Not wholly belonging: British planning’s uncertain European connections

This article takes a long view of British planning’s connections with continental Europe, locating Brexit within historic uncertainties about the country’s international outlook, interests and position. In 1948, Churchill portrayed Britain at the intersection of three ‘great circles’: the British Empire, the wider English-speaking world (principally the USA) and Europe. This notion is drawn on to show how the strong earlier European links of British planning were seriously disrupted or severed by twentieth-century wars. These drew both country and planning approach closer to its ‘distant friends’ within the other ‘great circles’. As former imperial ties faded and the USA relationship became less special, Britain looked again to Europe but without shedding these habitual links. Even after Britain joined the European Communities in 1973, its strongest international planning connections remained with the USA and its former Empire and Dominions. In the 1990s, the EU promoted spatial planning but Britain remained largely aloof until the ‘New Labour’ governments of 1997–2010. Yet growing Euroscepticism saw this relative enthusiasm fade, with Brexit reviving uncertainties, now about whether EU approaches should be jettisoned and a more deregulated planning system created. The article predicts (or at least hopes) that current anti-Europe thinking will itself fade.