24 MARCH 1979, Page 4

Political commentary

End of the ortolan season

Ferdinand Mount

The noise of the lawnmower is the sound of suburban summer. For millions of us, that throaty whirr is what the moan of doves was to Tennyson. It is with dismay yet without surprise that one learns that the Eurocrats have plans to deny us even this simple pleasure and silence the British lawnmower. The Commission has placed before the Council of Ministers a sinister proposal, 'COM (78) 387 Final', headed with ominous understatement LESS NOISY LAWN MOWERS. It is for tasks like this, apparently, that we send our most outstandingly able and thrusting young men to fritter their primes in Brussels.

There is, however, a way out for all true-born Englishmen. The 'indelible certificate' of noiselessness which the Eurocrats intend to stamp upon every lawnmower from Cork to Taormina 'would not be required for electrically powered lawn mowers, the cutting width of which is less than 30 cms.' Already at a secret workshop somewhere west of Walsall, sturdy Black Country craftsmen are doubtless working on a 29-cm-bladed electric mower which will make a noise that can shatter a greenhouse at a hundred yards.

On the other hand, I have always had some sympathy for the European Commission in its efforts, now backed by the European Court and accepted by the MOT, to compel British lorry-drivers to instal the tachograph, the 'spy in the cab'. This sympathy derives, it must be admitted, from an early Leslie Charteris story in which the Saint outwits a filthy profiteer who forces his lorry-drivers to work excessively long hours — the Saint in his heyday had a strong Gaitskellite side, his faith in the mixed economy being allied to support for government intervention on a broad front.

About the European Commission's report ISEC/B6/79 Protecting the Birds, it is harder to reach a sound conclusion. The average Man in the Bird Sanctuary may be delighted to learn that the unsporting French and Italians will no longer be allowed to shoot ortolan buntings. But one wonders why we should be permitted to go on banging away at the widgeon, let alone the capercailzie — which in terms of scale is like shooting at a flying Sealyham. The capercailzie, moreover, is inedible compared with the tasty ortolan. Is there a double standard here?

Some birds at any rate are protected. But we are not. Mr John Nott, Mrs Thatcher's trade spokesman, points out that we have been 'deluged by a wholly needless flow of Directives' from Brussles. 'We find ourselves apparently unprotected against a series of harmonisation proposals which are low or nonexistent on our list of priorities.' The machine — unlike our lawnmowers — just roars on unchecked. Who asked the Commission to muffle our Atcos and Flymos? By what process of political debate was it decided to rob us of our right to cheap and noisy mowers?

Mr Nott made a stir because he happened to speak at the very moment when Mrs Thatcher was telling the Prime Minister to be less abrasive in his dealings with the EEC. Great glee on the glee-starved Labour benches. Why can't the Tories make up their minds? Trust Honest Jim, the true-born Briton who will stand up for your interests against the wily foreigners. Europe is said to be Labour's secret election card. John Silk in's refusal to agree to any increase in food prices is the finest piece of patriotic stubbornness since Petain's 'us ne passeront pas' at Verdun — well, perhaps not Petain, isn't there somebody stubborn and British? The Tories, whose nerves, never very strong, always quaver when they are finally within sniffing distance of power, are genuinely dismayed by Mr Callaghan's apparent coup. Could Labour pull it off at the last moment by laying on a magnificent — and united — demonstration of antiEuropean feeling, perhaps by holding the general election on 7 June, the same day as the European elections?

'No' is a fairly safe answer to that. If Labour were to win, it would not be because of the unpopularity of the EEC. The Europe card looks less like the ace of trumps than the nine of clubs — not useless, but not strong enough to transform a poor hand. Mr Callaghan is easy to trip up on this issue. As with devolution, his motives are too transparent. It was, after all, he himself who, negotiated the formula which has resulted in Britain being the largest net contributor to the Common Agricultural Policy. And if Mr Silkin is able to freeze food prices this year, why didn't Labour freeze them last year and the year before that?

But, more important, the Common Market remains a low-ranking issue in most people's mind — suffering unpopularity certainly, but a vague misty kind of unpopularity which it would be hard to sharpen into any kind of substantial electoral advantage. Foreigners, like trade unions, may be generally disliked, but also like trade unions they are perceived as people who have it in their power to hurt us and so must be treated with a certain diplomacy. Jingoism of the Silkin-Callaghan sort is somewhat unconvincing, not least because it comes so late. Mr Heath's denunciation of these spoiling tactics may have been rather more effective because of his lifelong consistency. And anyway it is all so complicated. 'I always say, Doris, what you lose on the Deficiency Payments, you gain on the Monetary Compensation Amounts.' 'Too true, Ivy, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, as long as John Silkin refuses to devalue the Green Pound, we're on easy street and no mistake.' What is worrying is not the political impact in Britain of the row about farm prices— nor the argument inside the Council of Ministers. That is all healthy political conflict. The real worry is that, as John Nott says, each meeting of the Council of Ministers and too many acts of the Commission take us further and further away from the basic principles of free trade which inspired the Treaty of Rome. The huge tax-free salaries paid to the bureaucrats are apparently not enough to satisfy them. They feel compelled to make work for themselves — and work of a suitable magnificence. The outlawing of ortolan-shooting and noisy lawnmowers does not fulfil their vision of their role. Stories of broken bottles and broken hearts among the Eurocrats are legion. And all too many of the survivors — the sober ones, go va sans dire — are now coming back. Half a-dozen of the likely Tory Euro-MPs are past or present members of the Commission staff; others still are old Brussels hands in one way or another. How can these ambitious people be expected to scrutinise and control the activities of the Commission with the proper vigilance? On the contrary, their natural instinct, their own interest in self-aggrandisement will be to expand the Community's budget and to add volumes to the body of its laws. The proper vigilance Is one which asks of each proposal: does the Community need to make regulations 09 this question or to demand taxpayers money for this purpose? Does the Conmunity need to have a view on this at all Many of the critics of the Common Agricultural Policy — Mr Callaghan and Mr Heath to name but two— want to reduce the subsidies to dud French and German far mers only in order to increase the subsidies to dud British factories. The truly 'coMmunautaire' attitude would be to phase out the lot of them and to sweep away exchange controls too — and to leave us with the nostalgic chug of our lawnmowers. There do exist a few Tories like Mr Nott NO° believe in a genuinely liberal CommunitY, but they are outnumbered by those Who visualise Europe as a high-speed gravy train crammed with goodies for their con stituents. The Gaullists in France and both sides in Germany still depend on the sur, port of the farmers, so the gravy train wl,h roll on for several years yet. But that is no reason why Mrs Thatcher should not see to it that the Tory delegation to the European Assembly is not only 'pro-European' but also vigilant and sceptical. And they need 8 tough egg to lead them if they are not to become isolated from the people who sent them there.