So, you may be aware that the UK Government, under pressure from an increasingly vocal eurosceptic tide and mindful of 4 million people voting for UKIP in our recent election, is legislating for a referendum on membership of the EU, although the Prime Minister intends to campaign for the UK to stay in. Just context, anyway.
There was a referendum on UK membership of the EEC (EU predecessor) in 1975, and one of the many eurosceptic claims I see bandied around on discussion boards is the claim that the voters of 1975 were told the ‘Common Market’ was ‘just a trade union’, and that ergo that victory of YES in that referendum is invalid, as it is nothing of the sort.
There’s a separate issue here of whether the Government or the voters anticipated or were honest about the political sides of the EEC becoming more integrated and significant as they are in the present EU, but for now I want to address this chief claim which seems pretty obviously bogus to me: if the EEC was sold as ‘just’ a trade union, why would there have been such controversy over membership in the first place, leading to a referendum?
I’m fairly sure such a bald-faced lie in a public vote would have been rapidly leapt on by the eurosceptics of the day. Can anyone who was a voter of the time remember the debates and issues? Or find articles or quotes elaborating on the questions about membership?
On the other hand, perhaps I am mistaken, and both the Yes and No camps of the day both kept quiet on the issue!
The European Economic Community (as it was then called) wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity to UK voters in 1975; they had been members for two years by then, with a lengthy period of public debate (but no referendum) preceding their entry in 1973.
I don’t remember whether the EEC was sold as “just a trade union”; it was frequently called “the Common Market” at the time, so that may well have been a common perception on both sides of the referendum debate. I’m sure if the ‘No’ campaign had felt that the EEC was being mischaracterised by the ‘Yes’ campaign they would have said so.
Of course, the EEC was a very different creature in 1975. This was more than a decade before the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, the Amsterdam Treaty, the Nice Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty. So, if it was represented at the time as something very different from what it is today, that’s what you’d expect.
On the issue of whether the 1975 vote was “invalid”, I suppose you could argue that the British people have never been asked to vote on whether they want to be part of a Union like the present EU, and that the 1975 vote wasn’t about that, and so doesn’t give a political mandate for membership.
Still, this is a stance which will obviously piss off other member states. The time to secure a political mandate for participation in an enlarged or extended or otherwise changed EU is when you are acceding to the treaty which will effect the enlargement/extension/change. Those other members states who consider a popular vote to be either legally or politically necessary hold one at this point, as part of the process by which they ratify the treaty concerned. The UK, by contrast, has already ratified the treaties, and has only subsequently decided to hold a referendum. This behaviour obviously raises the question of how much political reliance can be placed on a British ratification.
No-one *could *anticipate exactly where it might all lead, by definition. There was no master plan. There was an agreement that it was better to do as much as possible together, and what that would mean in practice would be a matter for constant negotiation and decision-making between the member states.
It was true that the pro campaigners of the day were at pains to stress that some of the suggestions made by the no campaigners as logical implications of the principles of the Treaty of Rome were wildly off the mark, and that the UK wasn’t committed by joining to anything more than the common market and adjustment to the common agricultural and fisheries policies.
But I had no difficulty understanding that what we were joining was the beginning of an ongoing relationship, in which there might well be proposals for new forms of social and economic integration (ideas for a common currency were already being floated at the time). I also understood that those proposals would be considered for approval by member state governments and parliaments (and at that time, any new development required unanimity among them all).
Now, you could say that there was a lack of democratic input in the internal arrangements we made as a country for how we took our decisions on all the different developments in the relationship, or a lack of widely understood debate about those developments as they came forward. You could argue that successive UK governments should have had a referendum on every new treaty that put those developments into effect, rather than rely on the sovereignty of parliament.
But the fact is they didn’t; virtually no-one presented any sort of argument about our own institutional arrangements at any general election until 1992 and the Maastricht Treaty, and then the Referendum Party (as it then was) got nowhere.
And what is dishonest now is to talk as though it’s all Them imposing laws on Us, when the argument is really about how you define Us.
But you’re quoting the preamble there, not the operative provisions. The Treaty of Rome didn’t itself bring any of that about, and didn’t bind any signatory to accept or accede to any measure that might later be proposed to bring any of that about. Yes, the EEC was inspired by a Grand Vision, and everybody knew this. But the referendum wasn’t about committing to realise the Grand Vision; it was about remaining in the Common Market.
The context of the time was different: post the 1973 oil shock, Britain seemingly permanently enmired in either balance of payments or inflation crises (or both), a strong sense of national decline and Europe the only obvious safe haven.
Wilson had secured some changes to appease his left, Cameron is now trying to do the same to appease his right (but has cack-handedly put himself into a much weaker position vis-a-vis the other governments he needs to persuade to help him).
Oh I have no doubt that your description is exactly how it was put to people but are you seriously suggesting that those words, preamble or not, give* no * clue as to the end goals?
This is exactly how the EU has found itself at the current point.
No single treaty by itself get countries to sign up directly for the end visions but bit by bit they introduce elements that inextricably take countries down that path. A path that has been explicit from the outset. Both in the words used in the treaties and the words used by the European project architects.
Classic “frog boiling”. If you dig in to the writings and speech of those founding fathers it was very clearly their expressed intent to pursue exactly this staged, ratcheting up, treaty by treaty, towards full integration right from the start, using the “crises” that arise as impetus for further integration. (Monnet’s “chain reaction” theory) This was no secret then and certainly wasn’t at the time of the UK referendum.
Whether it was publicised or not is another matter entirely.
In the original debate on accession to the Common Market, Harold Wilson announced that he could have got a better deal for Britain, and on these cynical grounds led his MPs into the ‘No’ lobby. When his party returned to office in 1974 Wilson set about renegotiating the terms of entry and the people were asked to vote on the result, with the implication that Britain would leave if they voted ‘No’ (the referendum result was not legally binding). The changes were mostly cosmetic, as in truth, the deal Britain had was about the best that was going to be offered. Privately civil servants had concluded by the 1970s that Britain’s economic prospects were so dire that it was necessary to join the Common Market on almost any terms, no matter how onerous.
Of course it was publicised; it’s right there in the Preamble to the Treaty of Rome. You quoted it yourself.
My point is not that there was no Grand European Project underway. My point is (a) there was a European Project under way; (b) everybody knew it; (c) the Common Market was not the fruition or end-game of the European Project but merely one of its outcomes; (d) everybody knew that too; (e) the referendum did not ask the British people whether they wished to endorse the European Project, but merely whether they wished to continue participating in the Common Market; and (f) everybody knew that too.
If the Common Market was to develop further, that would require further treaties. (Which of course happened.) In the referendum the UK was not binding itself, either legally or politically, to accede to any further treaties that might be proposed; they could take decisions about that as and when the Treaties were proposed. And they could, if they chose, have further referendums about those treaties. (Which of course didn’t happen. Because the UK chose for it not to happen.)