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A Timely Tunnel for the Channel
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11132 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1986 |
3,020 Words |
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Mark Palmer
Mark Palmer is the London correspondent for the New York City
Tribune. |
Napoleon first had the notion to build a tunnel under the channel between France and Britain nearly 200 years ago. To the British, aware of Napoleon's reputation for marching unannounced into neighboring territories, it was a preposterous idea, worthy of no further comment.
But in 1883, the thought was revived when construction workers in both countries began digging at their respective ends, intending to meet somewhere in the middle. The project soon ran out of money and was abandoned before either side had advanced more than a few hundred yards.
A more organized effort surfaced in 1974, but that too was cut short a year later by the newly elected Labor government when potentially dispossessed homeowners in England's southeast county of Kent launched a massive campaign against the scheme, mainly on the grounds that it would devastate the environment.
Since that time, British opinion about a fixed-link between the Continent and the island nation has not changed much. Despite the fact that 60 percent of Britain's total exports go to European Economic Community countries, and despite the government's prediction that by the year 2000 traffic across the English Channel will have doubled, the majority do not see the point of it and, one suspects, have great difficulty in dealing with it psychologically. To be a part of Europe is one thing but to be joined to Europe is clearly another.
"Where are you going on vacation this year?" one typically might hear a Briton ask a fellow Briton. "Oh, I think we might go to Europe," comes the
... (1985 of 17620 Characters)
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