Volume 37, Number 14 · September 27, 1990
The Chequers Affair
By Timothy Garton Ash
In July this year, in the midst of far, far more important developments, such as NATO's London Declaration, the 28th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Stavropol accord giving Soviet approval to the full sovereignty of a united Germany, Anglo-German relations suffered a little shake. The first part of this little shake was an interview given to The Spectator by Britain's then secretary for trade and industry, Nicholas Ridley, in which, after lunch, but just one glass of wine, Mr. Ridley talked about the proposed European Monetary Union as 'a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe,' and declared that if you were prepared to give up sovereignty to the Commission of the European Communities, 'you might just as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly.' Saltily written up by the new editor of The Spectator, Dominic Lawson, son of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, and adorned with a characteristically vivid cartoon by Nicholas Garland showing a schoolboy-like Mr. Ridley daubing a poster of Chancellor Kohl with a Hitler moustache, this 'outbreak of the Euro-hooligan Ridley,' as the normally restrained Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it, caused a political storm and the resignation of Mr. Ridley.
Feature, 1815 words
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