POLITICAL COMMENTARY PETER PATERSON If Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn—the thinking
man's politician—seeks a text for his argument that Britain's signature to the Treaty of Rome should be decided not by a parliamentary vote but by a national refer- endum, he will find it in Tom Payne's Rights of Man, appropriately enough in the section headed, 'Ways and Means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with Mis; cel la neous Observations'.
`Rebellion,' stated Mr Payne, 'consists in forcibly opposing the general will of a nation, whether by a party or by a govern- ment. There ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion with respect to government.' Now, it may be argued that the old revolutionary was not talking about referenda, and certainly not what people today would call opinion poll government. But nor was he talking about occasionally elected Parliaments, for he went on to give a little pat on the back to the French mon- archical system of the States-General. One may be permitted to assume that confronted by the tendency of modern British political parties to stand for election on the broadest possible platform, Tom Payne would have been in favour of a referendum to decide so historic and momentous a change of course as Britain's surrender of national sovereignty to the European Economic (and Political) Community.
As one of the successors, as an MP for Bristol, of Edmund Burke, Mr Benn might have been expected to take a far more traditionalist line on the duty of an MP to• wards his constituents. The Burke dictum, that an MP owes his constituents not only his industry but his judgment 'and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion . . will no doubt be much quoted against Mr Benn, and invoked by pro-Market MPS in the great battle which is to come. But if we are playing historical games for a moment, we may also question whether Burke would stick to his own prin- ciple if he interpreted membership of the Market as jeopardising the terms of the Revolution of 1688. So let's claim, before anyone else does, that Payne and Burke as well as Benn would have been for a refer- endum.
That, unfortunately, is probably not sufficient to recommend it to Mr Heath or Mr Rippon, or even to Mr Harold Wilson, though if the latter had recovered fully from his electoral reverse he might have been expected to see the glittering opportunity that a referendum on this issue could present him with, without his having particularly to bother changing his stated policy towards Market entry. That opportunity lies in the proposition that the present Government would not be strong enough to survive an adverse vote on a referendum, and would almost inevitably be defeated in the general election that would follow.
Mr Benn is not the kind of politician who would argue for the referendum on such grounds, or with such thoughts lurking in his mind. More than any of his contem- poraries on either side of the House, Mr Benn brings an independent and unorthodox attitude to political problems. If he is worried about pollution, for example, or the remote- ness of government, or the lack of account- ability of the technologists, he thinks pretty carefully before delivering his views, and when he does so he usually has something refreshing and interesting to say. This does not make him a political Fauntleroy, and he is probably more capable than most other politicians of puUing his foot in it, often in the most embarrassing way at the most em- barrassing moment. But when he is being serious, there is no more serious man in politics.
Unfortunately, Mr Benn's career has been studded with plenty of examples reflecting both sides of his personality, and such is the nature of politics that, his more lighthearted or excitable or partisan contributions have tended to obscure some of the important things he has to say.
The question that his past forces us to ask, therefore, is: are we sure that Mr Benn is being serious on this occasion? There are obviously grounds for the suspicion that he is not. First of all, he is the first professing Marketeer to call for a referendum. Since a referendum, it is assumed by most people, would reject British entry by a very sub- stantial majority, the doubt must arise that Mr Benn remains a Marketeer any longer. If he,has indeed changed his views on this question, then his advocacy of a referendum loses its surprise value and he becomes just another anti-Marketeer seizing on my device that will prevent Britain going in.
Another area of doubt concerns Mr Benn's views on participation. Unsophistic- ated believers in political participation by what are usually, and disparagingly, called the masses have a great belief in everything being decided by a vote, preferably on a show of hands at a public meeting, and a great contempt for Members of Parliament and the parliamentary system. Mr Benn is not unsophisticated, and he combines a genuine belief in wider participation with a respect, even reverence, for the parlia.
mentary process. A national referendum on the Market, it could and very likely will be argued, is a blasphemy against Parliament. Is he really being serious when he argues for it?
Again, we all recall Mr Benn as Labour's Minister of Technology full of whizz kid boffinry, mad keen on Concorde (at least in public) and sufficiently delighted by the idea of international co-operation that he allowed the French to add the final `e'. Mr Benn's internationalist brand of socialism, his belief that the power of international corporations
can make life intolerable for national governments, his knowledge of the immense amounts of money that must be pooled if Europe is to compete in technology with the United States, all made it understandable that he should veer towards the idea of the European Community. Why then should he now argue for a referendum, a vote that will be decided, according to all the other pro. Marketeers, not on technological considera. tions, not on the future of Concorde-type projects, not on taming IBM or General Motors, but on the price of groceries? So, does he mean it?
The answer seems to be that Mr Benn is serious, that he does mean it, and that he is pressing for it in spite of, rather than because of, his views on the Market—though it may be doubted whether those views are quite as strong as they once were. But this is an issue on which many people have chopped and changed, and one of the reasons for this is that the issues raised by British entry to or isolation from the Market have never been bound together in one great debate in which all aspects could be argued and a firm decision reached. Information has emerged in dribs and drabs, so that at one moment the case for going in seems overwhelming (this was the position for many Mrs during the 1966 economic crisis) and at another (when the White Paper on the effect of entry on food prices and the balance of payments was published) when it seems unthinkable. Political leadership, with Tories, Labour and Liberals all in favour, has been gravely damaged by anti-Marketeers within, at least, the two major parties. People are naturally confused when they see national figures dis- agreeing with the party leaders on an issue of such magnitude, and possibly even more alarmed when it is suggested that no final decision can be taken before the full terms of entry are finally negotiated. When that time comes, Mr Benn suggests, a narrow majority of the Cabinet and a narrow majority of the House of Commons could take a decision which would, for good or ill, be quite irreversible. If we assume that he would be part of that majority, it is the first sign of nervousness we have yet seen among that group over the gravity of the responei' bility they will bear for the decision and its consequences. Mr Benn is right to be nervous. But the value of a referendum would surely be greater than merely to make the waveren feel that they are no longer opposing the general will of the nation. It would give the first and only opportunity for the issue to b debated by the British people, uncluttered by all the other considerations that affect the outcome of a general election. And after., that process, as any opinion pollster couli have told us on 19 June, no one could be certain of the outcome.
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