1988 speech by Margaret Thatcher
The
Bruges speech
was given by British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher
to the
College of Europe
at the
Belfry of Bruges
, Belgium, on 20 September 1988. Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the
European Economic Community
(EEC) into a
federal Europe
that would take powers away from its members. She considered
European Commission
president
Jacques Delors
a campaigner for
federalisation
and clashed with him publicly. Earlier in 1988, Delors had reaffirmed his commitment for the EEC to take a greater role in establishing European economic, fiscal and social legislation, which Thatcher considered provocative. On 8 September, Delors spoke to Britain's
Trades Union Congress
, calling for their support.
Thatcher had been invited to speak to the College of Europe in Bruges and decided to make her text a response to Delors' speech of 8 September. Thatcher's speech recounted Britain's history within and close connection to Europe and called for the EEC to resist a move towards
centralisation of power
. She called for reforms to the
Common Agricultural Policy
and for the EEC to continue to support the work of
NATO
. One of the most famous and controversial passages was her remark that "we have not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of state at home only to see a
European superstate
getting ready to exercise a new dominance from Brussels".
Despite its commitment that Britain would work within the EEC to reform it, the speech was perceived as
anti-Europe
. The speech exposed a divide in the
Conservative Party
between those favouring federalisation and the majority who opposed it. Thatcher's foreign secretary
Geoffrey Howe
was greatly affected by the speech; his later support, with Chancellor of the Exchequer
Nigel Lawson
, for Britain to join the
European Exchange Rate Mechanism
eventually led to Thatcher's resignation. The
Bruges Group
, a
British Eurosceptic
think tank, was named after the speech. Some have described it as "setting the UK on the path to
Brexit
".
Background
[
edit
]
The
European Economic Community
(EEC), a
common market
and
customs union
for Western European states, was formed by the
Treaty of Rome
in 1957. The
United Kingdom joined
the organisation in 1973; by 1986, it included most non-Communist European states. The 1987
Single European Act
gave the Community's governing bodies (the
European Commission
,
European Parliament
and
Council of Ministers
) greater roles in managing policies on the environment, health, education and other areas.
[1]
Margaret Thatcher
, the
prime minister of the United Kingdom
, resented the power being granted to the Commission and its president
Jacques Delors
, who she considered a leading campaigner for a
federal Europe
. Thatcher and Delors became involved in several public clashes, which dismayed Thatcher's foreign secretary
Geoffrey Howe
, who was more sympathetic to Delors' policies.
[2]
On 6 July 1988, Delors spoke to the European Parliament and predicted that "10 years hence, 80 per cent of our economic legislation, and perhaps even our fiscal and social legislation, will be of Community origin". Thatcher perceived this as a provocation, a deliberate
crossing of the Rubicon
away from
national sovereignty
and towards federation.
[2]
Delors made a speech to the
Trades Union Congress
(TUC) on 8 September, calling for their support for the Commission's attempts to strengthen the powers of unions. Thatcher had previously clashed with the
trade unions
during her successful campaign to strengthen the
British economy
.
[3]
Thatcher decided to use an upcoming speech to the
College of Europe
, an academic organisation based in
Bruges, Belgium
, to respond to Delors' speech to the TUC. The year marked a dramatic change in Thatcher's position on Europe from pragmatic acceptance to distinct opposition to further integration, which she would reflect in the speech.
[3]
Much of Thatcher's speech was drafted by her foreign-policy adviser
Charles Powell
and Conservative peer
Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton
.
[4]
[3]
Drafts of the speech were sent to the
Foreign Office
for review. Howe noted that there were "some plain and fundamental errors" and did not like references to a
United States of Europe
. He did not object to it, although the final version of the speech contained some significant changes. Howe did praise one passage in the draft that remained unchanged in the final version: "let me say bluntly on behalf of Britain: we have not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of state at home only to see a European superstate getting ready to exercise a new dominance from Brussels". This passage would become one of the most controversial of the speech.
[2]
Speech
[
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]
External videos
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[Film]
(Speech) – via the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.
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The speech was to be in a hall at the historic
Belfry of Bruges
on 20 September 1988.
[2]
[5]
Thatcher had planned to use an
autocue
but because of the venue's layout, with most of the audience sat to her sides, she chose to speak from her paper notes. She deviated slightly from the text but not in any politically meaningful manner.
[5]
A copy was sent in advance to Delors and, having read it, he refused to attend the event.
[4]
The Belgian prime minister,
Wilfried Martens
, was in the audience.
[5]
Thatcher began her speech by noting that her last appearance before the College had been shortly after the
Zeebrugge ferry disaster
, in which Belgians had saved many British lives. Thatcher also praised the College's rector, Professor
Jerzy Łukaszewski
, and the institution's role in the EEC. She went on to reference Bruges' long history and the city's association with English literary figures such as
Geoffrey Chaucer
and
William Caxton
.
[5]
She thanked the College for having the courage to invite her to speak on the topic of Europe and noted that some federalists would regard it as "rather like inviting
Genghis Khan
to speak on the virtues of
peaceful coexistence
".
[2]
Thatcher stated that she believed that the
culture of Europe
did not begin when the Treaty of Rome was signed but was instead the product of thousands of years of shared history.
[2]
She noted that Britain had long been associated with Europe and that its ancestors were
Romans
,
Celts
,
Saxons
and
Danes
. Thatcher stated that her "nation was?in that favourite Community word?'restructured' under the
Norman
and
Angevin rule
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries" and referred to the
Glorious Revolution
of 1688, where the Dutch
William of Orange
ascended the English throne.
[5]
Thatcher afterwards noted Britain's history as a home for those fleeing tyranny on
Continental Europe
and her later fights "to prevent Europe from falling under the dominance of a single power".
[2]
[5]
In a passage that had not been in the original draft seen by Howe she referred to the
British First World War
dead: "Only miles from here, in Belgium, lie the bodies of 120,000 British soldiers who died in the
First World War
. Had it not been for that willingness to fight and to die, Europe would have been united long before now?but not in liberty, not in justice".
[2]
[5]
She afterwards noted that Britain had supported the
European resistance movements
against
Nazi Germany
in the
Second World War
.
[5]
Thatcher stated that Britain's commitment to Europe remained, as seen in the 70,000
British Armed Forces
service members deployed on the continent.
[5]
She urged the audience not to forget
those parts of Europe under communist rule
, stating, "we shall always look on
Warsaw
, Prague and
Budapest
as great European cities".
[5]
[2]
Thatcher said that European values had led the United States of America to become a "valiant defender of freedom".
[5]
Thatcher then stated that "the European Community belongs to all its members. It must reflect the traditions and aspirations of all its members" and that Britain did not desire "some cosy,
isolated existence
on the fringes of the European Community" but to remain within it. To ensure this, she asked the EEC not to become "ossified by endless regulation" and that it must respect each nation's customs and traditions and not try to mould them into a single
European identity
. She argued that the EEC should not look to model itself upon the US and that it seemed to be moving towards greater
centralisation of power
at the same time that the
Soviet Union
was moving away from it (
perestroika
).
[5]
Thatcher hailed the success of the February 1988
European Council
meeting in cutting expenditure on
storing and disposing of food surpluses
generated by the
Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) and called for continued reform of the CAP, which she described as "unwieldy, inefficient and grossly expensive". She suggested that by doing so, the agriculture budget could be redirected towards training and aid. Thatcher urged the EEC to learn the lessons of history that "
central planning
and detailed control do not work and that personal endeavour and initiative do" and to move towards
free enterprise
in a
single market
. She stated, "of course, we want to make it easier for goods to pass through frontiers. Of course, we must make it easier for people to travel throughout the Community[,]" but some frontier controls were essential for security purposes. Thatcher argued against
protectionism
and in favour of
international aid
to
developing countries
. Thatcher stressed the importance of NATO and the US to the defence of Europe and argued that the
Western European Union
should not be seen as an alternative to NATO.
[5]
Thatcher concluded by arguing that Europe did not require any more treaties beyond the
North Atlantic Treaty
, the
Brussels Treaty
and the Treaty of Rome. Her closing remarks were: "Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our
national identity
no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that
Atlantic community
?that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic?which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength".
[5]
The text of the speech was released to the media at 17:30 GMT by the
Downing Street
press office.
[5]
After finishing her speech, Thatcher left the event with her husband,
Denis
, and travelled to Brussels for an audience with
King Baudouin
. Afterwards, she had dinner with Prime Minister Martens and his cabinet members, during which a row erupted after Belgian foreign minister
Leo Tindemans
made a federalist comment.
[4]
Impact
[
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]
The speech was perceived as an attack on the "European project". However, Thatcher supported the
Common Market
and had intended the speech to be anti-federalist, not anti-Europe.
[4]
Delors admitted that "technically it was a good speech, well written, beautiful phrases. She was very direct, very comprehensible" but considered it to be an attack on the EEC.
[2]
Lord Thomas of Swynnerton
was at heart a
Europhile
and was disappointed that the speech was perceived as being anti-Europe.
[4]
The speech was seen as a warning against expanding the remit of the EEC beyond the limits of the Treaty of Rome into the
social policy
of member states. Though it did not mention socialism by name, the speech was seen as implying that the EEC was turning into a
socialist state
.
[3]
The author
Robin Harris
considered the speech the most important of Thatcher's prime-ministerial career. He regarded it as marking British resistance to the
Economic and Monetary Union
and setting out an alternative model for
European cooperation
under a
voluntary association
of independent states.
[6]
Though, in essence, a
pro-European
speech, it quickly became a symbol of hostility to Europe, behind which Eurosceptics rallied.
[7]
[8]
The address exposed a divide in the
Conservative Party
between the minority of European federalists and the majority who were opposed.
[6]
Former prime minister
Edward Heath
, who had handled the original negotiations on the
British accession to the European Communities
, broke the precedent against criticising a sitting Government while the Prime Minister is engaged in foreign negotiations by travelling to
Brussels
while Thatcher was there to attend the
1988 NATO summit
to deliver a rebuttal personally.
[9]
The Bruges speech greatly affected Howe, who considered Thatcher's position to be at odds with his own, and on 4 May 1989 he met with the
Chancellor of the Exchequer
,
Nigel Lawson
, who had been planning for the country to join the
European Exchange Rate Mechanism
(ERM), an EEC
economic stability
measure, against Thatcher's wishes. Howe and Lawson continued to lobby Thatcher on the matter; however, Lawson resigned when Thatcher refused to sack her chief economic adviser Sir
Alan Walters
, who opposed British membership of the ERM. Britain eventually joined the ERM on 5 October, under Lawson's replacement as chancellor
John Major
.
[2]
The political decision ultimately led to Thatcher's resignation and replacement by Major, who came to prominence for his role in the ERM decision.
[6]
[2]
[8]
Thatcher became increasingly sceptical of the EEC after her resignation.
[2]
After the Bruges speech, there was an increasing trend towards
Euroscepticism
in the Conservative Party.
[4]
This created difficulties during Major's negotiations to pass the
Maastricht Treaty
, the founding document of the
European Union
(EU), under which increased powers were granted to the European institutions.
[8]
An agreement was eventually reached, and Britain passed the treaty, though it retained an
opt-out on the Social Chapter
until this was given up by
Labour
prime minister
Tony Blair
in 1997.
[3]
Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020, after
a nationwide referendum
on the matter. The Bruges speech is sometimes described as "setting the UK on the path to
Brexit
" (Conservative peer
Lord Willetts
),
[3]
though some writers such as
David Allen Green
have stated that this was not the case and was instead "a call to battle" to reform the EEC.
[7]
The Eurosceptic
Bruges Group
think tank was founded in 1990 and named after the speech.
[7]
The original drafts of the Bruges speech were released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust in 2018 under the
thirty-year rule
. The drafts showed that the final speech had been considerably toned down. Direct references to Delors were removed, and those to the European Commission were replaced with "European community". The use of the term "Euro
waffle
" was also removed.
[4]
See also
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References
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External links
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