Britain and the EEC
Sir: Your long and continued opposition to Britain's entry into the EEC is I fear influencing many readers to the highly questionable conclusion that all would be well with the UK had we not taken that step. By so doing you are, I suggest, unconsciously diverting the readership away from looking closely and clearly at the real causes of. the relative decline of the UK among the western powers.
It seems to me that we are in danger of seeing entry into EEC as a permanent alibi; supplementing "If only Ted Heath were not our Leader," "If only we had Harold, or Jeremy or Enoch," now as well we have " If only we had not joined the EEC." Truth is of course that if we were at full throttle, firing on all cylinders we should with a free floating pound be experiencing an 'economic miracle,' comparable with that achieved by other industrial nations, overcoming in our stride any initial handicaps consequent on our being late entrants into the EEC.
To date I should think we are "on course;" on course ' that is to fulfil the Hudson Institute's forecast that we will be bottom of the Industrial Nations League by 1985 with a lower per capita income than Spain and Portugal.
The Hudson Institute did not postulate " If you enter the EEC," "If you remain out of the EEC " — either way they forecast relative decline in the standard of living for citizens of the UK.
If you, Sir, and many of your talented readers who write such ex
cellent letters, would reverse the trend, would prove the Hudson Institute wrong, let our deep collective self analysis begin, and begin by not deluding ourselves any longer "that the fault is in the EEC and not in ourselves that we are underlings!"
Gordon Bighorn
34 Thorpe Avenue, Peterborough.
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