A letter to the Editor of the Financial Times which was published on 7th September 1996.

The assertion by Mr Tony Hales and fourteen other company executives (Letters, 5 Sept.) that Britain’s likely refusal to abolish the pound sterling is based on a “serious misunderstanding of the process of monetary union” is clearly based on their own misunderstanding of the Maastricht Treaty.

It is not true, as they say, that “many aspects of monetary union remain to be resolved”.  If they would take the trouble to read what they pronounce on so confidently they would find that all the important provisions of monetary union are set out in black and white in Articles 2 and 102-109 and in 12 protocols of the Treaty.

Protocol 3 alone runs to nine chapters and 53 articles.  In protocol 3 the operation and constitution of the European Central Bank, the handover of our gold and dollar reserves, which belong to the British people (Art 30), the capital subscription (£700M in our case) (Art 28), the transition arrangements including exchange and issue of bank notes (Arts 16, 52 and 53), membership of the Bank’s Executive Board (Art 50), its governing council (Art 11), the Bank’s responsibilities (Art 12) and so on are all completely laid down.

Only the name of the currency and the location of the Central Bank were left open and these have now been decided.

In November 1991 a similar group of CBI executives wrote to the Times saying how important it was for Britain to stay in the ERM.  A year later, after White Wednesday, they were writing to say how important it was to keep open an option to re-enter the ERM.

Four years on, after 800,000 lost jobs and £30Bn of lost output, from which we are only now slowly recovering, they are at it again.

A letter to the Editor of the Times which was published on 7th October 1991.

It is a pity that Sir Peter Hordern (October 1st) should subscribe to the view that central banks control inflation through their supply of the currency.

The massive inflation which we are only just recovering from was not due to the Bank of England’s printing a large over-supply of bank notes, but to the vast expansion of credit by the commercial banks.  This expansion of credit in 1987-9 expressed as a proportion of GDP, more or less accounts for the inflation rates of 8 to 11 per cent during those years.

A central bank per se, whether independent or not, is an almost total irrelevance so far as inflation is concerned in a world dominated by thousands of different monetary agencies able to switch assets and liabilities across the world at the touch of a button.

For continentals the drive for a European central bank is seen as a vital step on the way to a European state and government.  Monetary and political union are inseparable as everyone, except the British political centre, with its overwhelming wish to avoid hard choices, recognises.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th July 1990.

The Vice-President of the German Bundesbank said on the BBC Today Programme in February that “of course, a country which merges its currency completely cannot remain independent politically”.

These views are commonplace on the Continent, which is why monetary and economic union is seen as an immediate precursor to a United States of Europe.  Mr Ridley has only exploded the myth that there is any halt between our agreeing to monetary union with the rest of the EEC and our complete loss of status as an independent nation.

Monetary union and political union are effectively inseparable and the Government’s foolish pushing of the idea of a hard ecu is merely one more attempt to fudge the issue and avoid a split in its own ranks.

Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet should face the fact that the “unhappiness” expressed by commentators about Mr Ridley’s remarks is as nothing to the deep unhappiness felt by millions at the way a Government, faced merely with a barrage of words, rather than bombs as in 1940, cannot find the simple courage to say: “Whatever the rest of the Continent does, we will not take Britain down the road to political extinction.”