The whole sorry saga of the U.K.’s involvement with the European Project (i.e. the attempt by Germany to attain financial hegemony over the rest of Europe after 1945, the E.E.C., E.C. and the E.U.) has seen certain patterns repeat themselves.
The U.K.’s entire raison d’être for getting involved in the European Project was based upon a monumental deception.
After the Suez Crisis in 1956, when it became apparent that the British Empire was definitely set to disband and that the U.K. was also set to lose her role as a world superpower, the political elite became very concerned and set about looking for one that could replace it.
Despite both Harold Macmillan (as early as 1956) and Hugh Gaitskell (in 1962) determining that ‘there was no discernible [economic] benefit to E.E.C. membership’, the Europhile political class, blinded by ideological zeal, seized upon the newly founded bloc as a suitable vehicle for providing a new role for the U.K. on the world stage.
It is both illuminating and interesting to examine the background to what the political class were thinking in the period running up to the U.K.’s entry into the then European Economic Community (E.E.C.) in order to shed some light on the way the duplicitous Europhile political establishment took the U.K. into the E.E.C. on a false prospectus, whilst employing a myriad of deceptions and distortions to do so.
In November 1956 (just before he became Prime Minister), Harold Macmillan assessed the U.K.’s possible membership of the E.E.C.’s Customs Union in the following dismissive terms:
‘If the United Kingdom would be swept aside and replaced by this single common tariff that would mean that goods coming into the United Kingdom from the Commonwealth, including the Colonies, would have to pay duty at the same rate as goods coming from any other country [that was] not a Member of the Customs Union, while goods from the Customs Union would enter free.
Judged only by the most limited United Kingdom interests, such an arrangements would be wholly disadvantageous’.
In October 1962, Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell made a now forgotten speech in which he pointed out the flaws in the argument for joining the E.E.C. that a report conducted by Sir Donald McDougall had determined after conducting a ‘close examination of the facts’.
McDougall concluded:
‘There is no really compelling economic argument for Britain’s joining [the E.E.C.] unless it is thought that, without being exposed to the blast of competition from the Continent, she will never put her house in order.’
In 1962 McDougall, who was an Oxford educated top Government economic advisor with a career that spanned decades from Churchill’s wartime Coalition Government in the 1940s to Edward Heath’s administration in the 1970s, determined that ‘There is no really compelling economic argument for Britain’s joining [the E.E.C.]’
Gaitskell also noted that in 1961, 16.7% of Britain’s exports went to the Common Market countries, 13.1% to the European Free Trade Association (E.F.T.A.) countries and a staggering 43% to the countries of the Commonwealth Preference System.
The U.K. would benefit little from trade with the E.E.C., compared to that with the Commonwealth.
So, it had been well established long before applying that there was no economic case for E.E.C. membership. Despite this, from the start of the European Project, Europhiles have utilised deceptions and distortions in order to advance their cause.
It has also been well established that Ted Heath had been briefed comprehensively by a senior civil servant before applying to join the E.E.C. that membership would entail the complete loss of the U.K.’s national sovereignty as the ultimate aim of the block was to create a political superstate (the United States of Europe) with all power centralised in Brussels (this was revealed to Heath in April 1971, just before entry, as shown in the recently released Foreign snd Commonwealth Office document F.C.O. 30/ 1048).
In 1971, just before Edward Heath took the U.K. into the E.E.C. without consulting either the electorate (in the first instance) or Parliament, a senior civil servant presented him with a dossier labelled ‘F.C.O. 30/ 1048’.
It unambiguously and expressly set out to Heath that the then European Economic Community (the E.E.C. became the E.U. in 1993) had the ultimate goal of economic, monetary and fiscal union, as well as a common foreign and defence policy, all of which constituted the greatest surrender of Britain’s national sovereignty since the Norman Conquest of 1066.
It also went on to state that ‘Community law’ (i.e. the laws and regulations made by the bloc and adjudicated solely by the European Court of Justice) would take precedence over that of the U.K.’s and that ever more power would pass from Parliament to the bureaucratic system centred in Brussels.
The dossier even accurately asserted that the increased role of Brussels in the lives of the British people would lead to a ‘popular feeling of alienation from Government’ (i.e. that the British public would resent being ruled from Brussels and that this would lead to ill feeling towards the British Government).
The biggest revelation was that the dossier also completely unambiguously stated that political union – the complete loss of the U.K.’s national sovereignty to a European superstate with all power centred in Brussels – was clearly the bloc’s ultimate aim.
The dossier was classified and kept secret from the the U.K. public for 30 years, thus hiding Heath’s duplicity.
More alarmingly and damningly, the dossier repeatedly actively welcomed the U.K.’s decline and Europe’s predominance. It acknowledged that the U.K. would in time become little more than a puppet state of Brussels, after ceding judicial and executive powers to the putative superstate.
However, instead of sounding alarm bells, the authors of the dossier warn ministers to hide the truth from the public. Added to this, damningly for Heath, and all those who kept quiet about the findings in the early 70’s, the dossier was locked away under Official Secrets Act rules for almost three decades.
The language employed in the dossier suggests repeatedly that the citizens of the U.K. aren’t intelligent enough to grasp the implications of joining the E.E.C. and that, what’s more, this stupidity could be used against them to hide the truth until it was essentially too late to do anything about it.
Again and again the dossier asserts that Britain’s Parliament will be sidelined and that, sooner rather than later, there will be a United States of Europe with a single currency.
So, why did Heath take the U.K. into the bloc, against the evidence presented in dossier F.C.O. 30/ 1048 on its highly dangerous potential to strip the U.K. of her sovereignty?
The U.K. was forced into the E.E.C. against clear evidence that it wasn’t in our best interests (politically RE sovereignty or economically) by a pro-European elite, without consulting either the electorate (initially) or Parliament.
Forty-six years later the disastrous effects predicted have come true and the case for leaving was watertight.
We were taken into the European Project in the full knowledge that it would lead to the U.K. being subsumed into a European superstate that would completely destroy our nationhood and leave us a mere province of a foreign state. Subterfuge and deception were employed by a pro-European political elite to force their will on the electorate. This should be kept in mind the next time Europhiles dismiss Brexit as being based on a ’tissue of lies’.
What’s more, the underhand way in which Ted Heath forced the legislation for the U.K. to join the then E.E.C. through its legislative stages in the Commons is very revealing about how Europhiles then and now operate.
The legislation was forced through Parliament and onto the statute book with minimal time for M.P.’s to scrutinise it. This was deliberate so as to prevent any serious examination of and debate on it and absolutely minimise any chance of its deficiencies and negative implications for the U.K. (such as the massive loss of sovereignty, amongst many others listed above) being discovered and revealed to the public.
This pattern of deception and underhand manoeuvring by the Europhiles in order to force their agenda on a public which they knew full well wouldn’t support if they became aware of its existence repeated with Brexit.
Boris Johnson’s really a Europhile who wanted the U.K. to stay in the E.U. at heart and always was. Many in his government also are. They only give public lip service to Brexit in order to garner public support. Added to this, just like their sneering elitist counterparts in the 1970s, they have no love for, or desire to preserve, our national sovereignty. They are internationalists (in all senses of the word) and secretly share the supranationalism of the E.U. In other words, they have no problem being subservient to an external power if that serves their purposes and furthers their ideas.
This is the reason that Johnson rushed the legislation to put the trade deal with the E.U. through Parliament with undue haste. He knew full well that it didn’t really return full sovereignty to the U.K. and that this very inconvenient fact (for him, the Europhile elite and their supporters in the wider public) would be discovered if any substantial time was given to study its details. Consequently, he rushed it through its legislative stages absolutely as fast as possible (in just one day before the transition period ended). He was just as underhand, manipulative and deceptive as his Europhile predecessors from the 1970s.
Machiavellian manipulation and deception has been a common tactic of supporters of the European Project from the beginning. They knew from the start that membership of the E.E.C./ E.C./ E.U. held no discernible economic benefits for the U.K. as their own studies and even the E.E.C. itself admitted from the outset, but they still pursued it.
They hid these very unsettling facts from the public and misrepresented the case for membership to them in the 1975 referendum, deceptively claiming that the U.K. was just entering a trading bloc, something the F.C.O. 30/ 1048 dossier had expressly and unambiguously proved to be false.
Forty years later this same pattern has repeated itself – underhand and extremely misleading tactics and out and out deception have been employed by the Europhile elite in order to cover up the fatal deficiencies in their argument.
History has repeated itself, again.
For more from Stephen Bailey please visit: https://ukunionism.wordpress.com/blog-2/
© 2021 Stephen Bailey
