Category Archives: Europe

The EU: Making the going good for getting Out

May 27, 2013 – 5:24 pm

ROBERT HENDERSON suggests some ways in which the No side can maximize its chances of winning the referendum on EU membership

Amidst all the confusion and excitement of bringing about a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, it is easy to forget that there are considerable risks associated with the vote. The government will almost certainly campaign to stay in, as will the Labour Party, and many institutions, lobby groups, media groups, foreign governments, and influential individuals. Public opinion, although hardening towards leaving, is fickle and cannot be relied upon. A decision to stay in would probably destroy the UKIP, and would also seriously undermine Conservative Eurosceptics. It is therefore essential that we should think about the likely shape of the campaign, and how we who believe in leaving can improve the odds.

The general strategy

A) How to leave

Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty states

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49. (http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html).

It is strongly implied in in para 3 of the Article that unilateral withdrawal is possible :

“ The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2”.

However, the clause does not explicitly give the right of unilateral secession and could be interpreted as merely referring to how any agreement might be scheduled to take effect. The other EU members could adopt this interpretation to thwart the UK leaving without declaring UDI.

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties cites two legitimate instances where a party wants to withdraw unilaterally from a treaty which does not make any provision for withdrawal : (1) where all parties recognise an informal right to do so or (2) the situation has changed so substantially that the obligations of a signatory are radically different from that which was originally agreed to. The informal right patently does not apply in the case of the EU. As for radical changes to the obligations of a signatory, that would be difficult to sustain. It is true that the organisation (the EU) the UK belongs to now is radically different from that which they originally joined in 1973 (the EEC), but the UK has signed new treaties to agree to the new circumstances as they have arisen. Hence, there would be no radically changed obligations which had not been taken on formally by the UK.

The only precedent of any sort for withdrawal is Greenland’s secession in 1985 from the European Economic Community (EEC). The was facilitated by the Greenland Treaty. However, it is not an obviously relevant precedent because Greenlanders retain Danish citizenship for Greenland has home rule not full independence from Denmark. They are consequently full EU citizens. Because Greenland is also one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the EU it is also subject to some EU law and regulations, mainly those relating to the Single Market. .

Even if it is accepted by the other EU members that there is a unilateral right of secession, the fact that it could only take place legally after two years would give the remainder of the EU the opportunity to run the UK ragged before the UK left.

In any event it is likely is that the EU would drive a bargain which is greatly to the UK’s disadvantage because the Eurofederalists would be terrified of creating a precedent for any other EU member which might wish to radically change their relationship with the EU. That would make them demand conditions of the UK which were so unappealing it would deter other member states from following suit. There is also the danger that the Europhile UK political elite would take the opportunity to agree to disadvantageous terms for the UK simply to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached. The treaty arrangements of Norway and Switzerland are routinely portrayed by supposed Eurosceptics as purely trade relationships. They are not. Both countries are firmly within the EU straitjacket. Indeed, the Europhile BBC ran a story in 2012 entitled Non-EU Norway ‘almost as integrated in union as UK ‘ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16594370). As for Switzerland, a glance at their treaty arrangements will show their close EU embrace http://www.europa.admin.ch/themen/00500/index.html?lang=en. Most importantly they have no control of immigration from the EU . If the UK signed up to the Single Market after formally leaving the EU we should be in the same boat.

The OUT camp must make it clear that it would be both damaging and unnecessary for the UK to abide treaty requirement. Even if the UK did not try to sign up to the Single Market, it would allow the EU to inflict considerable damage on the UK both during the period prior to formally leaving and afterwards if the price of leaving with the EU’s agreement was for UK to sign up to various obligations – for example, to continue paying a large annual sum to the EU for ten years.

There is also the danger that the stay-in camp could use Article 50 to argue that whether the British people want to be in or out, the cost of leaving would be too heavy because of this treaty requirement.

The Gordian knot of Article 50 can be cut simply by passing an Act of Parliament repealing all the treaties that refer to the EU from the Treaty of Rome onwards. No major UK party could object to this because all three have, at one time or another, declared that Parliament remains supreme and can repudiate anything the EU does if it so chooses.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise (1) that international law is no law because there is no means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction if a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments.

The OUT camp should press the major political parties to commit themselves to ignoring Article 50. If a party refuses that can be used against them because it will make them look suspicious.

Before the vote

B) The parties’ plans of action if there is a vote to leave

It is important that all the parties likely to have seats in the Commons after the next election are publicly and relentlessly pressed to give at least a broad outline of what action they would adopt in the event of a vote to leave. Left with a free hand there is a serious danger that whatever British government is in charge after a vote to leave would attempt to bind the UK back into the EU by stealth by signing the UK up to agreements such as those the EU has with Norway and Switzerland which mean that they have to (1) pay a fee to the EU annually, (2) adopt the social legislation which comes from the EU and (3) most importantly agree to the four “freedoms” of the EU – the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour throughout not merely the EU but the wider European Economic Area (EEA).

It is probable that the Westminster parties will all resist this, but that would present them with two problems. First, a refusal to do so would make them seem untrustworthy; second, if one party laid out their position but the others did not, that would potentially give the party which did say what it would do a considerable advantage over the others which did not. If no party puts its plans before the public before the referendum, there should be demands from those who want the UK to leave the EU that any new treaties with the EU must be put to a referendum and, if they are rejected, the UK will simply trade with the EU under the WTO rules.

C) Repudiate re-negotiation before the referendum

Supporting the negotiation of a new relationship between the UK and the EU before a referendum is mistaken, because it would seem to many to be giving tacit approval for renegotiation and legitimize the possibility of the UK remaining within the EU. It is also rash, because the likelihood of the EU giving nothing is very small. Indeed, they might well give something substantial, because the UK leaving the EU would be a very great blow to the organisation. The UK is the country with the second largest population within the EU with, depending on how it is measured, the second or third largest economy and the country which pays the second largest contribution to the EU budget. For the EU to lose the UK would not only be a blow in itself, it would also create a very strong precedent for every other EU state, especially the largest ones. If the UK left and prospered, the temptation would be for other EU states to leave.

If the EU offered a big carrot such as the abolition of benefits for migrants to the UK from the rest of the EU until they had lived in Britain for ten years, that could seriously undermine the resolve of those wanting the UK to leave the EU because it would dovetail with British fears of mass immigration from the EU and the mainstream media representation of the immigration problem as being essentially a welfare problem. The Europhiles would then be able to represent the immigration threat as no longer a threat as they bleated their mantra “the only immigrants will be those who are working and paying their taxes”. That would be difficult for any mainstream British politician or party to counter because they have all be peddling the line of welcoming “hard working immigrants” for years.

But even if negotiation produced nothing of substance, as happened with Harold Wilson’s “renegotiation” of 1975, it would be a mistake to imagine that it would not influence the referendum result. The electorate is divided between the resolute come outs, the resolute stay-ins and the wavering middle. A claim by the stay-in campaigners that something had been conceded by the EU, however insignificant, would provide the waverers with an excuse to vote to stay in because they could convince themselves they were voting for change. If the EU were to offer nothing, waverers might see this as evidence that the EU was too powerful to oppose.

Those who want the UK to leave should unambiguously put the case for no renegotiation. Dismiss anything Cameron (or any other PM) brings back from the EU by way of altered terms as being irrelevant because the EU has a long record of agreeing things with the UK and then finding ways of sabotaging what was agreed. In addition, a future British government may agree to alter any terms offered at the time of the referendum. The classic example of this changing of agreed terms happening in the past is Tony Blair’s giving up of a substantial amount of the Thatcher rebate in return for a promised reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a promise which was never met. That episode produced my all-time favourite amongst Blair’s penchant for lying. Two days before he went to the EU meeting at which he gave away a substantial part of the rebate he declared during Prime Minister’s Questions that the rebate was “non-negotiable – period”.

It is difficult to envisage any British prime minister not trying to negotiate with the EU before a referendum, but it might just happen if whoever is in power when the referendum is announced were to be told privately by the major EU players that nothing will be given and the prime minister of the day concludes it would be best to pretend that a decision had been made not to negotiate rather than risk the humiliation of getting nothing, perhaps not even a pretence of negotiation before nothing is given. Why would the EU do this? They might calculate that it would be a gamble worth taking to send a British PM away with nothing, whilst hoping the referendum vote would be to stay in because then the power of the UK to resist further integration would be shot.

If the EU offers nothing, the OUT camp should welcome the fact and stress to the public that if the referendum is to stay in, the EU could force any federalist measure through because not only would any British government be much weakened in its opposition to more federalism, the UK political class as a whole would more than willing to go along with it because of their ideological commitment to the EU.

D) After the vote

Ideally the government which deals with the EU after a vote to leave will have committed themselves to a plan of action before the referendum vote. However, as described above, it is quite possible that this will not happen because the UK’s overwhelmingly Europhile political class will try to re-entangle the UK with the EU. To prevent them doing so there should be a concerted campaign after the vote to ensure that the British public understands what is being done on their behalf with a demand for a further referendum to agree any new treaty.

The terms of the debate

It is essential that the Europhiles are not allowed to make the debate revolve around economics. If they do it will effectively stifle meaningful debate. As anyone who has ever tried to present economic ideas to an audience of the general public will know it is a soul-destroying experience. Take the question of how much of UK trade is with the EU. The debate will begin with the stay-in camp saying something like 45% of UK trade is with the EU. Those wanting to leave the EU will respond by saying it is probably less than 40% because of the Rotterdam/Antwerp effect. They will then be forced to explain what the Rotterdam/Amsterdam effect is. That is the point where the general public’s concentration is lost and the debate ends up proving nothing to most of the audience.

But although nothing is proved to the general audience by detailed economic argument, the audience will remember certain phrases which have considerable traction. In amongst the serious debating on the issue of trade there will be phrases such as three million jobs in Britain rely on the EU and dire threats about how the EU will simply not buy British goods and services any more. This is nonsense, but fear is not rational, and many of those who vote will enter the voting chamber with fear of losing their jobs in their heads regardless of what the OUT camp says if the debate is predominantly about economics. Shift the debate away from economics and the fear-inducing phrases will be heard less often.

National sovereignty

How should those wanting to leave the EU shift the focus of debate? They should put the matter which is really at the core of the UK’s relationship with the EU – national sovereignty – at the front of the OUT camp’s referendum campaign. Campaign under a slogan such as Are we to be masters in our own house?

Making national sovereignty the primary campaigning issue has the great advantage of it being something that anyone can understand because it is both a simple concept and speaks directly to the natural tribal instincts of human beings. Being a simple concept readily and naturally understood, it is a far more potent debating tool than arguments attempting to refute the economic arguments beloved of the stay-in camp. The fact that the natural tribal instincts have been suppressed for so long in the UK will increase its potency because most people will feel a sense of release when it begins to be catered for in public debate.

The appeal to national sovereignty has a further advantage. Those who support the EU are unused to debating on that ground. That is because uncritical support for the EU has long been the position of both the British mainstream political class as a class and of the mass media. That has meant that the contrary voice – that which wishes Britain to be independent – has been largely unheard in public debate for thirty years or more. Where it has been heard, the response of the pro-EU majority has not been rational argument but abuse, ranging from patronising dismissal of a wish for sovereignty as an outmoded nationalism to accusations that national sovereignty amounts to xenophobia or even racism. These tactics – of excluding those who want to leave the EU from public debate and abuse substituted for argument – will no longer be available to the pro EU lobby.

Immigration

The most threatening and energising subject relating to the EU for the general public is immigration. The public are right to identify this as the most important aspect of our membership of the EU because immigration touches every important part of British life: jobs, housing, education, welfare, healthcare, transport, free expression and crime besides radically changing the nature of parts of the UK which now have large populations of immigrants and their descendants.

The public rhetoric of mainstream politicians and the media is changing fast as they begin to realise both what an electoral liability a de facto open door immigration policy is, as the effects of mass immigration become ever more glaring. The argument is shifting from the economic to the cultural. For example, here is the Daily Telegraph in a leader of 25 March:

“The fact is that, for many in Britain (especially those outside the middle classes), it is not just a matter of jobs being taken or public services being stretched, but of changes in the very character of communities. Those changes may not necessarily be for the worse: as the Prime Minister says, Britain’s culture has long been enriched by the contributions of new arrivals. But as long as ministers treat immigration as a matter of profit and loss, rather than the cause of often wrenching social change, they will never be able fully to address the grievances it causes.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9952717/Immigration-and-the-limits-of-the-possible.html)

This new frankness in public debate means that the OUT camp can use the immigration argument freely, provided they keep the language within the confines of formal politeness. The subject will naturally dovetail with the emphasis on national sovereignty because the most important aspect of sovereignty is the ability to control the borders of the territory of a state. Judged by their increasing willingness to talk publicly about immigration, it is probable that the mainstream UK parties will be content to go along with ever more frank discussion about immigration.

The economic argument must be kept simple

It will not be possible to avoid economic arguments entirely. The OUT camp should concentrate on repeating these two facts:

The disadvantageous balance of payments deficit the UK has with the EU

The amount the UK pays to the EU

Those are the most solid economic figures relating to the EU. There is some fuzziness around the edges of the balance of payments deficit because of the question of where all the imports end up (whether in the EU or outside the EU through re-exporting), while the amount the EU receives is solid but it has to be broken down into the money which returns to the UK and the amount retained by Brussels. Nonetheless these are the most certain figures and the least susceptible to obfuscation by the stay-in side.

The best way of presenting the money paid to the EU is simply to say that outside the EU we can decide how all of it is spent in this country and to illustrate what the money saved by not paying it to the EU would pay for.

It will also be necessary to address the question of protectionist measures the EU might take against the UK if the vote was to leave. It is improbable that the EU would place heavy protectionist barriers on UK exports because:

1. The massive balance of payment deficit between the UK and the rest of the EU, which is massively in the EU’s favour.

2. Although the rest of the EU dwarfs the UK economy, much UK trade with the EU is heavily concentrated in certain regions of the EU. The effect of protectionist barriers would bear very heavily on these places.

3. There are strategically and economically important joint projects of which the UK is a major part, like Airbus and the Joint-Strike Fighter.

4. The Republic of Ireland would be a massive bargaining chip for the UK to play. If the UK left and the EU rump attempted to impose sanctions against Britain this would cripple the RoI because so much of their trade is with the UK. The EU would be forced to subsidise the RoI massively if protectionist barriers against the UK were imposed. The EU could not exempt the RoI from the sanctions because that would leave the EU open to British exports being funnelled through the Republic.

5. The EU would be bound by the World Trade Organisation’s restrictions on protectionist measures.

The economic issues which are not worth pursuing in detail are those relating to how much the EU costs Britain in terms of EU-inspired legislation. It may well be that these load billions a year of extra costs onto the UK but they are not certain or easily evaluated costs, not least because we cannot in the nature of things know what burdens an independent UK would impose off its own bat.

Getting into detailed discussions about such things will simply play into the hands of the stay-in camp because it will eat up the time and space available to those promoting the OUT cause.

Other issues

Apart from the economic questions, the stay-in camp will use these reasons for staying in:

That the EU has prevented war in Western Europe since 1945. This can be simply refuted by pointing out that the EU was not formed until twelve years after WW2; that until 1973 the EU consisted of only six countries, three of them small, and of only nine countries until the 1980s. Consequently it would be reasonable to look for other reasons for the lack of war. The two causes of the peace in Western Europe have been the NATO alliance and the invention of nuclear weapons which make the price of war extraordinarily high.

That nation states such as the UK are too small to carry any real diplomatic weight in modern world. That begs the question of whether it is an advantageous thing to carry such weight – it can get a country into disastrous foreign entanglements such as Iraq and Afghanistan – but even assuming it is advantageous, many much smaller countries than the UK survive very nicely, making their own bilateral agreements with other states large and small. It is also worth remembering that the UK has such levers as a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (which allows the UK to veto any proposed move by the UN) and considerable influence in institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

ROBERT HENDERSON is a London-based freelance writer

Originally published in the Quarterly Review

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Richard North: useful idiot or Europhile wolf in Eurosceptic’s clothing?

May 10, 2013 – 9:41 pm

Campaign for an Independent Britain meeting 4^th May 2013

Dr Richard North: The way forward

His contribution was very odd indeed for someone who is supposedly strongly Eurosceptic. His “way forward” is for the UK to remain entwined in coils of the EU for the foreseeable future. Of course, North does not describe his suggestions as leading to this, but that is the practical consequences of what he advocates.

North’s strategy for the UK’s departure from the EU is this:

“….invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, leading to a negotiated exit based on UK membership of the EFTA/EEA as an interim settlement. To ensure short-term continuity, we would have all EU law repatriated, giving time for examination and selective repeal, and the enactment of replacement legislation as necessary – all over a period of some years.”

He wants the UK to sign up to the type of arrangements Norway and Switzerland have with the EU. This requires them to adopt a large proportion of EU regulations (not least because of the ever broadening bureaucratic demands of the EU obsession with competition and harmonisation ), pay large annual sums to the EU to subsidize the poorer members of the EU and, worst of all, subscribe to the four EU “freedoms”, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour across not only the EU but also the larger European Economic Area (EEA).

That would be bad enough but his naivety over what Article 50 entails is startling. Here is the article in full:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49. (http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html).

It is strongly implied in in para 3 of the Article that unilateral withdrawal is possible :

“ The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2”.

As for getting an agreement which would allow the UK to generally re-establish its sovereignty, especially over the control of its borders, this is most improbable. A Qualified Majority in the European Council is required and even if such a majority is obtained the European Parliament can block the secession. The potential for delay and blackmail by the EU of the UK is considerable. In any event it is likely is that the EU would drive a bargain which is greatly to the UK’s disadvantage because the Eurofederalists would be terrified of creating a precedent for any other EU member which might wish to radically change their relationship with the EU. That would make them demand conditions of the UK which were so unappealing it would deter other member states from following suit. There is also the danger that the Europhile UK political elite would take the opportunity to agree to disadvantageous terms for the UK simply to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached. The stay-in camp could use Article 50 to argue that whether the British people want to be in or out, the cost of leaving would be too heavy because of this treaty requirement.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise (1) that international law is no law because there is never any means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction if a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments.

The OUT camp should press the major political parties to commit themselves to ignoring Article 50. If a party refuses that can be used against them because it will make them look suspicious.

How much of the vote does UKIP command?

North also addressed the question of UKIP’s share of the vote in the recent council elections. This he represented as trivial because although they took 25% of the vote the turnout was very low (around 30% overall). He ignores one important fact about turnout: if the turnout is shrinking then the potency of those who vote rises. UKIP voters and those willing to vote to come out of the EU at a referendum may be much more inclined to vote than those who want the status quo or at least are not motivated to vote for the UK’s independence.

Based on objective facts North is far too pessimistic about obtaining a vote to leave. There are two great differences between now and the 1975 referendum. In 1975 the British public had only two years’ experience of the EEC which was a vastly less intrusive body than the EU is now. If a referendum is held in the next few years the electorate will have 40 odd years of ever greater interference by Brussels with British politics and in the lives of Britons. To this can be added the growing number of prominent voices, both political and from the media and business , which are calling for either an outright campaign to leave the EU or at least a reshaping of the EU in such a radical fashion that it has no chance of success. Both factors will lend vastly greater potency to the OUT camp campaign now than was the case in 1975.

North’s tactics before a referendum

Much of this was driven by fear, fear that a the British electorate would not vote to come out. The consequence is that North proposes a complex, expensive and above all time consuming schedule of preparatory work before any referendum is held. There are also conflicts between his desired ends and proposed means.

North addressed the subject under five separate heads. I comment separately on each.

Reassurance for business

North argues that because the EU is first and foremost a political construct, business has no right to have a say in whether the UK is in or out of the EU. I have sympathy with that view, but North immediately capsized this position by stating:

“…business has a right to expect a predictable and stable regulatory and trading environment, the status of which is affected by our membership. Therefore, we need to be able to assure the business community that, should we leave the EU, there would be no adverse effects.

“In effect, that would mean “protecting” membership of the Single Market – which could be achieved through EEA membership. And, as long as that membership is assured, business has no locus in the broader debate.”

By taking this position on the Single Market North is effectively granting business a very large say in how we are governed, because continued membership of the Single Market will require at the least subscription to the four “freedoms” and the acceptance of EU laws relating to the Single Market. That will greatly impinge upon the UK’s sovereignty.

An alternative to the EU

North believes that we should not merely take back power from Brussels but also stop the power regained being grabbed by Westminster. He starts from the claim that the UK has never been a democracy. That is true in the sense that there has never been direct democracy – that is no more than a commonplace – but for a century before the UK was signed up to the EEC in 1973 there was a good deal of democratic control because the UK’s politics were national. British politicians then could not routinely hide behind supranational agreements such as those governing the EU to avoid responsibility for unpopular policies or be forced to adopt policies which were in the interest of foreign powers and to the UK’s disadvantage simply because of Treaty arrangements. If the UK leaves the EU utterly and our relationship with the EU becomes the same as we have with any other foreign power British politics will again become national not supranational. That is the most certain way of re-democratising the UK.

What does North want? He is much taken with the Harrogate Agenda (HA) (http://harrogateagenda.com/). This has six demands which are similar in tone to those of the 19^th century Chartists and the 17^th century Levellers before them. Here are a couple of the demands to give a flavour of the HA:

2. local democracy: the foundation of our democracy shall be the counties (or other local units as may be defined), which shall become constitutional bodies exercising under the control of their peoples all powers of legislation, taxation and administration not specifically granted by the people to the national government;

4. all legislation subject to consent: no legislation or treaty shall take effect without the direct consent of the majority of the people, by positive vote if so demanded, and that no legislation or treaty shall continue to have effect when that consent is withdrawn by the majority of the people;

Whether or not these are practical (which I very much doubt if put forward in this extreme form) , there is irony in the fact that North espouses such ideas because his proposals for a new relationship between the UK and the EU would utterly undermine the thrust of the HA demands for a UK entangled in an EFTA or similar arrangement would still be subject to decisions being made by foreigners with, doubtless, the willing complicity of Westminster politicians. The Europhile British political class is not going to vanish overnight so the only realistic way of making them behave reasonably is to force them to operate within a national context.

A network for dissemination

Here are North’s proposals:

“ Spreading the message is an essential part of any campaign, but reliance on the media is not going to be sufficient. Formal and informal networks will have to be built, some not dissimilar to direct marketing networks. Activities should include formal training and education, as well as more general propagandising.

Many revolutionary organisations have acquired their own newspapers, or news magazines, as a means of better spreading the message.”

Even if all this was possible, which is very doubtful because it would need serious money as well as willing hands, it would take far too long to establish as an effective propaganda tool. A referendum if it comes will not be that far in the future. What is needed is a simple readily understandable message such as “Are we to be masters in our own house” repeated as often as possible through the national and local media. With more and more politicians, mediafolk, businessmen and various celebrities making Anti-EU noises this is not a forlorn hope.

Agitation

North proposes a campaign of civil disobedience, including the late payment for “Council Tax, water bills, BBC license fees and other such fees” and visiting every “agency, every employment office, etc. and remove all information (leaflets, brochures) not in English”. He goes on to say that there are “A very wide range of activities is in fact possible, many entirely risk-free and totally within the law”.

I doubt whether in these politically correct and increasingly authoritarian times that there would be many which are “entirely risk-free and totally within the law”. Late payment of the BBC license could get you a criminal record; removing information leaflets not in English would probably get you investigated for racial harassment because there would not be much point in removing them without running a campaign saying what you were doing and why; failing to pay many official bills on time could result in late payment surcharges. If civil disobedience is urged it is important that the possible consequences are spelt out to prospective candidates for such action.

Nonetheless that is not my main concern with civil disobedience committed in this random fashion. Civil disobedience is only effective if it is (1) focused, (2) publicity worthy (3) does not greatly inconvenience or disgust the general public and (4) does not make the protestors look ridiculous. A good example of a serious single issue campaign blighted by clownish antics is that of Fathers for Justice. Leaving people to engage in acts of civil disobedience (particularly on a local scale) as they choose will not meet those criteria. If it is to be used, civil disobedience must be a national act. The Poll Tax disobedience is the best example in modern British history of such action. A readily understandable single issue: we won’t pay the tax. It was perfect because it blocked up the magistrates courts and brought the everyday system of justice to its knees.

Sovereignty and opposition to immigration are the two strongest cards the OUT camp has to play. If it is used , civil disobedience should be designed to focus public interest on those two issues.

A coalition of allies

North tried to make a distinction between umbrella groups (bad) and coalitions (good). In practice the two are indistinguishable. What determines the unity of purpose of any coalescing groups is not what they are called but the nature of the groups and their leaders.

North’s response to being challenged

During questions from the audience I said that North’s proposals were an excellent recipe for remaining within the EU for the reasons I have already given. North became very animated and spoke at considerable length to refute what I was saying. People only behave in such a manner during debate if they feel their position is under real threat.

The kindest interpretation of North’s position is that he is acting as a useful idiot for the Eurofederalist cause in the mistaken belief that things can be resolved to the UK’s advantage by talking, by being “reasonable”; the unkindest interpretation is that he is a Eurofederalist wolf in Eurosceptic clothing attempting to undermine the campaign to remove the UK from the grip of the EU.

North has condensed the views espoused in his speech into written form on the CIB website – see http://www.freebritain.org.uk/_blog/Free_Britain/post/an-eu-free-future-for-all-by-dr-richard-north/

And

http://www.freebritain.org.uk/_blog/Free_Britain/post/turnout-by-dr-richard-north/ ).

Robert Henderson

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Politics | Tagged internationalism, laissez faire, law, nationhood, NWO | Comments (0)

Margaret Thatcher and the cult of personality

April 24, 2013 – 8:20 pm

Robert Henderson

Two Cults

Margaret Thatcher was the subject of a cult of personality. This was not the result of calculated propaganda, but simply the creation of her extraordinary personality. Because the cult of personality developed not in a totalitarian state but a country where public opposition was possible, there were two cults of personality attached to her in a relationship which mimicked the matter/antimatter duality. These were the Thatcherite religious believers fulfilling the role of matter and the Thatcher-hating Left acting as the antimatter.

Both the matter and the antimatter Thatcher cults were potent. The religious believers bowed down before the great god MARKET (and Thatcher was his prophet) and, when things went wrong, did what all religious believers do until they lose their faith, denied reality by simply pretending something had not happened or by giving a calamity some absurd spin to ”prove” the god had not failed.

For the Thatcher-hating Left she was the personification of the Devil and consequently credited with all manner of evil, but, as is the way with personifications of the Devil, never portrayed as anything but powerful, a being possessed of a political juju (doubtless ensconced in her handbag) which could wreak any degree of havoc with all that the Left held dear is if she so chose. Like all those who believe in evil spirits the Thatcher-hating Left ascribed every act of ill fortune to her.

The attitude of both bands of cult followers was essentially superstitious, attributing powers to the woman which she did not, and often could not, have. The religious Thatcherites imagined she could speak the spells which would miraculously convert Britain from a country making silly old fashioned things such as steel, ships and cars and mining coal to a country stuffed to the gunnels with entrepreneurs creating new non-unionised service industries; the Left saw her as a witch practising black magic to contaminate and transmogrify the world they knew.

Because the Thatcherite religious believers and her leftist haters could not and still cannot see past the woman’s gigantic political personality, they made and continue to make the same mistake, namely, seeing the two cult figures as the reality while ignoring her actual policies and their outcomes.

The reality of Thatcher

The reality of Thatcher is that objectively she achieved little if any of her wishes. It is a bitter irony for the woman (and Thatcherites generally) that her policies were of a nature which undermined the ends she espoused. Perhaps the prime example is Thatcher’s avowed wish to see a strong and wealthy Britain whilst creating through her commitment to laissez faire economics the very circumstances that would weaken the country. Under her economic regimen and its lingering aftermath ever since Britain has become ever less self-sufficient in strategically important economic activity such as the production of food and energy and vast swathes of British business were either bought up by foreigners or ceased to operate from Britain because of offshoring and the absence of government action to protect our own economy. She simply did not understand that you could not have laissez faire in both the domestic and international economic sphere and have a strong nation state. Had Thatcher known any economic history she would have realised that, but even without such knowledge common prudence should have told her that a country which is dependent on others for necessary goods and services is a weak country. Moreover, one of her claimed tutelary heroes Adam Smith readily understood there are things which are either strategically important such as armaments or social goods which are never going to be supplied universally by private enterprise such as roads. Thatcher never gave any indication of realising that Smith was not the unrelenting free marketer of her imagination.

Thatcher’s failures in making policy to achieve her ends were legion. She destroyed much of British heavy industry in the belief that those made unemployed would rapidly be re-employed in private sector jobs. The new jobs did not materialise and she was reduced to presiding over massive and long lasting unemployment which she funded with North Sea oil and gas tax revenue and the receipts from privatisation, whilst fiddling the unemployment figures shamelessly. She sold off state owned services (which belonged to the community as a whole not to the government) in the belief that service would be improved . It was not. Instead vital services such as the railways and the provision of energy and water became ever more expensive whilst providing poorer service and less employment. She introduced so-called private business methods into the NHS and higher education in the belief that they would become more efficient. The result was massive increases in bureaucracy and an ever climbing cost of both the NHS and higher education and a substitution of the pursuit of money for the public service ethos because money was attached to individual patients and students. She introduced the Community Charge or “Poll Tax” in the belief that it would be fairer than the old domestic rates. The result was widespread unfairness because it took no account of an individual’s means and provoked the nearest thing to a national movement dedicated to the non-payment of taxes known in modern times. She raged against EU interference in British affairs but signed up Britain to the Single European Act (SEA) in the belief that it would create a genuine single market within the EEC. It did not create such a market and merely presented the EEC with an open goal for ever more audacious sovereignty grabs. A supposed opponent of further mass immigration, her signing of the SEA also opened the door to free movement within the EU, a situation worsened by her strategy of dramatically widening the EEC. She signed Britain up to the She embraced “Care in the Community” for the mentally ill or disabled on the grounds that it was more humane than keeping such people in long-stay institutions. The result was thousands of people left to largely fend for themselves in the outside world who were quite incapable of doing so. She sold off great swathes of social housing (which belonged to the community as a whole not to government) to tenants in the belief that this would result in a “property owning democracy” whilst more or less ending the building of new social housing. The eventual result was the growing housing emergency we have today. She instigated the disastrous “light touch” regulation of the financial services industry by abolishing credit controls and failing to meaningfully regulate the industry meaningfully after “Big Bang” in 1986 which effectively de-regulated the London Stock Exchange to bring in a brave new world of free trading (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8850654/Was-the-Big-Bang-good-for-the-City-of-London-and-Britain.html) with the dire results with which we are now living.

Even in the few areas where she was ultimately successful such as the Falkland’s War she was at best negligent in ignoring warnings from the Foreign Office of a growing threat to the Falklands in the months leading up to the invasion and even after the expeditionary force had been dispatched she agreed to a US organised plan which would have not offered the Islanders either self determination of or any meaningful security (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/10008116/Margaret-Thatcher-how-she-took-on-the-men-and-won.html).

There were also acts of omission and collusion with policies with which she supposedly fundamentally disagreed. Most importantly, Thatcher failed utterly to carry her strong views against further mass immigration into her period in office. Not only that but, as already mentioned, she made things much worse on that front by signing up to the Single European Act. She agreed to the institutionalisation of political correctness in public life, especially in the Civil Service, schools and universities. In addition, she allowed the “progressive” educational establishment to destroy a first rate school examination system by swopping the certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) and O(rdinary) Levels for the dangerous absurdity of the General Certificate of Education (GCSE), an exam supposedly for all 16 year olds but which was in reality two exams masquerading as one. Despite the fact that Tory support rested heavily on the countryside she allowed the de-regulation of rural bus services to occur which reduced them so severely that to live in countryside meant owning and driving a vehicle or at least having access to someone who did. To make matter worse, this was done in tandem with a wilful neglect of the then nationalised railways.

The protests after her death were unsurprising

Just based on her economic disasters the uproar surrounding her death is unsurprising. In the space of a few years she raised the unemployment pay claimant count from 1.4 million when she took office in 1979 to 3.2 million by 1986 (http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/unemployment/measuring_unemployment.html) That bald figure is startling enough but the reality is ten times worse. She must have known her policies would result in mass unemployment, at least in the short term, when she removed the financial support of taxpayers from nationalised industries or sold them off in the belief that private business would be able to do the job more efficiently with much smaller workforces. Further, as these industries were concentrated in areas where they were by far the dominant employer she should have realised that structural unemployment would be created in many parts of the country. To imagine, as she did, that new jobs would rapidly sprout in the areas showed a shocking lack of understanding of economic history which has no example of such a thing happening on the scale required in 1980s Britain.

What is certain is the fact that she had no doubt about the destructive possibilities of laissez faire economics, viz:

“Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the ‘gales of creative destruction’ still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself.” — Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft P. 462

A politician of conviction?

The idea that merely having convictions is praiseworthy is a rum one. Hitler, Stalin and Mao had convictions. But even if the quality of a person’s convictions is ignored, this is one of the most mystifying of myths attached to Thatcher. The reality was she frequently changed her position on the most important issues she faced or adopted methods which went against her avowed policies when she had created a mess, most notably with the massive rise in unemployment resulting from her slash and burn approach to the British economy which greatly increased the benefits bill for many years and left people unemployed for years, in many cases for decades.

The most significant publicly admitted changes of policy were on immigration, the Europe and global warming. Before the 1979 election she had spoken of the need to control immigration because the country was in danger of being “swamped”:

‘If we went on as we are then by the end of the century there would be four million people of the new Commonwealth or Pakistan here. Now, that is an awful lot and I think it means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.’

She went on to say, ‘The British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in.’

’If you want good race relations, you have got to allay peoples’ fears on numbers. […] We do have to hold out the clear prospect of an end to immigration…’ (http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/59/margaret-thatcher-claims-britons-fear-being-swamped.html)

Once in office she did nothing despite still feeling strongly about the subject in private (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/6906503/Margaret-Thatcher-complained-about-Asian-immigration-to-Britain.html).

On Europe she went through the following metamorphosis:

- 1975 she campaigned and voted for Britain to remain within the European Economic Community (EEC – the EU was only formed by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993).

- By 1980 she was convinced that the EEC was not acting in Britain interests.

- By 1986 she had signed the Single European Act giving the EEC immense powers to interfere with Britain’s sovereignty.

- In the late 1980s she adopted the policy of enlarging the EEC which meant that a vast new swathe of workers from poor countries would be allowed free movement within the EEC. The effects of this also allowed the federalists to press for things such as Qualified Majority Voting on the grounds that the EEC/EU had become too unwieldy to operate under the original rules and to generally press forward with the creation of a United States of Europe.

- In 1990 she took the UK into the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) despite being opposed to a single currency to which the ERM was a stepping stone with the pound effectively shadowing the Deutschmark.

The idea that Thatcher only realised what the EEC was after taking office in 1979 is simple nonsense. Thatcher’s speech to the Conservative Group for Europe at the start of the Wilson referendum on the EEC clearly shows her viewing the EEC as far more than a simple free trading area, viz:

That vision of Europe took a leap into reality on the 1st of January 1972 when, [ Edward Heath] Mr. Chairman, due to your endeavours, enthusiasm and dedication Britain joined the European Community.

* The Community gives us peace and security in a free society, a peace and security denied to the past two generations.

* The Community gives us access to secure sources of food supplies. This is vital to us, a country which has to import half of what we need.

* The Community does more trade and gives more aid than any group in the world.

* The Community gives us the opportunity to represent the Commonwealth in Europe. The Commonwealth want us to stay in and has said so. The Community wants us.

Conservatives must give a clear lead and play a vigorous part in the campaign to keep Britain in Europe to honour the treaties which you, sir, signed in Britain’s name.

We must do this, even though we dislike referenda. We must support the [ Harold Wilson] Prime Minister in this, even though we fight the Government on other issues.

We must play our full part in ensuring that Conservative supporters say “Yes to Europe”. (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102675).

In any case, the Treaty of Rome left no room to believe it was merely a free trade organisation. No one could read that and be in any doubt that the intention was to create a United State of Europe. Thatcher, the supposed obsessive who was a stickler mastering a subject, should have read it before the referendum.

As for global warming, she started the ball rolling whilst in office and then reversed her position in her autobiography published in 2003. Here she is speaking to the UN general assembly, in November 1989:

“What we are now doing to the world … is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world’s climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.

“The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. Those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-green-hero)

By the time she had published her political work Statecraft in 2003 she was thinking along these lines:

“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.

“Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.” (http://www.masterresource.org/2013/04/thatcher-alarmist-to-skeptic/).

There were other issues where her public position was at odds with her actions, for example, the troubles in Northern Ireland and the rule of law. Thatcher claimed that there would never be a surrender to IRA terrorism. Yet after she narrowly escaped death in the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing in 1984 (12 October) the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed little over a year later in November 1985 giving the Republic of Ireland government a say in what happened in Northern Ireland and committing the British Government to accepting the principle of a united Ireland if a majority were in favour. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_2539000/2539849.stm). There was no obvious reason for such a change of heart beyond the fear generated in Thatcher by the bombing of the Grand Hotel.

As for the rule of law, far from respecting it as she claimed, she laid the basis for the ever increasing authoritarianism of the British state by permitting the police to act unlawfully during the miners’ strike by stopping miners and their supporters from travelling across the country and turning a blind eye to any police excesses as they clashed with the miners and their supporters.

A politician of conviction? Only if you define someone as such who runs from one position to another while vigorously embracing each successive position regardless of its contradiction of a previous advocated policy or set of ideas.

Nor was she someone who would take responsibility for her actions. When she found her policies were a disaster she either claimed she had been badly advised or cheated (for example, the Single Market, global warming) or attempted to ignore the mess she had created (for example, enduring mass employment and ) by misrepresenting it, or in the case of unemployment, using North Sea oil tax revenues, the privatisation receipts and blatant manipulation of the unemployment statistics to paper over the unemployment cracks.

Why did Thatcher get things so horribly wrong?

Why did Thatcher get things so horribly wrong? Her behaviour strongly suggested that she was seriously lacking psychological and sociological insight. This meant she constantly made horrendous mistakes such as trusting the EU over the single market and imagining in truly infantile fashion that millions of jobs shed from heavy industry and coal mining would be rapidly replaced by “modern” jobs in the service and light industry sectors. Her record in choosing people to support or employ was also dismal.

Far from being a free thinker her cast of mind made her the ready captive of an ideology:

“…as Leader of the Opposition MT once cut short a presentation by a leftish member of the Conservative Research Department by fetching out a copy of The Constitution of Liberty from her bag and slamming it down on the table, declaring “this is what we believe”. (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/Hayek.asp).

It is dangerous to trust anyone who is susceptible to ideological capture for the simple reason that all ideologies, whether sacred or profane, are inadequate descriptions of and guides to reality. This means that ideologues constantly have to try to fit reality within the ideology rather than having reality driving their choices. Those which include economics are particularly dangerous because their reach is so vast.

Ideologies are the prime example of Richard Dawkins’ memes, mental viruses which capture the individual and direct their thought and behaviour. Those who are captured by them by them give up their mental autonomy. That speaks either of a character trait such as that of requiring a source of authority for choices or a weakness of intellect which seeks ideological algorithms developed by others to answer political questions because the person’s capacity to answer the questions by rational pragmatic examination based on their own knowledge and intelligence is inadequate.

How good was Thatcher’s mind? She is frequently represented by her adherents as ferociously intelligent. This view will not stand up to examination. She read chemistry at Oxford but only achieved a second class honours degree (http://womenshistory.about.com/od/thatchermargaret/a/Margaret-Thatcher.htm). Oxford at the time did not divide the second class degree into upper and lower second classes and had a fourth class honours division instead. The old Oxford second is generally taken to be the rough equivalent of an upper second. That raises questions over her intellect. Chemistry at degree level in the 1940s had not become heavily mathematized as it now is. Diligence would get a student a long way. This quality Thatcher reputedly had in spades. If she did, the fact that she only took a second suggests that she was not very intellectually gifted. That is particularly the case when it is remembered that she went up to Oxford during wartime when competition for places was severely reduced because so many of the potential male students went into the forces rather than to university. A beta plus mind at best.

What people probably mistook for intelligence was her avid seeking and retention of data. But it is one thing to learn facts or arguments parrot fashion, quite another to mould them into a coherent intellectual whole. Based on her frequent renunciation of previous positions, it is reasonable to assume that she simply did not have the intellectual wherewithal to put the data she took on board to any useful purpose. She certainly never gave no indication that she ever saw the bigger picture.

There were also the question of her how fitted she was by experience to fill the role she played, that of the hard-core economic libertarian forever seeking ways of making people take responsibility for their lives both socially and in their work. When I look at the present Tory front bench I have a similar feeling to that which I experience when thinking of the Nazi leadership. The Nazis had a rather noticeable lack of Aryan types amongst them: the present Tory front bench is remarkably short on people who have been entrepreneurs or indeed of people who have any great experience of work outside the narrow confines of politics.

Margaret Thatcher was a forerunner in this respect. She graduated from Oxford in 1947. For the next four years she worked for various private companies as a research chemist. At the age of 26 she married a millionaire. He funded Thatcher’s career change from chemist to barrister. She took the bar exams in 1953 and practised (specialising in taxation) until 1961, the last two years of the period occurring after she was elected to the Commons in 1959. After that it was all politics.

Thatcher’s experience of the real world of work is at best four years as a research chemist and eight years as a barrister. However, being married to a millionaire at the age of 26 rather dulls the idea of her living a normal working life. The truth is she made her way not as a self-made woman but by the traditional route for female advancement of marrying a rich man.

There was no need for Thatcherism

The really angering thing about Thatcher’s time in No 10 is that she could have done what she was elected to do, tame the unions, without engaging in the deliberate wholesale destruction and alienation of much of Britain’s heavy and extractive industry and the placing in private hands of the public utilities, especially those of gas, electricity and water. This was because Thatcher had the great good fortune to arrive as Prime Minister just as North Sea oil and gas was coming on-stream in large quantities. Those revenues alone would have provided any government with a very large safety net to finance temporary difficulties caused by serious confrontations with the larger trade unions. She also enjoyed the very large receipts from the big privatisations such as gas, electricity and BT. No British government has ever had such a sustained revenue windfall as hers.

There was absolutely no economic need to destroy so much of British industry or place much of the state-owned organisations into private hands. Continental countries such as Germany and Italy retained their shipbuilding; France, Germany and Italy retained a native mass production car industry. Germany still has a substantial coal mining industry. Privatisation proceeded at very different speeds throughout Europe. That no other large industrialised country followed Thatcherite policies with anything like the speed or fervour of Britain yet survived and frequently out competed Britain economically demonstrates that Thatcher’s policies were not a necessity but simply an ideological choice.

Her government could have spent the 1980s taming the unions sufficiently to prevent the excesses of the 1970s. It is true that the very high level of unemployment of the 1980s was an aid to this, but it was probably not the main rod which largely broke the Trade Unions’ back. Home ownership had been rising steadily throughout the twentieth century and by the time Thatcher came to power in 1979 not far short of 60%. The highest it reached even after Right To Buy was only 69% – the idea that it was Thatcher who made it possible for the working man and woman to own their homes for the first time is another myth about her(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/houseprices/10005586/Home-ownership-falls-for-first-time-in-a-century.html). .

The fact that so many people were owner occupiers with mortgages meant that they were much less willing than they had been to strike at the drop of a hat because they feared losing their home. Even those who were not owner occupiers had much more to lose in terms of general comfort, security and prospects of greater opportunity for their children than had been the case before, say, 1939. To take just one example, children from poor families had a greater opportunity than ever to enter higher education. This growing reluctance to come out whenever the union called for strike was why the National Union of Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was not willing to hold a ballot of all his members before calling a strike. He feared such a ballot would be lost.

The combination of this increasing reluctance to strike amongst union members together with the legal restrictions on unions such as no secondary picketing and severe penalties for strikes called with a formal ballot would have been enough to end the anarchy which prevailed in the 1970s.

Apart from the social and economic upheaval of the Thatcher years, she can also be blamed for a continuation of the damage she caused both in the long term structural unemployment but also in the fact that she subverted the Labour Party so that it adopted most of what was damaging from the Thatcher period, most particularly in the adoption of her devotion to laissez faire economics and in Labour’s all too ready acceptance of the EU elite’s desire for comprehensive political and economic union.

The 1980s could have been so very different. The revenue from North Sea Oil could have been put into a sovereign wealth fund which by now would be worth hundreds of billions. If the Single European Act had not been signed the movement towards a federal EU would have been halted in its tracks (national vetoes applied to this area of decision making at the time). If Thatcher had not argued for an ever wider EEC the poorer nations from the East would not have joined and the immigration threat they carry would not exist. Indeed, Britain could have left the EU entirely because the Tory Eurosceptics could have allied with Labour under Michael Foot or even Neal Kinnock. New social housing could have been built with the proceeds of Right to Buy thus obviating to a large degree the shortage of housing now. If the nationalised industries had been sustained there would have been no serious structural unemployment. Had proper attention been paid to the strategic importance of essential economic areas such a food and energy self-sufficiency we should not be so dangerously reliant on foreigners for such things today. Most importantly, if that had been the general thrust of politics in the 1980s it is doubtful in the extreme that Blair and NuLabour would ever have arisen.

The tragedy of Margaret Thatcher is that she had a sense of patriotism and probably genuinely thought she was doing the best for her country at the time she implemented or advocated policies (her honesty when policies went wrong was another matter). The problem was that her judgement and understanding was all too often hideously wrong or defective. She so often provided comforting rhetoric, especially on Europe and immigration, but she never delivered the goods. The fact that she was such an overpowering political figure made things worse because it meant she could steamroller her cabinet on most issues at most times. It is difficult to think of another politician in the past three centuries who wrought so much damage on Britain.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Economics, Politics, Social Policy | Tagged ethnicity, free markets, free speech, free trade, housing, liberal bigotry, political correctness, race | Comments (2)

How governments created the present welfare mess

April 7, 2013 – 8:23 pm

Robert Henderson

The current attempt by the British Coalition Government to radically alter the welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in gross hypocrisy. Why? Because the increasingly shrill and uncouth portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers by Tories’ (and some on the left like Labour MP Frank Field) overlooks one very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all political hues over the past 35 years which created the welfare mess we have today. Between them these governments have produced a situation where millions of Britons cannot either get a job at all or can only obtain a job which does not pay enough to support them and their families even meagrely. This has produced the truly mad situation where substantial benefits are out of necessity paid to not only the unemployed but to millions who are in work, mainly through tax credits and housing benefit, because the wages on offer are too low to allow someone to live an independent life.

Mass unemployment

How did this dire situation come about? Let us begin with the shrinkage of jobs. Sustained large-scale unemployment did not begin with Thatcher in 1979 but she greatly increased it. Unemployment was officially 1.4 million in 1979 and rose to over three million (even by the dole claimant count) by the mid-1980s ( http://econ.economicshelp.org/2007/03/uk-economy-under-mrs-thatcher-1979-1984.html ).

Shocking as the 1979 figure of 1.4 million was at the time, it was primarily the consequence of the oil price quadrupling after in 1973, something over which the Labour governments from 1974-79 had no control over because North Sea oil was not yet flowing in commercial quantities. Conversely, the remarkably rapid rise of unemployment in the 1980s was caused by the wilful economic vandalism of the Thatcher government which publicity celebrated (yes, I did say celebrated) destroying much of the UK’s heavy and extractive industries.

Privatisation

Privatisation was the platform which placed large swathes of the public services into private hands, including the strategically important providers of gas, electricity, telecommunications, railways and water. This alone removed several million well paid and secure jobs from the UK. It also created areas with structural unemployment. Many of those made redundant in such areas never again obtained anything other than a low paid job or, worse, never obtained a new job.

The early big privatisations , such as those of gas and telecommunications, were unashamed; other privatisations proceeded piecemeal through the contracting out of public services to private business. Later from the 1990s onwards came the Private Public Partnership and Private Finance Initiative which involved either joint financing between government and private business or private business providing the money for a project up-front with the taxpayer repaying the debt on generally extortionate terms over periods of time as long as thirty years. As well as reducing employment and service standards built up massive amounts of public debt whilst keeping most of it from being added to the official National Debt. Bizarrely, the supposedly Labour governments headed by Blair and Brown were even more enthusiastic than the Thatcher and Major governments about using private contractors for public works. The effect of all these various forms of privatisation was to reduce manpower and conditions of work radically.

Outsourcing

Privatisation was followed and after the 1980s accompanied by outsourcing. The Thatcher years broke the back of mainstream political resistance to laissez faire in both the domestic and foreign markets. British companies exported jobs to the Third World incontinently squeezing the available jobs further both in terms of numbers and pay and conditions. This trait was propelled to a significant degree by the willingness of British governments of any political colour to allow British companies to be purchased by foreign countries. These had even less reason to retain jobs in Britain than British owned businesses.

The European Union

When the Single European Act (SEA) was signed in 1986 the UK effectively lost control of its borders and its commerce and industry because the SEA required member states to allow the free movement of “goods, persons, services and capital”. (http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/treaties/treaties_singleact_en.htm). Later treaties whittled away the UK’s sovereignty a good deal further.

The signing up the SEA fitted the laissez faire economics of the Thatcher government in one sense – a single market within the EU – but not in another because it restricted UK trade with the rest of the world. The Thatcherites also found the remnants of state economic control in the EU such as the Common Agricultural Policy unpalatable. As time passed they also had a growing concern about the growing extent of EU ambitions to remove sovereignty.

For all these reasons the Thatcher government developed a policy of enlarging the EU. This policy was eventually adopted by all British governments up to this day – David Cameron is even now pushing for Turkey’s admission (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/seealso/2010/07/daily_view_camerons_turkey.html). The policy of enlargement was to have profound consequences for immigration as the EU expanded as workers from poor EU states, especially the new entrants from the old Soviet Bloc such as Poland flooded to the UK from 2004 onwards ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/17/eastern-european-uk-migrants).

Immigration

On top of all this came immigration from outside the EU. This really took off from the advent of Blair as Prime Minister in 1997. The combined net immigration from both the EU and the rest of the world (RoW) was 50,000 in the year before Blair took office . This rose to 250,000 in 2010, the year Labour lost power (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9713954/Interactive-graphic-how-UK-migration-has-changed-1964-2011.html). The British population has officially increased by a net 3 million from immigration since 1997 (http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/). How far these figures are accurate is debatable, but they certainly do not overstate the numbers which rest on the 2010 UK census. It is probable that they substantially understate it as illegal immigrants will not appear in a census for obvious reasons and foreigners generally may be cautious about registering for a census because they come from countries where the state is not trusted in any way.

Massive immigration produced severe competition for jobs, most of them low-skill or unskilled, but also for skilled workers especially in the building trade. The immigrants not only took jobs from native Britons but did so by accepting much lower wages. The huge influx of immigrants also had the adverse effect of helping to raise housing costs, both for buying and renting.

Housing: the poison in the UK economy

House prices were inflated by the failure of all governments to continue to build enough new social housing from the mid-eighties onwards,by the introduction of Right-to-Buy (RTB) which greatly reduced the existing stock of social housing by giving tenants the opportunity to buy the properties they rented at huge discounts and the lunatic absence of controls over the provision of mortgages, which at the height of their absurdity were being offered at 125% of the value of a property. Come the crash of 2008 no deposit mortgages vanished and lenders began to demand deposits of 20-30%. The result was property prices too high for most first time buyers because they could not raise the deposit and a general weakening of the housing market as those with mortgages found that they could not re-mortgage on affordable terms when short term deals came to an end or obtain mortgages for a new property. The freezing of the property market meant that more and more needed to rent. Most could not find social housing and were left at the mercy of private landlords who relentlessly raised rents to unaffordable levels for large sections of even the employed.

To understand exactly how inflated property have become compare the prices today with what they were in 1955. Then the average residential property price was around £2,000. Uprated for inflation the average price of properties today would be around £40,000. It is housing costs which are the primary poison in the British economy. If there was sufficient housing to both rent and buy at the sort of prices to wages ratio which existed even 20 years ago, much of the general problem of rising benefit costs would not exist.

The manipulation of the UK’s unemployment statistics

Today the official unemployment figure for those drawing unemployment benefit (the claimant count) is 1.54 million, which is the nearest to the way the 1979 figure is calculated. The 2013 Independent Labour Organisation measure of those seeking work has unemployment at 2.52 million. (http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/jobmarket/unemployment.htm) However, the contrast between the 1979 unemployment figure (1.4 million) and the one now is a false one because the figures are not really comparable. This is because there has been a massaging of the unemployment figures, many more pupils staying on a at school after the age of sixteen and a dramatic rise in those going into higher education.

Thatcher began the government’s habit of fudging the employment figures by cynically shifting people from the unemployment registers to long-term sick benefit. By 2011 2.6 million were claiming such benefit. (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=statistical_summaries). In 1979 around 600,000 were doing so (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/19/lax-benefit-rules-not-responsible-more-disability).

To this distortion was added the constant changing of the rules for eligibility for claiming benefits, the definition of who was unemployed and the exclusion from the unemployment claimant figures of those engaged in government training schemes receiving what was to all intents and purposes unemployment benefit . To put the cherry on the massaging of the statistics those in training were counted as employed in the total workforce statistics. This suppressed the unemployment figure as expressed as a percentage of the total workforce. There were also issues with students. Between November 1986 to September 1990 they could claim some unemployment benefits in the summer vacation. They were excluded from the unemployment count. ((http://www.radstats.org.uk/no072/article4.htm).

These changes to and exclusions from the unemployment statistics had considerable repercussions. The Bank of England wrote in 1991 “…although unemployment is falling because there are more jobs, it is also true that much of the decline in the claimant count which has occurred since mid-1986 has been due to a shift in the unemployment/employment relationship resulting from changes in the Government’s range of Special Employment Measures – especially the introduction of more rigorous availability for work tests and the rapid growth of the Restart programme (quoted in SSAC, 1991, p. 59). Ibid.

On top of all this came the vast increases in the numbers in post-16 education. The 1980s saw the beginning of the governmental drive to have much larger numbers of schoolchildren staying at school until they were eighteen . By 2011 they had almost doubled from the rate of those staying at school after the age of sixteen from what it was in in 1980 (see p10 www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04252.pdf). From 2015 all those under the age of 18 will, in theory at least, have to be either in education or training – http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/warning-over-raising-of-school-leaving-age-to-18).

The expansion of higher education was even more dramatic. In 1980 only 13% of young Britons went to into higher education (page F152 – http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/nmg/1468-0297.00102.pdf). More than forty per cent of British school-leavers are now going on to start degree courses. (The last Labour government had a target of 50% of school-leavers entering higher education and in 2010/11 47% of those between the ages of 17-30 were in higher education -http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/419496.article)

The false classification of people as long-term sick rather than unemployed, the rise in children saying on at school and the increase in students taking degrees means the official statistics considerably understate the true level of unemployment. The wrongful classification speaks for itself, while the extended schooling and increased university participation is important because it delayed the point at which millions entered the employment market.

Exactly how distorting these interferences with the unemployment statistics are compared with those before 1980 is debatable, but its effects must be very substantial. Those between the age of 16-64 deemed economically inactive were 9.04 million according to the official figures issued in October 2012 (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/october-2012/statistical-bulletin.html. This gives an indication of the huge numbers who should really be listed as unemployed. Even if the schoolchildren above the age of 16, the students and the sick and disabled were discounted, there would be several million left. Add that to the official unemployment rate of around 2.5 million and the true unemployment rate could be in the region of 5 million or even more.

But the picture is even bleaker than that because large numbers of those now counted as employed are on short time. Many of those and the full time employed are on short contracts and have no security of employment.

Working tax credits

All of this – the destruction and export of jobs, mass immigration, and the government driven housing market – produced a Britain which had become both a low-wage economy and an extremely expensive place to live. Many people in full time employment could not afford to live on their pay. As rents soared housing benefit was increasingly taken up by even those who ordinarily would not have been thought of as being at the bottom of the income pile. Eye-watering amounts of housing benefit were paid for those with large families (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/5663014/Family-claims-147000-a-year-in-housing-benefit-for-seven-bedroom-home.html) , especially to those in London where by 2013 families in private rented accommodation were paying 59% of their household income according to the housing charity Shelter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20943576).

In April 2003, the Blair government tacitly acknowledged that wages for many were simply inadequate to support life by introducing working tax credits. (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-qualifies/workingtaxcredit/work.htm). This had several pernicious effects. It acted as a subsidy for employers which allowed them to offer ever lower wages secure in the knowledge that the taxpayer would subsidize business by making up their inadequate wages with working tax credits. The regulations for working tax credits also allowed people to claim them when they were working part-time. This provided an incentive for employees to work the minimum hours, which were as little as 16 hours for a single parent. The employer also had an incentive to employ a number of part-timers rather than full time employees because the wages of the part timers could be kept below the level at which national insurance had to be paid . It thus became cheaper to employ two or three part-timers rather than one full timer.

The effects of working tax credits were made worse by the Blair and Brown governments ideologically driven desire to have every woman of working age out at work. This resulted in childcare tax credits (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/ccin.htm#1) whereby mothers were paid to leave their children in the hands of other women while they went out to work.

The benefits situation needs fixing but the way the Coalition is going about it is unreasonable. They are not starting from where we are now and taking regard of the effects of their changes in policy on people who are already encased in the circumstances of high unemployment, low paid and often insecure jobs and ever rising rents. Instead they are using the blunt instrument of cutting benefit suddenly and seriously disrupting the lives of millions.

Housing is the main bugbear. it makes no sense to say housing benefit will be capped if this makes continued residency in an area impossible because of rental costs way beyond their means or the £26,000 cap on benefits. The policy may well drive many people in employment out of the area in which they not only live but work causing them to become unemployed. Even if people are unemployed forcing them to move any real distance will have effects on those with children at school and take away the informal support mechanisms of family and friends.

Similarly, the attempt to move those in social housing out of their properties if they are deemed to be too large for those now resident there (the “bedroom tax”) is absurd unless there is smaller social housing accommodation they can move into. If this forces social housing tenants to move a long way from where they live they will suffer the same problems that those who move because they cannot afford private rented accommodation. If social housing tenants have to rent from private landlords that will cost more than the social housing. Such tenants on housing benefit would be more expensive for the taxpayer to support.

What should be done?

What should be done? The answer is to change the general circumstances which cause the welfare bill to be so high. This can be done by creating an economy in which any full time wage will at least support a person and ideally will maintain a family. This can be done by adopting these policies although Britain would need to leave the EU or get the EU to agree to change the rules governing free movement of labour, goods, capital and services to impose many of them):

1. Cease all further mass immigration.

2. Address the housing shortage by introducing rent controls and much stronger legal backing for secure tenure in private rental properties, engaging in a massive programme of social house building, restricting all future social house tenancies to those born British citizens, abolishing Right-to-Buy, banning buy-to-let mortgages, banning foreigners from buying residential properties and giving private builders an incentive to build by taxing the land they hold until they build.

3. Place a tax on employers for every foreign worker already here they employ to discourage their employment.

4. . Remove benefits from all foreigners to encourage those already here to return home.

These policies would have short term and longer term effects. For example, rent controls and strong tenure conditions could be brought in very rapidly giving tenants in private property both an assurance that they could continue in their rented property for a long time with a rent that did not suddenly rise beyond their means. Building large numbers of new properties would take several years to gain momentum but there should be a considerable increase in the housing stock within five years.

Policies such as stopping further mass immigration and incentives for foreign labour already here to leave like placing a tax on employers if they employ foreigners and removing all benefits from foreigners should tighten the labour market . This will raise wages and make employers use labour more efficiently.

A tighter labour market will produce higher wages which added to much cheaper housing will lessen the need for people to draw benefits whilst in work and the cost of housing benefit generally should reduce substantially. That will draw most of the poison from the benefit debate.

Even as things stand, the current hysteria about benefits is unjustified in its own terms. Most of the public say that it is right that the old and the ill or disabled are looked after by state action. That is very interesting because most of the benefit bill is spent on the old, the sick, the disabled and, this is the real tragedy, on those in employment who simply cannot live on their wages. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#zoomed-picture). The British elite are very successfully pursuing a policy of divide and rule by setting the less well-off members of society at each other’s throats. It is both highly distasteful and unjustified. The real culprits for the mess we have now are all the politicians who have produced the situation we have now and their all too compliant media supporters, especially over the past 25 years.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Economics, Politics, Social Policy | Tagged housing, immigration, internationalism, public ownership, wealth | Comments (0)

The EU IN/OUT referendum: strategy and tactics for those who want to leave the EU

April 1, 2013 – 8:08 pm

Robert Henderson

The general strategy

A) How to leave

Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty states

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49. (http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html).

The OUT camp must make it clear that it would be both damaging and unnecessary for the UK to abide by this Treaty requirement. It would allow the EU to inflict considerable damage on the UK both during the period prior to formally leaving and afterwards if the price of leaving with the EU’s agreement was for UK to sign up to various obligations, for example, to continue paying a large annual sum to the EU for ten years . It would also give the Europhile UK political elite ample opportunity to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached. More of them later.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise (1) that international law is no law because there is never any means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction is a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments.

The OUT camp should press the major political parties to commit themselves to ignoring Article 50. If a party refuses that can be used against them because it will make them look suspicious. Before the vote

B) The parties’ plans of action if there is a vote to leave

C) Repudiate re-negotiation before the referendum

Supporting the negotiation of a new relationship between the UK and the EU before a referendum is mistaken because it would seem to many to be giving tacit approval for renegotiation and legitimise the possibility of the UK remaining within the EU. It is also rash because the likelihood of the EU giving nothing is probably very small. Indeed, they might well give something which is substantial, because the UK leaving the EU would be a very great blow to the organisation. The UK is the country with the second largest population within the EU with , depending on how it is measured, the second or third largest economy and the country which pays the second largest contribution to the EU budget. For the EU to lose the UK would not only be a blow in itself, it would also create a very strong precedent for every other EU state, especially the largest ones. If the UK left and prospered the temptation would be for other EU states to leave.

But even if negotiation produced nothing of substance as Harold Wilson’s “renegotiation” did in 1975, it would be a mistake to imagine that it would not influence the referendum result. The electorate is divided between the resolute come outs, the resolute stay-ins and the wavering middle. A claim by the stay-in campaigners that something had been conceded by the EU, however insignificant, would provide the waverers with an excuse to vote to stay in because they could convince themselves they were voting for change.

It would be also be a mistake to see the EU offering nothing at all as a gift for the OUT camp. This is because the waverers might simply see that as evidence that the EU was too powerful to oppose and shift their votes to staying in.

It is difficult to envisage any British prime minister not trying to negotiate with the EU before a referendum, but it might just happen if whoever is in power when the referendum is announced were to be told privately by the major EU players that nothing will be given and the prime minister of the day concludes it would be best to pretend that a decision had been made not to negotiate rather than risk the humiliation of getting nothing, perhaps not even a pretence of negotiation before nothing is given. Why would the EU do this? They might calculate that it would be a gamble worth taking to send a British PM away with nothing whilst hoping the referendum vote would be to stay in because then the power of the UK to resist further integration would be shot.

If the EU offer nothing, the OUT camp should welcome the fact and stress to the public that if the referendum is to stay-in the EU could force any federalist measure through because not only would any British government be much weakened in its opposition to more federalism, the UK political class as a whole would more than willing to go along with it because of their ideological commitment to the EU.

D) After the vote

The terms of the debate

It is essential that the Europhiles are not allowed to make the debate revolve around economics. If they do it will effectively stifle meaningful debate. As anyone who has ever tried to present economic ideas to an audience of the general public will know it is a soul-destroying experience. Take the question of how much of UK trade is with the EU. The debate will begin with the stay-in camp saying something like 45% of UK trade is with the EU. Those wanting to leave the EU will respond by saying it is probably less than 40% because of the Rotterdam/Antwerp effect . They will then be forced to explain what the Rotterdam/Amsterdam, effect is. That is the point where the general public’s concentration is lost and the debate ends up proving nothing to most of the audience.

But although nothing is proved to the general audience by detailed economic argument , the audience will remember certain phrases which have considerable traction. In amongst the serious debating on the issue of trade there will be phrases such as three million jobs in Britain rely on the EU and dire threats about how the EU will simply not buy British goods and services any more. This is nonsense but fear is not a rational thing and many of those who vote will enter the voting chamber with fear of losing their jobs in their heads regardless of what the OUT camp says if the debate is predominantly about economics. Shift the debate away from economics and the fear inducing phrases will be heard less often. If the BIG LIE is not repeated often enough its potency fades.

National Sovereignty

The appeal to national sovereignty has a further advantage. Those who support the EU are unused to debating on that ground. That is because uncritical support for the EU has long been the position of both the British mainstream political class as a class and of the mass media. That has meant that the contrary voice – that which wishes Britain to be independent – has been largely unheard in public debate for thirty years or more. Where it has been heard the response of the pro-EU majority has not been rational argument but abuse ranging from patronising dismissal of a wish for sovereignty as an outmoded nationalism to accusations that national sovereignty amounts to xenophobia or even racism. These tactics – of excluding those who want to leave the EU from public debate and abuse substituted for argument – will no longer be available to the pro EU lobby.

Immigration

The public rhetoric of mainstream politicians and the media is changing fast as they begin to realise both what an electoral liability a de facto open door immigration policy is as the effects of mass immigration become ever more glaring. The argument is shifting from the economic to the cultural. For example, here is the Daily Telegraph in a leader of 25 March:

This new frankness in public debate means that the OUT camp can use the immigration argument freely provided they keep the language within the confines of formal politeness. The subject will naturally dovetail with the emphasis on national sovereignty because the most important aspect of sovereignty is the ability to control the borders of the territory of a state. Judged by their increasing willingness to talk publicly about immigration, it is probable that the mainstream UK parties will be content to go along with ever more frank discussion about immigration.

The economic argument must be kept simple

It will not be possible to avoid economic arguments entirely. The OUT camp should concentrate on repeating these two facts:

- The disadvantageous balance of payments deficit the UK has with the EU

- The amount the UK pays to the EU

Those are the most solid economic figures relating to the EU. There is some fuzziness around the edges of the balance of payments deficit because of the question of where all the imports end up (whether in the EU or outside the EU through re-exporting) , while the amount the EU receives is solid but it has to be broken down into the money which returns to the UK and the amount retained by Brussels. Nonetheless these are the most certain figures and the least susceptible to obfuscation by the stay-in side.

1. The massive balance of payment deficit between the UK and the rest of the EU which is massively in the EU’s favour.

3. There are strategically and economically important joint projects of which the UK is a major part, for example, Airbus, the Joint-Strike Fighter.

4. the Republic of Ireland would be a massive bargaining chip for the UK to play. If the UK left and the EU rump attempted to impose sanctions against Britain this would cripple the RoI because so much of their trade is with the UK The EU would be forced to massively subsidise the RoI if protectionist barriers against the UK were imposed. The EU could not exempt the RoI from the sanctions because that would leave the EU open to British exports being funnelled through the RoI.

5. The EU would be bound by the World Trade Organisation’s restrictions on protectionist measures.

The economic issues which are not worth pursuing in detail because they are too diffuse and uncertain , are those relating to how much the EU costs Britain in terms of EU-inspired legislation. It may well be that these load billions a year of extra costs onto the UK but they are not certain or easily evaluated costs, not least because we cannot in the nature of things know what burdens an independent UK would impose off its own bat. Getting into detailed discussions about such things will simply play into the hands of the stay-in camp because it will eat up the time and space available to those promoting the OUT cause.

Other Issues

Apart from the economic issues the stay-in camp will use these reasons for staying in:

- That the EU has prevented war in Western Europe since 1945. This can be simply refuted by pointing out that the EU was not formed until twelve years after WW2; that until 1973 the EU consisted of only six countries, three of them small, and of only nine countries until the 1980s. Consequently it would be reasonable to look for other reasons for the lack of war. The two causes of the peace in Western Europe have been the NATO alliance and the invention of nuclear weapons which make the price of war extraordinarily high.

- That nation states such as the UK are too small to carry any real diplomatic weight in modern world. That begs the question of whether it is an advantageous thing to carry such weight – it can get a country into disastrous foreign entanglements such as Iraq and Afghanistan – but even assuming it is advantageous , many much smaller countries than the UK survive very nicely, making their own bilateral agreements with other states large and small. It is also worth remembering that the UK has such levers as a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (which allows the UK to veto any proposed move by the UN) and considerable influence in institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

Robert Henderson

1 April 2013

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Conquest by other means, Economics, Elite Mischief, Politics | Tagged internationalism, law, nationhood, patriotism, political correctness, quislings | Comments (1)

The Bruges Group meeting From Here to the Referendum held on 12 February 2013

February 18, 2013 – 11:43 am

Robert Henderson

The Tory MPs Peter Bone and Richard Shepherd were the speakers . (http://www.brugesgroup.com/eu/from-here-to-the-referendum.htm?xp=speeches). Both are in favour of the UK leaving the EU, although that of course begs the question of on what terms. Much of their speeches were not directly to do with the referendum . To get the parts which were go into the Peter Bone speech at 9 minutes 27 seconds and the Richard Shepherd speech at 11 minutes and 50 seconds to get to their views on the future and the prospective referendum.

The MPs were frank about why no referendum could be held in this Parliament: a consequence of the lack of a Commons majority and the deadweight of the Lib Dems on the government. Both admitted that prospects of a referendum being held in the next Parliament (the audience was decidedly sceptical on this point) were far from certain, but they were distinctly more optimistic than most of the people at the meeting.

The most positive move suggested by the MPs was for a campaign by Tory Eurosceptic MPs to get Cameron to introduce a paving Bill for an in/out referendum before the next General Election for a referendum in the next Parliament. This would put both Labour and the Lib Dems in a difficult position because, if they did not support and pass such a bill, it would allow the Conservative Party to go into the next election as the only major party promising a referendum. If such a paving Bill were passed, it would then be effectively impossible not to have a referendum in the next Parliament. In principle, this is a sound tactic but of course it does beg the question of the terms of the referendum and how it would be done. Reports appeared in the media for precisely such a Bill on 17 February (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/9875024/Tory-MPs-want-new-law-to-lock-in-EU-referendum-pledge.html) .

Apart from the question of whether a referendum will actually be held, there were two things of note about the meeting: a widespread legalism which led a number of the questioners from the audience to fret over the restrictions placed on a member state leaving by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and an undue concentration by both the speakers and audience on economics as the ground on which the anti-EU and pro-EU camps would fight. (Richard Shepherd in his general comments did show himself to have a strong sense of nation and to understand that the core issue at stake was being masters in our own house, but still fell back on economics when it came to his doubts about how the public would respond).

When I asked a question I prefaced it with a refutation of the idea that leaving the EU meant invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty . I did this by pointing out that international law is no law, but merely agreements between sovereign states. For laws to have meaning, they must be applied equally within the jurisdiction. International law patently does not do this, a fact due to the absence of any practical means to make all states abide by the law (who would invade China or the USA to enforce breaches or impose sanctions? ) Richard Shepherd thanked me for making the point with which he agreed. After the meeting a number of people sought me out and did the same. I suspect this would have widespread appeal in a referendum campaign.

As for the concentration on economics, this is simply playing into the hands of the Europhiles. The general public simply will not take the detailed economic arguments on board. At worst they will simply hear the frightening false claims about millions of jobs being lost. The campaign to leave the EU should be centred on the question “Do we wish to be masters in our own house?” That will be readily understandable to anyone of normal intelligence and will tap into the innate tribal sense of human beings. If the stay-in camp have to fight on ground other than the economic they will have no sure footing, their only argument being the demonstrably false one that the EU has prevented war in Europe for 60 years. (This argument can be readily punctured by pointing out that for its first twenty years there were only six countries involved and only until the 1980s. It was the Cold War that kept the peace). The economic arguments must be addressed but they should be subordinate to the political issue of sovereignty.

When I got to my question, I took the subject beyond the next election and painted a future in which the Tories had been returned with a working majority, the in/out referendum had been held and the vote had been to leave the EU. I then asked what confidence we could have that whoever was in power would not sell us down the river by renegotiating terms which would in practice lock us into the EU through such things as the “Four Freedoms” of the EU, the free movement of goods, services, capital and most importantly people not only within the EU states but the larger European Economic Area which includes the likes of Norway. I particularly stressed the importance of regaining control over our borders when it came to immigration, something which got the loudest murmur of agreement of the night. I got no meaningful answer from the MPs on that point – the best they could offer was the tactic already described of pushing for a paving Bill for a referendum.

Apart from the question of the EU, it was very interestingly to see how disenchanted both Bone and Shepherd were with Cameron’s leadership and the issue of gay marriage in particular. Shepherd spoke of Cameron “racing against his party” (Go into his speech at 5 minutes). The audience was very much in sympathy with both their general dissatisfaction and their opposition to “gay marriage”.

There were approximately 60 people attending.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Politics | Tagged authoritarianism, immigration, internationalism, treason | Comments (1)

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Knowledge is Ignorance…. Treason is Patriotism…

September 2, 2011 – 11:00 am

Robert Henderson

As yet another prime British business, the hi-tech company Autonomy, is bought by foreigners and the country is still digesting the failure of a massive contract for trains to go to the last British based train-maker Bombardier ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/05/viewpoint-manufacturing-job-bombardier-siemens), the vast majority of Britons cannot understand why those we elect to safeguard the interests of the country persistently fail to do so by preventing takeovers of important British based companies while other developed countries, supposedly operating under the same commercial and legal rules, routinely find a way to prevent their most prestigious and strategically important industries and companies from falling into foreign hands. The answer lies in the mindset of British mainstream politicians, especially those with power.

The Trade Secretary Vince Cable displayed this mentality graphically in an astonishing article for the Sunday Telegraph on 28 August 2011. In it he made clear that not only will there be no new law to prevent takeovers of British companies, but that the Government ‘s intention to positively encourage foreign companies, viz: “we welcome overseas companies who work to make British manufacturing great again” . He then produced this amazing passage: “Last, but not least, the new industrial Britain challenges our traditional ideas about patriotism. There are, of course, still great traditional British companies like Rolls-Royce. But most struggle to think of many more. And after British owners and managers ran the car industry into the ground, it was Japanese and American owner investment, management and technology which turned it around. Some of our most impressive industrial plants I have visited are Indian (Tata in steel and vehicles), German (Bentley, part of VW and BMW which make the Mini), French (co-owners of Airbus), Japanese (Toyota as well as Honda and Nissan) and Malaysian (Lotus). Hewlett-Packard has recently acquired Autonomy in Cambridge in order to bring their advanced software development into the UK.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/engineering/8727474/Vince-Cable-welcomes-overseas-firms-that-boost-UK-manufacturing.html).

The claim that “the new industrial Britain challenges our traditional ideas about patriotism” is pure Newspeak. To Orwell’s War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery and Knowledge is Ignorance we can now add Treason is Patriotism.

Pathetically, Cable concludes his article with “Global companies can spring nasty surprises like Pfizer in Sandwich. But Britain is proving that it is an attractive place in which to make things and we welcome overseas companies who work to make British manufacturing great again.” A classic piece of Lib Dem wishful thinking.

The Coalition’s industrial strategy can be seen in Government documents seen by the Telegraph which lay out a plan to attract 12 major foreign automotive component makers to Britain with major “bribes”, viz: “A briefing note drawn up by the Automotive Council (a Government creation) suggests “key objectives” for the motor show, the biggest in
Europe this year, should be to “follow up on the success of Paris Show” last year, to “re-engage with key decision makers and identify potential investment opportunities” and “seek commitments for UK investment” rather than encourage British companies (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/engineering/8729481/UK-foreign-manufacturing-hopes-at-Frankfurt-Motor-Show.html).

This mentality treats Britain as a country unable to provide for itself from its own resources and abilities and is indicative of the great contempt for their own country and people held by many of the British elite . How has state of mind developed amongst our politicians which goes against all the natural instincts of human beings , instincts which cry out for the protection of the interests of the tribe, clan or nation before all else? Simple. Between 1970 and 1995 our entire mainstream political class signed up to what is known as globalism and its supposedly unstoppable consequences.

Those on the mainstream Right embraced the ideology first because it had at its heart laissez faire economics and free trade (these are not the same thing for all free trade means is that countries can send their goods freely to other countries with the economic system in any participating country being anything Communism to the most rampant laissez faire). Free trade and laissez faire appealed to many modern conservatives who were in reality not conservatives, but born again neo-classical liberals. Globalism provided an alternative to the social democratic politics of the post-war era with its promise of rolling back the state and making the individual responsible for their own lives as far as possible. It also provided the means to crush the power of the unions . This was achieved through the deliberate and direct Government destruction of some state-run industries such as coal on the grounds that they were inefficient and the opening up of British markets to foreign manufacturers whose wage costs were so low that no developed country which did not protect its markets could possibly compete on price – there was no more sickening sight in post-war British politics than Thatcher publicly celebrating the destruction of our extractive and heavy industries.

Ostensibly the Thatcher anti-union legislation did have a profound effect on unions, because it made strikes without a ballot of all members and sympathetic strikes very expensive because the unions then became liable for damages and fines. Wildcat strikes also became a liability because it meant that the union had to officially repudiate them or risk them being treated as official strikes. But the anti-union laws would have had little effect by themselves had Britain continued with a large state component in the economy and the still large powers to control imports of goods and labour which existed in the early 1980s. But with Britain open to foreign trade and mass immigration from the EU, the unions were inevitably undermined. The privatisation of the utilities and public services also removed a great deal of union power by fragmenting control of the utilities and public services.

Although Thatcher almost certainly did not realise it, the single European Act, the 1980s privatisations and the emasculation of the unions were pre-requisites for creating the present situation in which it is not the British interest which comes first but that of the globalist project. Had there been no European Act Britain would have retained much greater control over who could work in Britain and been able to prevent foreign takeovers from within the EU. If the privatisations of public utilities and industries such as coal not been virtually destroyed there would have been no opportunity for such vital enterprises such as water, gas and electricity to fall into foreign hands nor a need for Britain to place themselves increasingly in the hands of foreigners for the production of essentials of life such as energy.

Without such privatisations the unions would not have been wiped of the face of the political map and consequently would have been able to continue their traditional role of opposing mass immigration on the grounds that it was cheap labour and making the removal of protectionist barriers difficult because of the political potency of the claim that it was “selling British jobs”.

A Britain with no single European Act, no 1980s privatisations and a less complete emasculation of the unions would have been very different . There would have been a more national sentiment generally and politicians would have had to respond to it. More of British industry would have been truly British so that off-shoring would have been less palatable to those in control of British jobs.

The presence of large sections of the economy in state control would in itself have made politicians much less willing to sell out British interests because they would have had a direct interest in and responsibility for vital industries.

Those on the mainstream Left became thorough-going globalists not out of conviction but from desperation. T The Labour Party’s four successive general election defeats led to 18 years out of office (1979-1997). After the second defeat in 1983 they began to challenge the hard left in the Party by expelling Militant Tendency and ended the Party’s opposition to the what is now the EU. The third defeat in 1987 began their shift away from supporting the unions uncritically. The last defeat in 1992 caused the first stirrings of the idea that they had to embrace free market economics and rid themselves of the blatantly socialist parts of their agenda. The untimely death of John Smith and the election of Tony Blair completed the process and thirteen years of NuLabour in power removed any meaningful difference in overt economic policy between the Tory and Labour Parties.

But along the way to their conversion to globalism in general and laissez faire in particular, the Labour Party (and to a large extent the British Left as a whole) came to realise that embracing the ideology was more than a tool to return Labour to power. They recognised belatedly that free trade internationally and a laissez faire approach in the domestic market is the most powerful dissolver of the nation state there is. This led them to embrace laissez faire ever more enthusiastically and as British manufacturing capacity steadily declined and what was left was voraciously devoured by foreign buyers, the Blair Government wholeheartedly got behind the line that it did not matter if Britain did not make anything or even produce its own food, because the future lay in Britain exporting services.

This line became the mantra of the mainstream left – a classic example of the mentality is at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/05/viewpoint-manufacturing-job-bombardier-siemens). The Bombardier case has an acidic ironic side, because it is a Canadian-owned company and it demonstrates to what desperate straits Britain is reduced, that the country which invented the railways is reduced to complaining about a foreign-owned company not being favoured over another foreign company.

Is there anything we can do to change matters as they now stand? Precious little lawfully while we are part of the EU and signed up to trade treaties such as those of the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) . However, lawfully in the international sphere is rather different from lawfully in Britain. Other nations both within and without the EU do ignore laws which apply to trade and competition with impunity. The USA regularly imposes tariffs without suffering sanctions from the WTO (those imposed on steel imports to the USA several years ago are a good example) and the likes of France and Germany regularly defend their great national companies with abandon and shamelessly provide state aid in a manner illegal under EU competition law without being brought to book (the EU imposes fines but France and Germany merrily refuse to pay them). The better, honest way out of such legal obligations is of course for Britain to leave the EU.

Is there any prospect of things changing? The Coalition is most unlikely to voluntarily do anything. As Vince Cable showed in the quote above, the Government’s mindset is at best defeatist taking the line “Britain cannot compete” and at worst treasonous. It is true that British politicians may throw their hands up in horror or drop their shoulders in defeat when something like the takeover of Cadbury occurs or a massive contract goes to a company which will do most the manufacturing abroad as happened with Bombardier and Siemens, but experience shows that these are crocodile tears because nothing ever happens to change matters.

We did not have to embrace globalism. It was a conscious act of political will. Another such act would remove us from its embrace. By that I do not mean an autarkic self-sufficiency behind massive protectionist walls with a state industrial component as large as it was by 1980, but rather a judicious protectionism to protect our self-sufficiency as far as possible in food and energy; the creation of strategic reserves of necessary minerals; the placing of utilities such as water, electricity, gas and the railways back into public hands and a general emphasis on the need for Britain to have the capacity to produce at least some of our requirements for all important manufactured products. In addition, we need to recover sovereignty over our borders and affairs. To do that will require our departure from the EU and the repudiation of any other treaty which prevents Parliament from deciding what will happen within our own land.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Conquest by other means, Economics, Politics | Tagged free markets, nationhood, NWO, patriotism, treason | Comments (0)

No 10 Downing Street e-petitions dealing with Immigration, the EU and the ECHR

August 8, 2011 – 4:24 pm

Robert Henderson

The Government scheme for e-petitions (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/) which the public can initiate and/or vote on is now live. If a petition can garner 100,000 votes in a maximum of a year, Parliament will then consider whether to debate the subject of the petition. Although there is no guarantee of a debate, it would be politically difficult to refuse one because a failure to debate an issue would nakedly reveal the scheme as simply a piece of political elite PR.

There are already quite a few petitions, the large majority being serious. The most popular subjects are those which the British political class wish they could censor out of public debate: immigration, race, foreign aid, Islam, the EU, the corruption of the political class, warmongering, weakness in punishing criminals, the death penalty, the harassment of motorists, the cost of transport and the imbalance of the devolution settlement with England left high and dry without a political class to look after her interests.

There is a good deal of duplication, not least because the search function is poor and it is difficult to see exactly what has been put up by other people. Nonetheless, it gives a good idea of what the public is most interested in.

Below are links to the petitions which deal with immigration in all its forms, the European Union and the European Convention of Human Rights in all its manifestations which have already been sanctioned at this date. Where there are misspellings or typos, this is because those moderating the submissions are putting them up on the site without correction.

Immigration

End mass immigration View

Stop ALL immigration into the UK View

An immediate Ban on immigration from outside of the EEC View

No to Turkey joining the EU View

Abolish the residual categories of British nationality View

Emigration should be drastically reduced View

Asylum seekers should should be given temporary refuge and should return to their own country as soon as circumstances allow View

Benefits for immigrants View

Benefits for non-UK residents View

Resident Permits for Immigrants View

To opt out of the Human Rights legislation View

Abolish Islam in the UK View

English Law, Not Shariah Law View

European Union

European Law View

Leave the European Union View

We Want To Withdraw From The EU View

Repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 View

European Sovereignty Act View

Repatriation of Powers from the European Union View

Britain wants referendum to leave EU View

No to Turkey joining the EU View

Referendum on the Accession of Turkey to the EU View

Referendum on accession of Croatia to the EU View

Remove the EU flag from British number plates View

Reduction in payments to EU View

Cost/Benefit Analysis of EU Membership View

Human Rights (ECHR)

Repeal The European Courts Human Rights Act View

withdraw from the european human rights act View

Protect the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights View

Withdraw from the European Human Rights Commission View

Human Rights Act & the ECHR. View

Human Rights Act View

Ban the Human Rights Act View

Human Rights Act should be revoked. View

Ban the Human Rights Act View

Human right legislation View

Protect the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights View

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Conquest by other means, Politics | Tagged ECHR, human rights, nationhood, NWO, sovereignty | Comments (0)

Too big to bail-out? Spain and the future of the Eurozone

July 16, 2011 – 7:31 am

Open Europe and FAES panel debate 11 July 2011, Bishopsgate meeting room, Liverpool Street.

Chaired by Matts Person, Director of Open Europe

Panel

Alvaro Nadal Spanish MP (Secretary of Economy and Employment of Partido Popular)

Vick Ford MEP (East of England)

Anonio Garcia Pascual (Chief Southern European Economist, Barclays Capital, ex-IMF)

David Oakley (Capital Markets Correspondent, Financial Times)

Megan Green (Eurozone Economist)

The panel members spoke for an hour or so to open the meeting. All the panel members bar Megan Green showed a remarkable lack of concern for anything other than the preservation of the Euro (and by extension the EU) at all costs and hang the consequences for the masses. Green, who had recently been in Athens and seen the growing anarchy fuelled by the rage of the Greek have-nots (a rapidly expanding part of the population) went as far as raising the possibility of civil war if the present demands being made on the Greeks were not abated.

The rest of the panel simply peddled the economic advantages of the Euro, yes, I did say advantages, and the dire consequences if the Euro was not preserved.

Nadal trotted out the line that “You cannot have a single market without a single currency” as though this was explanation enough for its continuance and then claimed that the Euro had brought “8 million new jobs to Spain” of which six million remained even after the economic toils they are now in. This Nadal thought was a most tremendous boon, although he rather marred the picture of a contented Spain by saying that three million of the jobs had gone to immigrants. (One imagines the hombre in the calle has a rather different view of the joy of diversity which comes with 3 million immigrants).

Vicky Ford said nothing much and said it very well, but it was clear she saw the present situation as a chance to engage in “market reforms” (translation: reduce social provision and make employment insecure). So did Pascual who, as might be expected from an old IMF apparatchik, appeared to see society as no more than a series of economic relationships.

The Greeks would have been most surprised to hear from Oakley that the Euro had been good for them and the Germans might have cocked more than an eyebrow to learn that it was in their interest to continue bailing out the likes of Greece, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland and any other of the Eurozone who became the economically halt and lame. The latter judgement was based on the premise that the Euro had made German exports more competitive because the Euro’s value against other currencies was lower than what an independent German Mark would have been. This ignores two rather contrary facts, namely, that Germany with the Mark was remarkably competitive internationally (even with the burden of a newly absorbed East Germany) and the amounts Germany stand to lose if they keep propping up the Euro lame duck economies are so colossal they would dwarf any benefit gained from the
Euro’s lower exchange rate.

When Matt Persson called for questions, he used the old chairman’s controlling trick of saying he would take two or three at a time then get the panel to comment. This allows awkward questions to be ignored with a fair chance that most of the audience will not notice. Sure enough it happened.

The first questioner was that well known opponent of the EU and campaigner on other causes Idris Francis. The second questioner was me.

Idris attacked the idea of the Euro as a doomed enterprise from the start and ended by pointing out that not one of the speakers had adequately addressed the question of the effects on most people. In a note on the meeting he distributed afterwards he paraphrased his words at the meeting as :

“Do you really believe that millions of Greek people are going to accept that they have to live in poverty for decades to come, to pay 15%, 17%, 20% interest on enormous debts that they can never repay – and pay the money to wealthy banks?”

“Do you seriously believe that millions if Irish will do the same? In recent times people started flooding in to Ireland – now they are leaving again in their droves. Who in his right mind with ambition for a decent life will start where the only prospect is of permanent poverty? They won’t do it.”

“Its all over, its finished, stop pretending.”’

I then put my question, but engaged in a little preamble. I said that I not only hoped Spain was not to big too fail, but that it failed and brought the rotten edifice of the EU down around it. I added that the creation of the Euro was an act of criminal recklessness because it was obvious before it was created that it would not be sustainable because of the widely differing Eurozone economies. Finally, I pointed out that we were being asked to allow the people who had led the EU to its present pretty pass to carry on occupying the positions of power. I then put my question “Why should we trust those who have created the mess to clear up the mess? “

When the panel were called to comment they made some attempt to answer the question of why the masses in the Euro states in financial trouble should be expected to bear the deprivations – Nadal in particular suddenly became dreadfully concerned about “the people”, doubtless because he realised that his opening comments which paid no heed to the ordinary Spaniard would not have gone down well in Spain. However, as he was still saying what a wonderful thing the Euro had been for Spain, it was difficult to take his “concern” seriously.

There was no attempt to answer my question. Nor did Persson ask them to speak on it when they failed to address it off their own bat. This was unsurprising because the question is the most difficult one Europhiles face, for there is no rational reason why those who have shown themselves to be at best grotesquely incompetent and at worst ideologues blind to anything but their creed should be allowed to continue in office and every reason to remove them from any position of power and influence.

After the panelists had spoken, Persson called for more questions but added that Eurosceptic speakers should keep their remarks brief. He made no such request of Europhiles. I will leave readers to judge his motive for this imbalance.

The rest of the meeting saw a gradual shift from the unselfconscious “forget there are real people involved” attitude they began with, but it was all for show because with the exception of Greene, they still cleaved to the idea that when shove came to push the EU and the Euro must continue at any cost. However, when Persson ended the meeting by asking how the panel thought the Eurozone would look in 2014 there was a reluctant majority amongst them who thought it would be smaller.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Conquest by other means, Economics | Tagged free markets, free trade, internationalism, laissez faire, nationhood, NWO | Comments (2)

If we leave the EU we mustn’t be another Norway

May 1, 2011 – 11:35 pm

Amongst those who want the UK to leave the EU there are those who say “Look at Norway, we can have the same arrangement with the EU as they do, a simple free trading agreement”. This is profoundly wrong. The European Economic Area (EEA) countries of which Norway is one have to take on most of the more obnoxious burdens of the EU whilst being excluded from EU decision making . This is unsurprising because the EEA was born of a desire of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) to integrate with the EU.

EFTA was founded in 1960. The founding members were Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Subsequently Finland became an associate member in 1961 (becoming a full member in 1986), Iceland joined in 1970, Liechtenstein 1991 (previously its interests in EFTA had been represented by Switzerland).

EFTA gradually lost its members as they joined what is now the EU. The United Kingdom and Denmark joined the European Economic Community in 1973, Portugal joined in 1986., Austria, Sweden and Finland joined the EU in 1995. This left only Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Negotiations between the EFTA nations and what was then the European Community (EC) for a closer relationship came to fruition in 1992 when the EEA Agreement was agreed by negotiators of EFTA states and the EC members. Switzerland rejected the agreement in a referendum, but later signed bilateral treaties with the EU which have much the same effect as the EEA Agreement. (http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/switzerland/eu_switzerland/political_relations/index_de.htm )The rest of the EFTA members signed. The EEA Agreement came into force in 1994. The full text can be found at http://www.efta.int/legal-texts.aspx (click on the EEA link and open or download the PDF file).

EEA membership requires that subscribing states have to accept the “four freedoms” of the EU: the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital among the EEA countries as well as those comprising the EU. This the prime reason for not joining the EEA or having a bilateral relationship with the EU similar to that of Switzerland. These “ four freedoms” mean amongst other things that EEA members cannot meaningfully control immigration, protect their economy, prevent foreign takeovers or freely engage in any new taxpayer funded subsidy for which is judged to interfere with the market (article 61).

The forced adoption of the “four freedoms” is reason enough not to join the EEA or anything like it. However, there are further sovereignty removal horrors. EEA members have to adopt EU law in the areas of social policy (article 67), consumer protection (article 73), environment (article 73), company law(article 77) and statistics (article 76) and surveillance (article 108). In addition, article 78 states “The Contracting Parties shall strengthen and broaden cooperation in the framework of the Community’s activities in the fields of:

- research and technological development,

- information services,

- the environment,

- education, training and youth,

- social policy,

- consumer protection,

- small and medium-sized enterprises,

- tourism,

- the audiovisual sector, and

- civil protection”

The EEA states are not required to make the type of contribution required of EU members to Brussels nor do they receive any funds from the EU. However, they are forced to follow the judgements of the European Court of Justice, they have to pay a membership fee towards “community cohesion, that is, they are required to subsidise the poorer EU states. (article 82).

The EEA states have no formal position within EU institutions such as the Council of Ministers, the EU Commission or the European Parliament. Hence, EU decisions are made without their official involvement. In addition, the EEA states are required in practice to abide by the European Court of Justice’s rulings (article 105). However, there is a joint committee comprised of EU and EEA representatives (article 90).

If the UK joined the EEA, in theory they would not have to participate in these areas of EU policy

“Common Agriculture and Fisheries Policies (although the Agreement contains provisions on various aspects of trade in agricultural and fish products);

Customs Union;

Common Trade Policy;

Common Foreign and Security Policy;

Justice and Home Affairs (even though the EFTA countries are part of the Schengen area); or

Monetary Union (EMU).” (http://secretariat.efta.int/eea/eea-agreement.aspx)

However, as we have consistently seen since Britain joined in 1973, the EU has constantly found ways of expanding their powers either by stealth or through new treaties which are never resisted in the end even if national referenda reject them because the elites of all the EU and EEA countries are committed Europhiles . A referenda rejects further EU integration; the elites arrange for another referendum to get the “right” result or produce a new Treaty which is the rejected treaty in a new guise and then find an excuse not to hold a referendum on it , normally along the lines that it is not a constitutionally important treaty.

If the UK is to regain its sovereignty it needs to withdraw completely from the EU for two reasons. First, if we accepted EEA membership or something like it, we should still be so heavily linked into the EU (and would almost certainly become more heavily involved as the EU expanded its remit), that the British political elite would always be able to argue that we were so much part of the EU we might as well go the whole hog and become full members. That argument would have resonance with Europhiles, the resigned and those who have no strong opinion either way about the EU. The second reason is that even as it stands EEA membership would deprive the UK of massive amounts of sovereignty including the most important of all sovereign powers, the ability to control who lives in a country. If we are to leave, the UK should deal with the EU and EEA countries as we do with any country outside the EU and EEA territories.

How easy would it be for the UK to leave? Legally it would be difficult because the Lisbon Treaty requires the agreement of the other member states of the EU for a member to withdraw. Article 50 of the Treaty runs:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

The reality is that if a state as large and wealthy as the UK announced its withdrawal without conditions, the EU would accept it because they could do nothing to prevent it and imposing sanctions against the UK would be counter-productive because the UK runs a large trade deficit with the EU. Moreover, any sanctions against the UK would ruin the Republic of Ireland, another EU member.

Membership of the European Economic Area is a poisoned chalice. Resist the temptation to drink from it.

By Robert Henderson | Also posted in Economics, Politics, Social Policy | Tagged free markets, free trade, laissez faire, nationhood, NWO, welfare | Comments (4)

Living In A Madhouse

Category Archives: Europe

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Published in http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=1737

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War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Knowledge is Ignorance…. Treason is Patriotism…

No 10 Downing Street e-petitions dealing with Immigration, the EU and the ECHR

Robert Henderson

Too big to bail-out? Spain and the future of the Eurozone

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