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"We'll negotiate withdrawal from the EEC which has drained our natural resources and destroyed jobs"
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Tony Blair, British Labour Prime Minister since 1997. Personal election manifestos for Beaconsfield and Sedgefield in 1982 and 1983.
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"Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea. Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt."
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Winston S. Churchill, great British Prime Minister. Comments to de Gaulle before Normandy Landing on 06.06.1944. Often slightly misquoted, but the sentiment is fairly clear.
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"Every step that tends to make Europe more prosperous and more peaceful is conducive to British interests ... but we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. And should European Statesmen address us in the words which were used of old - 'Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Lord of the Host?' - we should reply with the words of the Shunamite woman: 'Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people ...'
"We must build a kind of United States of Europe ... Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America must be friends and sponsors of the new Europe"
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Winston S. Churchill, great British Prime Minister. Speech at the University of Zurich, September 1946. Making it clear enough even for Jaques Delors to understand that he envisaged European integration only for the countries of the European continent, not for Britain (as Delors noted in Le Monde, 3 May 2000).
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"England is an island, maritime, and linked through its trade, markets and food supplies to very diverse and often distant countries… In short, the nature and structure and economic context of England differ profoundly from those of the other states of Europe."
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Charles de Gaulle, President of France 1959 - 1969. Part of his justification for vetoing Britain's entry into the EEC in 1963.
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"Swallow the lot and swallow it now."
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Ted Heath. British Conservative Prime Minister, noted Europhile and swallower. Instructions to negotiating team during EEC entry talks in 1970. Made public after 30 year quarantine and quoted in "Britain's entry into the European Community", Whitehall History Publishing, 2000.
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"Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example."
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William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806). British Prime Minister 1783-1801. Pitt's final public utterance, in response to a toast at the Lord Mayor's banquet, London, 9 November 1805. Sadly it was not to be, as history subsequently showed.
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"Here we go again with both feet planted firmly in the air."
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Hugh Scanlon, British Trade Unionist. Reacting to the results of the referendum to stay in the Common Market 1975.
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"[the British and the French] share a conception of how the EU should work."
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Jack Straw, British Foreign Minister. Speech in Paris on 100th anniversary of Entente Cordiale1, 2 Jan 2004. Could have fooled me!
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"Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is Europe, as part of that Community."
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Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister. 1989, in the run up to the Maastricht treaty. During her lapse-of-judgement years, when she thought she could tame the European Monster from within. Perhaps predictably, she was spat out.
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If you have an authenticated quotation on Europe, the EEC or the EU that you think should be listed here, then email me .
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