Market matters
Sir: It seems incredible that a British Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, like the offical Conservative and Liberal parties, proposes to make us pay, indefinitively, foreigners' taxes for them.
It is a notorious fact that tax frauds and evasions are rampant on the Continent compared with Britain. In Italy, for example, it is said that Italians fraudulently evade two-thirds of their taxation, including the money required for their regional development. Yet our Brussels masters see fit to award Italy four times Britain's "share" of the EEC regional aid. And in his renegotiations Mr Wilson did not obtain 1 p more for the Common Market frauds and tax evasions which affect the EEC Budget — and now our own.
Staying in this Common Market means a treble loss to the Exchequer: not only the loss due to continental corruption; but also the consequential massive tax evasions here as people learn they have to pay Europeans' taxes for them, and then the expenditure on more income tax and bureaucratic staff as the Common Market frauds and evasions inevitably become socially acceptable here.
One can understand the Norwegian parents who voted "no" to save their children from Common Market competition. One cannot understand Prime Ministers and Chancellors who recommend ordinary people to support their Common Market without revealing that taxpayers, ratepayers, and pensioners alike will be paying foreigners' taxes for them.
A. V. Risdon Brook Lands, 75 Winslade Road, Sidmouth, Devon Sir: Chris Jones was quite right in his article 'The Sovereign State' in your issue of April 5, to say that the CAP of the Common Market was conceived in Hitler's Germany. The article will probably be received in the pro-Market camp with a lot of squeals.
We seem to be living in an age in which news has been superseded by propaganda, and education by brainwashing and indoctrination. From the advertising used to sell shoddy goods, to the classrooms in our schools designed to make our children into obedient robots of a federal European state, the art of persuasion has displaced the simple virtue of truth, The masters who rule out of the shadows, using as puppets those who govern us, to drive this nation of ours even further down the path of socialism, they seek to gain control of your mind — for with that, they will rule you in all things. And one of the great fortresses of the mind, which they must capture if they are to change your destiny, is your national identity and patriotism.
Anti-Marketeers, for example, are labelled as either of the extreme reactionary Right or of the extreme Left wing of the Labour Party.
The apologists of the Common Market still deny that remaining in the Community would not involve any loss of essential sovereignty, and thereby deliberately ignoring articles 189 and 224 of the Treaty of Rome. They also seem to have forgotten the words of their great champion, Sir Con O'Neill, who at a Stamp Memorial Lecture on November 14, 1972, actually admitted the contrary. He said: "It seemed to me in no way surprising that the attack by critics in Parliament on the EEC Bill concentrated, in an almost exclusive degree, on the consitutional aspect and the way in which membership of the Community would impinge upon and diminish the unique powers of our Parliament; for that is indeed the most revolutionary consequence of our entry, as well as the one most directly affecting Parliament and its members.
Then there are those pro-Marketeers who argue that the late Sir Winston Churchill was also in favour of a united Europe. I am sorry to say that the facts do not substantiate this. The other day, in my local public library, I came across a book entitled Europe Unite, edited by Randolph Churchill. The book contained a series of speeches on India and other colonial and Commonwealth affairs and only one or two on the issue of Europe.
I do, however, not believe that Churchill was in favour of anything like the Rome Treaty, aiming for the United States of Europe. My belief is based on a speech he delivered in the House of Commons on May 11, 1953. This is what Churchill said: "We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked—but not comprised. We are associated, but not absorbed, and should 'European' statesmen address us and say: 'Shall we speak for thee?' We should reply, 'Nay sir,' for we dwell among our own people.'
John Harmsen 50 Mulberry Close, North Drive, London SW16
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