Eliot, Brexit, and the Idea of Europe

T. S. Eliot held strong beliefs that are opposed to Brexit. In 1962, Eliot weighed the pros and cons of the UK’s application to join the six nations—France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—that formed the European Economic Community (EEC), or “Common Market.” Wary of a referendum and reserving judgment on the intricacy of the economic, political, and legal issues, Eliot declared:
I have always been strongly in favour of close cultural relations with the countries of Western Europe. For this reason my personal bias is in favour of Britain’s entering into the Common Market. And I have not been impressed by the emotional appeals of some of those who maintain that to take this course would be a betrayal of our obligations to the Commonwealth. (“Going into Europe,” Prose8 529)
This statement was consistent with Eliot’s long-standing faith in the idea of Europe, “the idea of a common culture of western Europe” (“A Commentary [Apr. 1926],” Prose2 778), a belief that outweighed support for empire and the economic complications of the UK redirecting its balance of trade. (In 1962, the UK saw 43 percent of exports heading for Commonwealth countries and 16 percent to those within the Common Market.) Nor was Eliot concerned by a loss of UK sovereignty. Increased political and economic union through a centralized bureaucracy might be the implied corollary of his vision of European unity. A few weeks later, in January 1963, Charles de Gaulle used his veto to keep the UK out of the EEC, dealing a huge blow to British Europhiles. Eliot would not live to see Britain join the European Union....
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