A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe (16 page)

The term ‘Third World’ was coined by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952. He wrote in an article in the French magazine,
L’Observateur
of the colonised countries:

… at the end this ignored, exploited, scorned Third World, like the Third Estate, wants to become something too.

Indeed it did, and it expressed
its desire at a conference in Bandung in Indonesia in 1955 when 29 Asian and African nations met to declare their demand for decolonisation.

The Russians were supportive of their demand but only to the extent that independence for the colonies would serve to damage the colonial powers. Meanwhile, the United States refrained from upsetting its western allies, although, in principle, it favoured
decolonisation. Both superpowers displayed their support when they agreed to lift their ban on new members being allowed to join the United Nations, the organisation that had been set up in 1945 to replace the largely ineffectual League of Nations.

Decolonisation began at a pace and had varying effects on the colonial powers. Britain granted India independence in 1947, the country being split
into two nations, India and Pakistan. The British created the Commonwealth in 1949, a largely powerless organisation containing Britain and many of its former colonies. In 1960, a dozen African colonies won independence from Britain and throughout the 1960s the process continued. By 1975, when the Portuguese left Angola after a lengthy war of independence, the European hold on countries and territories
across the world that had begun five centuries earlier was almost over.

The only country initially to stand aloof from the process of decolonisation was France which wanted to retain its hold on its colonies as a sign that it was still a major power. It soon received two major blows to its pride. The first came in Indo-China where the communist leader Ho Chi Minh fought for independence for Vietnam
from 1945 until 1954 when the French were beaten at Dien Bien Phu. The second occurred over France’s intractable Algerian problem. Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970), elected French president in 1958, divested himself of the problem after a great deal of violence when he signed the Evian Agreements in 1962.

Europe no longer controlled the world. Indeed, to some extent, it could be said the world now
controlled Europe. When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in July 1956, it was brought home to the former mighty powers of Europe just how far they had fallen in the world pecking order. France and Britain linked with Israel to regain control of the canal and at first enjoyed some success against Egyptian troops. When the USSR became involved, threatening to use
nuclear weapons against Britain and France and the United States refused to help, the British and French had little option but to withdraw with their tails between their legs.

After the war, the Soviet Union rapidly extended its influence over the nations of Eastern Europe. East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania all fell into the Soviet sphere
of influence, allying themselves with the USSR and with each other. Communist governments were established in all of them, and they were known as ‘People’s Democracies’. Other political parties were banned and Cominform formed a necessary link.

The only leader to stand up to the Soviets was Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and an armed confrontation
was narrowly avoided as Tito pursued his own policies, becoming a founder member of the non-aligned movement. Other leaders who displayed nationalist tendencies were quickly dealt with so that their countries could not follow the same ‘Titoist’ path as Yugoslavia. Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka (1905–82) was sacked in 1948, Hungarian leader Laszlo Rajk (1909–49) was hanged in 1949 and, in
1952, Czech leader Rudolf Slansky (1901–52) was also hanged, after a show trial.

The Soviet satellite states entered into economic cooperation with the USSR and were forced to introduce reforms imitating the Soviet system – nationalisation, collectivisation and agrarian reform. Press freedom was abolished and a Communist elite was cultivated in each country. Art and culture were strictly controlled.
Painting, for instance, had to adhere to the tenets of ‘Socialist Realism’. The Church was repressed and senior members of the clergy were arrested and incarcerated.

When Stalin died in 1953, people became less afraid of voicing criticism of the regime, although this often still resulted in expulsion from the party and isolation. New Secretary General of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev
initiated a programme of de-Stalinisation and the way was open for individual states within the Soviet sphere to devise their own types of Socialism. There was still discontent, however, and 1956 saw revolt against the Soviet regime in Poland and in Hungary. In Poland, former leader Gomulka, purged by Stalin in 1948, returned to power but in Hungary, leader Imre Nagy (1896–1958) planned to restore
private property and reinstate the Catholic Church. On 4 September, Soviet troops occupied Budapest and ruthlessly crushed all resistance, replacing Nagy with János Kádár (1912–89).

Russia had delivered a powerful message to its satellites about how far they would be allowed to go. When they tried to stem the flood of refugees from East Berlin to West Berlin by building a wall separating the
two halves of the city in August 1961, it gave solid form to Churchill’s metaphorical ‘iron curtain’.

After the end of the war, European unity was seen as one way of avoiding the reappearance of the type of nationalism that had so recently devastated the continent. The first sign of such cooperation came with the founding in April 1948 of the Organisation for European Economic
Cooperation (OEEC), the body that would distribute the massive amount of aid provided by the American Marshall Plan. Between 1948 and 1952, European countries received some $13,000 million, Britain receiving more than $3,000 million, France $2,700 million, Italy $1,474 million and Germany $1,389 million. In 1960, it would become the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), consisting
of 30 member states dedicated to the principles of representative democracy and free-market economy.

Other organisations such as the European Coal and Steel Community, whose founding members were Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany – was claimed in the
Schuman Declaration
of 9 May 1950, made by French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, to be ‘a first step in a
federation of Europe’ and proved the value of cooperation between European states. Britain stayed out in order to protect its sovereignty and to prevent friction with members of the British Commonwealth.

The International Committee of the Movements for European Unity held a Congress of Europe in 1948, chaired by none other than Winston Churchill, which called for a political and economic union
in Europe, a European Assembly and a European Court of Human Rights. The Council of Europe was established as a result to deal with legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation. In 1950, it published the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.

Further European cooperation emerged in the age-old problem of the Saarland which,
although under French control since the war, expressed its desire once again in a referendum to be part of Germany. This duly happened in 1956 but this time without trouble. Europe, it seemed, had grown up and was beginning to view things in a continent-wide context, rather than in a purely national one.

Many had dreamed of uniting Europe and, indeed, large parts
of it had enjoyed some form of union during the continent’s long history – the Roman Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Empire and Hitler’s Nazi Germany had all brought together large areas of the European continent, but usually by force of arms and in unions that were neither willing nor mutually beneficial. The idea of such a geopolitical entity had been considered
before, of course. In the seventeenth century, William Penn (1644–1718), founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony, advocated a ‘United States of Europe’. The eighteenth-century French Enlightenment writer and radical, Abbé Charles de Saint Pierre (1658–1743), wrote about an international court and league of states. In the nineteenth century, Italian politician
and philosopher, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72), a leading player in the unification of Italy, used his experience in that struggle to advocate a unified Europe. In 1941, Hungarian Prime Minister, Pál Teleki, devised a plan for a European federation, based on geographical and economic realities, shortly before he committed suicide in the face of Nazi aggression against his country. Winston Churchill,
too, had called for a United States of Europe in 1946 and America favoured European Union and worked to try to make it happen, creating organisations such as the American Committee on United Europe and the European Youth Campaign.

In 1957, following the success of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaties of Rome were signed by France, West Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands,
establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The basis for the EEC was a customs union, wherein members charged no customs tariffs to each other and shared a common customs tariff with regard to outside states. Having initially refused to join the EEC, Britain made an attempt to establish a free trade community whose members would include
all the countries who were part of the Organisation for European Economic Development. When the plan was rejected, principally by France, Britain and six other countries who had not been admitted to the EEC – Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland – formed their own trade organisation, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

The EEC, known as the Common Market, came into
operation on 1 January 1958 and had soon become an important and successful organisation. Amongst its plans for the future was a common agricultural policy as well as economic and monetary union. Britain applied for membership of the EEC twice – in 1963 and 1967 – but was rebuffed on each occasion by French President, Charles de Gaulle, who feared that British membership would introduce damaging
American influence into the organisation.

During the 1960s, good times seemed to have come to Western Europe. Year-on-year economic growth and increased trade with the rest of the world brought unheard-of prosperity to its countries and peoples. Numerous medical advances and technological innovation brought longer life and greater happiness. Wages increased,
purchasing power doubling in ten years, and a great deal of money was being spent on labour-saving items such as washing machines and what were seen then as luxury items – refrigerators, televisions, telephones and hi-fi systems. For the first time, home-ownership spread and there was a building boom. People were able to take holidays, often abroad, and indulge in other leisure activities.
Everyone became middle class, or behaved as if they were, and real poverty was now to be found in specific social groupings – immigrants, the unskilled, the uneducated and the elderly.

In 1942, the British economist and social reformer, William Beveridge (1879–1963), produced a report for the British government that identified the five ‘Giant Evils’ in society as ‘squalor, ignorance, want, idleness
and disease’. The government took steps after the war to deal with these issues, including the introduction of the Welfare State in an attempt to at least make medical treatment available to all, ‘from the cradle to the grave’ and ‘free at the point of use’. It was a policy that would have great influence on other European states, social security in particular being generally adopted.

The state
also intervened in other ways in many Western European countries, nationalisation becoming an important element of economic policy. State ownership of energy, transport and banks enabled them to exercise greater national economic control. State involvement in technology would lead to international ventures such as the building of a supersonic airliner, the Concorde, in a joint venture involving
Britain and France and the European Space Agency’s satellite launcher,
Ariane
, which put more than 50 satellites into space.

Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, the opposite was happening. Russia had put the first man into space on 12 April 1961 when Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin made one orbit of the earth, but the liberalisers had lost out when Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, was dismissed and replaced
by the reactionary Leonid Brezhnev (1906–82) whose ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ sought to bring the USSR and its satellites into line. Several of these satellites were, however, suffering from social and economic problems and one, in particular, expressed its disillusionment in an uprising. As Czech intellectuals agitated for radical reform, Alexander Dubcek (1921–82), purged in the 1950s, returned to
power. His ‘Socialism with a human face’ was anathema to the USSR and, echoing Hungary in 1956, Warsaw Pact tanks rolled in to crush the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968. Rioting in Poland also had to be crushed in 1970, emphasising still further how tenuous the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe was becoming.

Rationing and food shortages had persisted in Europe for many years after the war
and a generation grew up with hardship and poverty as everyday companions. The affluent consumer society that began to develop in the colourful 1960s following the dour, monotone 1950s brought huge changes to society and the family. The new music, launched in the mid-1950s by American rocker, Elvis Presley, and developed by the English beat group The Beatles in the 1960s, created a huge international
youth movement. Suddenly teenagers seemed like alien beings to their parents, their colourful, sexy clothing contrasting greatly with the utilitarian garb of their own youth. As the 1960s progressed, the youth of Europe found its voice in other ways than through music. It became politicised and protested against numerous things but principally American involvement in the Vietnam War. Dissatisfaction
in France at the de Gaulle government erupted in violent protests by students and workers in May 1968 that would culminate in the resignation of de Gaulle the following year.