Sir: Congratulations to The Spectator on its sustained and uncompromising
opposition to British entry into the Common Market. I have worked and voted for the Conservative party ever since I was an undergraduate, have served as secretary of two local branches and was president of one, have enrolled many members and collected many subscriptions. But I shall abstain from voting for a candidate of any party who is a Marketeer. There must be many like me, as MPs will learn when they stop cheering Mr Rippon and go down to their constituencies; and as by-election results are showing. Mr Heath, I fear, may have les defauts de sea qualttes and if he proves incurably obstinate as well as refreshingly forceful, he will destroy an otherwise promising administration and put the Tory party out of effective action for years to come. Mr Wilson is far too wily not to take advantage of such an opportunity, so let us hope that Mr Heath will yet think again; it is not too late.
No doubt bread-and-butter considerations are largely influencing the huge anti-Market majority in the minion polls — what govern
ment has ever wantonly increased the cost of living without destroying itself? But besides this there is still, I like to believe, a majority of ordinary British people not pre pared to sacrifice their legal and democratic traditions and desert their tried friends and relations in the Dominions (not to mention Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, farmers, fruit-growers and fishermen), in order to gain remote and problematical advantages by jOining a greedy, inward-looking Continental tariff ring. In the last resort, we must put our country before any political party.
The EEC is not 'Europe,' and the ' Six ' are really the Five, Luxembourg having the size and population of a very minor English county. Half Europe is behind the Iron Curtain, and the ECC, especially if it achieves its stated object of political integration, will make the eventual detente between East and West all the more difficult.
Irvine Gray 24 Lloyd Square, London WC1
Previous page
