EU: Cameron must heed Thatcher's words – and ask the people
FORTY years ago Edward Heath, our then Prime Minister, took us into what was termed the Common Market, probably the most fateful move ever made by a British Prime Minister.
Very little had been published prior to the question about our entry being asked, and we the British public, had little or no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. 'It will make it easier to sell our goods to our neighbours' was about all we were told.
The cosy relationship envisaged by the Tory Government and Labour and Liberal opposition could hardly be more different from today's undemocratic, obscenely bloated, EU federal state with its plethora of rules and regulations restricting us and the other current 26 nations in many areas affecting our daily lives.
We are now seeing the civil populations of several European countries on the streets fighting for their family's and their own futures. All this brought about by the unelected EU hierarchy and its dream of a federal super state, locking all countries into the straightjacket of monetary unity under the Euro; all brought about by group greed and corruption, endemic within in this behemoth structure.
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We have always been uneasy partners in this relationship, being at loggerheads on one topic or another very often. Thank goodness for our refusal to join the well-regarded pound sterling with the Euro.
All three parties currently are blathering on about wanting a looser relationship with our EU masters, when they should be listening to the people who put them into power, the British public, who quite clearly want an in / out referendum, and want it soon. That way, whatever the outcome, at least we will know what direction it is in which we are heading.
For 40 years the truth has been hidden from us by successive leaders from Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and now Messrs Cameron and Clegg as to the ultimate goal, always intended from the start, that of a European federal state with all participating nations subservient to it.
They have all deceived us and continue to do so. They fear our anxieties about the total loss of our sovereignty might cause them to lose the fear factor they wish to keep us under, in order to maintain power for themselves and their parties, rather than giving the British people what they so obviously want.
Let us be clear: the European Union has done, and is continuing to, cause tremendous damage to the British way of life and our industry. Our once-proud and competitive fishing industry is almost dead, despite us holding 70 per cent of the total EU fish stocks within our waters, and our agriculture, which was the most efficient in Europe until we joined in 1973, has been decimated by law after law, all angled towards helping the less efficient European farmers, with the Common Agricultural Policy or CAP.
Frenchman Jean Monnet after the Second World War started all this, but realising that it could never be put together in one piece, planned that it would be added to, stealthily piece by piece.
Firstly the Common Market was constituted via the Treaty of Rome, which also allowed to be set into motion the institutions at whose core the "government of Europe" would operate.
Member states' sovereignty was slowly scraped away, like layers of an onion. Because of the one-way ratchet, the Acquis Communautaire, once power was handed to Brussels it could never be taken back.
Why then all this talk of "repatriating powers" when this Government and opposition know perfectly well that unless all 27 member states agree, it cannot happen?
When our government, pre-1973, considered joining this project they were made fully aware of the required end product, something that has been repeatedly hidden from us. It has been a massive cover-up and continuous plan of misinformation.
In Harold Macmillan's own words he admitted that: the political objectives of the Rome Treaty would raise problems of public relations so considerable that they should be kept under wraps and that it was vital to emphasise only the economic advantages of British entry. This was backed by Edward Heath stating, on the day we joined 40 years ago, that people's fears "that we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty were completely unjustified".
This was a deliberate lie, as just two years before, a paper on sovereignty set out how it would be the end of the century before the British people realised how much power had been handed over and that it would be too late to stop it.
We have been hoodwinked into believing that successive changes from the Common Market, via the European Economic Union to the European Union, a federal state in its own right, was good for us, without us having any say in the matter.
Talk of us being 'on the outside looking in' or 'massive job losses' are just part of the misinformation. We always have been a world trading country and will continue to be so, in or out of the EU. The EU consists of 27 countries. At the London Olympics, 193 independent countries and 11 territories were represented. We also have the benefit of major links with our 55 Commonwealth colleagues. We cannot be dictated to about with whom and how we are allowed to trade.
Winston Churchill's words – "If it is a choice between Europe or the open sea, we must always choose the open sea" – say it all.
Mr Cameron would do well to read again the words of the one prime minister he would seemingly like to emulate, Mrs Thatcher. She wrote in her book, Statecraft, these words: "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European super-state was ever embarked upon, will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain should ever become part of it will appear a political error of the first magnitude."
If Mr Cameron truly wants to be 'one with the people', he will need to heed the voice of the people and give a date for an in/out referendum to enable us to speak out, not possibly after the next election, not padding it out with platitudes about revised membership or the like, but a straightforward referendum along the line stated well before the next election.
Let Mrs Thatcher's words ring clear in your conscience, Mr Cameron, and then do the right thing by us all.
DAVID SALMON
Chairman, UKIP Plymouth and S W Devon
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