Sovereign State

This article is one of a continuing weekly series in which specialist writers discuss various matters relevant to membership of the EEC and the forthcoming referendum.

Our business to be in?

Bill Jamieson

Whatever else may emerge from the EEC debate, it is already becoming difficult to keep a straight face. On March 5, for example, we saw the CBI taking to the stage, bells on its fingers and bells on its toes, warning us of the apocalypse, the ogre behind the curtain. The entire audience, building and all is to be gobbled up (boos) unless we stay in the EEC (cheers).

The cabaret stars of Disaster Inc. are already well into their act. In fact, the CBI is something of a star turn in this respect, for hitherto it has been a series of solo stands. Mr Heath was telling his Bexley constituents in December that he "cannot over-emphasise how disastrous the consequences would be for Britain if we were to withdraw from the Community." European Commissioner Christopher Soames has described the effects of our coming out "just too awful to dwell upon." Lord Watkinson has declared, "We have no industrial future at all if we come out of Europe"; and John Davies, former Trade and Industry Secretary warns of "chaos and misfortune" should we vote "No" to Europe.

How revealing this line of argument has proved to be Since, after three years, no cast-iron case can be put for our continued membership on economic grounds, the lines are now being read from the blank side of the pack; the dire consequences of our pulling out. And whether one likes it or not, it is the perception of the consequences of our corning out rather than staying in that will provide the hinge on which public opinion will swing in the coming months.

But this approach, juggling as it does with unknowns, does more than play on fear: for it seeks to deliver a pre-emptive strike against the judgement of the referendum. It is to argue that far from there being a choice to the people in June there is in fact no choice at all. Our economic weakness has chosen for us: we cannot afford to come out. It is like a gun held to the head of the electorate and like so many guns that have held there before it is loaded solely with bluff. CBI president Mr Ralph Bateman has said, "There is no doubt that British industry is overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the Community." What real basis is there for this view? Does industry and do business leaders really see it in the way that Mr Bateman claims that they do?

The only attitude survey done so far was conducted four months ago by a market research concern called Research Services Ltd. The survey was -carried out on behalf of the European Representation Fund, whose patron is Lord Selsdon and whose report, published in January, was unambiguously entitled Britain in Europe It's Our Business To Be There.

Sounding out the opinions of Britain's 500 leading industrial concerns, clearing banks, finance houses and property concerns, its most publicised claim was that 91 per cent of firms were in favour of continued EEC membership. An impressive figure, you may agree. It even surfaced in the latest Conservative Political Centre Pamphlet on Europe, on page 3. And at least one acolyte of the European Movement is referring to it as an official CBI figure.

But let us take a closer look at this survey, and in particular the technical appendix which no one has as yet given the careful scrutiny it deserves.

Lord Selsdon wrote to 612 companies, asking them to appoint a European representative to act "as an on-going point of contact" (sic). Of the total, just 51 per cent, or 311 replied to the initial letter. It was a response rate low enough for the ERF to re-circulate a random sample of 101 firms and enclose the main questionnaire. Even after that, however, of the 412 questionnaires sent out, "usable" replies came to 220 some 35 per cent of the original starting figure.

Of that 220, some 36 per cent believed UK entry to be beneficial. Expressed as a percentage of the original total, there is a positive response rate of just 12.9 per cent. Hardly a figure on which to build a scenario of doom and gloom should we decide to leave the Community. But what about profitability? For without the remittance to the UK of higher trading profits from the EEC countries then the economic case for membership begins to look very flimsy indeed. Asked whether there was a likelihood of increased profitability as a result of EEC membership, of the 220 firms who replied, 45 per cent said either it would make little change or that they didn't know either way. And 47 per cent said it would make "little change" or might even be beneficial if we withdrew.

Now there will be some still not wholeheartedly inclined either way on the EEC issue who may draw from these figures the perfectly justifiable inference that without even definitive or partial evidence to put beyond doubt the question of increased profitability through EEC membership and a wholehearted commitment by British industry, then the case for staying in is at best to return the classic verdict of Scottish law not proven.

And doubtless there will be others, committed anti-IVIarketeers, who will permit themselves the wry reflection that with enemies like these, who needs friends?

The low response to Lord Selsdon's survey is particularly worth highlighting because to the vast majority of people in Britain the EEC issue is not perceived as being directly relevant to them. And many are happy to give the CBI and Lord Selsdon and Uncle Chris Soames and all the benefit of the doubt if membership really is going to be beneficial to our trade. But behind the blind assertions, the warnings of apocalypse, the cajoling and the pleas, where is the ring of confidence amongst industrialists? And if our leading companies are still in two minds about the benefits why are the people being told they can only have one?

Perhaps what is more revealing than all else is the genuine apathy with which the European issue is nationally regarded. For apathy itself can be intensely political, a perception of issues, despite what the pundits are telling us, as being irrelevant, off-centre to our main problems.

To be scrupulously fair, the pro-EEC lobby can in no way be blamed for its failure to mount a clear-cut economic case for staying in. The economic world is not what it was three years ago: world inflation, the energy crisis, the subsequent recession jolt and jar the arguments. The traumatic shift of economic power to the OPEC countries last year they were paid some £47,000 million for their oil, of which £34,000 million is presently slushing round the world financial system in the form of highly volatile short-term deposits points to where our real trading links and our export opportunities lie. What do the panoramas and vistas of the EEC offer us in this respect? So far, blinkers.

Bill Jamieson is a financial journalist with Thomson Newspapers