Rival historians trade blows over Brexit

David Cameron is not the only one invoking the past to decide Britain’s future. There are two sides to every history

By Gideon Rachman

When historians get sucked into a political controversy, it is often a sign that a country is going through an identity crisis. In Germany in the 1960s, an academic argument about whether the country had been responsible for the first world war provoked a ferocious public debate — because of its implication that Nazism was not a solitary aberration in German history. The bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 provoked a sharp division between French historians about the true meaning of the events of 1789 — with the left celebrating the revolution as a triumph of liberty and the right emphasising the way in which it had descended into terror and despotism.

Disputes between historians of Britain have not tended to be so obviously political. Generations of undergraduates have enjoyed, or snoozed through, arguments about the standard of living in the industrial revolution (better or worse?); or the “strange death of liberal England” (organised labour or the first world war?) — and such debates sometimes did pit Marxist historians against conservatives. But these arguments generally remained some way removed from the rough-and-tumble of daily politics.

So it is perhaps a sign that Britain is now much less sure of its national identity that the country’s historical profession has got sucked into a heated argument about the most vexed political issue of the moment: Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe.

With Britain’s referendum on EU membership just weeks away, David Cameron has appealed to British history to make the case for the UK staying inside the EU. In a speech at the British Museum earlier this week, the prime minister argued that, “From Caesar’s legions to the wars of the Spanish succession, from Napoleonic wars to the fall of the Berlin Wall … Britain has always been a European power.”

In his efforts to ground his arguments in British history, the prime minister was tapping into a debate that has already been rumbling in the country’s universities. The trigger for the dispute was the formation of a group called “Historians for Britain”, chaired by David Abulafia, professor of Mediterranean history at Cambridge. In a letter released ahead of Cameron’s attempted renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership, the Historians for Britain argued that the UK should stay only in a “radically reformed European Union” that reflected “the distinctive character of the United Kingdom, rooted in its largely uninterrupted history since the Middle Ages”.

The declaration from Historians for Britain was signed by a sizeable group of academics and authors across the UK. It swiftly provoked a blistering response from a much larger group of historians, based in universities all over Britain, including Cambridge. An article for History Today, headlined “Fog in Channel, Historians Isolated”, laid into the idea of Britain’s “largely uninterrupted history” — arguing that “such continuity would indeed be spectacular, but it is illusory. Britain’s past is neither so exalted nor so unique.”

The tone of the initial letters was reasonably polite. But subsequent contributions were not so restrained. Neil Gregor, professor of modern history at Southampton, who helped to draft the response to Historians for Britain, later fulminated in a blog post that “it is difficult to know where to start when engaging with a narrative that, as any Lower Second Class undergraduate can tell you, the profession abandoned decades ago.”


One place to start, it strikes me, is by trying to break down the argument into its component parts and then talking to historians on both sides of the debate. I swiftly discovered that my journalistic tendency to refer to the two camps as “pro-” and “anti-EU” drew pained responses. Both sides are keen to insist that their view of history is not distorted by anything as vulgar as political prejudice. Nonetheless, signature of either letter is probably a reliable predictor of a vote to either Leave or Remain in the EU.

The claims made by the Eurosceptic historians can essentially be broken down into three words: continuity, moderation, separation.

On the continuity front, the Historians for Britain argue that “the British parliament embodies principles of political conduct that have their roots in the 13th century” and that “this degree of continuity is unparalleled in continental Europe”. The Europhile historians gleefully attempt to punch holes in this narrative — pointing out that parliamentary sovereignty did not prevail in Britain until the late 17th century, after the “devastating bloodshed” of the English civil war. As for universal suffrage, that was not established in Britain until 1928 — well after many other European countries.

When it comes to moderation, the Historians for Britain argue that “the British political temper has been milder than that in larger European countries”. They cite the country’s immunity to fascism, communism and extreme nationalism. This claim of an exceptional “mildness” in British history is also disputed. Ruth Harris, professor of modern European history at Oxford, told me, “That’s a view of British history that essentially leaves out the empire, and I think that is very pernicious.” Neil Gregor makes the same point, citing Britain’s “history of aggressive imperialism”, and adding — “expropriation, slavery, massacres, oppression, anyone?”

The third claim made by the Eurosceptic academics is that a certain separateness from Europe is in Britain’s historical DNA. David Starkey of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, a “Historian for Britain” well known to TV audiences all over the country, argues that “England’s semi-detached relationship with continental Europe is neither new nor an aberration. Instead it is deeply rooted in the political developments of the past 500 years.” This claim of semi-detachment is also disputed by the pro-Europeans. In their letter, they argue that “political, social, cultural and economic life in Britain has always depended upon, drawn upon, and given back to Europe … The centrality of Christianity to Britain’s cultural past makes sense only with reference to the broader world of Christendom.”

The occasional elision made by the Eurosceptic historians between Britain and England, and noticeable in Starkey’s talk of “England’s semi-detached relationship” with continental Europe, is something that has been picked up by some Scottish historians, who argue that the Historians for Britain are, in fact, Historians for England. It is true that Robert Tombs, one of the biggest names to sign the Historians for Britain, letter has recently published a much-acclaimed book called The English and their History. Yet the attempt to portray the Historians for Britain as Little Englanders is a little unfair. Most of Tombs’s work is actually on France, and Abulafia’s magnum opus, The Great Sea, is a history of the Mediterranean.

To pursue the argument, I decided to visit Cambridge — starting with lunch at Caius college with Abulafia, who seems unruffled by any suggestion that he would struggle to get a third at Southampton. Talking to Abulafia, it becomes clear that he regards many of the arguments made by his critics as quibbles or qualifications that do not disrupt the broader thrust of his case.

In an article for History Today, for example, Abulafia argued that “fascism and anti-Semitism never struck deep roots” in Britain. The counterblast pointed out that “Edward I was the first European king to expel Jews from his entire kingdom” in 1290, and cited the Marconi corruption scandal of 1912 — which featured anti-Semitic rhetoric — as a reminder “that 20th-century British history was uncomfortably similar to European history in this respect too”. As far as Abulafia is concerned, this is nitpicking. Sipping on his tea in the Caius senior combination room, he argues that “to mention the Marconi scandal in the same context as the Holocaust or deep anti-Semitism in Poland is silly and frankly offensive.”

To get a counterview, I contemplate simply crossing the courtyard at Caius and knocking on the door of Professor Peter Mandler — who had signed the response to the Historians for Britain letter. Instead, I opt for a five-minute walk across town to Jesus College to find another of the Cambridge historians who signed the “pro-Europe” letter.

As a French national teaching British history at Cambridge, Dr Renaud Morieux seems to embody his own argument that British identity has been shaped by a constant cultural exchange with Europe. Yet it also seems to me that the period that Morieux specialises in, the 18th century, is potentially helpful to the themes of British “continuity” and “mildness”, favoured by the Historians for Britain. After all, France experienced the violent rupture of revolution in 1789, while Britain’s political system evolved relatively peacefully, through reform rather than revolution, during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Morieux, who likes to pluck books from his shelves to illustrate his argument, acknowledges that there is something to the idea that Britain’s political development was relatively “mild”, from the 18th century onwards — but he argues that the Eurosceptic narrative is “too narrowly focused on political history and on the nation-state. The lives of ordinary people, shaped by trade and migration or simply survival, suggest personal identities and experiences were much more fluid than a stress on British uniqueness might suggest.” Battles that form a central part of what a patriotic children’s history book from 1905 called Our Island Story were actually multinational affairs. The majority of the troops under Wellington’s command at Waterloo were not British, and there were even French seamen in Nelson’s navy at Trafalgar. Morieux’s own recent book on the English Channel portrays this mythical stretch of water not as a guarantee of British separateness, but as a medium for constant exchange between Britain and Europe.

All of these points certainly complicate the narrative promoted by Historians for Britain. But it does not seem to me that they drive a stake through the heart of the Eurosceptic historians’ case, which is focused above all on political institutions — precisely the area where it is easiest to argue that there is a distinctly British (or English) path of development. In search of a referee in this dispute, I set off to Peterhouse, a college once famous for its conservative history dons — and now the home of Brendan Simms, a professor of European history whose new book is a large history titled Britain’s Europe and who, I notice, has not signed either letter.

Whatever their positions on the dispute at hand, I am beginning to notice that the rooms of Cambridge history dons have a certain family resemblance — with books and papers piled up on the floors as well as on the shelves. Professor Simms does not disappoint in this respect. Talking to him, it strikes me that his views are an eclectic mix of those of the Historians for Britain and of the “pro-European” camp.

On the pro-Europe side of the ledger, Simms is a firm believer that the EU can and must move towards a federal state. But he is resigned to the fact that Britain will stand aside from full political union. However, to complicate matters further, he also thinks that Britain should vote to stay inside the EU next month — because he fears that a Brexit would represent a grievous blow to the development of the EU; and the collapse of the EU would also undoubtedly have negative effects on Britain.

Although this view sounds convoluted, it is not unlike the argument set out by Winston Churchill in 1946 — when he argued for a United States of Europe, but suggested that Britain should not be part of it.

In Simms’ view, there will come a time for the UK to separate itself from the EU — but that time is not now. As he explains his views, he remarks half-apologetically, “Now you understand why I could not have signed either letter.”

The complexity of the Simms view of Britain’s relationship with Europe also makes him an interesting observer of the two sides in the historians’ debate. He thinks the pro-European camp have been too dismissive of the idea that “there has indeed been something quite distinct about Britain’s political deve­lopment” and “not just in the banal sense that everybody’s different”. This, Simms speculates, might be because the pro-Europeans have a “cultural discomfort with the notion of exceptionalism, because it can shade into chauvinism”. On the other hand, Simms thinks that the Historians for Britain have not thought hard enough about the political stability of continental Europe after Brexit. As he writes in his new book, “the storm fronts are rolling in again from Europe.” A British departure from the EU will not protect Britain from these storms. Instead, it may increase their ferocity.

As I walk back to Cambridge station, I pass the lamppost that marks the boundary between the university and the real world, and is known to students as “reality checkpoint”. I feel oddly reassured that I do not entirely agree (or disagree) with any of the historians I have met. I will be voting for Britain to stay in the EU, largely for the Simms-like reason that I think that a British departure from the EU could unleash dangerous political forces in Europe. On the other hand, my experience as a correspondent in Brussels (and my own view of history), makes me think that Simms is deluding himself if he thinks that a political union in Europe is either likely or desirable.

On reflection, I agree with Abulafia and the Historians for Britain in one important respect: their argument that the UK has been unusually good at creating successful political institutions and that this is an inheritance worth cherishing and protecting. But I do not think that this adds up to an argument for Britain leaving the EU — since it seems to me that the threat the EU poses to the integrity of British political institutions is relatively tolerable compared with the geopolitical dangers that could be unleashed by the destruction of the EU.

And while, like most British voters, I will be making my decision primarily on political and economic grounds, I think that the cultural arguments made by the likes of Renaud Morieux have real force. This is not just a vote about parliamentary sovereignty and GDP figures — it is also about openness to immigration and to cultural exchange. And that part of the argument also inclines me to vote to stay inside the EU.

I doubt that many voters will be swayed by heated historical debates conducted in Cambridge colleges. What is true, however, is that Britain’s referendum on Europe is ultimately about national identity. In that sense, the argument between Historians for Britain and their opponents is much more than an academic dispute. It goes to the heart of the question that Britain will have to answer on June 23