We had fought a good fight

Ge°rge Gale A Year ago, on 5 June 1975, we voted in the referendum on the Common Market. In rnanY ways it feels much longer ago: our concern then, whether we should stay in or get out, was immediately replaced by our ever-present concern, whether we shall survive or not. Looking back, I find myself marveiling at the luxury of the choice we had. This is not the time to rehearse old argualkerits, although I do not suppose many of t "IPse of us who opposed British entry and Urged the public to vote No will have changed our minds. Certainly I have no regrets for the part I p!ayed in the No camPaign, except that we lost. We knew, most of us, that we were bound to lose once it became clear that Harold Wilson and his Cabinet were determined to secure a Yes vote. There was no way in which 'fle Government could be defeated. We 'night believe we had the capacity to win the argument ; but there was no way for us to win tCle battle. We were, and right from the begianing we felt ourselves to be, the under

d

ogs and the poor relations. We were kicking against the establishment : we had no busi12ess to behave as we did, and in all manner of lash ions this was made clear to us. We were aISO, very much, the amateurs up against the Professionals, or at teast, this is how it felt to nte ti engaged for the first and probably last 0-111e. in my life in a political operation with , n"ticians. It was a most peculiar experience.

beW,.. hen a referendum became likely I let it th "own that I would be prepared to help in Ie No campaign, and at the beginning of eq't Year I had lunch with Alan Sapper, gen Fral secretary of ACCT and Christopher

rere..e ,

.mitn—Sapper of the extreme left, h.rere-Srnith an eccentric liberal solicitor and ri`ad of the Keep (or Get) Britain Out camriign. The host was Sapper and his union; rtie,, topic was how the campaign should be e2: as far as Press, television and radio were uncerned. This was to be the first of many Ineetings f for th or me, although it was just another dra e others. By February I had become into regular meetings, and the involiltneent acquired a momentum of its own. nrst half of last year now that I look at it seems to have been filled with comandee Meetings and arguments, with drafts evenre-drafts, with furious arguments and thro 12,1:ore furious frustrations. Looking of 46" MY diary, I find that at the beginning view arch I was one of those giving inter info' at the behest of the Central Office of of th'ination, to French journalists on behalf tooke'se, °PPosing British membership: this often Place at the Reform Club where, as thersas not, the pro-Marketeers would ga° soon had I become part of a political

arrangement, a propagandist : I had lost my virginity without knowing it, and without enjoying it, either. Not that I yelped or complained, although now, recollecting thtse endless meetings in a leaky basement room below Frere-Smith's offices in Upper Berkeley Street, or in Durrant's hotel, or in cornMince rooms at the House of Commons, I marvel at the work that was done—so much by so few and at the end to so little effect. ,

The anti-Marketeers were—still are—an odd bunch, held together by nothing but their conviction that British membership of the EEC was a mistake. The pro-Marketeers tended—still tend—to agree on most other political matters as well as on the Market. They were—are—socially and politically homogeneous. Not so the antis. They included the Communists and the National Front, for instance. One of the early debates —debate is the wrong■ word : it was much more of a running wrangle—concerned, naturally enough, money. It was known that government cash was to be provided. The existing anti-Market organisations—FrereSmith's Get Britain Out lot, the Common Market Safeguards campaigners and several others—all hoped to get some of the cash, if only to support their own rickety finances. But it was clearly advisable to prevent cash flowing to each organisation, if only to prevent squabbles and to prevent, also, the CP and the NF getting their hands on it. Thus we had to set up an umbrella organisation and we had to ensure that that umbrella kept its hands on the cash, rather than (as many wished) shelling it out. Under these political pressures the National Referendum Campaign, or NRC, came into being.

Its chairman from the beginning was the Conservative MP, Neil Marten. It is difficult to see who else could have done the job. His vice-chairmen were Frere-Smith and Douglas Jay; a young right-winger, Peter Clarke, was secretary; and the imperturbable Richard Kitzinger was treasurer. The NRC owed its name to Jack Jones and originally intended to change it ; but it could not agree on any other name, so NRC stuck.

The general theory of the anti-Marketeers was that the NRC would determine 'policy' and handle the cash, whereas its constituent organisations, especially the Get Britain Out lot, would provide the executive arm. This general theory was necessary to obscure the otherwise obvious fact that the anti-Marketeers were, apart from anything else, a bunch

of strident individualists, each paddling his own canoe on his own ego-trip. From this generalisation I make one exception : Bob Harrison came into the NRC from Jack Jones's T&GWU, and provided a centre of stability and commonsense without which the makeshift organisation (which also included Neil Marten's daughter Marie Louise and GBO's one time stalwart Ron

Leighton on the staff, as it werel and a collection of erratically visiting firemen like my

self) might well have foundered. My own

function, never properly defined (nothing, looking back, was ever properly defined, for

there was no one in charge, to do the defining), was to keep an eye on the publicity side of things: press, radio and television, not to mention pamphlets, broadsheets, advertisements, letters to editors, articles to be planted and so forth. On top of this there was the question of the 2000 words.

The 2000 words were what we had been informed the Government would permit us to use in the leaflet to be sent to every household in the land. It was thus our election address, and would be compared with the other side's 2000 words, and the Government's own statement. The drafting and re-drafting of the 2000 words alone involved dozens of meetings and innumerable arguments with, towards the end, separate meetings between myself and Douglas Jay on the one hand and myself and Neil Marten on the other. In the upshot our 2000 words were clearly better than the other side's, and this was due as much as anything to the skill of Danny Halperin, of the Daily Telegraph magazine, who came in at the last minute to do the final subediting and lay-out : a marvellous piece of voluntary effort. '

On Wednesday 23 April I got up at 6.30 to catch the train to London for a meeting on TV coverage at 9 am at the NRC headquarters in the Strand. At the time I was myself broadcasting each morning at ten and time was short. I cannot remember what we talked about, but I noted at the time: Neil Marten delayed and fiddled and meandered. An appalling piece of chairmanship. Later, Bob Harrison told me he thought Neil was 'getting better'. My uncharitable comment may have been justified : Neil Marten was not a particularly good chairman. But, as I've said, he was the only man for the job, being a central Tory who was capable of getting along with Douglas Jay, the trade unions and the wilder fringes of the left. The work he did during the first months of last year was stupendous, and it is not at all surprising that at times he appeared indecisive. Later that day Bob Harrison joined me at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, along with Ken Little, a BBC television producer. We discussed the broadcasting situation: what to do about the 'party politicals' each side had been offered. These were considered to be of vital importance, and it had become quite clear to me that the content and scope of the programmes could not possibly be de

termined in great committee meetings.

Bob Harrison briefed me on the morning meeting. Ken Little and I started planning programmes. We needed to have enough planned to get endorsement at the ACTT's meeting tomorrow, of all people interested in the programmes, and then to force it through the NRC on Monday. We agreed to 'have no politicians on the first programme; to get rid of all the obligatory 'names' on the second; to have the third regionalised; and to have the fourth fronted by Michael Foot and Enoch Powell.

We had no money. The NRC had decided to spend almost all its government cash on press advertising. This was sensible if only that once that decision had been taken there was hardly any money left to be spent on anything else. £3000 was to be set aside for the four television 'slots' and the additional radio programmes. In the event we spent a little over £2000, which must have been the cheapest television and radio campaign ever produced. The lack of cash determined the format. We were criticised for lack of sophistication; but sophistication was far beyond our means. The programmes eventually were presented by Paul Johnson, Patrick Cosgrave and Sally Vincent, all of whom risked professional ostracism for appearing on the 'wrong' side, and written and produced largely by Ken Little, Paul Johnson and myself. The radio programmes, which I think were brilliantly done, were produced by Jon Snow and Ed Boyle, both then with London Broadcasting. Their cost was nil. I mention this because I do not think people know how much purely voluntary skilled work went into the anti-Market effort. The other side had very considerable funds at their disposal and were able to pay professionals to do their work. Apart from the camera crew and Miss Vincent, none of those involved in the production and presentation of the television and radio programmes received or expected a penny piece; and, while I am now praising our volunteers, mention must also be made of the cartoonist Peter Clark, whose work we used in all the TV programmes and whose energy and output was prodigious. The BBC team, led by producer Margaret Douglas, who actually put the stuff together, performed, I thought, wonderfully.

But all this lay ahead. On 23 April all that had happened was that Neil Marten had won the toss to decide which set of TV and radio slots to, pick, and had decided, rightly (but after some hesitation) to bat on TV last. He wanted to tell the other side straight away of his decision. I said 'Don't tell them what we've decided until the last minute'. I think Neil, and others, suspected that I was prepared to play too dirty for their taste. In fact Paul Johnson and I cooked up several tricks for what Paul called our 'dirty tricks department'; but I think none of them was actually deployed. The politicians wouldn't give us permission.

The other side, needless to say, had no such scruples, as I discovered. They alerted the Independent Broadcasting Authority to

the fact that my name appeared in long lists of patrons and supporters on the Get Britain Out and the Common Market Safeguards letter-headings, and I was summoned to explain myself. They wanted me to write to the organisations asking that my name be removed, but this I refused to do. saying that if I did the press might find out and both the IBA and myself would end up looking silly. This argument prevailed. I was, however, in effect forbidden to make any public statements about the Common Market, and had to cancel meetings.

At this time, too, there was a great fuss about the appointment of a Press Officer for the NRC, whose tiny staff was not at all suited to deal with the constant barrage of press inquiries and demands being made of them. Various names were suggested, including that ofJohn Allen. Frere-Smith was dead against Allen, apparently on the grounds that he lunched frequently with the 'opposition' in the Reform Club. Will Camp telephoned me at home, pressing the claims of John Allen and I eventually agreed to go strongly for him. He was duly appointed, amid considerable dissension which his subsequent arrival did not entirely dissipate. John Allen is someone who knows his way around, and this he made clear to people he thought didn't.

1 should explain the way thecampaign was being run. The NRC campaign headquarters, in effect directed by Bob Harrison, was at Walter House, in the Strand : a couple of rooms on the top floor. Regular meetings, of what Neil Marten called his '0' group took place there, subject to overall control from the full NRC committee which met at the House of Commons. The GBO people had their own offices in the Upper Berkeley Stieet basement, where the ceiling continually threatened to fall in, and on one occasion did. There was also a press and research office in the Spectator office at 99 Gower Street, lent by the then editor and proprietor, Harry Creighton, who himself was actively engaged in the campaign, although fiercely intolerant of the longer-drawn-out committee meetings. And at 55 Park Lane, this time through the kindness of Sir Ian McTaggart, there were further offices. Additionally. some of the trade unions were very active, particularly the ASTMS. There was a good deal of mutual jealousy and distrust, not all of it unjustified. Some of this may be read between the lines of the following necessarilY censored excerpts from the diary I occasionally kept : 'Monday 28 April. I 2-ish to NRC "0" group, for broadcasting discussion. We effectively got the scheme through, with marginal alterations. Meeting went on till 2.10 pm. A fuss about a press officer. Afternoon: went through the leaflet drafts: did four Jobs, Food, Trade and the Alternative. Evening—House of Commons: full NRC committee. Endorsed broadcasting plans with hardly any discussion, thank God. Meeting degenerated into endless bickering about the leaflets ...'

'Tuesday 29 April. Chap claiming to be from the Economist phoned, wanting I° know what the IBA had been saying to me• suspect opposition up to dirty tricks again . • • Taxi to meet Ken Little in "Stocks" in Finch

ley Road. Ken tells me the BBC ground rules for the TV broadcast : no filming, onlY one studio, all v. mean. We'll have to hire film crew. We reckon £2000 will do, and agree to ask NRC for £3000. Then taxi to Liverpool Street. Just made it. Taxis today cost £5 plus. It can't be worth it, except fort sheer joy if, against everything, we win •

'This morning after radio programme t° the Strand for the "0" group. Neil Marten there. Already the £3000 approved. Neil wanted to go. We kept him talking about press officer until he'd more or less agreed. (NB last night he'd telephoned me about the leaked 2000 words with the suggestion that we, in NRC, should ban the release of the full version of our stuff, except to the Telegraph, which had the leak, thinking, he said, that we would therefore get a second lot of publicity the following day. I told him that was balls and would never work) ...'

'Thursday 15 May. Typical cock-uP. We're suddenly asked to do a five minutes and a ten minutes programme for the British Forces Broadcasting service. I sng: gest Lord Wigg for the ten minutes one ano Neil Marten for the five. Ron Leighton says he'll fix it. 'God, though, what a lot we are. Jon Snow told me that the other side, for the forces broadcast, had admirals all over the sh°P. including Mountbatten ...' 'Saw Teddy Taylor at LBC where he WaS first-class doing an anti-CM phone-in. But he was very gloomy : "It's hopeless. Every; body reckons the country is in such a rnes they daren't vote No".' My diary continues like this, for Pa,: after page. In a way I find it difficult to react it seems very distant, those weeks a year ago.e. We knew we could not win. Our own priva;A polls told us as much. The most we eou.T. hope to do was to state the case and sh!1,.1 opinion somewhat. I think we stated tilt" case. I do not think we shifted opinion mne,_ve at all. Sad, I suppose; but the case had to stated, and I do not think it was badly staleu which is. I suppose, something.