The Conservative Party and Europe

Ben Patterson, a former three-term Conservative Member of the European Parliament, looks at how and why the “party of Europe”, which led Britain into the Community under Edward Heath, has become one ever more influenced by Eurosceptic sentiment. The book is a non-polemical and balanced history of the whole period since the 1940s but with a clear perspective: as Ken Clarke MP puts it in the foreword, Patterson “writes... from the standpoint of a fair-minded participant and of someone whose views, like mine, represented the mainstream majority of the Conservative Party.” Ben Patterson has been involved in Conservative policy on Europe since as a young man in the early 1960s his first job was as a tutor at Swinton Conservative College, lecturing on the Common Market as it was then known. He draws on more than five decades of personal experience to explore not just the high politics but also the deeper currents of change among the party rank-and-file; and on his experience in European politics (including three terms as a Member of the European Parliament) to make an unusual excursion into the resemblances and contrasts between British Conservatism and European Christian Democracy. The book will be welcomed as a sober and serious-minded history in a field where much of the literature throws more heat than it does light.

Foreword, by Ken Clarke MP Preface 1. The Churchill Legacy 2. The Macmillan Application 3. Finding a Role 4. Preparing the Ground 5. Membership and Referendum 6. Direct Elections 7. The Years of “Maggie’s Money” 8. Towards the Single Market 9. Bruges and After 10. ERM and EMU 11. The Battle for Maastricht 12. Into the Cold 13. No Longer the Party of Europe 14. The Constitutional Treaty 15. The Road to Recovery 16. 1945 – 2010: An Analysis 17. Conservative European Policy and the Future Appendix 1: Conservatism and Christian Democracy Appendix 2: Chronology of Man Events Appendix 3: Tables Bibliography Index