And what about the first 20 years?
Closer inspection of the figures demolishes the
government position. A well-known pattern over the last 40 years is that more
women have joined the workforce, reflecting such deeply-entrenched social forces
as the fall in family sizes (because of birth control) and the use of
labour-saving devices in the home (dishwashers, microwave ovens, high-quality
frozen and prepared foods, and so on). Female employment in the UK ought to have
risen strongly over the almost four decades of EEC/EU membership, regardless of
that membership.
It follows that male employment is a better guide to the
success or failure of the nation’s economic and labour market policies,
including its participation in the European project. As it happens, the numbers
do show that male employment has done worse than total employment in the
relevant period. In 1973 the UK had 15.6 million men in work. A decade later the
figure had fallen to 14.0 million and 20 years later (i.e., in 1993, when the
EEC was relabelled the EU) it was down to 13.8 million.
Twenty years of Common Market membership had been
accompanied by a decline in male employment of almost two million. Where,
please, is the evidence that belonging to the EEC/EU was good for jobs in those
years – the first two decades of EEC/EU membership – when the effect ought to
have been clearest?
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