January 20, 2002	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 5, 1422

LONDON: More than a week after 12 European Union countries introduced a common currency with much fanfare on Jan 1, Britons are as hazy as ever over whether or not their government plans to join the euro.

Opponents of the Labour government have already launched their salvos at the currency, demanding that a date be named for a promised referendum on the issue.

A newspaper advertisement placed by the pro-euro ‘Britain in Europe’ campaign on Jan 1 had a triumphalist tone: “For many years anti-Europeans have scoffed that the euro will never get off the ground. Now they claim it will collapse. They were wrong before so why should we believe what they say about it now?”

The advertisement coincided with the minister responsible for Europe, Peter Hain, hinting strongly that as Britons got used to the euro on holiday and in some British stores, they would inevitably come to accept — if not actually embrace — the new currency.

Euro opponents bit back hard, fearing this so-called ‘euro creep’ - Britons’ reluctant acceptance of single currency membership. Opinion polls, they said, consistently showed two-thirds of Britons wanting to keep the pound sterling. The British economy, with unemployment well below continental Europe, would suffer by joining the euro, they added.

Amid all the noise, a senior treasury official, Gus O’ Donnell, let slip that the decision was principally a political one. The comment coincided with interesting revelations about Britain’s postwar relations with Europe in a new history of the Cold War by Nottingham University academic Richard Aldrich*. Britain’s 30-year-rule keeps secret much official government documentation. But Aldrich scoured the archives and turned up some fascinating material on the way the Americans prompted the postwar integration of Europe, a process in which the euro is the latest chapter.

America was motivated by a combination of two interests — to undermine leftist influence in Western Europe by encouraging integration and halt German rearmament by absorbing Germany into a wider unit.

It was partly done through an organisation called the European Movement, which still exists and is at the forefront of the pro-euro campaign in Britain today.

Describing the early years of the Cold War in his book, The Hidden Hand, Aldrich writes: “The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] rescued the European Movement from bankruptcy, encouraged replacements for the anti-federalist British leadership and then financed a massive popular campaign for unity among European youth.”

“The CIA also covertly funded British groups, even Labour MPs, who would oppose British foreign policy on federalism. Hidden American funds were secretly offered to ardent British federalists who worked with The Economist [magazine] in a campaign of influence designed to persuade key opinion-formers that a more positive line on Europe would pay dividends to British business.”

“The creation of a federalist United States of Europe was... a Holy Grail