Leave or remain? War and Peace

Leave or remain? That’s what all us Brits are being asked to give our opinions on in less than two weeks’ time. This is the first of a few pieces where I’m offering my attitudes to the question – for what they are worth.

The biggest complaint that I see and read in the news and hear amongst friends and family is “we don’t have enough information, it’s not clear cut”.  

Let’s get back to basics. What brought about the EU in the first place?

Most of those voting in the coming EU referendum will not have any idea of what an absolute horror the European wars were even though they were regular occurrences for over a thousand years. And that, I firmly believe, is largely because of the existence of the EU, an organisation many of us are considering leaving. Now why?

Avoiding another European war was the idea that drove the visionaries of France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries to construct the Treaty of Rome – the foundation of the European Union. We Brits didn’t join for another twenty years, having turned down the opportunity of being one of the founding nations. Clearly we've been confused about Europe for a long time.

One of my early memories is holding my mother’s hand while walking across a bomb site in Sheffield. It seemed to my young eyes to stretch into the distance and on my right, there were three department stores and four clumps of twisted girders where another four had been. I think the three left standing were Marks & Spencer, C & A and British Home Stores; “Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, had mistaken the department stores for a steel factory” said my mum. Some years later I was walking with a German friend around Stuttgart; I noticed a rather odd configuration on top of a hill just outside the town “that’s where the RAF dropped their load on a bonfire, believing it to be the town” said my friend. Those two incidents happened in a war that seems as remote to most people as the Great War of a century ago seemed to me, but to my grandparents, the memories of that war were raw and real and perpetuated by fading photographs of lost brothers and cousins.

Anyone who’s read a history book knows Europe’s famous names. Here’s a few: Napoleon, Wellington, Bismarck and Nelson: they were all heroes blessed with a large helping of charisma. And they were warriors, first, foremost and above all.

The European Union has succeeded in its aim of avoiding war. How? By creating the foremost opportunity for continuing dialog, friendship, trade, travel and mutual support amongst nations that had previously regularly knocked six bells out of one another. It hasn’t thrown up many charismatic heroes though.

I want Britain to remain in Europe because I’d rather leave a safe Britain to my grandchildren and their progeny than the opportunity for them to become heroes and heroines.