Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

British imperial memories and Europe 109
forced into actions of this kind, but precisely because decolonisation was
relatively untraumatic for Britain, there has been no thoroughgoing signal
that Britain is no longer an imperial power.’ 19 This suggests that collective
memories that have largely been sustained as positive experiences could
be erased by in fact treating them as negative experiences. Blair’s own
view was that ‘we cannot pretend that the Empire is back because it isn’t.
My generation has moved on beyond all that. My generation has come to
terms with its history. When I see the pageantry in Britain I think that’s
great, but it does not define where Britain is today. The whole idea of
a modern British identity is not to displace the past, but to honor it by
applying its best characteristics to today’s world.’ 20 But as we shall see,
in reality Blair too is driven by the quest for post-imperial European and
global leadership, both as a means to influence policy and as a representational
device.
How, in practice, has the reality and then the memory of Empire, and
the resilience of the notion of leadership that is bequeathed to the British
decision-making classes played out in Britain’s European policy?British
policy towards the European Communities was, and remains, the most
contentious foreign policy issue for British politicians since the 1950s.
Both major parties have realised that the lure of the past, and the strength
of the image of Britain’s independent great power role in the world,
have worked against the need to downgrade, adapt to and participate in
European integration projects.
The European foreign policy of the first post-war – Old Labour – government
between 1945 and 1951 was, naturally, deeply affected by memories
of empire/dominion and war, and it was during these years that the
framework of post-war British foreign policy was established. In 1945,
memories were direct and personal, as well as institutionalised, for, as the
war ended, Britain’s great power status was not contested. However in
practice, as one Foreign Office official put it, alongside the United States
and the Soviet Union, it was more a case of the Big Two-and-a-Half, than
the Big Three. Throughout subsequent decades, the direct memory of
Empire and Britain’s global role was to be changed into a collective historical
memory that was easily and subconsciously sourced by individual
politicians as well as Whitehall. Resistance to ‘Europe’, an unhappy alternative
to great powerdom, remained a powerful force in British politics. 21
19 Mark Leonard, Britain TM: Renewing our Identity (London: Demos, with the Design
Council, 1997), 70.
20 Time, 27 October 1997; the cover was titled ‘Renewed Britannia’ and showed a stained
Union Jack flag being pulled away to reveal a pristine one beneath – plus ça change?
21 Clement Attlee ‘would frequently half in earnest, half in jest, make such remarks as
“can’t trust the Europeans – they don’t play cricket”. He admired and liked Frenchmen,