EEC and.Mrs T
Sir: As one who would like if possible to share your political correspondent's enthusiasm for the 'star quality of Mrs Margaret Thatcher I have been wondering how her recent Commons apology for the Common Market can be defended. For if the press reports are to be trusted it was a very alarming performance.
I am in principle opposed US 'Europe', but I don't just,mean that. Nor do I just mean the tactical ineptness of Mrs Thatcher's position, though that too is discouraging to any well-wisher of the Conservatives. (If Mrs Thatcher is sure
• the referendum vote will be 'Yes' that is silly in itself. If not she is gambling quite gratuitously. For if it turns out to be `No' she has quite unnecessarily confirmed her party in opposition to the people, and got into an impossible position for the ensuing election. There won't, pace Mr Whitelaw, be a constitutional crisis if Parliament overrides,ethe referendum, but there will be odium for the Conservatives. Since nobody suspects Mrs Thatcher's sudden enthusiasm of being genuine why could she not lie low and accept_ either result as much less damaging to her party than to Labour?) What really worried me was the infirmness of her grasp of the basic strategic realities of East and West, that is, of the world we have to live in.
The idea being heavily promoted by Mrs Thatcher and Mr Heath, who are indistinguishable on the subject, is that the reason for our remaining in the EEC is to guarantee our peace and security. 'The first reason for being in is peace and security,' said Mrs Thatcher, and It is taken for granted that Western • Edrope will not embark again on its own destruction' due to the 'tremendous efforts and constructive ideas which led to those nations working together in the EEC.' She concluded, 'If we are to give our children the maximum peace and security in a very uncertain world, our best course of action is to stay in the Common Market.' (Loud Conservative cheers.) Now that does alarm me. It makes me fear for the safety of this country, because of its complacency and its unreality. We do at present take it for granted that there will be no outbreak of war between France and Germany, if by Germany is meant 'West Germany,' though even in this context Western Europe is not as secure as Mrs Thatcher thinks. Portugal is in Western Europe, and will her argument go on being repeated if civil war breaks out in Italy before the referendum? (And if it does, who can imagine intervention by the EEC?) The obvious fact, however (is it obvious to Mrs Thatcher?) is that the danger to our peace and security comes from the other half of Europe, to the East. It is equally obvious that any protection we have against the Soviet Union has nothing to do with the EEC. The barrier against Russian expansion to the West is NATO and in particular the American will to maintain NATO — that and that alone, not the EEC.
At a time when American power is in obvious decline, and when that decline is expressed as an unwillingness to stand by allies in their need, even at the expense of seeing them overrun in the most old-fashioned way by Communist armoured divisions, the prime diplomatic objective of the other Western Powers must be to encourage the Americans to maintain their essential position in the Western alliance.
To the extent that the EEC fancies itself as a great power (and one aimed as much at the US, as at the USSR — as it still is, ten years after de Gaulle, in the daydreams of Sir Christopher Soames and Lord George-Brown) it is a positive danger to the security of its members. 'Because of its combined bargaining power,' said Mrs Thatcher, the EEC 'is in a far better position than any single country to negotiate with the rest of the world.' There is a one-word answer to that: OIL. How many divisions has the EEC? How else is it in the last resort to protect its supplies against international cartels or the Soviet navy? And if, as also seems to me obvious, it is inconceivable that the EEC will ever use force in its own right how can it ever be a power even of the tenth rate? Is it going to offer peace and security to us by its weakness? Apart from NATO and apart from the military strength, such as it is, of the member nations, the EEC presents to the adventurers of the world the tempting prospect of a bloc of inordinate wealth and no means of defending it. To the Oil sheikhs (to potentates as feeble as they!) the EEC must look very like the Spanish treasure fleets looked to Sir Francis Drake.
The EEC could imaginably become a great military power if it spent a lot more of its money on its armed forces rather than on consumer goods, if universal conscription were introduced or extended and if a genuine imperial framework unified 'Europe' on the model of Bismarck's Germany: but not only is this not proposed, the whole lure of 'Europe' is that it is supposed to be a contrivance for making us rich and secure without effort on our part. This seems to me the really dangerous unreality in the beliefs of our Marketeers: the faith that danger can be manipulated out of politics, that in human life there can be everlasting increase of wealth without steady effort, that there can be some mechanical device, some guarantee of security other than the basic will to defend ourselves which can only in the last resort belong to a nation, that is, to the authority with the right to order us to risk our lives in defence of hearth and home.
The other sign in Mrs Thatcher's speech that she does belong to the manipulators was her awful remarks about large and small units. 'People recognise two quite different needs. There is a need to be .part of some smaller group to which we can belong and know we belong. The second need, ' that only when we get together can we achieve the large objectives we seek to ; achieve.' Ignoring a convenient silence about what these 'European' objectives are, one has to object that the political world is just not arrangeable like this. Nations and smaller or larger groupings cannot be manufactured even when their leaders try hard to make their minds mechanical. Mrs Thatcher is talking there for all the world like the 'Chief Executive' of one of the new district councils. That perhaps is her vision of her role as Prime Minister, and perhaps having safely won the referendum and the election she will play that role. Whether it will allow her to deal effectively with the unions or the IRA I must be permitted to doubt.
I shall vote 'No' in the referendum because in my judgement, in my observation of the political world, the UK is not like a county council and the UK, not the EEC, offers us (through its alliances and through any will to survival it still has) what security there is in this dangerous world. But I shall do so with more zest than the principles themselves can explain when I think of the likely domestic political results. Mr C. V. Porter's demand in The Spectator (March 22) for 'positive 'alternative scenarios' if this country is to withdraw from the EEC is, despite its phrasing, a serious one and deserves an answer. I think the Principled answer is that a 'No' in the referendum would itself be an assertion of the political will that alone can solve any of our problems in or out of the Market. 'No' would be a grand remonstrance to the defeatism of all the party establishments, the defeatism that has taken us into 'Europe' and now offers appeasement as security. 'No' would be more than 'you have got us into this damned mess, now get us out!' (though that is better than nothing) because any decision to withdraw from the EEC ought to entail a determination to tackle our problems such as all the establishments determined to keep us in 'Europe' cannot evince. If we are not to rely on German gold we must simply start earning our own again. Withdrawal would constitute a demand to be governed. Withdrawal will also, of couse, be supported by those who hope for general chaos and mayhem as a prelude to Communist takeover. I do not think they would be more likely to succeed out than in if our establishment can somehow be persuaded to pluck up its courage. (The alternative 'scenarios' must also, by the way, be considered. What is likely to follow a 'Yes' vote? Wouldn't the magical Union by 1980, or 1984, or whenever it is, be immediately resuscitated? And wouldn't our rulers be confirmed, by the electorate's endorsement of their abdications, in their present habits of drift, appeasement, capitulation? — isn't it likely that one result will be the export of 'the English disease' to France and Germany?) However that may be, may I suggest the following conditional scenarios?
If you want this country to begin entrusting its safety to a rich and weak group of nations, vote Yes.
If you want the present style of British non-government to continue, vote Yes. If you love the present leadership of the Labour Party, vote Yes.
If you would like to see the ignominious collapse of Mr Wilson's government followed by the decimation of Labour in the ensuing election, vote No. If you want the genuine demise of Heathism in the Conservative Party, vote No.
If you want the Conservatives to have to take Mr Powell back, vote No.
Ian Robinson .130 Bryn Road, Brynmill, Swansea
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