The Labour Party and the European Question, 1961-2000

The British Labour Party has had a troubled relationship with Europe throughout the post-war period in the 20th century. Despite the enduring policy differences, the anti-European biased Gaitskell's cry God for England and a thousand years of history, Foot's Little Englanderism, Jenkins' quest for a special role for his country and Blair's equally Europhile vision of a Europe of separate identities, they all seem to have in common an adherence to the nation-state and a mutual dislike of Britain being sucked into a European superstate. Bearing in mind the policy inconsistencies, this book, by defining national identity as a dynamic and relational concept in which race has been a constitutive element of nation at spatial, cultural and temporal levels, goes beyond the short-term motives of the party factions, and places its focus on the stable core of their beliefs in the nation-state. At a time that the debate over the national identity still provokes competing visions of nationhood in most European states, this work would be a useful tool for everyone who is interested in European and not just in British public affairs.