Download or read book A Stranger in Europe written by Stephen Wall and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-04-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of how British governments have wrestled with policy towards the European Union, written by someone who worked closely with many of Britain's political leaders in shaping an often fraught but always full-frontal relationship between Britain and her European partners.

Download or read book A Stranger in Europe written by Stephen Wall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-04-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over twenty years, at the heart of Whitehall, Sir Stephen Wall worked for British leaders as they shaped Britain's European policy: Margaret Thatcher fighting to get 'her money back'; John Major at Maastricht where the single European currency was born; Tony Blair negotiating the Amsterdam, Nice and Constitutional Treaties. Stephen Wall draws on his experience to trace a journey from 1982 to the present as successive British governments have wrestled with their relationship with their EU partners. A Stranger in Europe goes behind the scenes to tell the story of how Margaret Thatcher and her successors sought to reconcile Britain's national and European interests. Drawing on the documents of the period it gives a unique insight into how Britain's leaders weighed the British national interest and the interests and personalities of their European counterparts. This is the story of Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries in intimate discussion with other EU leaders, of how politicians instruct and motivate their top officials to implement their political will and how those officials seek to turn political instruction into negotiating success. Stephen Wall analyses British success, and failure. He shows how, despite differences of declared aim and of personality, Britain's leaders have in practice followed very similar paths. Britain has been an awkward partner, often at odds with her fellow Europeans: a stranger in Europe. But with dogged determination and seriousness of purpose Britain's leaders have done much to shape and reform the modern Europe in which we live today.

Download or read book Reluctant European written by Stephen Wall and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2016, the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. The majority for 'Leave' was small. Yet, in more than 40 years of EU membership, the British had never been wholeheartedly content. In the 1950s, governments preferred the Commonwealth to the Common Market. In the 1960s, successive Conservative and Labour administrations applied to join the European Community because it was a surprising success, whilst the UK's post-war policies had failed. But the British were turned down by the French. When the UK did join, more than 10 years after first asking, it joined a club whose rules had been made by others and which it did not much like. At one time or another, Labour and Conservative were at war with each other and internally. In 1975, the Labour government held a referendum on whether the UK should stay in. Two thirds of voters decided to do so. But the wounds did not heal. Europe remained 'them', 'not 'us'. The UK was on the front foot in proposing reform and modernisation and on the back foot as other EU members wanted to advance to 'ever closer union'. As a British diplomat from 1968, Stephen Wall observed and participated in these unfolding events and negotiations. He worked for many of the British politicians who wrestled to reconcile the UK's national interest in making a success of our membership with the sceptical, even hostile, strands of opinion in parliament, the press and public opinion. This book tells the story of a relationship rooted in a thousand years of British history, and of our sense of national identity in conflict with our political and economic need for partnership with continental Europe.

Download or read book The Official History of Britain and the European Community Volume III written by Stephen Wall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III of The Official History of Britain and the European Community covers the divisions over Europe of the Labour Government (1975–79) and the controversies surrounding Britain’s relations with her EEC partners under Margaret Thatcher. As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, this book is the story of the stresses, quarrels, compromises and ambitions which contributed to an unhappy relationship between the United Kingdom and her European partners. Immediately after the 1975 referendum, when the British people voted by a large majority to stay in the European Community, the divisions in the Labour Party over Europe, which had caused the referendum in the first place, resurfaced as if nothing had changed. They dogged the beleaguered Government of James Callaghan and contributed to the defeat of the Labour Party in the General Election of 1979. Margaret Thatcher proclaimed herself a pro-European Prime Minister but her premiership, too, was governed by a succession of crises in Britain’s relations with her partners as Thatcher fought to redress the unfair budget deal Britain had been forced to accept on accession, and then to secure her vision of a reformed, outward-looking, economically liberal Europe. This is also the story of personal relationships between Thatcher and the successive leaders of Germany, France and the United States. It is told through the contemporary accounts of the period, in the words, ideas and emotions of politicians and officials at the heart of Government. This work will be of much interest to students of British politics, European Union history, diplomacy and International Relations in general.

Download or read book Britain and the European Union written by David Gowland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging and concise text offers the student and the general reader a compact, readable treatment of British membership of the European Union from 1973 to the present day. It provides a highly distilled and accessible analysis and overview of some of the parameters and recurring features of Britain’s membership of the European Union, touching on all of the major facets of membership. Key features: examines the constant and changing character of British membership of the European Union (EU) discusses the problematical and often paradoxical features of membership familiarizes the reader with both academic and public debates about the subject offers thematic treatment of all aspects of policy and attitudes towards the EU provides an overview of the main landmarks in the history of the EU since 1973 presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date text on the course and result of the EU referendum campaign. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and the generally interested reader in the areas of European Studies, British Politics, EU Studies, Area Studies and International Relations.

Download or read book 20th Century Britain written by Nicole Robertson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 20th Century Britain provides an authoritative and accessible survey of contemporary research on economic activity, society, political development and culture. Written by leading academics, it examines recent advances in scholarship and gives a grounding in established approaches and topics. The first part comprises thematic essays covering the whole of the twentieth century, including chapters on the economy, economic management, big business, parliamentary politics, leisure, work, health, international economic relations and empire. It uncovers key areas of equality and diversity in chapters on women, living standards, social mobility, ethnicity and multiculturalism, and gender and sexuality. The most recent subfields of historical studies are also explored, including disability history and environmental economic history. The second part focuses on seismic events and topics covering shorter timeframes, including the World Wars, interwar Depression, Britain and European integration, sexual behaviours, civil society, the 1960s cultural revolution and resisting racism. This collection provides an essential guide to current academic thinking on the most important elements of twentieth-century British history and is a useful tool for all students and scholars interested in modern Britain.

Download or read book The European Union and its Crises written by G. Ross and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on interviews with some of the EU's most important leaders, this book is designed to probe and elucidate what they think. The goal of the book is to find out whether they believe that the current period in the history of the European Union constitutes a 'crisis,' and if so, what kind of crisis is it?.

Download or read book Reluctant European written by Stephen Wall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2016, the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. The majority for 'Leave' was small. Yet, in more than 40 years of EU membership, the British had never been wholeheartedly content. In the 1950s, governments preferred the Commonwealth to the Common Market. In the 1960s, successive Conservative and Labour administrations applied to join the European Community because it was a surprising success, whilst the UK's post-war policies had failed. But the British were turned down by the French. When the UK did join, more than 10 years after first asking, it joined a club whose rules had been made by others and which it did not much like. At one time or another, Labour and Conservative were at war with each other and internally. In 1975, the Labour government held a referendum on whether the UK should stay in. Two thirds of voters decided to do so. But the wounds did not heal. Europe remained 'them', 'not 'us'. The UK was on the front foot in proposing reform and modernisation and on the back foot as other EU members wanted to advance to 'ever closer union'. As a British diplomat from 1968, Stephen Wall observed and participated in these unfolding events and negotiations. He worked for many of the British politicians who wrestled to reconcile the UK's national interest in making a success of our membership with the sceptical, even hostile, strands of opinion in parliament, the press and public opinion. This book tells the story of a relationship rooted in a thousand years of British history, and of our sense of national identity in conflict with our political and economic need for partnership with continental Europe.

Download or read book Yes to Europe written by Robert Saunders and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 5 June 1975, voters went to the polls in Britain's first national referendum to decide whether the UK should remain in the European Community. As in 2016, the campaign shattered old political allegiances and triggered a far-reaching debate on Britain's place in the world. The campaign to stay in stretched from the Conservative Party - under its new leader, Margaret Thatcher - to the Labour government, the farming unions and the Confederation of British Industry. Those fighting to 'Get Britain Out' ranged from Enoch Powell and Tony Benn to Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Footballers, actors and celebrities joined the campaign trail, as did clergymen, students, women's groups and paramilitaries. In a panoramic survey of 1970s Britain, this volume offers the first modern history of the referendum, asking why voters said 'Yes to Europe' and why the result did not, as some hoped, bring the European debate in Britain to a close.

Download or read book Imagining Britain s Economic Future c 1800 1975 written by David Thackeray and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-04 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the Brexit vote, this book offers a timely historical assessment of the different ways that Britain’s economic future has been imagined and how British ideas have influenced global debates about market relationships over the past two centuries. The 2016 EU referendum hinged to a substantial degree on how competing visions of the UK should engage with foreign markets, which in turn were shaped by competing understandings of Britain’s economic past. The book considers the following inter-related questions: - What roles does economic imagination play in shaping people’s behaviour and how far can insights from behavioural economics be applied to historical issues of market selection? - How useful is the concept of the ‘official mind’ for explaining the development of market relationships? - What has been the relationship between expanding communications and the development of markets? - How and why have certain regions or groupings (e.g. the Commonwealth) been ‘unimagined’- losing their status as promising markets for the future?

Download or read book The Routledge Guide to the European Union written by Dick Leonard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by experts, this long-established and definitive guide to the workings of the European Union provides comprehensive, straightforward and readable coverage of this sometimes misunderstood and complex institution. It explains not only what happens but also why, and analyses the EU's strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities for it to be more effective. With the EU's very existence under pressure due to fiscal crises and the eurozone, migration and borders, and Euroscepticism, it specifically outlines: How it works: the institutions, the mechanisms Every area of EU competence from agriculture to workers' rights The effects of the single market and the single currency and the successes and stresses of the eurozone The impact of the enlargement of the EU and the prospects for further enlargement and for closer political integration The EU under strain - the 2008 recession and after 'Britain in or out' Fully updated and revised material with new data, statistics, examples and non-partisan coverage The Routledge Guide to the European Union is well-established as the clearest and most comprehensive guide to how the EU operates. This new edition brings you up to date at a crucial stage in its history at a time when, arguably, it has never been under greater threat, but conversely is perhaps more important than ever.

Download or read book Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations written by Andreas Kruck and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume analyzes mistakes in different areas of international relations including the realms of security, foreign policy, finance, health, development, environmental policy and migration. By starting out from a broad concept of mistakes as “something [considered to have] gone wrong” the edited volume enables comparisons of various kinds of mistakes from a range of analytical perspectives, including objectivist and interpretivist approaches, in order to draw out answers to the following guiding questions: • How does one identify and research a mistake? • Why do mistakes happen? • How are actors made responsible? • When and how do actors learn from mistakes? This book will be of great interest to scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as practitioners in International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Security Studies, International Political Economy, and Diplomatic History.

Download or read book Margaret Thatcher written by Charles Moore and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 1983 Margaret Thatcher won the biggest increase in a government's Parliamentary majority in British electoral history. Over the next four years, as Charles Moore relates in this central volume of his uniquely authoritative biography, Britain's first woman prime minister changed the course of her country's history and that of the world, often by sheer force of will. The book reveals as never before how she faced down the Miners' Strike, transformed relations with Europe, privatized the commanding heights of British industry and continued the reinvigoration of the British economy. It describes her role on the world stage with dramatic immediacy, identifying Mikhail Gorbachev as 'a man to do business with' before he became leader of the Soviet Union, and then persistently pushing him and Ronald Reagan, her great ideological soulmate, to order world affairs according to her vision. For the only time since Churchill, she ensured that Britain had a central place in dealings between the superpowers. But even at her zenith she was beset by difficulties. The beloved Reagan two-timed her during the US invasion of Grenada. She lost the minister to whom she was personally closest to scandal and almost had to resign as a result of the Westland affair. She found herself isolated within her own government over Europe. She was at odds with the Queen over the Commonwealth and South Africa. She bullied senior colleagues and she set in motion the poll tax. Both these last would later return to wound her, fatally. In all this, Charles Moore has had unprecedented access to all Mrs Thatcher's private and government papers. The participants in the events described have been so frank in interview that we feel we are eavesdropping on their conversations as they pass. We look over Mrs Thatcher's shoulder as she vigorously annotates documents, so seeing her views on many particular issues in detail, and we understand for the first time how closely she relied on a handful of trusted advisors to help shape her views and carry out her will. We see her as a public performer, an often anxious mother, a workaholic and the first woman in western democratic history who truly came to dominate her country in her time. In the early hours of 12 October 1984, during the Conservative party conference in Brighton, the IRA attempted to assassinate her. She carried on within hours to give her leader's speech at the conference (and later went on to sign the Anglo-Irish agreement). One of her many left-wing critics, watching her that day, said 'I don't approve of her as Prime Minister, but by God she's a great tank commander.' This titanic figure, with all her capacities and all her flaws, storms from these pages as from no other book.

Download or read book Britain France and the Battle for the Leadership of Europe 1957 2007 written by Richard Davis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-04 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book gives an account of an essential part of Britain’s troubled relationship with the rest of Europe after 1945 – particularly considering the rivalry of France and Britain between 1945 and 2007. The record of Britain’s relations with the rest of Europe, and in particular with France, from 1945 onwards was seen by the politicians and diplomats in charge of foreign policy very much in terms of a diplomatic battle. This is paradoxical given that European integration was supposedly aiming to create a European community. Although Britain has usually been seen as an at-best half-hearted participant in European integration, it nonetheless maintained its ambition to assume the leadership of Europe. This inevitably led to a confrontation with France which shared the same goal. This book begins by looking at the opposing ways in which these two ancient European rivals presented very different models for the sort of Europe they wished to see emerge. It goes on to consider the record of their rivalry between 1945 and 2007. After this, Britain effectively gave up the battle for the political leadership of Europe. This, however, should not obscure the fact that it had succeeded in imposing many of its social and economic models on Europe. This volume will be of interest to both undergraduate students and general readers interested in Britain’s position in Europe.

Download or read book European Integration and the Atlantic Community in the 1980s written by Kiran Klaus Patel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique collection of essays lays the groundwork for the study of the intersection of European integration and transatlantic relations in the 1980s. With archives for this period only recently being opened, scholars are beginning to analyse and understand what some have called a peak moment in the European project and others have called the Second Cold War. How do these moments intersect and relate to one another? These essays, by prominent scholars from Europe and the United States, examine these and related questions while challenging the '1980s' itself as a useful demarcation for historical analysis.

Download or read book The Passage to Europe written by Luuk van Middelaar and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the untold story of the crises and compromises that lead to the formation of the European Union.

Download or read book EU Cohesion Policy and European Integration written by John Bachtler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EU Cohesion policy accounts for a major share of the EU budget and is central to economic and social development in many European countries. This book provides a comprehensive and theoretically-informed analysis of how Cohesion policy has evolved over time, in particular the budgetary and policy dynamics of the 2007-13 reform. In the context of the budgetary politics of the EU, the book examines the process by which the reform of Cohesion policy has been shaped; it identifies the key factors that explain the allocation of funding, assesses the roles of the Member States, European Commission and European Parliament, and tests whether the process and outcome are consistent with the expectations of EU decision-making and integration theories. Based on extensive, EU-wide research over a ten-year period, the book provides new insights into both the process and outcomes of EU policy reform. Presenting original research in an accessible format, this book will be of interest to scholars as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of European integration and policy studies.