Euroscepticism and the United Kingdom*

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Notes

1. Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics (London: Routledge, 2002), 3.

2. For an overview of seminal approaches, see Forster, 3ff., and of more recent work, Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart, Opposing Europe? The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), vol. 1, 3.

3. Agnès Alexandre-Collier, La Grande - Bretagne eurosceptique? L’Europe dans le débat politique britannique (Nantes: Editions du Temps, coll. Actualité Européenne, 2002).

4. An average Dutch general election might see about 80% turnout; in the UK, the rate has been closer to 70% for much of the post-1945 period, but dipping to around 60% or lower in the two twenty-first-century elections as yet held.

5. Max Beloff, Europe and the Europeans: An International Discussion. A report prepared at the request of the Council of Europe (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), 276. This presumably out of print but still exceptionally pertinent volume, based on discussions with leading figures like Alcide de Gasperi, Eugen Kogon, and Robert Schuman, can be downloaded from the Universal Library website.

6. In the light of a rampant Euroscepticism, this might be extended to the burgeoning of “European Union Studies” at the expense of the more precise study of one ’ s international neighbours’ languages, cultures and institutions. This is a problem addressed by Max Beloff in his Europe and the Europeans: “existing facilities” should be strengthened, rather than making “a wholly new start irrespective of the fundamentally social role that Universities have to play within modern democratic societies where they represent an important form of social investment” (272).

7. David Marquand, “Crab-like into the Future,” Marxism Today (December 1991): 41.

8. Source: IMF Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves 1995-2008. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/cofer/eng/cofer.pdf.

9. Source: Ernst & Young website, European inward investment stalls as recession looms (http://www.ey.com/UK/en/Newsroom/News-releases/EAS-09-06-04-European-inward-investment) 4 June 2009.

10. See Antonio Gramsci, “Americanism and Fordism,” Notebook 4 (1930-32), #52.

11. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 125.

12. Cp. E. Schoenberger, “From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation: Technology, Competitive Strategies, and Iinternational Location,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6 (1988): 247.