SIXTH CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY
held at Church House, Westminster
on Friday 13 July 2001
SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS
Session 1:
Chairman: Austin Mitchell MP
Sir Michael Spicer welcomed participants to the Sixth Congress for Democracy. Before handing over to his Co-Chairman, Austin Mitchell MP, he announced that Peter Shore, Lord Shore of Stepney, had been admitted to hospital the previous evening. Lord Shore was, he said, a tremendous friend of both the Congress and the movement and Chairman of the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign. The news from the hospital was that Lord Shore’s condition was stable and further assessments were to be made shortly. Congress agreed unanimously to send their very best wishes to him for a speedy recovery.
Michael Spicer welcomed friends from Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and Estonia, particularly Estonia, where there would be a referendum on EU entry within the next year or so. He then handed over to Austin Mitchell, Co-Chairman of Congress and Deputy Chairman of the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign.
Austin Mitchell introduced Roger Pincham, who had been chairman of the Liberal Party in the early 1980s.
The Case for an Independent Pound
Roger Pincham CBE, Liberal Democrat Party
Roger Pincham said that he had been Chairman of the Liberal Party from 1979 to 82 and had been much involved in the amalgamation with the Social Democrats. His presence on the platform did not mean that the Liberal Democrat party had changed its view on the Euro, but he was not the only Liberal Democrat who took a sceptical view. However, he felt that Liberal Democrats generally were more hopeful that within Europe Britain would be able to push for reform and revision. The euro-enthusiasts in his party were also internationalists, influenced by the Europeans who had emerged after the war to rebuild a decent democratic Europe; Liberal Democrats tended not to be very pro-British.
As he saw it, there were two general approaches to politics: fixed and fluid. Those who pursued a fixed approach tended to be protectionist in trading terms and in legal terms they wanted everything written down and enshrined forever. The other approach was to be more fluid and take a more pragmatic view, as had been the general British tendency since the seventeenth century. Since 1992, when an inflexible approach to the ERM had damaged both the economy and the reputation of the Conservative party, the country had enjoyed an unprecedented period of economic advance and prosperity with a flexible currency which had moved quite considerably against the dollar and the euro currencies.
In his view the prosperity of a nation should not be seen as a single entity, but rather as a combination of the economic fortunes of millions of individual efforts, which the Government could only try to keep together using very limited means. Governments had two means of regulating the economy: taxation and interests rates, and the strongest argument for retaining the pound was that the British Government would continue to control interest rates. Although eurosceptics were mocked for being "Little Englanders" the real issue was whether the currency was going to be managed entirely in the interests of the British nation, or in the interests of a group of nations irrespective of the needs of individual countries. He believed that Britain was a big enough unit in the world economy with extensive world-wide trade to merit its own currency and interest rate system; to abandon it would leave the country at the mercy of other forces which would not be so concerned about Britain’s prosperity. The economies of other members of the EU varied greatly and he foresaw trouble in joining them together; Britain would prosper more by remaining genuinely flexible.
He saw no need for a massively expensive and dangerous change; the Bank of England was dealing with interest rates under a formula which was working well. Failure to join the single currency would not mean that Britain would be expelled from the EU; in fact there was evidence that many of the countries likely to join the EU would need to retain their currencies. Despite predictions to the contrary, overseas investment had remained high and the City of London had prospered. There would always be discussion about convergence, which he found a strange concept; rates moved and a sensible system of currencies enabled that to happen.
On democracy, he said that one of the issues which had arisen
in Liberal Democrat circles was
Lord Dahrendorf’s assertion that there could be no democracy beyond the nation
state. Democracy depended on people being part of the same big conversation and
should be nurtured. It could not be confined to a representative delegation of
people meeting to determine the fate of an entire continent; people who loved
their country and had some understanding of its history and culture should be
involved in determining its future.
Michael Shrimpton, Co-Chairman of the Bruges Group asked Mr Pincham to agree with him that the internationalist case for the European Union had not been made: the European Union was not democratic and never could be, nor was it internationalist in its perspectives. He asked whether a case could not be made to the internationalists in the Liberal Democrat party that they should argue for withdrawal from the European Union and promote engagement with the wider world, the United States, the Commonwealth and Central and Eastern European countries. He also argued that the EU did not stand for peace; it had played a crucial role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
Roger Pincham replied that there was no doubt that Yugoslavia had been carved up behind the scenes and he believed the UK had been allowed to keep the pound as a concession against the independence of Croatia. There was a case for leaving the EU, but there was still hope within the broader liberal alliance in this country that something could be done with Europe with more liberal forces in France and Germany. There needed to be far more publicity, discussion and debate. On the trade question, he pointed out that in the EU wages could be ten times as high as for people doing similar work outside the EU; this was protectionism and could lead to serious trouble.
Leolin Price QC referred to Mr Pincham’s use of the phrase "offshore nonentity", and asked whether he recognised the political and constitutional reality faced by Britain. More and more governmental power was being transferred to the authoritarian, illiberal and unaccountable institutions of the European Community. He asked why the UK should belong to this inward-looking protectionist system, which was the negation of free trade and not the exemplification of liberty.
John Townend said that whilst he agreed that the most important issue was the constitutional one, he felt that one practical difficulty had been discussed very little: the enormous costs to Government and business of adopting the Euro. He recommended that those campaigning to retain the pound should publicise the cost and make the point that the billions of pounds which would be spent on adopting the Euro could otherwise have been spent on schools, roads and hospitals.
Roger Pincham commented that he did not think there was any member of the Government who seriously intended to take Britain into the Euro in the foreseeable future, and he warned members of Congress, who had very strong views, not to provoke an unnecessary response from the Government.
He told Mr Price that he had not presented the Liberal Democrat point of view in his speech; although he was a Liberal Democrat, he had described his personal view, which was that the longer the UK stayed out of the Euro the better. He agreed that Britain was not a nondescript offshore island, and that it had the fourth strongest economy in the world. He admitted that he did not know how to protect real democracy and freedom; some were arguing for withdrawal from the EU, whilst others felt they could fight to change it from within, but he felt that the role of Government was becoming all-pervasive.
Austin Mitchell thanked Roger Pincham and reminded the Congress that a collection of speeches, (including Roger Pincham’s) given at this and all previous Congresses would be published later in the year. He then introduced Sir Oliver Wright, former Ambassador to Germany and the United States and author of a fascinating article in the current issue of the European Journal.
The United Kingdom, the EU and the World
Sir Oliver Wright GCMG GCVO DSC
(Full text of speech here)
Sir Oliver Wright described his current role in life as that of a "tribal elder", being interviewed by PhD students about his experiences which were, to them, history. History was important; it produced the roots for the country’s life. As a nation Britain prided itself on dealing with problems as they arose but in the past it had sometimes turned a blind eye to problems until they were almost beyond solution. He argued that politicians should warn people of dangers ahead and dismissed criticism of the concentration by the Conservatives on Europe in the recent election campaign. In his view Britain now faced threats to its independence as a nation and to the liberties of its subjects.
He said he would not talk about the Euro, except to say that a sixth point should be added to the Chancellor’s five points: whether the Euro was any longer worth joining.
He proposed to concentrate on the proposal for a European army or Rapid Reaction Force. There was a good case for Europe bearing a larger share of the burden of western defence, which the Americans would welcome. Ever since Mr Blair and M Chirac had met at St Malo, they had been pursuing complementary but different agendas: Mr Blair had chosen European defence as his route to the heart of Europe and the French objective was to achieve autonomy from the USA in defence matters. Europe was currently setting up a defence organisation separate from but in rivalry to NATO; the ESDP had a plethora of committees of soldiers and civilians which duplicated NATO’s committees and were designed to be autonomous from them. Although there were phrases in the Presidency’s report to justify Mr Blair’s assurances to Mr Bush that the European force would not undermine NATO (it would operate only when NATO as a whole did not wish to be involved and NATO assets would be used when Europe did not have the assets necessary for the tasks in hand) the real purpose was to give the EU "the currency and the sword", the essential attributes of a future superstate. The only Government which was not being honest with its people about these objectives was the British Government.
Whereas it was unlikely that the European Rapid Reaction Force would be ready for operations for some time, the political damage had probably already been done. The President of the USA did not need Mr Blair’s assurances; he had his own sources of information and he had asked that Europe should add value to NATO, which was unlikely to happen. The Americans had also asked that planning be done together, which had been refused.
One of the grosser misrepresentations of those in favour of ever closer union was that Britain would be isolated if she did not go along with all these "stupidities" – economic, political and military. Even if Britain were to submit to no further integration and were to negotiate repatriation of the CAP, she would still be a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7 Group of industrial nations, the World Bank, the IMF and a leading member of the Commonwealth. However, Britain had no separate representation in the World Trade Organisation, where she was represented by the Commission. Under Qualified Majority Voting Britain had 10 votes out of 87, with the result that in the WTO there was frequent deadlock with the United States and Britain was powerless to change it. There was a way out of the deadlock: to negotiate a trade agreement between the EU and NAFTA.
Representation on world bodies by the Commission might be tolerable if public accountability were taken seriously in Brussels. However, in continental Europe a political culture quite different from Britain’s operated. There was a top-down democracy run by and for the political elites and Parliaments were there to support the executive and not to control it. The people of Europe could do things their way, but it was not the British way. The British people had no vocation for Europe and the heart of Europe was not a place where they belonged. He urged that Britain should ally herself closer to the English-speaking world.
Austin Mitchell invited comments from the floor.
Neville Beale asked if Sir Oliver saw a change in US foreign policy, a major plank of which had for many years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, been the promotion of European integration.
Sir Oliver replied that he thought there had always been ambiguity on the part of the American administration, certainly Democratic and probably in the past Republican too. There was no doubt at all that the State Department tended to want to encourage Britain’s closer association with Europe, but the Pentagon had a completely different view because they valued our military relationship, and in particular our intelligence relationship, component parts of the overall special relationship. However, the ultimate executive authority in the United States rested with the President, and he quoted three examples when three British Prime Ministers (Macmillan, Wilson and Thatcher) had managed to persuade the President to go against the advice of the State Department.
Idris Francis, Subjects Against the Nice Treaty argued that as there was no prospect whatever of reforming the EU from within and there would be very little prospect of leaving by democratic means once the rapid reaction force was in place, it was now time for all euro-realist groups, including the Conservative Party, to stop talking in code and embark on a clear, determined, aggressive but constructive campaign to tell the people of this country that there was no alternative but to leave.
Sir Oliver replied that he firmly believed that if the European army went ahead and it led to decoupling from NATO the UK must maintain control of its armed forces. He was not in favour of withdrawing altogether from the EU; he described himself as an anti-Maastricht europhile and would prefer to see the UK repatriate what was necessary, such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the structural policy. Whilst he felt the Economic and Monetary Union and the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice had gone too far, he did agree with the single market although it had its disadvantages. He believed the country could exist independently if it came out of the EU and he refuted arguments that 3½ million jobs would be at risk and that the country would be isolated if it did not comply with everything. He felt that it would be easier for Britain to renegotiate the terms of the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, given that public opposition to those treaties was widely known.
Finally, he agreed that all the eurosceptic groups should
combine forces to see that Britain went no further in to the EU and that it
negotiated to repatriate government from Brussels. He quoted
Mrs Thatcher’s success in renegotiation, and expressed his belief that with
tough negotiation the British could get what they wanted.
David Hearnshaw, Preformed Line Products (Great Britain) Ltd, noted that EU leaders were building themselves a fortified citadel in Brussels to carry on their deliberations without being troubled by the people they were supposed to be leading and asked if the huge gap between the leaders and the led contained within it the seeds of the EU’s own destruction.
Dennis Delderfield, Chairman, New Britain, argued that Britain must never forget the Commonwealth, an automatic common market which the country was in danger of ignoring in favour of the EU.
Sir Oliver agreed on the question of the Commonwealth. He said he would be in favour of restoring some of the economic and political relations with members of the Commonwealth, damaged when Britain had entered the European Community. He advocated dealing more with the English-speaking world (the US, the Scandinavians and the Commonwealth) than at present.
On Fortress Brussels, he found it interesting that Brussels were now thinking of building a Kremlin of their own, which he saw as evidence of the tendency towards authoritarianism on the continent and he did think it contained the seeds of its own decay. He had entitled his article in the European Journal, "The European Union, fraying at the edges and rotting at the core" and in his last paragraph has used the words, "sowing the seeds of its own decay".
Austin Mitchell thanked Sir Oliver and Mr Pincham and those who had taken part in the discussion from the floor. Congress broke for coffee.
Session 2: Preparing for a Referendum Campaign
Chairman: Sir Michael Spicer MP
Sir Michael Spicer introduced a distinguished panel of seven speakers, each representing organisations which would be involved in campaigning in the event of a referendum on the Euro.
(Full text of these speeches here)
Lord Beaumont of Whitley, Green Party representative, House of Lords
Lord Beaumont said that the Green Party would be campaigning wholeheartedly for a No vote in the referendum. He believed the Green Party had much to offer; they had just had a very successful General Election campaign, doubling their vote all over the country and saving ten deposits. The had 1 MSP, 2MEPs, 3 members of the Greater London Authority and a share in the administration in a number of local councils. The Green Party would also bring to the campaign an enthusiasm which came from a dislike of having things run in the interests of multinational corporations rather than in the interests of democracy. It was a party of the left whose members believed in equality, which they felt was only possible if a nation retained control of its own finances. The party believed that decisions should be taken as locally as possible, but members were prepared to accept that on certain environmental issues it was better to make decisions multinationally; they preferred the Council of Europe and the United Nations. The No campaign would be a rainbow coalition, to which the Green Party would add green and would co-operate wholeheartedly.
Lord Bell of Belgravia, Chairman, Conservative Keep the Pound Campaign
Lord Bell said that he was speaking as Chairman of the Conservative Keep the Pound Campaign, a position he held only because there was no one in a position to tell him he no longer held it. He did not know whether the next leader of the Conservative Party would wish to keep the pound, but he was sure that the part of the party which he looked after would be campaigning to keep the pound.
He made four main points:
The campaign should also consider the sort of question to be asked in the referendum. It appeared likely that it would be a Yes/No question, which he felt would benefit the anti-Euro campaign.
John Mills, Secretary, Labour Euro-Safeguards Campaign
John Mills said that he had long experience of campaigning against Europe; he had been responsible for the administration of the 1975 referendum campaign. He outlined lessons which could be learned from the recent successful campaigns in Denmark and Ireland:
One of the main strengths of the Congress was its diversity, lots of people with different views. It would be very difficult to get people to agree on one single set of propositions but if the referendum was to be on the Euro there was one single issue on which all could focus. It was important to win support on that issue and not campaign on other issues; this would involve flexibility.
People would have to be very disciplined in what they said. It would be important to hold the middle ground and focus hard on getting the votes and winning. The expression of extreme views would alienate people.
The campaign needed to be very professional and use all the techniques available to encourage support. The campaigns in Denmark and Ireland had been very well run. Those in charge had thought hard about the timing of advertisements and the tactics to use to draw in as many people as possible and to persuade people who did not normally vote to do so, as had been done in Denmark. A carefully constructed approach was essential.
He asked whether there should be a campaign to have a referendum. Most people thought it would be better never to have a referendum, which could only be achieved if the No campaigners presented such a well organised and united opposition that the Government did not dare to call a referendum.
Doug Nicholls, Secretary, Trade Unions Against the Single Currency
To show how companies viewed the single currency, Doug Nicholls quoted as an example Unilever, who felt people would be so confused by the introduction of the Euro at the beginning of 2002 that they had decided to raise their prices across Europe.
The trade union movement was divided on the issue of a single currency. Unison was strongly opposed and the T&G had a healthily sceptical position. His organisation was working to raise the level of debate within the unions and bring them round to a sensible position. People should remember that the constituency of 7 million union members was very disciplined and their votes would have a significant impact in the referendum. There was a possibility that the Trade Union Congress in September might be used to launch a pro-Euro campaign.
It had been recognised in speeches at the Congress for Democracy that the issue of sovereignty far outweighed political differences and there should be a patriotic campaign for self-governance. He called on all the organisations involved in the Congress to concentrate their efforts on uniting to launch a very organised and professional campaign for a No vote. The level of maturity would be seen in the extent to which the anti-Euro campaigners could unite, but if they were unable to unite and there was competition for the Government funding, then the British people would see the campaigning organisations as part of the treachery taking place. The referendum would be called at a time not chosen by the No campaign.
Elements of the campaign had been used to working separately against the Euro: larger businesses had had the excellent mostly media- and research-based Business for Sterling; the Federation of Small Businesses had done excellent work, as had many other organisations. Each had been able to use a different style to suit its own constituencies, but the referendum would require all organisations to speak with one voice – probably a new voice; no single organisation had the vocabulary and style to win. Presentation would be very important. It would not be a campaign which could be won or lost in the media alone but would need grass roots campaigning to ensure that the message reached all parts of the nation. He believed that the Agenda Committee created through the Congress for Democracy was the best nucleus for the umbrella body and consideration should be given to how to develop that to bring together all the organisations which would be campaigning on the issue.
He warned against an air of complacency which he detected as people felt the calling of a referendum was becoming less likely; the demand for entry into the Euro was a key part of the New Labour agenda. He also felt people underestimated the extent to which preparations for joining the Euro were under way, particularly in the public services and in the restructuring and decline of manufacturing industry. The move towards regional government and the quoting of certain salaries in manufacturing industry in Euros were all part of the process, and he recommended that the campaign should include those issues. He urged that more regional meetings be held, where several organisations had worked well together. There was much work to be done together to form the umbrella group, work which should start following the meeting of the Agenda Committee that afternoon.
Brian Prime, International Ambassador, Federation of Small Businesses
Brian Prime said that although the issue of European economic and monetary union was extremely divisive and there was no organisation whose membership was not split on it, 86% of the members of the Federation of Small Businesses were opposed to abolishing the pound in favour of the Euro. Their opposition was not confined to the costs and administrative problems involved but included the constitutional issues and the belief that joining the Euro would be a major step towards the demise of the United Kingdom as an independent nation.
He felt that the general public was not being informed of all the factors involved in joining the single currency: the surrender of gold reserves, transfer of control of foreign currency, the loss of economic control of the economy, leading ultimately to tax harmonisation and political union. These were all important issues and the FSB did not believe that those currently eligible to vote had the right to rob future generations of their inheritance and the freedom currently enjoyed.
The UK referendum must therefore be transparent, honest and address all the issues involved. Public funds must be balanced as should reporting in the publicly-funded media. In order to achieve a referendum result which all would respect he proposed that the Electoral Commission should have the authority to deal with abuse of the basic principles, to cancel the referendum and set a new date if they felt the public were being misled. Failure to run the referendum fairly would lead to future grievances, some of which he expected to see within the 12 member nations towards the end of the year as their people realised the full implications of abandoning their national currencies, a course forced upon them by their politicians and bureaucrats. The arrogance of the unelected European elite was exposed in their attitude to the Danish and Irish people who had had the audacity and freedom to vote No. The British people were being warned that if they voted No they would become isolated, together with 96% of the rest of the world that lay outside the borders of the European Union!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Campaign for an Independent Britain
Lord Stoddart said that the Campaign for an Independent Britain believed Britain should never have gone into the European venture and still believed that it should come out tomorrow, if not sooner. However, it did understand that the sacrifice of the currency was of prime importance and that it should combine with all other organisations to see that it did not happen.
He quoted from an article in the previous day’s Daily Telegraph, in which it was reported that the Foreign Minister of Belgium had warned the Austrian Government against holding a referendum on the expansion of the European Union in case it lost, on the basis that it was very dangerous to organise referendums without being sure of winning. He had no doubt that Mr Blair would take that to heart.
The whole of the euro-realist movement would need to be involved in the referendum campaign; it would not be the monopoly of any one group. Furthermore, the arguments could not be confined to economic and financial issues. The issue of sovereignty – who governed Britain – was likely to be viewed as more important than economic aspects by the electorate. The Danish and Irish people had, he believed, voted No in their referendums on the grounds of democracy and freedom. Those referendums had been won by a number of small organisations, not very well financed, working together at people level. It was therefore essential that the British referendum campaign had a strong organisation at constituency level to canvass, to inform, to persuade, to deliver written material on an organised basis and to build a system of identifying supporters and getting them out to vote on the day. He reminded the Congress that the opposition would comprise the official electoral organisation and publicity machine of the Labour Party aided by that of the Liberal Party and abetted by the Tory europhiles who would have access to both money and organisational assistance.
The campaign would therefore need financing and those organisations working at people level must not be starved of funds. He urged that discussions within the movement should start soon because he did not believe that the Government had had a change of heart about the Euro. The Prime Minister was committed to the project and would call a referendum when he felt it was politically expedient to do so. Meanwhile the euro-realist organisations should keep busy, building themselves into a winning team for the referendum.
Russell Walters, Director, Democracy Movement
Russell Walters said that most comment about the referendum campaign had so far centred on structure or strategy, but he wanted to highlight a dimension of the struggle which Lord Stoddart had touched on and which the Democracy Movement felt had not yet received enough attention.
He described the Democracy Movement as a grass roots organisation and he wanted to focus on how the referendum campaign was going to be fought on the ground. Much had been said about the media war but it was unrealistic to assume or to hope that the campaign would be entirely a media war. Unless there was an overall architecture, enthusiasts on all sides would take to the streets and some of them would be distinctly off-message as regards the national campaign and would be used in the media to embarrass or compromise the national message. No one who had ever fought an election could doubt the advantage of identifying likely voters months in advance, monitoring how many of them would vote on polling day and knocking up those who had not voted. The No campaign would be up against the Labour Party electoral machine, which was a fearsome prospect.
The Democracy Movement believed the No campaign needed its own joint electoral organisation into which every group which wanted to take part (for instance, Conservative Associations, the Democracy Movement, the UK Independence Party, the Campaign for an Independent Britain, SANITY, the Greens, the Freedom Association, the Socialist Labour Party, local trade union branches) could be fitted. It would look at every single constituency to allocate responsibility for every single polling station. None would be working under the supervision of the other, but all would be slotted separately into the great scheme agreed in advance. Such a sophisticated electoral campaign could not be thrown together overnight.
He recommended that all the organisations involved should negotiate a legal way of pooling their data-protected lists of supporters in secure circumstances so that all the information could be split up into constituency chunks to provide the foundation for constituency financing efforts. This would take time, as would the building up of trust in the central bureau of the ground force which all sides would need before parting with the data. Agreement would have to be reached, too, on the use of resources (computers, printers and stationery) for the ground force. If there was to be a ground force to fight the referendum there would be a long lead time before it became effective. These issues needed to be resolved sooner rather than later. The Democracy Movement wanted this campaign to be a people’s war with tens of thousands of people across the nation sharing the enormous burden and contributing to ultimate victory.
Sir Michael Spicer commented that during the speeches by members of the panel mention had been made of the Danish and Irish referendums, and he was pleased to welcome leaders from those campaigns to the Congress.
Anthony Coughlan, Secretary of the National Platform, Ireland described the National Platform as a research and information group which had provided the basic criticisms of the Nice Treaty most used by the diverse groups which had formed the No campaign in the Irish referendum. There had been no formal alliance between the groups but his organisation had provided a "common hymn sheet" from which the groups sang, though each one added their own grace notes.
The result had been quite good – 54% - 46% to the No
Campaign. He had spoken at the
Fifth Congress for Democracy on the Treaty of Nice and had appealed for and had
received support from democrats in Britain, which he was happy to acknowledge.
There had been many elements in the campaign for a No vote in the Irish referendum, of which the most significant had been the Catholic traditionalists, who had been particularly concerned at the possibility of the Charter of Fundamental Rights becoming part of Irish law; they had engaged principally in mass canvassing, using the arguments against the Treaty of Nice, and had been very successful. The elements of the Irish No campaign had been very diverse but they had managed to stay on message. The campaign for the No vote in Ireland had been assisted by the work of the Referendum Commission, a non-party quango, set up by the Irish Government and endowed with public funds to provide arguments on an equal basis for both sides. The situation in Britain was quite different; under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act there would be an umbrella group representing all the parties campaigning for a No vote in the referendum.
However, the Irish Government was conniving with its European partners to overthrow the referendum result and had told the other states to go ahead with the ratification process. Their aim was to confront the Irish people in about a year’s time with a second referendum on the Nice Treaty in the hope that people would change their minds. This might not be easy and there would also have been a General Election by then.
During the campaign the No side had made a deliberate pitch for the middle ground. They had repeatedly and designedly appealed to previous Yes-side voters. An important element of the Treaty of Nice had been the enhanced co-operation provisions which allowed an inner group of eight states to act independently even if the other seven did not agree; it cut across the traditional stance of europhiles that it was a genuine partnership, and the No campaign had used the slogan, "Vote No to keep Europe together" to very good effect. The Treaty of Nice provided for the formation of two groups – an inner group and an outer group – the inner group laying down the law to the outer group. He saw this as relevant to the argument in Britain and urged members of the Congress to point out that the Germans and the French were hijacking the EU for their own purposes, which was permitted under the Treaty of Nice.
In response to Sir Michael’s request that he share any hints on how his organisation was preparing for the next campaign, Anthony Coughlan said that they were continuing to produce information and documentation; there was no formal alliance. Some members of the campaign had met Mr Prodi when he had recently visited Dublin – and every time he spoke he helped the No campaign. The Irish Parliament had voted to join the Euro because they assumed that Britain would be in the single currency two years later. Ireland only did one-third of its trade in the eurozone and had totally inappropriate interest rates; a crescendo of publicity was arising to culminate in the introduction of the Euro currency in January 2002. Irish Parliamentarians and the public were gradually realising that it was an unfortunate course to tie the Irish currency for all time to an area with which Ireland only did one-third of its trade when her principal markets were with Great Britain and the USA.
Søren Espersen, Danish People’s Party
Søren Espersen said that his first piece of advice was that the campaign should never become negative or bitter because people did not like negativity or bitterness.
Denmark was still in existence following the No vote on 28th September 2000, in spite of the dire predictions of those campaigning for a Yes vote. In fact, Denmark had prospered: the interest rate had fallen, employment, foreign investment and wages had risen, and the Danish crown was as strong as ever. Denmark had not been isolated from the rest of the world; it had cross-border co-operation in the EU, the UN, the European Council and NATO, and free trade in the EU with equal competition conditions.
The Danes had seen the EU in its true colours as a powerful giant where democracy had drowned in bureaucratic self-indulgence. This giant now watched carefully over how opinions were formed and was armed with sanctions should a majority in any country want different ideals. Approximately 5% of taxpayers’ money in the EU budget disappeared due to corruption and maladministration; eurocrats received wages two to three times those for equivalent posts in national administrations.
They could also see that the joint economic venture, the euro, could not solve eleven countries’ different needs; the rate was falling, interest rates were going up and Denmark had only half the unemployment of the Euro countries and economic growth was substantially higher.
The situation was becoming increasingly chaotic as the time for replacing national currencies with the Euro approached. The Euro tumbled around in the ring like a semi-conscious boxer but the trainer at the ringside, Mr Duisenberg, would never throw in the towel as the Euro had become the very symbol of the principal case for the United States of Europe. The situation was tragic in the extreme. The European peoples’ welfare and wealth were being irresponsibly experimented with, all because of a fanatical idea.
The Germans had been promised that if they gave up their safe and strong Deutschemark the replacement currency would be just as strong, but after a few weeks it had become quite clear that the experiment was not going to work. The Germans had been calmed with the message that as soon as the Euro had become a currency in circulation confidence would return. However, experts now foresaw that the Euro would fall well below its lowest level of $0.8229. It had been said that the Euro’s weakness was due to the exceptionally strong American economy and yet the Euro had not fallen in relation to the dollar alone but also to many other currencies around the world. The American economy had recently levelled out but this had had no positive effect on the strength of the Euro. Moreover, there were no encouraging signs for the Euro. Firstly it looked as if America was already on the way to regaining her economic strength, and secondly, the three largest Euro countries, the driving force behind the joint currency, all appeared to be suffering economically.
However, in the view of the European Union it was essential that the single currency should be realised, irrespective of the damage it might do to the individual countries and their peoples, because it was a vital part of the project called the United States of Europe.
Concluding, Søren Espersen assured members of the Congress of the loyal support of the Danish People’s Party and expressed the hope that the battle to keep the pound would succeed.
Christopher Gill, Chairman, Freedom Association said that, whereas before the General Election he had been convinced that there would be an early referendum, he was now persuaded that there might not be a referendum during the course of this Parliament, but it was certain that there would be another IGC and another European Treaty in the year 2004 and he argued that it suited the integrationists that those opposed should be worrying about the single currency while they quietly got on with the business of European integration.
He suggested that it might be helpful to interest the proponents of the single currency in the effect it would have on the country in terms of the value of the pound. The pound was currently worth €1.66 and the US$ €1.18, which meant that the currency would have to be devalued by 29% to join the Euro, on top of the 15% which it had depreciated against the US$ since October 1999 - a huge depreciation of nearly 50% against the world’s leading currency. Those in favour of the single currency should be asked to explain the benefit to the UK economy of such a massive devaluation.
He stressed that the campaign had to be conducted purely and simply on the issue, and that the introduction of political personalities should not be allowed to deter people from the cause. He had found it very difficult in 1975 to vote "No" because he had been voting with his political opponents, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn. In his view the campaign needed to be sold like soap powder, but without the manufacturer’s name.
Eric Deakins, Labour Euro-Safeguards Campaign presented six brief points for consideration by the panel.
Teresa Gorman asked why there were no women’s organisations represented on the platform, reminding Congress that it was the women who had campaigned to compel supermarkets to display imperial (as well as metric) weights on their products; women largely controlled the family budget. She stressed the need to marshal the common sense, energy, resentment and the power of the women’s vote in the campaign.
Howard Pedraza, Anti-Common Market League proposed that arrangements be made for an "alternative referendum" on the same day as the official referendum. He believed that the official referendum would be rigged, which would prevent those against the Euro from voting effectively and recommended that they hand their electoral cards to an anti-Euro teller. The cards collected by the anti-Euro tellers would give a national total of those opposed to the Euro and make a mockery of the official referendum result.
Will Podmore, Trade Unions Against a Single Currency and UNISON, said that he had written to many constituency Labour Parties, factory trade union branches and trades councils, inviting them to join in the debate on the single currency. This showed that it was not the anti-Euro campaign which was afraid of debating the issue. The Prime Minister was extremely frightened of an intelligent debate being held on the subject, and Mr Podmore urged Congress to keep up the pressure on the Prime Minister so that he did not dare to call a referendum, or to include entry to the single currency in the next election manifesto.
He felt that the Trade Union movement was the key to the campaign; if the movement could be turned from its enthusiasm for the single currency the pro-Euro side would be damaged.
Anna McKeown, Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union and Trade Unions against the Single Currency endorsed what previous speakers had said about preserving the unity of Congress through its diversity and the need not to get diverted into trying to define exactly what was meant by democracy, for example.
She felt that the debate at the previous year’s TUC had been good and it had seriously dented the credibility of the TUC’s pro-Euro argument. The MSF union leadership was now calling for a debate on the Euro. She anticipated a tremendous challenge to persuade those, especially in manufacturing, that it was an illusion that only through the EU could this country have jobs, employment and an industrial future. She felt there might be a constituency for an emotional response against the single currency, but the 7 million trade union members were intelligent people and needed an intelligent debate. They needed to be shown that the decline in manufacturing, the problems on the railways and in agriculture were inextricably linked to the way the country was enmeshed in European Directives.
Iain MacGregor, Scotland Against being ruled by Europe drew to the attention of Congress the cover of the current issue of Printing World (9th July), which announced the results of its referendum on the single currency – a "No" vote contradicting the accepted leadership position. He felt the printers would be sound allies in mobilising forces for the referendum.
Dr Max Gammon said that he had been encouraged by what he had heard; the battle lines were being drawn up, and he believed the battle could be won.
He had attended a recent OUP Waterstone,s debate at University College, at which the motion had been "Britain’s place is at the heart of Europe", opposed by John Redwood and Graham Leech, who had both spoken extremely well. At the beginning the audience, business people and academics in the 30-50 age range, had been extremely europhile, but by the end of the debate the motion had been defeated – 57 against to 36 in favour. For the first time in his life he had seen a change made by debate and saw the forthcoming campaign as a great opportunity to save Britain and to save Europe by example.
Session 3: Debate on the Nature of Democracy
Chairman: Sir Michael Spicer MP
Sir Michael Spicer welcomed to the platform Roger Helmer MEP and Frederick Forsyth, who would each speak briefly on aspects of Democracy before the Congress resumed its discussion on Preparing for the Referendum Campaign.
Democracy and the European Union
Roger Helmer MEP
(Full text of speech here)
It was said that the European institutions were democratic and that one of the key reasons for the enlargement of the EU to the new countries of central and eastern Europe was to extend democracy and the rule of law to those countries. However, the European institutions were prepared to ignore democracy in order to achieve agreement. He had been astonished by the reaction of the European institutions to the result of the Irish referendum, describing it as a phenomenon called "biased finality", which referred to a decision which could be made many times but there would only be one answer which would be accepted. He quoted several examples, one of which was the Danish vote against Maastricht in 1992, when they had been told to go away and vote again. The same thing appeared to be happening in Ireland over the Nice Treaty.
The EU was not and never could be a democratic organisation for three reasons. Firstly, the European institutions were very complex. Even in the European Parliament, the only institution to make a pretence of democracy, the rules linking other minor institutions were so complicated that they prevented it from being accountable. Secondly, within the Parliament there was a built-in bias of federalism because until very recently the only people who had stood for election to the Parliament had been on the extreme europhile wing. Only since 1999 had a few people who felt that integration had gone far enough stood for election to the European Parliament; 85% of the Parliament were totally committed federalists and integrationists, a proportion which did not represent the views of people across the European Union. Thirdly, a democracy required a demos, a people with shared history, culture, economic interests and language who were prepared to be governed by each other. Whereas he would be prepared to accept a decision made in Westminster although he might not agree with it, he saw no reason to regard a decision made by a coalition of Belgians, Portuguese, Greeks and Lithuanians, for example, as having any democratic legitimacy.
The nation state was the natural forum for democracy and the concept of representative democracy across 15, 20 or 25 countries was meaningless. The British people had a simple choice: democracy at Westminster or no democracy at all.
Parliamentary Democracy
Frederick Forsyth CBE, Chairman, Congress for Democracy Constitutional Committee
He had been asked by the Chairman to define Parliamentary Democracy as succinctly as possible, and he had tried to do this by listing 12 points, irreducible criteria which, if they were not met - and in the European Union they were not and could not be met - meant there was no Parliamentary democracy as the British understood it.
There was increasing reference in Europe to the initials USE, standing for the United States of Europe, used occasionally by the hierarchs of the EU when asked what was the end of the European journey. He suggested that the use of the initials USE was to invite comparison with the United States of America, the richest and militarily most powerful country in the world. The USA was a democracy comprising 50 states, regions or provinces with devolved self-government. It was completely mendacious to suggest that the European Union could ever develop into something remotely resembling the USA. The USA had begun with 13 seaboard states on the Atlantic coast, and it had taken 200 years to create the USA of today as civilisation spread through the vast wilderness beyond the Appalachians. The situation as entirely different east of Calais; there were people, inhabitants of ancient and proud republics and kingdoms. The USA had been founded on one governmental system, one legal system, a common history and a single language; none of these existed in Europe.
In his view there were only three ways to accomplish any project which involved other people: coercion, volition and deception. He dismissed coercion as a means likely to be used to achieve European integration and argued that had it been the intention to persuade the peoples of Europe to agree to the creation of a superstate there would have been a requirement for regular pan-European exercises in consultation. The third option was deception, which was how he feared the project was being pressed forward. It was not acceptable because parliamentary democracy and the deliberate extensive deception of the people were incompatible.
It was said that the choice to be made was about the abolition of the national currency but that was secondary, in his view, to the choice to cease being members of a self-governing nation state. The British people would only be asked whether they wanted to join the single currency but economic union would automatically lead to political union. The referendum on the single currency would in fact be about whether the British people wished to become citizens of a devolved regional assembly governed by a non-democratic entity, and he thought that they ought to be ready for it.
Writing off the Democratic Deficit
David Green, Communications Director, Liberal Party, and member of the Congress for Democracy’s Agenda Committee
A paper was presented to the Congress prepared by David Green (who was unable to attend) on Writing off the Democratic Deficit.
Preparing for a Referendum Campaign (continued from Session 2)
Sir Michael Spicer said that the discussion would now return to the issues raised by the panel of speakers on Preparing for a Referendum Campaign before lunch.
Lord Neidpath, UK Independence Party expressed disappointment that the UK Independence Party had not been represented on the platform. Lord Stoddart had said that the whole of the Euro-realist movement must be involved in the struggle. There was no split on the UKIP on the Euro; it had won 400,000 votes at the General Election and had fielded 430 candidates. He hoped that Congress would not be tempted to think that UKIP was irrelevant to the cause and that the party would be represented on the platform at future meetings.
Sir Michael Spicer commented that the Steering Committee, which had been set up some years ago, had never received any formal application to join from anyone in authority at the United Kingdom Independence Party. Moreover, the Steering Committee had made it a condition of membership that the organisations be prepared, whatever their differences on tactics, strategies and objectives, to concentrate and focus on the single objective which brought Congress together: the referendum on the single currency.
Peter Troy, Federation of Small Businesses, Darlington Branch said that whilst he felt that the intellectual argument had been won, he believed that the voter was asleep on the vital issue of keeping the pound. He would like to see the Congress take the debate to the people, presenting the arguments for keeping the pound in terms that were relevant to the everyday needs of business people, trade unionists, the person in the street. He urged Congress to organise and encourage meetings in the country, the regions and in the constituencies, along the lines of the meeting held in Darlington the previous year, which had been very successful and about which people still talked. He urged the Steering Committee to consider taking the debate to the public and offered his help.
Sir Michael said that Peter Troy had organised the highly successful meeting held in Darlington; there had also been an equally successful meeting in the West Midlands. The Steering Committee had always been of the view that regional meetings should be encouraged, and would welcome any practical suggestions on how to set them up. The Federation of Small Businesses had been a wonderful source of ideas in the past.
Terry Daly, Universal Democrats saw language as an important element in the campaign and proposed that the Congress for Democracy adopted a strategy for the referendum of promoting Democracy against European Dictatorship. Misquoting the Americanism, he said, "It’s not about the economy, stupid, it’s not even about the pound, it’s democracy versus the European dictatorship. Keep the pound and keep democracy. A vote against keeping the pound is an anti-democratic vote."
Peter Goodchild asked on what basis the campaign was going to be fought. Would the Congress fight on the basis of a single currency alone? Or on the broader constitutional and political aspects? He feared that simply talking about the currency would minimise the chances of winning because people would find it boring and it was possible that on the day of the referendum all the factors might point in favour of joining the single currency. The real issue was whether the British people agreed with the European political venture called the European Union, a question they had never been asked. He urged the Steering Committee to consider broadening the campaign to take on the issue at an emotional, constitutional, national level, rather than just talk about the currency.
James Harvard, Youth for a Free Europe said that he was speaking as an individual as well as for Youth for a Free Europe. Youth for a Free Europe hoped to be a strong part of the pitch to young people in any referendum campaign. It was a cross-party organisation, currently building up a network on campuses of universities all round the United Kingdom, though its aim was to include all young people, not just those at university. He felt it was vital that young people were spoken to by those of their own peer group.
Speaking as an individual, he saw three elements to the campaign: the issue of democracy; the Euro as part of a move to a European superstate and the economics. He did not share the optimism of the earlier speaker that a call for democracy would make people flock to the cause because he did not believe that the majority of people thought in those terms. He quoted the example of Referendum Street, a BBC programme in which the No campaign had lost to the pro-Euros. While many people thought that it had been another example of a rigged BBC programme, he felt campaigners for a No vote should ask themselves why their side lost – could it be because they spoke about democracy while the other side simply advocated joining the Euro for more jobs, cheaper mortgages etc?
He also urged that lessons be learned from the general election campaign in which the Labour Party had used snappy mantras, such as "Tory Boom and Bust", which had been repeated throughout the last Parliament until they had seeped into the public consciousness and had become established as fact. The No campaign should work out the thrust and spin of its argument and produce mantras which could be fed into the public consciousness through organisations like the Democracy Movement with its strong grass roots support. He quoted as an example the Business for Sterling phrase, referring to the Pro-Euros as the "Boom and Bust Lobby".
Ashley Moate, author and co-founder of SANITY, commented that nobody under the age of 40, let alone 21, had ever had a vote on whether they wished to be a part of the European Union.
His main point was about the many millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being spent by the Government, both nationally and locally, on Euro preparations. No board of directors of a PLC would be permitted to spend shareholders’ money on a scheme which was unlikely ever to happen and which was probably also against the best interests of those shareholders. He felt there was much to be done to ensure that people knew what was being spent in their name, probably in vain and without their approval.
Nigel Spearing, Campaign for an Independent Britain, said his main concern was the lack of debate being allowed by the Government on the Bill to implement the Treaty of Nice. He explained that, while the Bill itself contained only four clauses, they were extremely complex and the effect of them was to amend previous Treaties and numerous Declarations, copies of which were very difficult to obtain. The Bill was being timetabled under one of the most oppressive double guillotines ever seen in the House of Commons, allowing only three days for debate on Committee stage, one of which had already passed. There were very few explanatory notes from the Government, and they had not been printed with the Bill.
He mentioned in particular Declaration 23 of the Treaty of Nice, which dealt with subsidiarity, the Charter of Human Rights of the European Union, the simplification of the Treaty (which he felt would be the Constitution of the European State) and a delimitation of the powers between the central institutions of the European Union and national Parliaments and states. He regarded the fourth element as the most sinister because, as those with knowledge of constitutional law or federations would know, the separation of powers between the higher international level and that of the components was the fundamental signature or definition of a political federation. Robin Cook had signed the Treaty in Nice and the legislation currently going through Parliament would implement the Treaty. In his view it was the responsibility of members of the Congress to make their supporters aware of the effects of this legislation so that people in the country could tell their MPs how they felt and persuade them not to vote for the Bill at Third Reading when Parliament returned in the autumn.
Mr Bennett, UK Independence Party recommended that when talking about the pound in the referendum campaign emphasis should be place on the fact that the pound was ours and that we were being asked to give it up. He proposed the slogan: our pound and their Euro, making it an emotive issue.
He also said that in December 1999 he had raised with Sir Michael Spicer the question of the involvement of the United Kingdom Independence Party in the Steering Committee, and Sir Michael had suggested that an approach be made after the UK Independence Party national executive and leadership elections. He asked whether an invitation to join the Steering Committee had been issued after those elections.
Sir Michael reiterated his point that no one in authority in the UK Independence Party had asked to join the Steering Committee.
Tony Miller, Federation of Small Businesses suggested that, given that it had been widely claimed that Labour had won the election because it had focused on health, education etc, it would be worth considering pointing out to the public what they might have had but would not necessarily get if the country joined the Euro because the Government’s freedom on expenditure would be curtailed.
He also raised the possibility that if the referendum were long delayed the Government could consider introducing the Euro by the back door as a secondary legal tender and asked whether Congress should perhaps be planning for that eventuality.
The Hon Neil Turner, Edward Turner & Son (manufacturer in Sheffield) said that, based on his many years’ experience of manufacturing in Yorkshire and also sitting at regional level on different economic quangos, he believed firmly in variable exchange rates, and gave three reasons:
They had kept the economic peace amongst nations for the last fifty years because they had allowed one nation to adjust itself to the success of another or to its own failure.
Secondly, they had distributed wealth around the world because as one nation had succeeded economically the value of its currency had gone up until the point was reached where the product was not able to be sold abroad. Therefore those wealthy nations had begun to move to less well developed nations the means of production, manufacture, training, management skills and the finance to do it, bringing productivity to less well developed nations.
Thirdly, he would prefer that decision-making on the investment of wealth were done by the industrialists than by a European central body through the taxation of large companies. He feared that investment through taxation would result in decisions being taken by a committee of mainly Mediterranean people who would want to send it down to the Mediterranean.
Finally, he worried that if Britain did go from a system of variable exchange rates into fixed exchange rates, locked into the Euro, there would be no flexibility to deal with inflation, demands which could not be met or goods which could not be sold, and companies would go out of business. In that event the Government would suffer a loss of revenue and would be forced to increase company taxes, which would destroy the viability of other companies. Ultimately, he predicted there would be no revenue income for the Government to meet its payroll and pension obligations. The only way to overcome that was to maintain a variable exchange rate.
Ron West said that he had been involved for a few weeks in the Croydon Central Conservatives election campaign and that he had been told that in the past three General Elections the Post Office had failed to deliver the Conservative candidate’s election address until after the election. He suggested that consideration be given to ensuring that anything delivered by the Post Office had both the Yes and the No campaigning literature in the same leaflet, as had been the case in the London GLA elections.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Global Britain, told the Congress of a possibly rather hopeful development in Estonia, where there was guaranteed to be a referendum in 2002 on whether or not to join the EU. The leading business newspaper in Estonia had just changed its position from supporting entry to opposing it; current opinion polls showed something around 50% against. He and some colleagues were proposing to hold a high-level conference in Talin later this year or early next year with anti-EU speakers from Washington and London to demonstrate international support. He thought the Estonian Government might be invited to the conference to put the case for Estonia joining the EU. He felt that if Estonia, with a population of only 1.5 million, could vote not to join the EU, the argument that the UK was too small to survive outside became rather specious.
Eric Clements, NE Region UCATT agreed with Christopher Gill that it could be dangerous to confine the campaign to the narrow issue of the single currency; the opposition would undoubtedly raise other issues, such as the danger to 3 million jobs, during the campaign and they would have to be answered.
As a result of the General Election the trade union movement was no longer afraid that by criticising New Labour they would let the Conservatives back in and the movement could exercise real pressure on Labour MPs. He had attended the previous year’s TUC and had been unable to find any pro-Europeans, except on the platform. He thought the dam was going to break; Labour backbench MPs had recently shown a great deal more independence. He asked that those from the Conservative party and from business should not, when campaigning against the Euro, stress the advantages of the flexible labour market because it would alienate the seven million trade unionists and jeopardise the fragile unity of the campaign.
Sir Michael invited Doug Nicholls to comment on whether there was any chance of getting the TUC to move its position at the next conference.
Doug Nicholls, Trade Unionists Against the Single Currency made the point that the TUC could not fix the position for its constituent unions; the key was to change the minds of the individual unions, thereby creating a groundswell which would change the nature of the debate at the TUC. Several unions were opposed to the Euro, and the T&G, whose general secretary would chair the TUC, was cautious. He and his colleagues were working through branch meetings to change the minds of the unions. Their big task was to convince the members of the manufacturing unions that independence was essential to rebuild the industrial base.
He predicted that there would be no major change at the Trade Union Congress this year, potentially dangerous support for the Prime Minister’s pro-Euro agenda (which could possibly be launched at the TUC) but, more optimistically behind the scenes, a lot of scepticism developing, and policy changes in the unions for next year.
Peter Todd, Enigma Ventures Limited, was pleased that at this meeting of Congress there was evidence that people were seeing the campaign in terms of a war, one of the attributes of which was confusion of the enemy, a tactic which the Government appeared to be following over the timing of the referendum. He was concerned that there might not be a referendum, but the Prime Minister might put the Euro issue into the manifesto for the next election, making it a party political issue, and urged that the Steering Group consider what Plan B might be if that happened.
Stuart Gulleford, Campaign for an Independent Britain, asked what campaigners were going to do on 1st January 2002, the date on which the Euro notes and coins were to be introduced. He felt that the currencies should not be allowed to pass away unlamented and saw that date as a significant opportunity for co-ordinating protest activities on the streets. He was also concerned that the BBC would not cover the event from both sides, omitting to report the disadvantages and anticipated confusion to the British people.
Pam Barden, Save our Sovereignty, said that she worked with the grass roots and because she had never belonged to a political party she could receive information from all elements in the campaign. She stood on the corners on Democracy Days, in the company of members of the Campaign for an Independent Britain, the Freedom Association, the Democracy Movement and the UK Independence Party; at ground level they all worked together. She feared that unless campaigning started at once the battle would be lost; several large companies had already announced that from 1st January they would take Euros in their shops, and she quoted an example of a receipt she had recently been shown, from a British garden store, on which the currency sign was not a pound but a Euro.
She criticised the Tories’ Keep the Pound campaign, which she said did not tell people why they needed to keep the pound – what would be the consequences of losing it.. She wanted the funding for the No campaign in the referendum to go to the Congress for Democracy because the view of Business for Sterling and New Europe was "not yet" to the Euro, whereas at the grass roots the feeling was "never". The Congress for Democracy united all shades of opinion and could come up with a leaflet giving the constitutional and economic implications. She stressed that each element in the Congress should be allowed to speak in its own way to its own supporters, and that steps be taken to include the ethnic minorities.
Sir Michael Spicer intervened to explain Mrs Barden’s reference to money. State money was now available by statute for the referendum campaign. It would be the Electoral Commissioner who would decide which group or groups formed the body which received it.
Darryl Godbold, speaking as a British fisherman, commented that Britain no longer had any fish. The British public had been deceived in 1972; they had been told that joining the Common Market would bring trade, and overnight it had disappeared. Neither the Government nor the British people owned any resources any more, they were all owned or managed by organisations which were orientated towards Europe.
John Walker, Federation of Small Businesses expressed his concern that the power to designate the organisation which would receive funding for the No campaign had been given to the Electoral Commission, especially in the light of new article 191 of the Nice Treaty: Conditions for Recognition and Funding of Political Parties. He saw that as a move to take away the power of the people to decide who they elected, and he was suspicious of the Electoral Commission
During the referendum campaign it would be essential to counter points made by the other side on job losses, isolation and loss of influence; the Britain in Europe leaflets would give clues to the arguments that would be used. He suggested as a slogan "a No Vote is a Vote for the Country" though he feared that too much nationalism could put off younger people. He had spoken to about 200 students at a school and 63% had been in favour of keeping the pound. He suspected the 35-50 age group would be the problem.
He was also worried that people would feel that a No vote would mean that one day Britain would have to leave the European Union; this was another argument to which there would have to be a response, but it was essential to stick to the issue of the single currency in order not to lose the argument in the referendum.
Finally, he warned of the possibility of the Government calling an enabling referendum to permit them to join the single currency at some future date.
James Carver, United Kingdom Independence Party, welcomed the political diversity of the Steering Committee of the Congress for Democracy but pointed out that those in the room were predominantly the stereotypical Eurosceptic: white, middle-aged or retired. He asked what plans the Congress had for involving the ethnic minorities and sympathetic people from different areas of society, and he urged that Nirj Deva be invited to play an active role. He also suggested that Tony Benn be invited to become involved.
Sir Michael Spicer commented that, though he couldn’t speak for Tony Benn, he was very much on the No side. He thought it a good idea to invite Nirj Deva to a future conference.
Paul Rhodes, London Swinton Circle issued several challenges: that all the anti-euro organisations should work together as they had never done before; that they should form another committee of people who would act and not just talk; and that the information about the euro and the arguments of the No campaign should be put together in a very simplistic form and put in the hands of the public, of which 50% were totally apathetic. The British public remained as ignorant about the commercial and political factors of European life as they had been in 1975.
Joan Martin asked whether, as the issue was too big for those organisations represented in the room, Congress should approach the President of the United States and say that the British people were being sold down the line.
Charles Starkey, Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign said he had been on the committee of the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign for many years and he warned that, although Mr Straw had been an active member of the committee twenty years ago, he had changed with Neil Kinnock when he had changed the attitude of the party from anti to pro in 1987. Peter Hain had never been a member of the Labour Euro-Safeguards Campaign.
Sir Michael Spicer invited Lord Pearson to respond on the American point. He reminded those present that Congress had provided a platform for Senator Gordon Smith, until very recently chairman of the US Senate European Affairs Committee.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Global Britain, said that he thought the new administration in Washington was on the side of the eurosceptics. They saw the new European Army as hugely dangerous, undermining NATO. He had spoken to the Vice-President about the defence initiativet; unfortunately they had to live with the British Government. There was enormous support for euroscepticism in Washington but the President had to deal with the British Prime Minister.
Peter Dul, Anti-Common Market League expressed the view that an emotional appeal was necessary and commended the slogan "No Pound, No Independence" which indicated that without control over the economy people would not be able to elect a Government to change anything; everything would be decided by supranational unelected bankers and bureaucrats.
Lionel Bell, Anti-Maastricht Alliance, referred to the paper on Parliamentary Democracy, written by Frederick Forsyth, to which he would like to suggest two amendments:
Sir Michael Spicer remarked that the paper was not a formal document published by the Congress and that Mr Forsyth had just left, but he would ensure that the points were conveyed to him.
He then responded to the plea that Congress should become more active. He said that it had never been the purpose of the Congress to set itself up as a new campaigning organisation or to replace the existing organisations who had demonstrated their effectiveness over a long period. He saw a need for a point at which all those organisations came together to share views and swap ideas but there could come a stage when Congress decided, either alone or in association with another group or groups, to apply to the Commission to be the umbrella group in receipt of state funds. It would be very difficult with such a diverse collection of groups, many with long histories and different objectives, to set up an organisation on their behalf, but it was an issue which he was sure would be discussed at the Steering Committee.
Joan Martin suggested that Pam Barden, Teresa Gorman and James Harvard should be on the Steering Committee.
James Harvard, Youth for a Free Europe, commented that his organisation was not in the same league as those represented on the Steering Committee, to which Sir Michael suggested that they try to turn themselves into a substantive group and they would then be welcome to apply to join the Steering Committee.
Mr Harvard expressed his regret and concern that there was no
representative from
Business for Sterling on the Steering Committee and suggested that contact be
established.
Sir Michael said he was happy to give a very frank response on this. Business for Sterling had been set up following a conference which he and other members of the ERG had organised at the Café Royal in 1998. He had an enormous admiration for what they had achieved. It was not the wish of the Steering Committee that Business for Sterling had not been represented at the Congress but there appeared to be a view that Business for Sterling wished to keep away from anything to do with politics, politicians and people involved in the political process. He personally spent quite a lot of time with them discussing this matter because he thought that if the Congress and Business for Sterling were to come together that would probably provide the ideal solution ultimately to the umbrella organisation. Discussions would continue to take place.
Michael J May, Michael J May and Partners raised the question of bias on BBC Radio 4 (and television), despite the obligation in the Charter that they be free from bias. He asked whether there was anything, such as withholding the licence fee, which could be done.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Global Britain, who Sir Michael said had been battling constantly with the BBC, said that the difficulty was that the Broadcasting Act made the Chairman and Governors of the BBC judge and jury in their own court on matters of political balance and impartiality. The Broadcasting Standards Commission was not allowed to judge those matters and the present Government, with its overarching broadcast media control body, intended to leave that responsibility with the BBC. His organisation had conducted seven major monitoring exercises, all proving that the BBC was wildly europhile, and giving chapter and verse. The Chairman had apparently passed these reports to the executive and not to the Governors. He and Lord Shore had agreed the previous day to write to each of the Governors and ask whether they had read the reports and what they proposed to do about them. He also intended to get in touch with the Culture Minister to try and impress her on the position. At the lower editorial levels great strides forward had been made, but at the top of the BBC the culture was hopelessly socialist europhile.
Michael May felt that through the organisations represented on the Congress a large number of individuals could be mobilised to express their indignation in some more direct way. Several people thought this would be a good idea, and it was suggested that Mr May try to organise it.
Winding up the meeting, Sir Michael reminded those present that a collection of the speeches given at meetings of the Congress would be published. He thanked everyone for coming and making such interesting contributions. The date of the next Congress would be discussed at the Steering Committee meeting.
Friday 1 March 2002 was subsequently agreed for the Seventh Congress for Democracy.
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