Tim Montgomerie founded the website Conservative Home and is said to be the most influential Tory outside the cabinet. He is a keen Brexiter but not of the swivel eyed variety, usually he comes across as quietly spoken and thoughtful. So it was a surprise to see a tweet from him claiming the whole EU project was founded on a lie. He was born in 1970, which make him about three when we first joined under Edward Heath although the previous prime minister, Harold Wilson had also been discussing UK membership.
This is Montgomerie's tweet:
Ruth Davidson keeps saying Leave tell lies. The EU is one big lie. We were told we were joining just a common market. So false #BBCDebate— Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 (@montie) June 21, 2016
You would think he might know this assertion was simply adding to Leave's lies but apparently not. He has obviously accepted what he was told without question.
Another Twitter user who goes by the name Steve Analyst responded some weeks later with a huge thread of evidence showing Montgomerie was plain wrong - as most of us knew. His Twitter thread is below and it's well worth reading in full.
He includes newspaper articles and even a TV debate - this one from 1970 - chaired by Ludovic Kennedy and including a point made by a man who looks and sounds suspiciously like Michael Howard although I may be wrong:
And what about this from The Times in 1971:
February 13th, 1971: Heath “Politically, the challenge is to create a unity of action which will give our countries collectively that position in world affairs which individually is beyond our reach”. pic.twitter.com/plqrrbtjOB— Steve Analyst (@EmporersNewC) August 24, 2020
Or another from April 1971:
April 29th, 1971: Heath “We are confident that economic unity in Europe can be the foundation of a wider political unity in Europe. That would mean a growing political influence in world affairs…” pic.twitter.com/XhahwoQzss— Steve Analyst (@EmporersNewC) August 24, 2020
And another video clip:
The whole thread is carefully researched and shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was a political union as well as economic. Indeed we left EFTA - a purely trading union - in order to join the EEC which was a political union. Even the original Treaty of Rome talked about ever-closer union.
Steve Analyst relies mainly on quotes from The Times but Richard Corbett had a blog post from 2015 which shows a headlne and quotes from The Daily Mail leader of 4 June 1975 which referred explicitly to the goal of “political union”, saying that this was no “dark secret”. It asked whether the anti-Europeans hadn’t been listening “to the visionary words of European leaders for the past twenty-five years?"
Corbett quotes Harold Wilson from 1967 presenting the reasons for British membership of the EEC:
"Whatever the economic arguments, the House will realise that, as I have repeatedly made clear, the Government’s purpose derives above all from our recognition that Europe is now faced with the opportunity of a great move forward in political unity and that we can — and indeed must — play our full part in it."
He also gives part of a 1971 White Paper which spoke of:
“an ever closer union among European peoples”, an objective “to which this country can wholeheartedly subscribe”. It said that “what is proposed is a sharing and enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest”; “Europe united would have the means […] which Europe divided has lost”.
Corbett went on:
The Sun (leader, 4 June 1975) warned against pulling out of “the circle of unity”, calling on people to vote not just for increasing trade, but “YES — FOR A FUTURE TOGETHER”. It added “We cannot afford to be half-hearted about Europe”. In another piece, it declared: “We are all Europeans now”!
The Daily Telegraph opined that defence, foreign affairs and economics must all be harnessed to the task of strengthening Europe”. It, too, said that a referendum “was wrong”, but that it at least enabled “the British people to consciously re-dedicate to European integration […] to add their impetus and inspiration to the great work”.
This blog has a link to the 1975 leaflet sent to every household which on page five, set out the reasons for joining and trade was only one of five - and not even the most important one. The NO to the EEC campaign also sent their own leaflet and made all the arguments about loss of sovereignty and said the EEC sets out in stages to "merge Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other countries into a single nation."
It's hard to believe that anyone in Montgomerie's position doesn't know this but apparently he doesn't.
I don't post this to re-run the arguments but to show that our original membership wasn't based on any lies but a clear eyed vision of the reality of our position in the early 1970s. Our power in the world was declining while the EEC's was growing and becoming a real force. We had created EFTA as a counterweight to the EEC but it was obviously just a watered down version of what everyone could see the EEC was developing into.
Politicians on both sides knew and understood the sovereignty arguments and they were fully aired beforehand. These were no secrets or lies when we joined - but there have been many since and the worst of them were told by the Leave campaign.
Let us never forget that.
