Britain and Europe: The Culture of Deceit
Christopher Booker
"There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall
in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need
hardly say, are completely unjustified."
Prime Minister Edward Heath, television broadcast on Britain's entry into
the Common Market, January 1973
This country quite voluntarily surrendered the once seemingly immortal
concept of the sovereignty of parliament and legislative freedom by
membership of the European Union ... as a once sovereign power, we have said
we want to be bound by Community law.
Judge Bruce Morgan, judgement in Sunderland metrication case April 9, 2001
Contents
Preface
The Strange Case of the Werner Report
Mr. Macmillan and 1961
Mr Heath and 1970
Mrs Thatcher and 1985
From Major to Blair, Maastricht to Nice
The Price We Have Paid
Epilogue
Preface
I am grateful to the Bruges Group for the chance to expand on a talk I gave
to their 12th anniversary meeting in February 2001, and which I rather
frivolously suggested might be entitled "Having Made Our Bed, Must We
Continue To Lie In It?".
The starting point for my talk was the release under the 30-year rule last
January of documents relating to Britain's application to join the Common
Market in 1970. What these papers revealed more starkly than ever before was
just how deliberately the Heath Government and the Foreign Office set out to
conceal from the British people the Common Market's true purpose. They were
fully aware that it was intended to be merely the first step towards
creating a politically united Europe, but they were determined to hide this
away from view.
It may no longer be particularly shocking to see such clear evidence of a
British Government's dishonesty over our relations with 'Europe', if only
because this is something which has since become so familiar. Scarcely a day
now goes by when British politicians and civil servants do not make
statements relating to the European Union which can be shown to be based at
best on concealment of the truth or even on direct falsehood.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the fundamental reason why our
involvement with 'Europe' has introduced into our politics a culture of
deceit which is quite new in our history, not least by obscuring the scale
on which it is changing the entire way in which our country is now governed.
In the light of the European Union now making the final moves towards
political integration, it is particularly urgent that the nature of this
culture of concealment should be analysed and more widely understood.
Full article at britanniaradio
http://britanniaradio.co.uk/?q=node/7567
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