Booklet published by Prosyma Research Ltd (1998) ISBN 0 9517475 2 5

It contains 18 sections and 6 tables/charts. It can be found and read in full on the Britain Watch website on the “Performance of the Economy” Page.

A letter to the Sunday Times which was published on 4th November 2007.

In your editorial ‘Right not to remain silent’ (Comment, last week) you state that “one of the unspoken truths is that there is little the government can do to control immigration” because as Britain is a “member of the European Union, many of these people can come and go as they please”.  However, one may ask what scale of national catastrophe will we have to endure before the really unmentionable subject of leaving the EU is contemplated.

While the latest of a sequence of projections and corrections (for 2005) gives a net flow of 190,000 people coming each year, what has not been so clearly broadcast is that this figure derives from about 550,000 coming in (including about 90,000 returning British citizens) minus about 360,000 leaving (about 170,000 British).  Thus there was estimated a net inflow of foreign nationals of 270,000 and a net outflow of 80,000 British, an increase of 350,000 in the relative size of the foreign population.  This is projected for each year to 2050.

This would mean that in the lifetimes of almost everyone under 40 the foreign-born population will have grown relative to the native population by more than 15 million, twice the population of Greater London – about the same change proportionately as has been inflicted on the Tibetan people by the enforced immigration of ethnic Chinese.

Britain’s catastrophe can be averted by stopping immigration completely, for say five years, until the British people have had a chance to pronounce on whom and how many they want to settle here.

A speech at the first Goldsmith Memorial Lecture on 22nd May 2007, at University College in London.

To read the text please click on the link to the “Governance of Britain” page of the Britain Watch website.

A letter to eurofacts which was published on 11th March 2005.

After its behaviour in the North East referendum, the Electoral Commission’s approval of the Government’s choice of question in the Referendum Bill was hardly unexpected, but the Conservative leadership’s endorsement of the question is extraordinary.

As you say, the question implies the Treaty establishing the Constitution is something remote from the British citizen – like say the treaty which established the International Maritime Organisation – while the reality is totally different.  As big a difference in fact as lies between the two questions, “Do you approve of the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Mrs Parker Bowles?” and “Would you like to marry the Prince of Wales/Mrs Parker Bowles?”

Any referendum question should reflect the reality of the change in the status quo.  In this case the simplest question which does this is: “Do you agree the proposed Constitution for the European Union should apply to the United Kingdom?”  This question, with its focus on the application of the Constitution to the United Kingdom, would also force the Electoral Commission to tackle the issue of informing the people about the main provisions of the Constitution, e.g. Clauses I-6 to I-16.

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.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 12th April 1994.

The dawning realisation of the inescapably federative tendency of the European Union, to which Niall Ferguson refers (article, April 8th), is very welcome.  There is indeed no middle way between Britain’s independence and our extinction as a self-governing nation.

Escape from the European Union nightmare is not only possible but also the only way to secure our future as a happy and prosperous nation.

The fourth quarter of last year saw Britain’s visible exports to the EU fall below 50 per cent of total visibles.  When invisibles are added the EU probably took less than 45 per cent, refuting once again the constant Europhile refrain about the ever-increasing importance of the EU market to Britain.

In any case, free trade in industrial products has long existed between all European countries, whether inside or outside the EU, and will continue when we eventually leave.  Britain’s trade with non-EU Switzerland – per capita the richest country in the world – is as free as it is with Germany.

The North American Free Trade Area is visible proof that free trade arrangements do not need large, EU-type bureaucracies. As important, the failure of the United States to grapple with its huge crime and public education problems, and the EU’s impotence in the face of massive structural unemployment, should discourage anyone from believing that large, multi-ethnic federated states do anything but provide employment for functionaries.

With national self-determination regained, Britain would be free to reallocate the massive resources of taxpayers’ money and civil service effort presently expended on mitigating the worst effects of EU membership.  This effort would be in part transferred to determined support of our trade and culture in the Americas and other parts of the world which have been neglected because of the European fixation.

Accompanying this would be a re-evaluation of the Commonwealth as an asset, not a burden; as a vehicle for practical idealism; and perhaps, by virtue of its containing about a quarter of humanity, as informal guarantee of our UN Security Council seat.

A letter to the Editor of the Times which was published on 4th November 1992.

I wonder how many of the 27 luminaries of the CBI who write today advocating ratification of the Treaty on European Union have actually read it.  One would hope that they have brought to bear on the treaty the same exacting scrutiny which they bring to bear on their companies’ commercial agreements.

Your correspondents say that while “early re-entry to the ERM is not likely to be feasible . . . we should not close off the option to re-enter”.  Do they not realise that the central purpose of the treaty (Article G, Title VI) is monetary union, that membership of the ERM is the first stage and that the second stage to which the treaty legally commits this country begins on January 1, 1994, less than 14 months away. Despite Britain’s theoretical option to defer a decision on full monetary union in Stage 3, under Stage 2 we will be bound to adopt convergent monetary (largely deflationary) policies which run flat counter to the new policy of economic growth.

Again, contrary to their letter, the Maastricht treaty articles do not add appreciably to the framework of the single market: these are provided for in the Single European Act (1986). Where the treaty does have an additional effect on the market is in its provision (Articles 130a-d) for the setting up (before December 31, 1993) of a new cohesion fund whose central purpose is to transfer large sums of money (so-called structural funds) from the rich north to the poor south of the Community.

In other words, countries like Britain will pay subsidies to other countries like Portugal and Greece in order that they will be able to compete better with us. On current EC plans these transfers double Britain’s present EC contribution of almost £3 billion.

Is this what the CBI wants?

A letter to the Daily Telegraph from Mrs Gillian Bush, which was published on 18th March 1992.

We have now been presented with a budget from each of the main political parties, and there has been non-stop media comment on them.

The essential point, however has been missed.  Not one of these budgets has a chance of being carried out.  Whichever party or coalition of parties forms the next government, it will have to ratify, under present pledges, the Maastricht Treaties later on this year.

This will mean that the European Union, as the Common Market now calls itself, and not our Government’s budget, will decide our economic future.

The new, higher rate contributions that M Delors intends us to pay the European Union will distort all the careful calculations.

Some sort of compromise may be workd out.  But the Germans, who are the largest contributors, have problems that will make them keen for others to carry the burden of higher rates.  It would be close to a miracle if we do not end up doing so.

In addition, the stated intention of normalising VAT across all our presently zero-rated areas of food, gas, electricity, water, sewage treatment, children’s clothes, transport, mail and books will greatly increase indirect taxation and hit the lower paid in particular – as, of course, the artificially high European food prices do already.

This election campaign should be about the future of our country either continuing as an independent sovereign state or becoming just a region of the European Union, not about tiny changes to the tax system.

Over the weekend I heard Mr Major say twice that the Conservative campaign was about giving people choice.  We have no choice at all on the one really crucial issue.  He should promise us a referendum on the Maastricht Treaties before they are ratified.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 30th October 1990.

Your editorial (Oct. 29th) is wrong to say that Britain has a weak negotiating position in respect of the EEC.  We have no negotiating position to stop a United States of Europe coming about because all the Continental countries fervently wish it to come about.  Our wishes and theirs are mutally exclusive, and no soft-voiced diplomacy will alter this.

Furthermore, the British people do not “appreciate the material benefits which close association brings” because there are none.  Free trade may bring benefits, though vastly exaggerated, but this arrangement is open to any Western European country, whether in the EC or not.

If British politicians as a whole could bring themselves to accept these basic facts, we would then start negotiating sensible arrangements with the future European Union, as one sovereign power to another. Here our position is strong because we take about £16,000 million more of their goods than they take of ours, and no German or Frenchman will wish to jeopardise that.

As for currencies, why does Sarah Hogg try to frighten us with talk of a European super currency?  The ecu will be just a currency, a medium of exchange, like the yen or the dollar, against which the pound will have a rate as it does against these currencies today.

Again all this talk of hanging on to the City’s role is so much special pleading.  If foreign banks want to relocate their head offices in Frankfurt or Paris, let them – and the absurd rents in London will fall.  In fact the loss of the City’s casino role in our economy would be of enormous benefit to us.  Perhaps then it could get down to the task of financing the manufacture of goods that even Germans would want to buy.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 28th June 1989.

The juxtaposition of your headline “Thatcher to take first step on European union” and the photograph of the Queen opening the New Zealand collection of plants (June 24th) exactly captures the crisis now facing our country.

Despite the fancy words from certain Conservative politicians about sovereignty being out of date (tell that to the Russians or the Swedes), European monetary union is completely incompatible with the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament, which is the way our country has been governed for 700 years.

Not long ago, British politicians of all parties would have erupted with fury at foreigners like Andriessen and Delors telling us what we must and must not do.  Yet today Mrs Thatcher is left by her Cabinet and party to fight alone, as if our continued independence from foreign domination was a personal idiosyncrasy rather than a duty laid on every Member by their parliamentary oath.

The incredible thing is that the British people pay huge sums of money for these humiliations, and these are sums which will grow rapidly if Delors gets his way.  If the British people’s patriotism and pride have been emasculated by years of media propaganda in favour of “Europe”, one might have thought they would still have had concern for their pockets.

Mrs Thatcher has made her view of our country’s future clear.  It is now long overdue for Mr Edward Heath and Mr Michael Heseltine to be asked: “Are you in favour of Britain ceasing to be an independent country in the way the world recognises it?  If not, at what point would you part company from Continental countries in their ambition to have a European state with its own president over our Queen, government over our government and laws over our laws?”