were disappointed by such fears and struggled to come to terms with such continued distrust35In his memoirs of the period, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl echoes this incredulity: after forty years of a Federal Republic both Atlantic and European, and especially after his and his supporters hard fought faithful backing of NATO in the 1980s, he could not grasp such visceral doubts about »the Germans.«36Reflecting on her position towards Germany in 1989 –1990, Kohl diagnoses Thatcher with a »generational distrust« of the German people, cou-pled with disappointment at Great Britain’s loss of its Empire and leading place in the world despite its victory in both World Wars, whereas the twice defeated Germany could emerge at the end of the twentieth century as a relative winner.37 Clearly those factors reviewed above – an instinctive bitterness and distrust born of her youth wartime experiences and a belief in a nigh inescapable na-tional character that very much accommodates those memories of the war – play a valid and important role in explaining Margaret Thatcher’s attitude and be-haviour towards German reunification. Two further factors will now be stressed which have a complementary relationship with one another and with her his-torically rooted fear of »the Germans« which found such strong expression.
Firstly, a phenomenon which can perhaps best be called »British ex-ceptionalism,« and the flip side of this coin, the fear of »Europe,« of European integration as the realization of this fear, and the conflation of Germany with Europe. A focus on these factors and the fears they engendered will shed further light on the nature and interrelation of Margaret Thatcher’s behaviour as the Cold War came to a close.
demi-paradise […] the sacredness of England, whether or not corrupted into Britain,« which was set »for ever apart from Europe.«39Such romantic consid-erations of the nation may indeed seem a faintly ridiculous framework within which to make or interpret foreign policy in the late 20thcentury, but the lasting appeal of Britain as an island apart is not to be denied to this very day and an examination of Thatcher’s own reflections on Britain and Europe reveal in stark, direct terms just such a viewpoint.
Indeed, Thatcher was not one to mask such an attachment to and glorification of British history and its differentiation from continental Europe. Interviewed by Der Spiegelin March 1990, following the Volkskammer elections in the GDR and the resultant clear wish for hastened German unity, Thatcher was asked whether she feared that a reunited Germany would both politically and economically dominate Europe. Her immediate response conjures echoes of 1940 and the image of indomitable British resistance.40Snapping back: »so leicht sind wir nicht zu dominieren, wir bestimmt nicht,« she reached farther into history to further justify her position, proudly claimed that »Freiheit im Sinne der Recht-staatlichkeit […] hier schon seit langem [besteht]. Wir haben dasälteste Par-lament in Europa – 700 Jahre alt ist es. Uns dominiert man nicht so leicht.«41 Visible here are the two main characteristics of this British exceptionalism: an evocation of the roots of British democracy broadly reminiscent of the Whig view of history, and a defensive tone set against a perceived threat from the continent. In her 1993 interview withDer Spiegel, when asked about the dif-ferences between the British people and the German people, Thatcher responded with the grand proclamation that the British people are »das Volk mit derältesten parlamentarischen Demokratie der Welt. Tief in unserer Seele haben wir den leidenschaftlichen Glauben an Fairness und Freiheit.«42Pressed as to whether the Germans lacked these very same beliefs, she avoided an answer and merely responded that Germany only found unity in 1871 as the result of an aggressive war against France. A more direct response to this very question, however, is to
39 Young, This Blessed Plot, p. 1. Young’s mention of the dominance of English imagery, history and actors in this ostensibly »British« exceptionalism is especially notable.
40 On the role of the »1940« in modern British self-conception and exceptionalism see Malcolm Smith, Britain and 1940. History, Myth and Popular Memory, London and New York 2000.
The emotive connection in 1989–1990 to Britain’s wartime experience, as Kohl noted, is clear: »With the unification of Germany, Britain could no longer maintain her role as the old, glorious victor of World War II.« Klein, Obstructive or Promoting?, p. 408. Timothy Garton Ash connects the »finest hour« and the feeling that »wir haben den Krieg gewonnen, sie aber den Frieden« as two sides of the same coin, Timothy Garton Ash, »Ein festes Bündnis«, in:
Der Spiegel 45 (1993), p. 20.
41 Hans Hielscher/Hans Werner Kilz/Dieter Wild, »Alle gegen Deutschland – nein!«, in: Der Spiegel 13 (1990), pp. 182–187.
42 Dörler/Kaden, »Ihr wollt den Rest Europas«.
be found in a BBC interview wherein Thatcher plainly stated that »there is a great strand of equity and fairness in the British people, this is our characteristic.
There is not a strand of equity or fairness in Europe.«43
The clearest enunciation of Thatcher’s underlying conception of British ex-ceptionalism is to be found in her 2002 bookStatecraft.Reflecting on the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe in a chapter tellingly entitled »Britain and Europe – Time to Renegotiate,« she quotes Charles de Gaulle’s 1963 rejection of British EC membership in order to introduce British difference from Europe.
Expanding at length on de Gaulle’s evocation of the insular, maritime character of Britain, Thatcher outlines her conviction that »by her history and her interests Britain is indeed a fundamentally different kind of nation state to those which are involved in ›building‹ Europe […]. It was Britain’s long history of continuous constitutional development, the respect in which her institutions were held, the honesty of her politicians and the integrity of her judges, the fact that not since the Norman Conquest had she known occupation, and that neither Nazism nor communism had ever gained a grip on her political life – all these things marked Britain out from Continental Europe […]. Britain is different.«44 Indeed, Thatcher’s writings are punctuated with references to the gradual process of English constitutional development and that of Anglo-Saxon freedoms, both political and economic. One need only consider the concluding section of Statecraft, entitled simply »Runnymede«, the site of the sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215, in which she reflects on the meaning of that event and the English, British, and American character which she believes it spawned, »so irritatingly bent on liberty, so obstinate to right wrongs, so pig-headed in demanding jus-tice.«45 With such viewpoints in mind it is possible to appreciate the real meaning behind the otherwise merely entertaining comment by John Campbell, in the context of recounting Thatcher’s diplomatic stance towards South Africa in the 1980s, that »she was no more prejudiced against Africans than she was against Germans, Greeks, Italians, and others who hadthe misfortune not to be British.«46
Clearly, Margaret Thatcher was possessed of a very pronounced, in many ways profound, and certainly specific historical consciousness, at least as far as the United Kingdom and its role in the world was concerned. Only in reflecting on this historical consciousness can we appreciate the role played by the sense and fear of the decline of Britain that gripped the country so pervasively in the post-war era, especially after the Suez Crisis and the experience of decoloniza-43 Denys Blakeway/Samir Shah (Prods.), Thatcher. The Downing Street Years, BBC1 1993, a
documentary coinciding with the release of Thatcher’s memoirs.
44 Thatcher, Statecraft, pp. 365 f., [italics in original].
45 Ibid., pp. 467–471, here p. 469.
46 Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 2, p. 322, [author’s italics].
tion.47As a means of resisting this decline as an independent world power, the British political class had been »hanging on to the past, in the form of the post-imperial Commonwealth« and the »special relationship« with the United States:
the means of exercising world influence as an allied proxy, forged as it was during war and further justified by common history and values. For British citizens and statesmen possessed of such a viewpoint, »entry into Europe was a defeat.«48 Thatcher’s delaying action in 1989 –1990 thus stemmed from a fear of a further decline in Britain’s relative international influence in the wake of German re-unification and the related calls for the necessity and desirability of further European integration.
This realization is indeed a decisive point: As we have seen hints of above, Thatcher’s conception of English/British characteristic virtues continually find their counterpoint, their opposite, in the »Continental«, the »European«. This manifests itself both in vague historical-philosophical contentions and in spe-cific complaints regarding the institutional reality of European states and the European Community/European Union (EC/EU) itself. Her memoirs recount the French Revolution bicentennial in order to repeat her juxtaposition of the French Revolution (and the 1917 »Bolshevik« Revolution with which she asso-ciates it) with England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688: the French Revolution a utopian project blind to its own intellectual hubris of attempting to fashion a new order from a blank slate and thus inherently flawed by its own idealism; the Glorious Revolution characterized above all by continuity, evolution, developed traditions and thus balanced change.49This same pattern is echoed in her dis-cussion of human rights and the attempt to enshrine them in international treaties. Once again we find an appeal to the positive organic developments symbolized by Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution alongside their fellow Anglo-Saxon stepchildren, the American Declaration of Independence, Con-stitution and Bill of Rights. Against these texts she holds up the French Decla-ration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen as the original, instructive example of the impossibility of merely declaring and out of thin air creating law, traditions, or rights from an abstract idealistic drive.50
This comparison with continental European political culture against the English understanding takes more concrete form in Thatcher’s critique of Eu-rope as a functioning political order: Jacques Delors, the federalist president of the European Commission from 1985–1994 is derided as a self-inflated »fonc-tionnaire« who was a dangerous example of the »blurring of the roles of civil
47 Sharp, Thatcher’s Diplomacy, pp. 6–21.
48 Young, This Blessed Plot, pp. 2 f.
49 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 752 f.
50 Thatcher, Statecraft, pp. 250–256.
servants and elected representatives« apparently typical to continental political traditions.51She relates this trait to the posited centralization, inefficiency and instability characteristic of continental government which, she claims, has re-sulted in a long-standing distrust of politicians and thus a tolerance for the idea of a federal, technocratic European structure; concluding »bluntly,« and in-sultingly, that »if I were an Italian I might prefer rule from Brussels too.«52
It was thus the United Kingdom’s task to stand up to the spread of such continental values in the structures of »Europe« and to defend Britain’s char-acteristic national identity and virtues within that structure. This dynamic was clearly spelled out in Margaret Thatcher’s famous speech to the College of Eu-rope in Bruges on September 20, 1988, where she famously declared that »we have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.« The defensive nature of her fears of »European«
encroachment stands out in her claim that »certainly we in Britain would fight attempts to introduce collectivism and corporatism at the European level – although what people wish to do in their own countries is a matter for them.«53 This was a »ringing declaration of intent« which »caused an uproar« if not for the content of what she said, which was predictable enough, but for the style and tone.54Recalling the speech in her memoirs, Thatcher justifies it as stemming from the anger and frustration she felt from the thought of the familiar litany of British characteristics being subordinated to an European bureaucracy born of continental traditions, »because Britain was the most stable and developed de-mocracy in Europe we had perhaps most to lose from these developments.«55 This sort of British exceptionalism so directly enunciated by Margaret Thatcher is an overwhelmingly positive self-image, indeed a positive stereotype, rooted in a narrow view of British history that emphasized pride in being the heir of ancestors who had developed »the practical arrangements by which people could live in liberty.«56In this case, the British historical experience, and thus British national characteristics themselves are not just positively stated, but defensively stated against a perceived threat : British virtues are othered against
»Europe« and that which it represents.
51 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 742.
52 Ibid.
53 Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the College of Europe (»The Bruges Speech«), 20 September 1988, online:<http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/>, [16 May 2010].
54 Sharp, Thatcher’s Diplomacy, pp. 168–170, here p. 169.
55 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 743 f., she evokes »[…] British democracy, parlia-mentary sovereignty, the common law, our traditional sense of fairness […]«.
56 Sharp, Thatcher’s Diplomacy p. 171, describing what he calls »Thatcher’s cultural and ideological nationalism«.