A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th March 1990.
George Walden (article, March 14th) should realise that this politicians’ fear of Britain being marginalised that we hear so much about in the press is not shared by the mass of the people of Britain.
A nation’s influence is not determined by how many international conference top tables its politicians get invited to, but by its industrial strength, as the example of Japan makes so very clear. Many of the people who work in our industries are quietly confident about Britain’s ability to hold its own in a fair trading system.
What they really fear is that Britain’s independence and ability to negotiate fair terms of trade will be further sacrificed to the Euro-roleplaying ambitions of politicians of the Heath-Heseltine stamp – ambitions which led last year to our subsidising our Continental competitors to the tune of £4,500 million.
A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th July 1989.
Mr Heseltine (letter June 29th) conspicuously declined to answer my question about what limits, if any, he would set on the transfer of British sovereignty to Brussels. Instead we have the usual obfuscation about all alliances imposing constraints on a nation’s freedom of action.
Most people, however, can see the difference between an alliance like Nato with its specific and limited objectives and the Single European Act which, inter alia, allows the 11 other members of the Council of Ministers to issue instructions to Britain on matters that have nothing to do with free trade, which was what the British people have been led to believe was the objective of joining the EEC.
As for the EEC being a means of avoiding economic domination by the United States and Japan, Mr Heseltine should contemplate the make-up of our colossal manufacturing trade deficit, 85 per cent of which is attributable to our trade with the EEC (chiefly Germany). By contrast our trade with our biggest customer, the United States, is fundamentally in balance, as it has been through the years of our mounting deficit with the EEC.
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Despite the fancy words from certain Conservative politicians about sovereignty being out of date (tell that to the Russians or the Swedes), European monetary union is completely incompatible with the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament, which is the way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?”
