It was a Conservative Government that took Britain into the European Community. Yet, 37 years on, only four Tory MPs are ready to oppose a referendum seen as a first step to looser ties with Europe.

A referendum on the Lisbon treaty, on which the Commons votes today, would have the potential to usher in the greatest change to Britain’s foreign policy of the past 50 years.

No party, however, can claim consistency on an issue as profound yet as simple as Britain’s relations with Europe. Although their internal convulsions have been the most dramatic and damaging, the Conservatives’ complete about-turn towards the European Union is not unique. All of Britain’s leading political parties have gone through a painful metamorphosis over Europe in the past generation.

Anti-capitalist opposition to the European club led Labour to pledge complete withdrawal in its 1983 manifesto before the vision of a “social Europe” wooed the trade unions and municipal socialists on the path back to pro-Europeanism.

Now it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats, for long the most committed supporters of the EU, to be split profoundly over whether to back a referendum or sit on their hands.

Perhaps the most curious fact amid the chequered, and often bewildering, history of the politics of Europe is that voters at large appear not to share the concerns that have so preoccupied our political parties. Surveys by Ipsos MORI charting the most important issues facing Britain show that between 2 and 7 per cent of voters cite Europe among their concerns, far behind the top preoccupations of crime, immigration, health, defence and the economy.

The environment, housing, drug abuse, tax, pensions and even public morality also come higher in poll after poll, with Europe rubbing along behind on a par with inflation. Unlike inflation, the dragon of the 1970s, which successive governments of different colours largely managed to slay, Europe continues to menace the political classes, if not the electorate.

The seeds for its potential to wreak havoc within parties were there for all to see when, in November 1971, the Commons backed in principle the case for Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community.

The Conservatives, who from Macmillan onwards had been the party of Europe, voted in favour, with Labour against but, in defiance of a three-line whip, Roy Jenkins led 69 pro-Europe Labour rebels into the Aye lobby, the party’s most serious fissure since the Second World War. In the meantime, 33 Tory rebels voted the other way.

Labour’s divisions over Europe, driven by a suspicion on the party’s Left and among trade unions of the “anti-capitalist club” who feared it would impede a command economy and full employment, reached their nadir in the 1983 manifesto. “The next Labour Government, committed to radical socialist policies for reviving the British economy, is bound to find continued membership a most serious obstacle to the fulfilment of these policies,” it stated. “British withdrawal from the community is the right policy for Britain, to be completed well within the lifetime of the Parliament.”

Five years later the tide began to turn after Jacques Delors, the French socialist who became the Commission’s integrationist President, addressed the Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth in 1988, telling Britain’s wary trade unions: “Europe needs you.”

His vision of a social Europe and generous cohesion funds for poorer regions, which were much bigger before Europe expanded to the east, drew trade unionists and local government leaders within Labour to begin looking to Brussels for allies rather than Margaret Thatcher in London. A rump on the Left remains Eurosceptic but the party’s centre of gravity is supportive.

It was this prospect of “socialism by the back door” that helped to undermine Mrs Thatcher’s faith in Brussels, culminating in her denunciation of the Delors agenda. “No, no, no,” she told the Commons, referring to his plans for a more powerful European Parliament, Commission and Council of Ministers.

Her outburst in 1990 prompted the resignation of Geoffrey Howe, her Foreign Secretary, and led to her own downfall, but the shift towards Euroscepticism in Tory ranks that she precipitated continued apace as John Major’s Government was riven with feuds over Europe.

The more subtle change in recent years has been how the Tory Left felt compelled to choose between the pro-Europe and modernising causes. Overwhelmingly, the younger generation swung behind modernisation, leaving the pro-EU cause to wither.

The present rift among Lib Dems is anything but subtle, as Lib Dem MPs in marginal seats insist on honouring past commitments to a referendum made largely for electoral reasons.

Several, but not all, of the Lib Dems MPs in the thick of the discussions are defending marginal seats against Conservative challenges. Many other Lib Dems, including those in university towns won from Labour last time, are unmoved by the row while most Lib Dem peers remain implacably pro-EU and hostile to a referendum.

Optimists believe that the controversy across and within parties over ratifying the Lisbon treaty may prove to be the last gasp of British antagonism towards the European Union, provided it sets aside Brussels’ obsessive focus on institutional empire-building and turns outwards to address voters’ concerns. Even if a referendum is rejected and the treaty is ratified, in Britain and by the other 26 members, David Cameron’s repeated pledge that an incoming Tory administration “would not let the matter rest” raises the prospect of further confrontation ahead.

Sir Stephen Wall, Britain’s Ambassador to Brussels under John Major and Tony Blair, to whom he became European adviser, charts Britain’s troubled relationship with Brussels in a book, A Stranger In Europe, to be published next month. History and geography play their part, he says: President de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s membership in 1963 and 1967, setting Europe’s rules especially for farm subsidies before Britain joined, and concerns for sovereignty. He points to differences in political culture, too. “Our democratic system, not having coalition government and having a more confrontational parliamentary system, mean the sort of give-and-take that is very much part of the EU is more difficult for us.” he said.

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