British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945-1973

Neil Rollings (b. 1961) is currently Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. Rollings previously held posts at the University of Leeds and the University of Bristol. In 2000–2001 he was Associate Professor in the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Rollings is currently joint chair of the University of Glasgow Business School Strategic Advisory Board, Treasurer (until June 2007) of the Association of Business Historians, and on the Council of the Economic History Society. Rollings is the joint author of Economic Planning 1943–51 (1992), Economic Policy under the Conservatives 1951–64 (2004), and joint editor of Labour Governments and Private Industry (1992).

'British Business in the Formative Years of European Integration, 1945–1972 is an extremely useful book. It starts from the point of view of enterprise, not only of business organisations, such as chambers of commerce; it fulfils its promise to provide 'a key link between economic integration, political integration and the process of Europeanisation'; and not least it argues that we must understand business and its actors in relation to their whole environment.' Business History Review

• 1. Introduction; 2. Trade and protection; 3. Overseas investment, corporate strategy, and European integration; 4. From 1945 to June 1955: the Marshall Plan and the European coal and steel community; 5. The establishment of the common market and the Free Trade Area proposals, 1955–58; 6. Creating EFTA, applying to the EC and de Gaulle's veto, 1958–63; 7. After de Gaulle's veto, the second application and eventual entry, 1963–68; 8. The end game: from the Hague summit to British accession, 1969–73; 9. Competition policy; 10. Indirect taxation; 11. Company law and the European company.