Still debating

Sir: Your readers might be intrigued by the mysterious falsification of statistics in the British European, referred to in your leading article published on October 16. In July we claimed that the pension for a retired Dutch couple was £15 a week. In our September issue we corrected this figure to £16.50 per week, following a recent increase in Dutch pensions.

As you refer to my midEuropean background in Skinflint's City Diary, your readers might be interested in some further facts. I was born in Poland, but came to this country thirty-four years ago, at the age of fourteen, not as a refugee, but to complete my education. I subsequently applied and became a British subject, and served my country during the 1939/45 war in the Royal Air Force. I have twice been a Parliamentary candidate, in the 1964 and 1966 General Elections, and have been an elected member of my local authority since 1959.

E. Wistrich Director, The European Movement, 78 Chandos House, London SW1

Sir: As a footnote to the 'Great Debate' and, perhaps a prelude to the battle that is about to begin. one cannot but fail to be amused at the abject failure of the European Movement's campaign to get us lined-up in favour of entry into the EEC. This was best summed-up in one of their own 'comic cuts' in our local paper which appeared under the heading of 'Common Market Comment.'

Refering to a NOP survey they commissioned they found that 80

per cent of those questioned said that they did not have "adequate

information" on the issue. What an

apt epitaph to all their high pressure brain-washing. Perhaps

the Government should ask for their share of the contribution to be returned in view of their failure to deliver the goods.

J. Towler

25 Moseley Wood Lane, Cookridge.

Sir: 'A Conservative states on Lord Carrington's authority, that "no defence politics are implied by EEC membership" (October 23). However, Mr Heath, in his important Harvard lectures of March 1967 (printed as Old World, New Horizons, 1970) stated that "I do not myself think that defence will be excluded indefinitely." In an introduction to the book Mr Heath

said that it still represented his views. Still more significantly, on September 17 this year, he called in Zurich for a common foreign policy (as well of course as common policies on most other matters) and added, quite logically, "it seems to me inevitable that progress towards a common foreign policy will be accompanied by increasing co-operation in defence."

As 'A Conservative' says, cooperation on standardization and in other ways has gone as far as it can, so that this further co-operation, mentioned in the context of a common foreign policy, can only mean a common defence force.

What will the purpose of this force be? The reds-under-the-bed, save-Christian-Europe band of the John Biggs-Davison variety will answer, "to defend UE against Russia and China." Now, the EEC was devised by people like Speak and Blum, and will include 50,000,000 Moslems from Turkey, so we need not suppose that it was designed with any anti-Communist or Christian aims. In any case, even if the French or Italians could fight against anyone, which is doubtful, the quarter or third of their population which is Communist will assuredly not countenance them fighting Communism. Nor will Brandt's Germany, even if Germans were willing to fight East Germans, who are for many pur

poses members of the EEC. We must recall that Mr Heath in his UN speech stated that the major wars of the future would be civil wars. Also, most or all Western forces today are trained primarily in combating internal subversion.

We have seen in the US Civil War, the Weimar Republic, the Swiss war of the Sonderbund, and more recently in the Congo, Nigeria and Pakistan, that federations of disparate elements end up with a massacre of the dissenting minority. Now which nation in the EEC Mr Heath hopes for will be the 'odd man out in every way, and with a population hostile to the EEC into which it has been merged?

I hope that I am mistaken, but I

can only conclude that the purpose of the future EEC army is not to keep the Russians out — the EEC may well be socialist or communist itself — but to keep us in, and that the last chapter in our island history will be a war of extermination on the Nigerian or Pakastani pattern.

David Lazarus

124 Gladstone Park Gardens, NW2

Sir: Having spilt much statistical ink in proving that "most of the UK population still — thanks to lower food prices — enjoy as high real standards as any in the Six," Douglas Jay (October 23) fairly admitted that "this is naturally not immediately relevant to the question whether the UK should join the Six or not. . . ." If so, why bother?

More seriously, statistics can no more prove the case for entry than disprove it — particularly now that the international monetary crisis has thrown all international statistical yardsticks, let alone forecasts, into the melting pot. Nor, with respect, will your own aspersions on those who "seek now to subvert the nation's will and to destroy the nation's identity." Has the will of Wales or the identity of Scotland — to go no further back — been subverted or destroyed by the United Kingdom?

The fact, whether you or Mr Jay like it or not, is that the EEC is a historic reality which, if It had existed earlier, could have prevented the spilling of much blood and treasure in the past, and that it is in the interest of Britain and other like-minded countries to make this reality a power for peace and prosperity in the future.

W. Grey 12 Arden Road, Finchley, London

Sir: After an intensive brainwashing campaign and considerable 'arm-twisting,' at the eleventh hour Mr Heath decided on a free vote. This will not exonerate an unmandated Government if it subsequently submits the country and Commonwealth to a suicidal surrender of sovereignty by signing the irrevocable Treaty of Rome — or relieve it of the political consequences.

L. M. Hopkins Wick Crest, Devizes, Wilts

Sir: I think that many British people who can remember the last two wars and who have lived and worked in the Far East would put the issue as follows:— (I) Europe comprises all the countries between the Ural Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean;

(ii) The question is not whether Britain should "join Europe," for the present division of Europe makes that impossible; (iii) the question is whether Britain should now permanently merge with six countries which are all in Western Europe, or whether, as China's

nuclear capacity groW$ Britain should be free to pie an independent role in making, it easier for the countries 01 Eastern Europe, including Russia, to look westwards rather than eastwards for friends and allies.

A. H. P. HwnphreY