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Uniting Europe

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Grumble all you like about the EU – as long as you don't start another war

Sometimes I feel as if I've lived longer than most with the idea of a united Europe that so disgusts Ukip. In fact I have – I've lived with it since the 50s, when we still remembered the war. The forerunner of the Common Market was the Coal and Steel Community, a pooling of interests under the guidance of Jean Monnet. My boyfriend at the time was one Edward Behr, who had been Monnet's right-hand man. He was sent to Britain to promote the idea that if countries' resources and commercial interests were intertwined it would be not only more efficient but would make going to war with each other unthinkable. Edward acquired a base in respectable London SW1, but discovered a dodgy photographer in the basement and had to prevent the Beaverbrook press – pro Commonwealth and sceptical of Europe – from finding out about the blue photographer.

That era passed, of course, and now everybody can take the EU for granted and grumble about its restrictions. But the Nobel prize got it right: however irritating its protocols, these were countries which had so often over the centuries been sending their young men to kill one another, and now they weren't.

We may think Ukip and the sceptics are merely tiresome, that it doesn't much matter if we stay in the EU or not, but history says differently, and it would judge us sternly if we were to have a war in Europe again.

Katharine Whitehorn


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