Yesterday's Men and today's BIG, BIG issue

In the General Election campaign of 1970, Alan Aldridge designed a controversial poster showing plasticine models of the Conservative Cabinet and encouraging the electorate to write them off.

It didn't work. Heath won:

Edition of 20th June, 1970

- and the country lost. But it didn't know it. Ten years earlier, Lord Kilmuir had advised the future Prime Minister:

"I must emphasise that in my view the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones and I think that, as a matter of practical politics, it will not be easy to persuade Parliament or the public to accept them. I am sure that it would be a great mistake to under-estimate the force of the objections to them. But those objections ought to be brought out into the open now because, if we attempt to gloss over them at this stage, those who are opposed to the whole idea of our joining the Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on."

RESEARCH PAPER 10/79 - Appendix 2 Letter to Edward Heath from Lord Kilmuir, December 1960 [www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/rp10-79.pdf]

From 1973 on we were in what we thought - what we had been told and assured - was nothing more than a trading arrangement, and Heath had long known to be a glass slope down to European Union.
‎

Edition of 30th December, 1972

So in the Labour manifesto of February 1974, the Leader of the Opposition Harold Wilson said (my highlights):

"The Government called this election in panic. They are unable to govern, and dare not tell the people the truth.

"Our people face a series of interlocking crises. Prices are rocketing. The Tories have brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy and breakdown. More and more people are losing their jobs. Firms are going out of business. Housing costs are out of reach for so many families. The Common Market now threatens us with still higher food prices and with a further loss of Britain's control of its own affairs. We shall restore to the British people the right to decide the final issue of British membership of the Common Market.  

"The British people were never consulted about the Market. Even more, the country was deceived in 1970 about the Government's intentions on jobs and prices. They will not be deceived again."

Hence the 1975 Referendum, by which time Wilson was Prime Minister and was recommending a Yes vote:

"THE NEW DEAL

"The better terms which Britain will enjoy if we stay in the Common Market were secured only after long and tough negotiations.

"These started in April 1974 and did not end until March of this year.

"On March 10 and 11 the Heads of Government met in Dublin and clinched the bargain. On March 18 the Prime Minister was able to make this announcements:

"'I believe that our renegotiation objectives have been substantially though not completely achieved.'

"What were the main objectives to which Mr. Wilson referred? The most important were FOOD and MONEY and JOBS."

Who doesn't want these things? Who can manage without them? Who would have continued reading the pamphlet after this point, if they had read it at all? How many who did, would have teased out the timebomb issues further on in this document, or understood how to weigh them against the bribe-threats of "FOOD and MONEY and JOBS"?

Wilson continued:
 
WILL PARLIAMENT LOSE ITS POWER?

Another anxiety expressed about Britain's membership of the Common Market is that Parliament could lose its supremacy, and we would have to obey laws passed by unelected 'faceless bureaucrats' sitting in their headquarters in Brussels.

What are the facts?

Fact No. 1 is that in the modern world even the Super Powers like America and Russia do not have complete freedom of action. Medium-sized nations like Britain are more and more subject to economic and political forces we cannot control on our own.

A striking recent example of the impact of such forces is the way the Arab oil-producing nations brought about an energy and financial crisis not only in Britain but throughout a great part of the world.

Since we cannot go it alone in the modern world, Britain has for years been a member of international groupings like the United Nations, NATO and the International Monetary Fund.

Membership of such groupings imposes both rights and duties, but has not deprived us of our national identity, or changed our way of life.

Membership of the Common Market also imposes new rights and duties on Britain, but does not deprive us of our national identity. To say that membership could force Britain to eat Euro-bread or drink Euro-beer is nonsense.

Fact No. 2. No important new policy can be decided in Brussels or anywhere else without the consent of a British Minister answerable to a British Government and British Parliament.

The top decision-making body in the Market is the Council of Ministers, which is composed of senior Ministers representing each of the nine member governments.

It is the Council of Ministers, and not the market's officials, who take the important decisions. These decisions can be taken only if all the members of the Council agree. The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests. Ministers from the other Governments have the same right to veto.

All the nine member countries also agree that any changes or additions to the Market Treaties must be acceptable to their own Governments and Parliaments.

Remember: All the other countries in the Market today enjoy, like us, democratically elected Governments answerable to their own Parliaments and their own voters. They do not want to weaken their Parliaments any more than we would."

Fact No. 3. The British Parliament in Westminster retains the final right to repeal the Act which took us into the Market on January 1, 1973. Thus our continued membership will depend on the continuing assent of Parliament.

The White Paper on the new Market terms recently presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister declares that through membership of the Market we are better able to advance and protect our national interests. This is the essence of sovereignty.

Fact No. 4. On April 9, 1975, the House of Commons voted by 396 to 170 in favour of staying in on the new terms.

Note the ultimate reassurance in "Fact No. 3".

And so:

Edition of 7th June, 1975

Forty years on, the 2015 Conservative Manifesto says (contextualising it in a discussion of economic migration to the UK):

We will negotiate new rules with the EU, so that people will have to be earning here for a number of years before they can claim benefits, including the tax credits that top up low wages. Instead of something-fornothing, we will build a system based on the principle of something-for-something. We will then put these changes to the British people in a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017.

Once again, fundamental democratic issues are blended with economics. And there is some question about the circumstances in which this pledge would be binding. In his speech of 23rd January 2013, Cameron said (my highlight):

The next Conservative Manifesto in 2015 will ask for a mandate from the British people for a Conservative government to negotiate a new settlement with our European partners in the next Parliament.

At present we do not have a Conservative government, but a coalition, and this seems likely to be the situation after next month. And even it there is indeed an in-out referendum, will the people be fully informed of the implications? Will they be bribed and threatened? What will the Press and TV do?

Now here's the big, big issue: we're past the point at which national freedom simply means freedom from the EU. Wilson told us forty years ago:

Fact No. 1 is that in the modern world even the Super Powers like America and Russia do not have complete freedom of action. Medium-sized nations like Britain are more and more subject to economic and political forces we cannot control on our own.

We are now slithering further down the glass mountain, into an era of global governance. International trade agreements and regulation will more and more take precedence over national governments and their courts - and a secretive system of arbitration in trade disputes is bypassing open fora of international justice, so that a handful of firms in London (now taking one side, now the other, case by case) can impose multimillion-pound settlements on the UK and other sovereign nations, to suit the ambition and avarice of multinational enterprises.

To think we are still fighting the EU issue, when an even bigger threat to democracy is at our backs. David Malone ("Golem XIV") makes this clear.

But democracy can be used against itself, now as before: prejudice, misunderstanding, lack of understanding, misinformation, bribes and threats, the jokes of ignorant and partisan comedians, the slurs in the unthinking social media.

Fight, or flight? Are we "yesterday's men"(and women)?


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The dolorous stroke

Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal


Hitchens (1):

A great grey Tower of Babel reaches up into the sky over Europe, lopsided, full of cracks and likely to collapse in the fullness of time...

For Britain, Europe’s oldest continuously independent sovereign state, [...] it is the end of 1,000 years of history, as predicted by the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell as long ago as 1962...

In the EU, Ireland – no longer a Tiger – takes its place alongside Slovenia and Lithuania as a quirky, minor possession on the damp and unvisited fringes of the Continent, with almost no voting power.

Shorn – as it is now – of its ability to get in the way, it may find that the flow of subsidies will become much thinner in years to come...

The ascent of the EU happened to coincide with several decades of unheard-of prosperity and growth. But the EU did not cause that prosperity...

It was based on American Marshall Aid and helped along by American and British willingness to spend heavily on defending Europe against the USSR, while most of the EU nations kept their military budgets small.

The EU also cannot guarantee that Europe’s prosperity will go on forever. With so many member nations, many of them devastated by decades of Marxist misrule, its capacity to hand out subsidies is running out.

The credit crisis has not finished yet, Western Europe is fast running out of its own energy supplies and the shift of economic power to the Far East is speeding up, not stopping.

The European nations have not worked out how to deal with the enormous Muslim minorities which they have encouraged to settle on their territory and which increasingly demand the right to live according to their traditions.

Nor can they stop the slide of the manufacturing industry towards the regions where labour is cheapest.

Germany, still in a sort of post-traumatic shock over the cost of absorbing the Communist East, may not forever be willing to share a currency – and so a joint bank account – with the poorer and less well-run nations of the Eurozone.

Hitchens (2):

... At the coming Election, refuse to vote for any of them, and do so in such numbers that they can no longer claim they have any mandate to rule, so that their zombie parties collapse in a heap of dust and worms, and we can start again.

The alternative is the accelerating death of our civilisation.

Hannan:

People often wonder why national leaders are so ready to hand their powers to Brussels. Each successive EU treaty has weakened national parliaments, yet each has been enthusiastically ratified by those same parliaments, often in overt defiance of public opinion.

What makes the politicians do it? [...] Perhaps – let’s be blunt – they are defying their electorates in the hope of getting lucrative positions in the EU when their terms expire.

I realise that this is a big claim. But, in ten years as an MEP, I’ve seen it happen time and again.

I’ve watched people arrive in Brussels as moderate Euro-sceptics, but change their views as their lips become clamped around the teat of the expenses. I’ve watched ‘No’ campaigners turn into Euro-enthusiasts after being given sinecures.

Now Tony Blair is plainly not in that category. He was a Euro-enthusiast to start with, albeit in a rather vague, pro-Italian-holidays kind of way. And he’s hardly poor...

No, the charge against him is not that he abandoned his beliefs, but that he abandoned Britain’s interests...

Could the issue of the [EU] budget have been linked in Blair’s mind, even subliminally, with that of the presidency?

... if Blair really did seek to buy the presidency with British taxpayers’ money, he was almost literally selling his country – and there is a very unpleasant word for people who do that.

For those who believe in history with a human face, perhaps this is a punishment, for believing we could create some small and imperfect version of an Earthly Paradise, where even the poorest man would have a voice in his government, and have hope to better his position in society; where the bully would be held back by fear of punishment, and the powerful restrained by the apprehension of condign retribution.

My wife says she feels aggression everywhere, people arguing with bus drivers that they shouldn't have to pay. I say the hungry sheep look up and are not fed; we are lost and leaderless ; those at the bottom of society live in fear of the future, despair, impotent rage, having nothing but meagre dole given them with grandstanding condemnation and impossible promises of opportunity.

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help, said the Psalmist.

Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins

It always ends in a building project, whether the new EU Parliament or Ceauşescu's Casa Poporului...














But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more

It's not for us to take up arms. Worldly powers will rise and fall. Our defence, and the future, is the family. That is the nearest we can have to the Earthly Paradise.

Euro and EU doomed?

Justice Litle thinks so.

Beg to differ on one point:

If the Brown government fails, Britain will be left rudderless in the midst of the worst fiscal storm in decades. In a worst-case scenario where bad events lead to worse decisions, opines Stephens, the domino chain could even lead to a British exit from the EU.

"Worst-case"? Au contraire, the sooner the better, and for the reasons he has given in his exploration of Europe's problems.

The Oath

President Obama has re-taken the Presidential Oath, merely because he'd said the word "faithfully" in the wrong place (though still correctly, in grammatical terms). But it matters, because the wording is precisely set by the Constitution. And what a serious oath it is:

"I do solemnly swear (or, affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The Vice-President's oath is set by Congress, and in its latest (1884) wording is even more determined to leave no room for lawyerly ratting-out:

“I do solemnly swear (or, affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

A foreigner who wishes to become a US citizen must say:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

My brother took this oath last year, and knowing him, will have meant it and will uphold it down to the last punctuation mark.

Compare that with the British version, with its room for legal manoeuvre and evasion:

"I (name) swear by Almighty God (or, “do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm”) that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law."

I could wish that all our holders of political office in the UK would be compelled to use the American wording, substituting only "Kingdom" for "States of America".

And we appear to have forgotten (and compare it with the current US citizenship oath above!) the following extract from the Oath required by the 1689 Bill of Rights Act:

"I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm."

George III, whose actions were part of the causes of the American Revolution, knew the power of his Coronation Oath: “Where is the power on earth to absolve me from the observance of every sentence of that Oath? [...] I can give up my crown and retire from power. I can quit my palace and live in a cottage. I can lay my head on a block and lose my life, but I cannot break my Oath. If I violate that Oath, I am no longer legal Sovereign in this country.”

The Monarch's Coronation Oath has been amended (e.g. in 1937 - removing a vital reference to the "law and Customs" of the Kingdom) since then; and although the Common Law is enshrined in the 1701 Act of Settlement, it may have to give place to Europe's directives and such rights as its legislators are minded to grant (and, presumably, amend, suspend or withdraw).

In some senses, Britain is a younger country than the United States of America; and perhaps the worse for it; for here, I fear, one's word, oath, anciently (I believe) one's gesa, and the law itself, have become sandy; not a rock on which to build.

Small is beautiful

J R Nyquist argues that internationalism is used as a cover for expansion by aggressive states, and the nation-state is our stoutest defence.

I think this links in with our domestic EU in-or-out debate, on which the allegedly Conservative British MP David Cameron has recently been making flirty noises. I say "flirty" because although the headline talks boldly of tearing up the un-referendum-ed Constitution, the leader of the Opposition says "We think the treaty is wrong because it passes too much power from Westminster to Brussels." How much is enough?

Perhaps some will say mine is a typical reaction from a little Englander, but originally that term meant an opponent of imperialism. Well, I'm used to ignorant brickbats. It was Philip Toynbee who - his son told me - called me a Colonel Blimp while I was still at school, I think because I had dared to ask him about the significance of colour in Lorca's poetry. What I gathered from this experience was: never ask a posh leftie for an explanation, he'll only look down his egalitarian nose at you. (I haven't met his daughter Polly, though.) Intriguingly, though the term "little Englander" is said to date from the 1899-1901 Second Boer War, there is an 1833 German dictionary-cum-phrasebook (published in Grunsberg) called "Der kleine Englander ober Sammlung". I do hope the title wasn't intended to have a pejorative tinge, but you can never be sure with the Germans - they do have a wry sense of humour.

The relevance of all this, aside from the asides? I think the themes of diversity, dispersion and disconnection will grow in importance over the coming years, in politics and economics. As with some mutually dependent Amazonian flowers and insects, efficiency and specialisation will have to be balanced against flexibility and long-term survival.