We were sold a pup. From the 50s onwards, Tory politicians had busted a gut to join this thing called The Common Market, which, over years was to morph into the insidious EU.
De Gaulle, the leading figure, didn't really want us in. And so, in spite of this, leading Tories - Macmillan, Butler and especially Heath, fought tooth and nail to achieve entry at any cost. (Fishing issues today? - Blame Heath who gifted away our waters as a mere bargaining chip.)
The irony was that we had a certain nominal control over the largest trading bloc in the world at that time - the loose confederation of the British Commonwealth - which did not consist of a mere half a dozen states but of over fifty, largely friendly nations!
We were prepared to sell out our friends and cousins in order to pursue the new and untested.
In the cold light of day - how was this insanity allowed to proceed?
Simples! Democracy was abandoned and Heath took us in, in 1973, against the will of the people. He paid a price in the next General Election!
Harold Wilson won that election and had felt obliged to offer a referendum on whether or not we should stay in.
Heath and Wilson fought almost shoulder to shoulder and agreed to release this wicked pamphlet to every household:
http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
Never has any British government and combined opposition ever been so calculatingly dishonest in the entire history of UK politics.
Mrs Blogger and I fell for the rhetoric and voted to remain back in 1975. "Well, our bridges are well and truly burned; it seems harmless enough; interesting that it is only the political extremists who are against it; we are in now - better make the most of it; they have promised that it is never going to be a federal state etc, etc."
I apologise to all my readers for the worst decision I ever made in my life.
Shortly before his death, the mendacious Edward Heath was asked in an interview on, I believe the BBC, whether he had known back in 73/75 that the Common Market was destined to become a federal empire, he responded, "Of course I bloody did."
The greatest lie in British history? Worthy in my view of execution for treason so utterly reprehensible was it.
The years passed. The Common Market became the EEC, The EC and finally the EU. Over 25 years, I had come to realise how poor a choice this had been. The EU was: hideously expensive; was based on the manipulations and machinations of a wretched and profoundly sinister criminal called Jean Monnet; it stifled any state independence; its parliament could be overruled by the unelected - and extremely frequently was.
Note also:
"We are working discreetly but with all our might to wrest this mysterious political force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states.......all the time denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands." Arnold Toynbee.
The one upside was that it had a single, fairly honest body within its framework - The Court of Auditors. Since its inception, this grouping of independent economists and accountants dared to tell the truth about the budget.
Year after year, it failed to sign off the accounts on the grounds of incompetence and corruption. As an official, EU-funded researcher of the evil empire for over six years from 2002, I looked with horror at what was being permitted to happen.
After almost a quarter of a century of embarrassment, the EU Commission determined that political appointees would be made to that body to replace financial experts. I was actually present in the chamber when the Budget committee elected a heavily europhile, Finnish MEP with zero knowledge of finance to that previously incorruptible body. Incidentally, he was destroyed from the floor in a five minute roasting by Jonathan Arnott MEP - but still comfortably shooed in when the voting took place.
Pure corruption in action - and I was there to witness it, a few short years ago.
This was nothing compared to the incredible inefficiency of this ultra bureaucratic body. A group not run so much by experts as by pen-pushers.
Inefficiency means 'expensive' and we were the second largest contributor to the EU budget. Hundreds of billions of pounds. When grants came back - which they did on occasion - they were often not for projects which we had wanted but for ones that the EU had stipulated that we must have and that we would have to subsidise, typically at a rate of 250% more than the original grant had been.
They tried to force us into joining the Euro as a straitjacket to control nations. This took away the rights of individual countries to control their fiscal crises by devaluation and other such measures. (Ever wondered how Greece got so badly caught out?)
If you do not control your own currency - you become a vassal state
Tragically, many ordinary people had fallen for a different lie - that the EU had 'kept the peace since WW2.' (That was actually NATO.) I wondered how so many seemed to have such little comprehension of History. If there is one mega lesson from History - it has been that great empires always break up - and typically with huge effusions of blood when it happens!
The EU was based on lofty idealism. It probably meant well in the early days. But experience shows us that ideologues are amongst the most dangerous people on the planet.
