 210). Pro-EU opinion has long relied on the absence of any well-worked alternative to EU membership. In the debate on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Tristran Garel-Jones, the Conservative Minister for Europe, posed the question that always caused some awkward silences among Eurosceptics: ‘Can the anti-federalists, the Euro-sceptics and little Englanders offer a positive alternative?’ (Schnapper, 2014).

Besides the argument based on the absence of any alternatives to EC/EU membership, the pro-marketeers and Europhiles have also attracted criticism for a persistent unwillingness to explain the precise impact of membership on such matters as national sovereignty. More broadly still, there is strong evidence to suggest that the pro-marketeers failed to educate the public about the EC and instead mounted a propaganda campaign to manufacture consent for EC membership (Mullen and Burkitt, 2005). None of this is to underestimate the difficulties of the pro-EU case, both in countering what are perceived as simplistic Eurosceptic slogans and solutions or in seeking to expose the use of the EU as a whipping boy for a range of problems that have little or nothing to do with the organization (see Chapter 5).

The Eurosceptic case

Unlike their opponents, the anti-marketeers and Eurosceptics have exploited a rich seam of opinion and language invariably inclined to view Britain’s EU ties in terms of injured national sovereignty, lost independence and outraged national identity. In the process, the often prejudiced language against the EU has also found its way into the expressions of pro-EU arguments, thereby seemingly validating the views and attitudes of opponents on the issue.

The Eurosceptic press, most notably The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and The Sun, has unhesitatingly projected the EU as the hostile ‘other’ or ‘as somewhere else’ across the English Channel. It has drawn heavily on military metaphors of surrender and defeat in defence of British sovereignty and independence. In doing so, it has often depicted the EC/EU as an imposition from above masterminded by wily foreigners in league with defeatist politicians at home. However differently framed, whether as a hostile, bureaucratic and undemocratic superstate posing an existential threat to national sovereignty or as a bargaining forum within which Britain has limited influence, the Eurosceptic discourse about the EU is designed to alert and alarm the public. It aims to generate a deep-seated sense of separation and subjugation in support of the case for withdrawal from the EU.

Such a portrayal is indicative of a striking change in British press attitudes towards the EC/EU over the past 30 years. At the time of the referendum of 1975, the press overwhelmingly supported EC membership with a fairly simple, compelling narrative as noted above. The Financial Times and The Guardian had long favoured membership, while The Times and The Daily Telegraph threw their weight behind the cause.

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