The referendum
Sir: As Mr Humphry Berkeley says, there is a strong case for the forthcoming EEC referendum, although few people who believe in the supremacy of Parliament would want that supremacy eroded by a series of referenda.
There is, of course, an element of truth in the claim often made that this referendum was proposed because it seemed to offer a solution to Mr Wilson's difficulties within his own party, But that does not disguise the more important truth that he is giving the electorate what the last government denied it — an opportunity to express its own wishes; and no one who is prepared to see the weakening of the supremacy of Parliament by a 'pooling' of its 'sovereignty' has the right to protest that referenda deny MPs the right to decide what is in the best interests of `our' country.
What seems not to have been strongly enough emphasised — if indeed it has been publicly mentioned at all — is that no referendum has to be held in the future unless a particular government proposes, a Parlimanentary majority approves, and the government agrees to be bound by the result of, such a device. That being so, I don't see why it shouldn't be accommodated by present institutions as a minor, but occasionally necessary, element in a Parliamentary democracy.
But now that we have been granted the right to vote on EEC membership, without the permission of the pro-Europe' lobby, what needs to be urgently stressed is that economic and political union — which, it is silently assumed by many leading pro-Marketeers, is the consummation and even the raison d' etre of membership — has never been put to the electorate for its consideration and is completely ignored by the proposed ballot paper.
Opponents of our continued membership ought to be pressing some vitally important questions about this. Is EPU a dead, or just a tactfully dormant duck? Are all the three major parties committed to it as a policy? Are we committed to it by a 'yes' vote in the June referendum? Or will we be given a separate opportunity to register our full-hearted dissent? Until we get some straight and unequivocal answers the Great Debate has hardly begun.
Michael Garrard Fairfax House, Heslington Road, York
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