Like most members of the Labour party, I voted no in the 1975 referendum on membership of the common market, as we then called it. We regarded it as a rich man's club, a protectionist racket run for the benefit of the bosses and against the interests of the workers and the third world. It was emphatically not part of the new world economic order of which we dreamed. As a result, I campaigned enthusiastically for the party policy adopted in the early 1980s of immediate withdrawal.
Now, of course, I have changed my mind. Otherwise I would not be a member of the present government. But despite what some of my left-wing friends might think, I have not changed my views just to get a job in government. Nor have I recanted solely because the anti-Europeans-John Redwood, Tony Marlow, the late James Goldsmith -are such an unappealing group. I now believe that the European Union provides an essential forum for the pursuit of progressive politics. The nation state, the crucible of left-of-centre politics, is no longer powerful enough to deliver our goals.
The failure of Fran?ois Mitterrand's "socialism in one country" experiment in France in the early 1980s, followed by Jacques Delors' emphasis on a "social Europe," were early markers on the way to conversion for many of us on the left during the Thatcherite 1980s. It was certainly enough to persuade me, and most of my party, that withdrawal from Europe was no longer a sensible policy. But I remained something of a reluctant European. Tony Crosland once dismissed Europe as "around 17th on my list of priorities," and that was pretty much my view.
It was not until I arrived in my current portfolio-Minister for the Environment-that I became an actual enthusiast. Nothing better demonstrates the limitations of the nation state than the need to tackle environmental threats. It has become a platitude of environmental debate, but is none the less true, that pollution emitted by cars or factories in France or Belgium ends up damaging the lungs of people in Kent and Sussex, or that pollution emitted by British power stations falls as acid rain over Scandinavia.
The EU has a good record on many environmental issues. A series of agreements on vehicle emission standards and power station emissions have led to significant improvements in air quality. During the British presidency we made progress on an agreement to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and setting higher standards for air quality to protect human health. A new directive on water quality should also be agreed soon (like air pollution, water pollution is no respecter of national frontiers). Even the CAP is being gradually greened, although a great deal remains to be done before its destructive influence on the European countryside is brought to an end.
Of course, some environmental issues are too large even for the EU. The fight against global warming or the attempt to protect the ozone layer needs the cooperation of the entire international community. But having a grouping of 15 states with the political infrastructure to forge deals and then present a united front in international negotiations is invaluable. In the run-up to the Kyoto Climate Change Summit last year the EU played an essential leadership role, offering to do far more to cut emissions than anyone else was prepared to contemplate. At the summit, John Prescott and I negotiated not just for Britain, but also as part of the EU team. It was this that enabled us to talk on equal terms with the Americans, and everyone else.
If environmental policy needs the EU, the reverse is also the case. If the EU is to be brought closer to people, it will be by concentrating more on the things that matter to their everyday lives: jobs, crime and the environment. Environmental policy consistently ranks top among the issues which people accept should be dealt with by Brussels. Few people can feel enthusiastic about the fact that Brussels has standardised measurements for this or that gadget, but many welcome the fact that EU pressure is leading to a clean-up of Britain's beaches. The intricacies of the single market are of less interest to most people than the quality of the air they breathe.
Fortunately our party is not riven by conflict over Europe, as we have been in the past and as the Conservatives are still. But there remain some who regard the EU as an inconvenient and largely unwelcome constraint on a radical government's freedom of manoeuvre. The EU does create constraints, but not as many as the international economy would if we tried to go it alone. More importantly, being part of the European project enables us to ensure that the operation of the global market economy delivers the social and environmental objectives which the left still holds dear. n
Michael Meacher
