A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th January 1993.
Your report that Britain is being pressed to give up its permanent seat and veto on the UN Security Council needs a more robust response than your editorial (Jan. 27th).
If the level of current financial contributions were to be the criterion for membership, then both Russia and China would have to give up their seats before Britain did; the former because it has no foreign exchange to pay its $230 million assessment, the latter because it pays less than Spain or the Netherlands.
It would, however, be sensible and prudent for Britain to increase its contribution by the relatively paltry sum of £30 million and to act more conspicuously on behalf of the Commonwealth, to which it owed a great deal at the UN during the Falklands crisis.
At the same time, President Clinton should be reminded that it is not just cash to support a bloated UN bureacracy that matters, but a record of long-term willingness and ability to act physically in support of UN objectives. In this respect, Britain’s record, from Korea to Bosnia, is second only to that of the United States. Germany and Japan need to work their passage before making claims.
France and China were not victors in the Second World War as you state: they were the two principal defeated Allied countries, whose liberation was due to the victories of the other three permanent members of the Security Council. Stalin recognised this and opposed their membership of the Security Council for that very reason.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th October 1991.
It was written by senior members of the Campaign for an independent Britain: Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Chairman), Sir Robin Williams (Secretary), Austin Mitchell (Labour MP and vice-chairman), Professor Stephen Bush (vice-chairman).
The news that the present Prime Minister is flying to Germany to see Chancellor Kohl will cause despondency in those who recall or know of the flight of another Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. He flew to meet another German Chancellor in a similarly vain attempt to appease the unappeasable.
Every Westminster MP must recognise by now that it is not the freedom and independence of a small country “of which we know little” which is at stake, as in 1938, but that of our very own homeland.
Continental countries led by France and Germany want the complete surrender of this country to their bidding on all fundamental matters, particularly where, as is usually the case, our interests and theirs are opposed. Besides wishing to abolish our currency, Germany wants us to give up our seat on the Security Council at the United Nations, an organisation which we helped to set up.
The EC Commission aims to control our external relations, particularly those with the United States, and in short order thereafter deployment of our armed forces. In trade the GATT negotiatios show how we are already being conscripted to fight our natural friends and allies in the English speaking world.
As usual, a British government is trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of rushing to appease Chancellor Kohl, Mr Major should sit tight, veto political union and let the Germans carry out their threat to veto economic and monetary union – and if they don’t, we should.
We can leave the other 11 countries to form their 1940s-inspired union and let it wristle with the combined problems of millions of economic refugees, the Common Agricultural Policy and the importunate demands of Spain, Greece and Portugal, unsubsidised by the British taxpayer.
For Britain to escape from this nightmare of the past and rejoin the future, all that is needed is a little courage on the part of the Government to face the plain fact that this is the parting of the ways.
