FASCINATING 1962 FILM ABOUT THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

→ Make a cuppa and watch the full 18-minute film

Reasons2Remain is delighted to screen a remarkable film about Europe in 1962 that may change many people's minds about the purpose and origins of the EU and about Brexit.

The film was made just five years after the creation of the European Community in 1957 and includes striking shots of Europe from the early 1960s.

The film also demonstrates that the Community then was never “just about trade”, as some Brexiters claim today.

The six countries that founded the European Community did so to help create lasting peace between them, following the most devastating war the world had ever known, from 1939 to 1945.

That world war – the second to originate on our continent – shattered Europe and convinced Europeans that the continent could not remain divided.

This archive film showcases some of the impressive achievements of the six countries in implementing the Treaty of Rome, the aspirational accord that still forms the basis of today’s European Union.

These accomplishments of the Community in its early years included:

? the modernisation of Europe’s coal and steel industries;

? the creation of a common agricultural market;

? the freedom of workers to move from country to country inside the Community;

? the pooling of resources for the peaceful use of atomic energy.

The film starts with footage of Europe ravaged by almost six years of war, and includes an excerpt of Winston Churchill’s monumental speech made in Zurich on 19 September 1946, just one year after the war.

In that speech Churchill referred to “the tragedy of Europe” from war and called for the continent to be united.

Said Churchill:

“If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which its three or four hundred million people would enjoy.”

How sad that Britain is on the verge of leaving a united Europe and the sharing of its common inheritance.

• LOOK & LEARN: Watch the full 18-minute film:

•  Commentary by Jon Danzig
• Reasons2Remain is a campaign for a democratic reversal of Brexit. In the Christmas general election on 12 December, we can vote to bring an end to Brexit and remain in the EU.