We don’t want Turkey in the EU
December 14th, 1999
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 14th December 1999.
Serious as are the current threats to our national interests posed by Euro-taxation, Euro levies on the art market and the Euro defence initiatives, they are as nothing to the threat posed by the prospective admission to European Union membership of mainly East European countries, totalling about 130 million people with an average income per head of about a tenth of ours.
The Office of National Statistics shows that more than 400,000 migrants, mainly job seekers from the present EU countries, arrived here in 1998 (report, Dec. 1st). This figure, equivalent to the whole adult population of Bristol and Reading taken together, is set to grow as EU nationals, who need no job permits, are increasingly attracted by our high social security provision and low unemployment, especially in the overcrowded southern England.
The actions of our political leaders, both Labour and Tory, pass from folly to insanity in supporting the EU candidature of Turkey (report, Dec. 11th). This predominantly Asian Muslim country borders Syria, Iran and Iraq, with a population of 63 million increasing at two per cent per year.
A common Christian heritage was supposed to be the fundamental reason for bringing the disparate peoples of Europe together. Now even that principle is to be discarded. Whatever Turkey’s merits as a partner in Nato, they are irrelevant to the matter in hand.
Britain’s only protection from the prospect of being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of what will be legal, not illegal, migrants, is complete withdrawal from the EU madhouse while there is still time.