There seems to be a common myth
that those of us who are fundamentally opposed to our continued membership of
the European Union, do so because we are afraid of the bigger world outside of
our own national borders and that we are somehow incapable or unwilling to
accept that the wider world has fundamentally moved on from the period when
Britain still had a vast territorial Empire that stretched across the world;
and on which the sun never set. And so the same argument goes, Britain's
Eurosceptics are not only insular, but also isolationists, who would quite
happily turn our backs on all of the benefits that a truly globalised economy
might bring to our country, in return for living in a Britain that resembles the
best bits of the 1950's and 60's.
It's all stuff and nonsense of
course, as that presupposes we'd all like to be living without our improved
standards of living, our coloured televisions, personal computers, tablet
devices and mobile phones, which of course we wouldn't. The very idea that
those of us, who are opposed to the concept of a European political union, have
some sort of rose-tinted view of Britain prior to us joining the Common Market,
is not only ridiculous, but patently untrue.
Britain during the 1970's was
often a pretty grim place to be, what with a massive decline in our industrial
base, high unemployment, rampant inflation, power cuts and wildcat trade union
strikes virtually every other week, all of which contributed to us being seen
as the "sick man of Europe". However, let's not be completely misled
about this, even though our entry into what was then known as the European
Economic Community undoubtedly helped to stabilise and regenerate certain areas
of our national economy, through the various trade mechanisms, ultimately it
was sovereign British governments and not the foreign based EEC, that resolved
most of the social, economic and industrial ills that were blighting the
country at the time.
Even though you can continue to
argue indefinitely about the causes of Britain's industrial decline, whether or
not it was the bosses or the unionised workers who ultimately brought about industrial ruin, either way, the
almost wholesale de-industrialisation of Britain was carried out by a sovereign
British parliament, albeit in conjunction and with financial aid from the EEC.
Similarly, virtually all of the Trade Unions legislation enacted to limit the
immense financial and human power of
unionised labour in the UK was also initiated by a sovereign British
parliament, elected by the British people to both regulate and restrict the
enormous social, economic and industrial influence of the Trade Unions
Movement.
The point is that the EEC was
never in any way responsible for fixing the multitude of social, economic and
industrial problems that were affecting Britain during the 1970's despite what
the most avid supporters of the European Union might choose to claim. Most of
this country's ills were in fact "fixed" by a strong and independent
sovereign British parliament, which consisted of elected British
representatives who were finally prepared to bring the full force of their
executive powers to bear, in order to fix an assortment of social, economic and
industrial issues that had been allowed to fester for so long, that they were
in danger of destroying the entire country. Let's not forget that Britain
joined the EEC in 1973, had a referendum on our continuing membership in 1975
and yet large-scale industrial disputes were still raging in 1984/5, some ten
years after we had first joined the supposed customs union, so any claim that
the EEC/EU has been responsible for bringing peace, love, stability or even
prosperity in its immediate wake is fanciful at best.
One of the other great myths
surrounding our membership of the EEC/EU is that the other 27 member states
have not, would not and will not continue to trade with Britain, were we to put
ourselves outside of the customs union by deliberately leaving the club. Then
of course there's the added threat to the estimated two millions British
ex-pats who live, work, or who have retired to other member states, whose
entire position would be brought into question were the UK to willingly
withdraw from its membership of the EEC/EU. Clearly, to follow the EU
supporters argument to its logical conclusion then, prior to 1973, Britain
didn't trade with the likes of France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy,
Spain, Greece, the Netherlands or Portugal, we didn't sell anything to them and
they didn't sell anything to us? In a similar fashion, prior to 1973, there
were no Britons living, working or safely retired to any of those European
nations, nor were there any French, Germans, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards,
Greeks, Dutchmen or Portuguese living, working, or safely retired to the UK?
Now I could be wrong, but I
rather suspect that foreigners of all descriptions and nationalities have been
living, working and residing in the various countries of the European Union for
hundreds of years, without the need for a treaty or binding agreement to allow
them to do so. Likewise, Britain and most other major European states have been
happily trading goods with one another for hundreds, if not thousands of years,
yet still didn't need an overarching or restrictive international treaty to
allow them to do so. Ancient Britain was known to be trading with a number of
Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries prior to the Roman invasion of Britain
in the first century; and yet we managed to do that without the so-called
"benefits" that are attached to our membership of the modern day EU.
Fundamentally, people deal with people, trader deals with trader, countries
deal with other countries, very often without a single word being written down
on paper, let alone the tens of millions of words that the various EU treaties
have involved.
The very idea that German,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish or any other foreign consumers or
manufacturer would refuse to continue purchasing British made goods, just
because they happened to originate from outside of the European Union's self
imposed tariff boundary is quite frankly ridiculous, given that we all continue
to consume American, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Taiwanese made
products every single day. After all, it's not even as if British manufacturers
and producers are regularly supplying the sort of cheap tat, that might be
produced elsewhere in the world, but for the most part are actually supplying
the sorts of high-end luxury items that Britain is renowned for. British exports,
be they financial, industrial, agricultural, aeronautical, automotive, fashion
or petrochemical are generally some of the very best products in the world, so
the claim that global consumers would simply stop buying them, just because
Britain was no longer in the EU is an infantile suggestion.
As for Britain's global influence
being diminished by an EU exit, well that's yet another myth perpetrated by
those pro-EU'ers who would have us stay shackled to the project regardless of
any disaster that might befall it, now or in the future. Unfortunately, it gets
very tiresome having to endlessly repeat the facts that Britain is not only one
of the largest economies on the planet, but also has some of the best funded
and militarily capable armed forces in the world. It is a permanent member of
the United Nations Security Council, has been a founding member of virtually
all of the world's most important international organisations, has a diplomatic
network built up over decades and is a central member of the Commonwealth of
Nations. It can boast historic links to virtually every continent on the globe
and enjoys healthy diplomatic and trade relationships with nearly every nation
of the English speaking world, so quite how anyone can suggest that Britain lacks
global influence, let alone requires our membership of the European Union to
somehow bolster it, is just beyond parody.
The truth is of course that those
who would caution us against withdrawal from the EU are the real isolationists,
the real Little Europeans, who would have us turn our face against the wider
world, to concentrate instead on reserving our place in the limited, finite
marketplace that is western continental Europe. They would have us settle for a
potential market of 500 million people, rather than the billions of potential
consumers who inhabit other parts of the world, many of whom reside in the
newly emerging markets in China, India, Russia and South America. Why on earth
would we want to cut ourselves off from the billions of people in these
regions, simply to concentrate on the millions who happen to live within the
artificially created borders of the European Union?
Might it be because it is the
Little Europeans themselves who lack the confidence, the foresight, the
confidence to strike out into the big wide world; and it is actually they who
are busily looking back to a world of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's, when the
idea of a single unified Europe was being set against an almost common memory
of a devastating military conflict. Is it also perhaps that the likes of
Kenneth Clarke, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Jean Claude Junker,
Angela Merkel and all of those others Europhiles who would have us become good
"Europeans" are just small men and women trying to inflate their own
personal egos and political legacies, by creating what is in effect their own
small pond, in which they can appear to be much, much bigger? There is an
argument to be made therefore that if anyone is turning their backs on the
wider world, it is the likes of Kenneth Clarke, David Cameron, Ed Miliband,
Nick Clegg and their associated Europhile followers, the very people who will
campaign for the UK to say YES to remaining as a member of that same backward
looking, insular, isolationist and anti-global customs union.
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