Any symposium about the European Union edited by John Pinder must command attention. He is perhaps the last active survivor of that band of writers and academics – or intellectuals, to use a generic term better understood on the continent – that made the subject a lifetime’s work.
Unlike the politicians of the ilk of Heath and Kohl who embrace the European Union as a citadel in which an intoxicating thirst for power can be satisfied, to him an “ever closer union” of the peoples of Europe is a noble ideal, to be achieved by telling the honest truth. The politicians, more cynical of public opinion, believe otherwise.
The foreword by Princess Margriet reminds us how much we owe to Holland for nurturing the seeds of democracy. England’s part comes later with the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Settlement. The development of democracy, being a struggle for power, had to begin in a modest way. So we see it born in the city states, then succeeding in whole nations; and as its scope grows, it takes on a federal composition, enabling it to serve hundreds of millions. The reader is thus invited to draw an obvious inference, a federal Europe is evolving naturally and will be in keeping with her people’s democratic traditions.
There is no word in the political lexicon more abused than democracy. For at least half a century in the eastern half of the continent the vilest dictators proclaimed their countries to be democratic. Neither John Pinder nor the contributors are explicit about their meaning: it seems democracy for them is having the right vote for a government once every four or five years.
Governments, though, can do nothing unless they first take away our freedom or our money. Whatever form they take, whether federal or unitary, they are incapacitated and impotent unless they exercise the two coercive powers of legislation and taxation. Such coercion can only be justified when at least a majority of the people coerced agree to be so treated.
If that is the principle that underpins a democratic system of government, some hard questions have to be asked about the future of a federal Europe with some 20 or more states, each with distinctive cultures and values as well as a host of different languages. In a union of 750 million, 300 are a minority whose wishes and beliefs can be overridden. To argue that in a federal system there is subsidiarity with decisions taken at the lowest level is to challenge how every one near the apex of the EU intends it to operate. The symposium’s contributors shy away from the challenge.
Democracy, surely, is about the diffusion of power. The people’s perception of the government is just as important as its reality, so that every man and woman should feel they have an influence over how their lives are governed. The bigger the state the less that feeling can exist among the governed. In the old city states of Europe, even the inarticulate shared in that feeling. But as the unit of government grew, so did the feeling of powerlessness, even among the most articulate.
One vote in an electorate of 100 is worth struggling for; one vote in 1,000 is worth exercising; one vote in a million may justify a walk to the polling station; but one vote among hundreds of millions becomes a denial of democracy and a sham.
Every one of the ten contributors in this little book is readable and Professor Pinder has woven them together with the skill of a master craftsman. But the supreme argument against the European Union has not been answered.
