Tony Crosland was a passionate European: one of only 20 Labour MPs who defied the party’s three-line whip by abstaining in the key vote in October 1971 approving UK entry to the Common Market. But he did not join the 69 other Labour rebels led by Roy Jenkins and John Smith who voted in favour and therefore against Labour’s then policy to oppose British entry. His abstention was due to balancing party unity with his principles, not to any lack of courage. His first foray into continental Europe had been in wartime with the Parachute Regiment, and he played his part in winning the Labour government’s 1975 referendum when the British people voted for a European future.

Although Crosland made plain that The Future of Socialism was about the British domestic scene, his horizons did not stop at Dover. He recognised that 1950s Britain had lots to learn from Scandinavia with its greater social equality, and noted with approval how differently industrial relations and capital markets worked in Sweden and West Germany from the UK.

He lost his South Gloucestershire parliamentary seat at the end of May 1955 and may have missed the significance of the Messina conference, held only days later, when the foreign ministers of the six member states of the European Coal and Steel Community gave fresh impetus to the idea of European integration. Their call for a customs union and a common market led to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the creation of the European Union – but, sadly, without Britain.

Since those founding years – albeit more by accident than design – Europe has become the world’s leading multilateral force. It kept alive the Kyoto protocol on climate change and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. It helped to establish the International Criminal Court. And in supporting Labour government initiatives at the time, the European Union was also projecting its own values onto the global stage – values which involve nations working together and pooling their sovereignty in order to deliver a better world both at home and abroad for our citizens.

Europe’s place in the world

The immediate challenge is for Britain to decide once and for all whether it really wants to become a true ‘insider’ and leader in Europe. For that will be impossible so long as our deeply ingrained scepticism always seems to triumph.