In memoriam S S LM
Dear Readers and Friends
VJDay70: a Pointer to Britain’s future in the EU?
I was one of the younger nonagenarian South East Asia and Pacific veterans of World War II who
gathered, in the moving company of widows of former veterans, kith and kin, supporters and carers, on
Horse Guards Parade on August 15, the seventieth anniversary of VJ Day. We assembled at the
benevolent and superbly efficient invitation of the Royal British Legion. The Armed Forces likewise did us
escorting proud. The proceedings were held in the welcome presence of the Prince of Wales and the
Duchess of Cornwall. The Prime Minister courteously and unobtrusively interrupted his holiday to join in
the ceremonies of the day.
It is just conceivable, I suppose, that I was not the only British diplomat-veteran present. It is beyond
doubt that I was the only one who is in the habit of inflicting on his very close friends, in roughly Light
Brigade strength, his impressions of what is at stake in our relationship with our European partners.
For me, August 15 was a pointer to Britain’s future in the EU, as part of its future in the world. That future
is stirringly envisaged in the Prime Minister’s 100 Days article, published appropriately that very day in the
Daily Telegraph. The day stimulated cerebral, as well as emotional, and historical as well as
reminiscent, reaction It is in these respects that I venture to offer some reflections. They do not err on the
side of brevity, for which I apologise. It is the price for striving to maintain some analytical coherence.
Those whose Eyes Glaze easily Over (our good aMEGOs) may care to switch off at this point, and rejoin us
at the less demanding Part VI below.
I Seventy years on; the Kohima Epitaph and the United Nations
Anniversaries are not for nostalgia only. They are a valuable source of national cohesion and identity. They
link the generations together.
Learning from the past is perhaps the surest way of taking constructive thought for the future. This is all the
more important when we hold in remembrance past disasters on a grand scale, such as the Great War and
World War II We - all of us, together - have a great and enduring responsibility to see to it that the
sacrifice and suffering which so tragically characterised them wee not in vain.
This responsibility is poignantly enshrined in the sublime simplicity of the inscription on the Kohima War
Memorial:
When you go home, tell them of us and say
For their tomorrow we gave our today.
I dare to think that our collective stewardship of Tomorrow has been acceptably discharged by the work and
word of the United Nations system and by all those of iike mind, governmental or non-governmental, who
have laboured for or with it. Its inspiration has been the Preamble to the United Nations Charter. (The full
text is in the Annex). In two hundred words of superlative wisdom and clarity, the Preamble sets out a new
International Code of Conduct for the nations. It renounces the use of force, save in the common
interest, and establishes a tradition of countries co-operating to promote the well being of their
peoples, instead of indulging in rivalry and hostility jn the pursuit of conflicting (and often
illusory) national interests.
Vast numbers of previously dependent territories have achieved indepenent statehood since the end of World
War II. There are now four times as many member states of the United Nations as there were at the tome of
the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945. We have been spared the catastrophe of a Third World War. The
management of ever-increasing world wide interdependence presents us with enormous problems. But it is
incontestable that the manifold activities undertaken under by the United Nations system as a whole, or
under its broad aegis, has “promoted social progress and better standards on living in larger freedom” for
humankind in general to a degree that none of the delegates attending the San Francisco Conference would
have assumed likely. .
In this, its seventieth, year, the United Nations is holding summit level gatherings on four major
topics: disaster management, financing, sustainable development and climate change. While these issues
of substance of necessity hold our primary attention, let us see to it that the UN itself as an organisation is
accorded the recognition it deserves.
II The Commonwealth
Just as it played a key part in the Allied War effort, and especially in the Pacific and South East Asia
theatres, so the Commonwealth was prominent in the making of peace and post-war reconstruction.. The
Preamble to the UN Charter was a Commonwealth device, launched by the enigmatic Jan Christiaan
Smuts, and set in hand at a meeting of Commonwealth Ministers in London on the eve of the San Francisco
Conference.
There has been from the outset a symbiotic relationship between the United Nations and the
Commonwealth. .Jahawarlal Nehru, first Indian Prime Minister and one of the foremost-post-war
statesmen, realised at once that the Commonwealth could bring “a touch of healing to a troubled
world”. As an “interregional sub-set” of the UN, the Commonwealth has a unique capacity to bridge
regional or functional differences.. The profile of its membership, in contrast to that of the UN as a
whole, gives it unequalled expertise in, and special responsibility for, the smaller and more vulnerable
countries among the UN membership. Its organic affinities give it a particular facility in the fostering of the
links between the intergovernmental and the unofficial aspects of the activities of the international
community.
CHOGM , Malta, November, 2015
Heads of Government of the Commonwealth will gather for their next regular biennial meeting in
Malta in November. There is a general understanding that the meeting will proved a crucial occasion for a
re-invigoration of the Commonwealth after the difficult times it has encountered in connexion with the
previous CHOGM in Sri Lanka in 2013. It can show again its collective value to the United Nations, as
well as to its own membership..
Malta’s forthcoming EU Presidency
Malta, a Commonwealth member of the EU, in common with Cyprus and the UK, will assume the
six-monthly rotating presidency in January, 2016. As a result of the introduction, under the terms of the
Lisbon Treaty , of the post of “permanent” President of the European Council, the rotating presidency has
lost much of ts significance and its attraction. This has been a contributory factor to the sense of alienation
from the Union institutions experienced by so many people in the member countries. Perhaps the dynamic
young Prime Minister of Malta, the Hon Joseph Muscat will find a way of furnishing the rotating
presidency with new vitality.
III Magna Carta: its twenty-first century relevance
Amid the plethora of anniversaries which we in this country have observed during the course of
2015, Magna Carta 800 must rank high. Folklore would have it that the sealing of a particular document at
Runnymede on June 15 , 1215, was the culmination of a confrontation between a largely dysfunctional
King and a rebellious motley of Barons, in which the latter won on points, rather than by knock-out. The
reality is somewhat more complex. The principal outcome was that for the first time in recorded history the
sovereign was obliged to recognise on paper – well, parchment - that he too was subject to the Law. Noone, but no-one, was above it.
The Rule of Law: Foundation of Liberty and Engine of Progress
The Rule of Law is rightly described as the Foundation of Liberty. But it has proved to be more than
that. It is a Source of Progress. The stability which its sway confers on everyday life facilitates and
encourages the confidence and the enterprise to build, to invest, to lend, to venture, to explore, to
think, to plan and to aspire for the future: in short, to seek fulfilment, both individual and collective, in
conditions of widening horizons and growing opportunities. /
In the words of the American Declaration of Independence, this expansive notion of the whole realm of
endeavour is summed up in the cryptic phrase “the pursuit of happiness”. In the company of life and
liberty, it is proclaimed as one of the “inalienable rights with which all men are endowed by their Creator”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Magna Carta International?
How, then can we relate this Magna Carta legacy to the world of twenty-first century
interdependence? Eleanor Roosevelt, the moving sprit behind the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948, declared it to be an international
Magna Carta. Though understandable, and in many ways laudable, this assertion will not survive close
scrutiny.
The Universal Declaration was a child of its circumstances. The Cold War had already set in. The
Declaration was in effect an elaborate challenge to the Soviet Union to accept UN standards of behaviour
which it was already flouting. This had side effects. The width and depth of the provisions in the
Declaration were such that its implementation was quite beyond the capacity, and, in some cases, even the
intention, of many of the developing country signatories to fulfil.
This however is in no way to undermine the significance of the Universal Declaration. The great sheaf of
human rights instruments subsequently adopted under UN aegis served to prevent the Declaration itself from
being regarded as a glorified wish-list.
Magna Carta, the Preamble to the UN Charter and the Commonwealth Charter
The true international descendant of Magna Carta nonetheless remains the Preamble of the United
Nations Charter. And it is entirely in keeping with the Commonwealth origins of that great text that its most
comprehensive, yet succinct, sequel should be the Commonwealth Charter, adopted by the Governments
in 20123 and signed by The Queen on behalf of all the Commonwealth on Commonwealth Day (the second
Monday in March) in 2013.
IV Fundamentals of Society
A less familiar aspect of the Magna Carta narrative is the role of Stephen Langton, and Archbishop of
Canterbury. Scholar, theologian, diplomat, cardinal, he played a key mediating role between the king
and the barons. He was the Man of the Runnymede Match.
He was able to play this key very largely by virtue of his capacity as senior local representative of the
monolithic Christendom which prevailed in Europe at that time. But his authority also comprehended preexisting grass roots consciousness, seemingly widespread, of the way a society of rational beings ought to
function, This consciousness was based not so much on revelation as on normative instinct. It is
recognisable not only under such notions from classical times as jus gentium or jus naturale., but also in
modern guise, as the product of enlightenment, and in a range of concepts, deductive and
inductive, such as the Common Good, “values” held in common, the Social Contract, the panoply of
Human Rights , “People Power” or simply “civilisation”.
Three speeches at Runnymede on June15: an Allegory of Society today?
There can be no easy answer to the question how best to articulate this general normative
consciousness in conditions of pluralism and 21st century interdependence. Faith obviously has a
significant role, as has interfaith co-operation. To a great extent the representatives of faith can speak for
those who have none, but who are like-minded. A church which is established by law can do this the more
readily.
The point was well illustrated by the official proceedings on June 15 at Runnymede. At their core was a
sequence of brief speeches by the Master of the Rolls (ex officio Chairman of the Magna Carta Trust), the
Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The sequence has no known precedent and it is beyond
ordinary imagination to conceive of circumstance in which it could recur, except duirng celebration of
Magna Carta 900
The Speakers can be seen as representing successively the Rule of Law, the Political Process and the
Conscience of the People. The Rule of Law is the Warden of the Political Process, while the Conscience of
the People, as conveyed so movingly in the Preamble to the UN Charter and the Epitaph io
Kohima, represents both justification of its democratic infrastructure and its moral validation.
V Reconciliation
It is implicit in the Kohima Epitaph and in the Preamble to the UN Charter that former adversaries should
join together in the co-operation which the proper management of \
Tomorrow so obviously requires.
Here again the record is encouraging. One of the key consequences of the Cold War was the Berlin Air Lift
of 1948-49. This was an operation to keep West Berlin supplied by air when the Soviet Union had sought
to block all ground-level access to it, It was an example of Anglo-American-German co-operation of the
highest urgency and efficiency, a mere three years after the end of World War II.
There is no Far Eastern equivalent to this dramatic episode. The substantial part played over the years by
Japan in the work of the United Nations has encountered a lack of adequate recognition similar to that of the
UN itself.
Efforts at ”direct“, as distinct from implicit, or de facto, reconciliation are subject to the personal
difficulties and reticences with which we are familiar. The greater therefore is the debt we owe to those
who, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, “embark on the journey of becoming friends”.
The media did not fail to spot the Japanese Ambassador among those present on Horse Guards Parade on
August 15. Like us all, he had a Union Jack in his hand. In a speech of great grace and insight at a
ceremony after a special Service of \Reconciliation in Canterbury Cathedral the next day, Ambassador
Hayashi said “you might have thought I would not feel particularly at home but in fact I was very happy to
be there because of the spirit of the occasion”. The Ambassador epitomises what it is we should all seek.
There is nothing Utopian about reconciliation. As one UN Secretary-General succinctly put it, “ we are not
leading people to Heaven; we are saving them from Hell” An iconic photograph of a lifeless toddler
being carried from a beach, his family having drowned in an attempt to reach safety, is evidence enough
that the Secretary-General was not exaggerating.
VI
What does recalling 1945 tell us about our association with the EU?
At this point our good aMEGOs , who hopefully will by now have rejoined us, might well
ask: “precisely what has this long, and at times abstruse, catalogue of event and comment to do with the
specific question of Britain’s relationship with the EU?” The answer is “everything”.
Thinking joined- up with the past
My previous effusion - Prologue 8 - was a plea for joined-up thinking as between the numerous and complex
present-day issues which beset us. Even the briefest contemplation of that daunting ensemble is enough to
show that withdrawal from the EU in a bid to rid of two - or three specific snags, would be self-defeating.
I now entreat for thinking joined-up with the past. Just as you cannot hope to plan successfully for the
future without a realistic grasp of the present, so you cannot begin to understand the present without delving
deep into the past. “Everything in politics has a long history” is a very useful rule of thumb.
The disfigured first half of the twentieth century: failed statesmen
Future historians will ponder indefinitely the calamitous disfigurement of the first half of the twentieth
century by two world wars, separated only by twenty years of political and social upheaval, and rollercoaster economics. In the years before 1914 Europe’s sovereigns, with their cocooned advisers, failed to
reflect in the conduct of their respective – and conflicting - foreign policies a sufficient grasp of the fact that
they lived in a World Economy, which could certainly facilitate - and might even lead remorselessly to –
warfare on an industrial scale. When the Great War broke out, there was a widespread belief, belonging to
the nineteenth century, rather than to the twentieth, that “it will all be over by Christmas”. The assumption
that we can have an agreeable, cherry-picking withdrawal from the EU today is on a par with that tragic
delusion.
Just as they failed to understand how they were plunged into the catastrophe of the Great War, so the
world’s leaders either failed to understand how to avoid any repetition, or recoiled from taking the
measures which they recognised as being necessary to ensure its avoidance. .
Having learned the hard way, we did better after World War II
It was altogether different after World War II. We had in the meantime learned the hard way. In the
seventy years since its end our common habitat has changed from a World Economy to a Global Village. A
new dimension has been added thereby to the concept of interdependence
During this time, nonetheless, we have contrived to use the international machinery with which we were
endowed at the end of World War II with sufficient flexibility and with sufficient grasp of the issues to
enable us by and large to meet the challenge of massive and rapid change. This achievement is too easily
taken for granted.
Continued success depends on having antennae which work properly
The ability of intergovernmental machinery to cope in these conditions, and, who knows, more intense
versions of them to come, depends greatly on whether the antennae of those who operate it, be they
delegates or members of the Secretariat, are functioning properly; and whether they are looking outward as
well as inward.
The more elaborate the intergovernmental structures, the more comprehensive the powers conferred on
them, the greater is the danger of shortcomings in this regard. Getting matters back on track is not so much
a matter of changing structures as changing mind-sets. You can do this from the inside. You cannot do it
from the outside.
It is in this perspective that it is so difficult to find common ground with the Brexitmongers - those who
advocate British withdrawal from the EU, come what may. What seems to be the case for withdrawal is
less a coherent grasp of the practical realities of our relationship with our continental neighbours in all its
complexities than a collection of discrete objections to various current manifestations of it When subjected
to the scrutiny in depth and width which any worthwhile evaluation of them requires, these objections do not
lose all of their validity. But they have to be seen for what they are: only a part, of the whole picture.
Anyone who is prepared seriously to contemplate the significance of VJDay70, or of the Preamble to the
United Nations Charter, or of the unforgettable Moat of Poppies around the Tower of London last
Remembrance-tide, cannot but reject the idea that the UK should withdraw from the EU. It is
introspective, it is defeatist, it is unworthy. It runs directly counter to our history, our experience, our
nature, our disposition, our interests and any realistic hopes for our sustained future prosperity.
Eternal Vigilance, it is said, is the price of safety; eternal involvement is the price of vigilance.
absents ont toujours tort.
Les
VII Does that mean that the promised referendum is a mere charade?
Is the promised referendum then a meaningless charade? Not at all.. First, the British electorate is
thoroughly entitled, after all that has been foisted on them under the rubric of the Lisbon Treaty - as
deplorable in manner as it was undesirable in content, - to the opportunity to pronounce an overall, rather
than a parliamentary, verdict on our association with our EU partners.
Secondly, it is essential that, as a result of holding the referendum, the voters generally feel satisfied that
their concerns have been adequately and openly addressed, and in terms as clear and straightforward as the
complexities permit. An enormous amount has been said or written on the question of our relationship our
EU partners. , Indeed Britain has long since become de facto the principal EU think tank. But perhaps the
discussion has been on a plane more comfortable for the expert than for our compatriots generally. I am in
favour of a soap opera on “Yes, Minister” lines about life and work in Brussels.
It is excellent news the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons is to undertake an inquiry
into “the costs and benefits of EU membership for the UK’s role in the world”. Written submissions are
invited and should be received by the Committee no later than October 2.
Thirdly, we are faced with the difficulty inseparable from the holding of a referendum: namely “how can
you most usefully and fairly offer a choice about a moving situation by means of debate on a still
picture? The specific question on which we will seemingly be asked to choose would seem to be whether
we should remain in the EU or leave it. The de facto basis on which we will be asked to decide is the
content of the report the Prime Minister renders on the outcome of his discussions with his EU
counterparts. What is fundamentally at stake, on the other hand, is how to organise ourselves for a
challenging but unknowable future..
For the reasons outlined earlier in this effusion, I have every confidence that the British people, in their
maturity and wisdom, .will vote to remain in the European Union . Interest is likely to focus on three broad
questions: how far we have been able to move our EU partners and, where necessary, to .get their antennae
working better, how much scope there is for further reform, and what sort of time frame should be
envisaged for it. The answers respectively to these three points are “a long way already”; “a great
deal”; and “in public affairs everything takes far longer than it ought to”.
As before, please feel free to make whatever use you wish of the above, with or without attribution.
With all good Veteran’s wishes
Peter Marshall,
September 3, 2015
Annex: Preamble to the United Nations Charter