Churchill set out a blueprint for the EU after the Second World War

In the first of a five-part series on Britain’s ambiguous attitude to continental Europe, Sean O'Grady reveals how such a stance predated even the EEC, and has led to it playing a game of catch-up thereafter

Strength in unity: Churchill wanted the new Europe to shine (Getty)

Given how bulkily he towers over the European debate, and has since the end of the Second World War, maybe a good starting point for assessing Britain’s troubled, ambiguous, and now emotionally charged relationship with Europe is with Winston Churchill. Although various notions of a more politically united Europe had been floated over the years (excluding the imperial designs of Napoleon and Hitler, of course), these had mostly been idealistic and academic; few practising politicians, and none of the stature of Churchill, had put forward such a vision.

Yet, in a speech in Zurich in 1946, Churchill did precisely that, and in terms that would still make the Eurosceptics of today squirm, not least with embarrassment at the way they lazily invoke his memory and reputation to “get Brexit done”. Only one year after the end of the war, Churchill told his startled audience this:

“If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and glory which its three or four hundred million people would enjoy. Yet it is from Europe that have sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations, which we have seen even in this twentieth century and in our own lifetime, wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.