Britain and Europe

Ten years ago during the Christmas holiday period I joined a debate on the discussion forums run by the Financial Times newspaper on Britishness as opposed to Europeanism, in which I made much of Winston Churchill's rejection of Britain joining the nascent Common Market.  The  quote upon which I placed particular emphasis came from the Cabinet Papers of 29th November 1951 in which he stated that Britain should not become an "integral part of European integration" as it would "forfeit our insular or commonwealth wide character".

Here is a follow up posting from boxing day 2002, which develops some of the ideas I linked to and discussed from my posting to this blog of yesterday morning.