Our Man was right
Sir: Fascinating though it was, Simon Hef- fer's article on 'The turning of the Tories' (13 June) surprised me in one respect.
'All through the referendum campaign,' he wrote, 'the word from Our Man in Copenhagen was that ratification was a foregone conclusion. The Foreign Office had never, in the six months since Maas- tricht, entertained the prospect that the people of any EEC country would go against the wishes of the European political establishment. The word from Copenhagen reinforced this complacent view.' I have no idea what the Foreign Office thought, nor what the telegrams from Den- mark to England were saying. But a week before the referendum took place, I had a long conversation in Copenhagen with one of Our Men — and far from being compla- cently certain that the ratification was a foregone conclusion, he insisted that there was in fact a serious risk of a no. No other diplomat or government official I spoke to took the idea so seriously.
Tim Jackson
The Independent Brussels Bureau, Rue Philippe Le Bon 15, Brussels 1040, Belgium.
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