United Kingdom membership of the European Union
The United Kingdom was a member state of the European Union and of its predecessor the European Communities – principally the European Economic Community – from 1 January 1973 until 31 January 2020. Since the foundation of the EEC, the UK had been an important neighbour and then a leading member state, until Brexit ended 47 years of membership. During the UK's time as a member state two referendums were held on the issue of its membership: the first, held on 5 June 1975, resulting in a vote to stay in the EC, and the second, held on 23 June 2016, resulting in a vote to leave the EU.
History
EU roots and British accession (1957–1973)
Ten West European nations created the Council of Europe in 1949, the first step towards political co-operation between them, but some countries wanted to go further. The 1951 Treaty of Paris created the European Coal and Steel Community, which began to unite European countries economically and politically in order to secure lasting peace, after two world wars had started in Europe in the first half of the century. The six founding countries were Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The 1950s were dominated by the Cold War between the Soviet bloc and the Western democracies. In 1951, the six ECSC countries signed a treaty to run their heavy industries – coal and steel – under a common management. It was felt that, with this arrangement, no country on its own could make weapons of war that it could turn against the others, in contrast to what had occurred in the past. In 1957, building on the success of the Coal and Steel Treaty, the six ECSC countries expanded co-operation to other economic sectors by signing the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community, or 'Common Market'. The idea was for people, goods and services to be able to move freely across borders. The French president Charles de Gaulle was determined to have his own 'special relationship' with West Germany, for he wished the EEC to be essentially a Franco-German alliance, with the other four members being satellite states.The UK was not a signatory of the three original treaties that were incorporated into what was then the European Communities, including the best-known of these, the Treaty of Rome. Britain first began talks to join the EEC in July 1961. The UK's applications to join in 1963 and 1967 were vetoed by the President of France, Charles de Gaulle. While it was true that Britain's economy, like many others, was struggling to recover from the high cost of the Second World War, De Gaulle had personal as well as economic reasons for not wanting the British around the table. He distrusted the British particularly because he thought that in disputes they would always take the American side. There were also distinct differences between the French and British farming industries. De Gaulle in his memoirs described the problem of the agriculture sector for French governments: "How could we maintain on our territory more than two million farms, three-quarters of which were too small and too poor to be profitable, but on which, nonetheless, nearly one-fifth of the French population live?" His solution was the Common Agricultural Policy. It provided for a single market for agricultural goods at guaranteed prices, a Community preference scheme against imports, and financial solidarity. Intervention in markets to buy up surplus stocks at minimum prices, subsidising sales on world markets, and imposing levies on the import of cheaper goods from outside the Community – these were the techniques adopted, the bill for them being paid by taxpayers and consumers.
Britain, as a result of emergency wartime measures, had one of the most efficient farming industries in the world, and while agriculture accounted for 25% of the French economy, it only accounted for 4% in the UK. In the 1950s Britain's cheap food policy was predicated on trading at world market prices, which were throughout this period substantially lower than the CAP ones. It was supplemented for its farmers from the 1950s by a system of deficiency payments.
De Gaulle, aware that the CAP was crucial to France's economic security and social stability at that time, knew the British would not accept it, and his veto made sure that they could not stop CAP happening. Despite its complexity, the CAP's origin and driving momentum lay in a simple but historic trade-off between France's agricultural interests and Germany's industrial interests. Germany as a manufacturing economy wanted tariff-free access for its industrial goods throughout the EEC, so France got the CAP, and in return Germany got the Customs union and the Common external tariff built into the Treaty of Rome.
The system of price support developed through the 1970s and 1980s: the CAP absorbed more and more Community resources, from an estimated 12.9 per cent of the budget in 1966 to 68.4 or even 80 per cent in 1985. Between 1974 and 1983, guarantee expenditure on agricultural products grew from three billion ECUs to 16 billion ECUs. These trends emerged precisely as the importance of agriculture and rural populations in the member-states proportionately declined. Distribution of the benefits was also highly skewed; the Commission estimates that in 1991 some 80 per cent of support went to 20 per cent of the EU's farmers.
De Gaulle said that "a number of aspects of Britain's economy, from working practices to agriculture" had "made Britain incompatible with Europe" and that Britain harboured a "deep-seated hostility" to any pan-European project.
Once de Gaulle had relinquished the French presidency in 1969, the UK made a third and successful application for membership. Attitudes to Britain joining the EEC had shifted in political and business circles in both the UK and France, for by the late 1960s exports from Britain to western Europe outstripped those to countries participating in Imperial Preference, and British investment in the EEC was greater than that going to the Commonwealth. Large firms in advanced manufacturing became increasingly vocal advocates of joining the EEC, and the Confederation of British Industry, whose predecessor the Federation of British Industries had originally opposed the establishment of a European customs union after the Second World War, stressed the importance of pan-European investment, collaboration and co-ordinated industrial policy. In France, government and business opinion were increasingly aware that American firms were dominating high-tech sectors and were better at organising integrated production networks in Europe than local companies, in part due to the fragmentation of European businesses, as argued by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in his 1967 book Le défi américain. In response, the country's main employers' organisation, the Conseil national du patronat français, lobbied along with senior French civil servants to reverse de Gaulle's policy regarding British membership.
One complication with the negotiation came about because, in 1969 European Communities had asked their Foreign Affairs committee to 'study the best way of achieving progress in the matter of unification'. When the foundations of common foreign policy in the European Community was drafted in 1970, it was explicitly extended to include accession countries, to ensure the UK were involved in the development before the accession.
The Treaty of Accession was signed in January 1972 by the then prime minister Edward Heath, leader of the Conservative Party. Parliament's European Communities Act 1972 was enacted on 17 October, and the UK's instrument of ratification was deposited the next day, letting the United Kingdom's membership of the EEC come into effect on 1 January 1973.
Despite having to wait until 1 January 1973 to become a member of the European Communities, the UK was allowed to take a full part in the political development in the days immediately after signing the treaty.
There were potential economic benefits for Britain joining the EEC in regards to earnings, with Britain having fallen behind member states of the EEC in this category following its establishment in 1958. That year, Britons earned on average 50% more than those in Italy and as much as workers in the Netherlands, West Germany, and France. In 1969, however, average earnings in Italy had caught up with Britain while in the other Common Market countries average earnings were between 25% and 50% higher than in Britain.
Referendum of 1975
In 1975, the United Kingdom held its first ever national referendum on whether the UK should remain in the European Economic Community. The governing Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, had contested the October 1974 general election with a commitment to renegotiate Britain's terms of membership of the EEC and then hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EEC on the new terms. All of the major political parties and the mainstream press supported continuing membership of the EEC. However, there were significant divides within the ruling Labour Party; a 1975 one-day party conference voted by two to one in favour of withdrawal, and seven of the 23 cabinet ministers were opposed to EEC membership, with Harold Wilson suspending the constitutional convention of Cabinet collective responsibility to allow those ministers to publicly campaign against the government.On 5 June 1975, the electorate was asked to vote yes or no on the question: "Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community ?" Every administrative county and region in the UK returned majority "Yes" votes, apart from the Shetland Islands and the Outer Hebrides. With a turnout of just under 65%, the outcome of the vote was 67.2% in favour of staying in, and the United Kingdom remained a member of the EEC. Support for the UK to leave the EEC in 1975, in the data, appears unrelated to the support for Leave in the 2016 referendum.