The lessons from Dunkirk for the Britain of today.

I am writing this posting as the memorial service for those who died on the beaches of Dunkirk, seventy years ago this weekend, is taking place in France.

What lessons for today may be drawn from the events only one mere normal lifetime away yet startlingly distant from the apparent realities of modern Europe. We do not have to look far to discern that the real horrors of that era are slowly being re-stoked in the sordid mess that is the modern European Union.

We must first consider a little historical fact. The Battle of France only began in earnest on 10 May 1940, thus it was in a short period of under three weeks that the pattern for five years of world war was established. On the same day seventy years later, the 10 May 2010, an agreement was reached in Brussels which, in the words of the French Minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche....."De facto ... changed the treaty" .... thus the legal basis for Britain being within the EU has been annulled. Yet in the intervening days, the same period as Britain's Expeditionary force was beaten and then mercifully rescued from Dunkirk in 1940, the British Prime Ministe, Foreign Office and mainstream media have been largely silent while a similar defeat for the nation's interests took place.

Are fuzzy or broken treaties a matter of great import? Can matters that appear to only affect eurozone members really be that crucial to Britain's sovereign interests? Look again at the root causes of British troops being deployed in France in 1940. They stem from the earlier dreadful tragedy of the Great War between 1914 and 1918, a period even more apparently remote for the young people of Europe today, yet nevertheless one that can help with the questions posed here.

Many believe that the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France required British involvement in the great continental disaster that unfolded in 1914. In fact that agreement mainly resolved various colonial disputes particularly in North Africa. It was an understanding regarding deployment of naval resources as between the Channel and the Mediterranean, apparently detailed by a letter in The Times, that imposed the pressure on Britain to come to France's aid. (Barbara W. Tuchman's "The Guns of August" best details these events).

Why then have the new British Coalition Government in the shape of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, (who waffled on this topic when questioned on Radio 4 this week), the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, whose own background and position is based upon his EU employment and activities and the Foreign Office (supposedly under the control of a new Foreign Secretary, William Hague, with his own reported doubts on the EU) all remained silent as the storm clouds gather?

Everything in Europe has changed since shortly after the day of the General Election on 6th May. When the Treaties were being trampled underfoot in a forum of only "informal status" restricted to Eurogroup members alone, on the weekend of 9th/10th May the new Coalition partners were busily drawing up their own agreement on how to govern. Inaction at that time may thus be understood.

In the intervening period, however, the EU is visibly falling apart at the seams. The President of the European Council has been appointed to establish the method of "EU economic governance" in contradiction of all EU Treaties since Rome. He himself has admitted that the citizens of Europe have been deliberately deceived, in my view "lied to" down the years on the question of the euro currency (much else could also be included among such lies). The French Europe Minister crows at the irrelevance of the Treaties, designed to protect national sovereignty and painstakingly negotiated over many years as now 'de facto' defunct.

The Coalition Government appears asleep on the job. Britain needs a new withdrawal from this law defying and despot creating Europe of the EU. If Cameron and Clegg had been in charge seventy years ago today, 300,000 extra British servicemen would likely be lying dead on the beaches of Dunkirk!