How Euro-candidates are chosen
Roger Berthoud
'Are any other European countries involved in this sort of thing?' The question, from a conservative lady in the West Country, was not wholly typical of those levelled at candidates for the first directly elected European parliament. But it did emphasise the novelty of the whole enterprise. Historic may be too strong a word for the elections, due to be held in June in the nine EEC member states, since the road of the new parliament may be as relatively mouselike in its initial impact as that of the outgoing, nominated assembly. But undoubtedly Britain's 81 elected members will be pioneers in their modest way, and now is the time when the main political parties are deciding from whom they will be chosen.
The selection process is complex, tortuous, in many ways tedious, yet also not without its fascinating aspects. Perhaps the best way to illustrate it is to take —or, rather, dig around in — 'London Central', the most marginal of the UK's 78 Euroconstituencies. Each of these constituencies will return a single member by normal methods, except for Northern Ireland, Which will return three by the single transferable vote system.
London Central, as delineated by the Boundaries Commission, consists of 10 Westminster parliamentary constituencies, whose collective voters at the October 1974 general election gave the Conservatites a majority of 0.1 per cent, Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington, St Marylebone, Westminster S, Hampstead, Holborn-St Pancras S, and St Pancras N. A pretty disparate bunch, whose demands on their Euro-member may often prove to be mutually contradictory. The procedures devised by the two main parties for selecting the final candidate for each Euro-constituency are rather typically different. The Labour system puts much of the onus on the party organisations of the Westminster constituencies involved, starting at branch level. The Conservative system is much more centralised, with candidates from a centrally approved list being winnowed by a Euro-constituency council composed of representatives of the parliamentary constituencies involved.
In the case of London Central, and no doubt many others, the more 'democratic' Labour system has predictably lead to the selection of candidates either opposed to Britain's membership of the EEC, or to its terms — anti-EEC views being strongly in the ascendant in many constituency parties. Each of the latter has been asked to put forward up to three candidates for consideration by a 'Euro-selection organisation', consisting of 20 delegates from each. In the case of London Central, this will hold its inaugural meeting on 29 Jan, and make its final selection on 22 Feb, relatively late in national terms.
At the time of writing, nine of the ten constituencies had produced one, two or three nominations, usually from seven or eight put forward by branches or affiliated organisations. Fulham was unique in choosing a single pro-Marketeer: William Unwin, the youngish treasurer of its Labour party and a lecturer in business management at Ealing Polytechnic. Untypical also is Chelsea, whose three included Norman Hart, deputy chairman of the Labour Committee for Europe, Jane Ewart-Biggs, widow of the assassinated British ambassador to Dublin and a recent recruit to the party, a factor not helpful to her.
On the face of it, the front runner in London Central on the Labour side is John Mills, aged 40, who is secretary of the Labour Common Market Safeguards Committee, deputy leader of the Camden Council, and a successful import/export businessman. Despite his credentials, Mills is not ranked among the more strident of the anti-Marketeers. Other antiMarketeers doing well are All Lomas, political secretary of the London Cooperative Society, who was first choice in Hampstead and did well in Hammersmith; David Offenbach, a well-to-do Tribunite solicitor, who was second choice in Holborn; and Terence O'Sullivan, first choice in Chelsea and Kensington, who is a computer analyst.
But here we come to a curious feature of the whole business: many candidates have put themselves down for far more than one Euro-constituency, the Conservative candidates being so greedy they had to be urged to settle for no more than 15. Mills himself is standing elsewhere: he is also doing well in London North, Manchester South, and Midlands East. All take their final decision before London Central, so he would drop out of the running if chosen elsewhere. That might enhance the chances of Peter Gresham, an adviser on industrial relations at NEDO, aged 33, who has sound backing in Hampstead, Kensington, Marylebone, Holborn and St Pancras. He is a critic of Britain's terms of membership and the emphasis of EEC policies, but regards the Safeguards Committee as basically nationalist, anti-Socialist and naive.
Much lobbying, it is evident, will be done at the level of Labour's 'Euro-selection organisation's executive committee, which will have to draw up the short list of those to be heard and grilled at the final selection conference on 22 Feb. The socialism of some anti-marketeers will be suspect to some Left-wingers. Some left-wingers may seem insufficiently nationalist in their dislike of the EEC. And so on. It is widely agreed that the process of producing a single short-list has involved much travail. 'The only procedural problem I had was keeping people awake,' said John Braggins, agent for Holborn and the St Pancrases. It was also a difficulty that the election was not to endorse or replace a sitting member: the body was hard to identify, he thought.
Robert Davies, secretary of the Marylebone Labour Party, thought it would have helped if all the branches had interviewed their nominees. Many had not, so the general management committee did not know enough about those it saw. There were some strange twists: Hampstead eventually rejected Offenbach, whom it had nominated for the main party list, but chose Gresham, whom it had rejected for the list.
Over on the Conservative side, proceedings have been a good deal simpler, but also less open. Last autumn Marcus Fox, a party vice-chairman, and his aides had drawn up an approved list of some 200 candidates, from 902 applications received. Those approved were asked to indicate by which Euro-constituencies they wished to be considered. Sixty ticked London Central, among, usually, many others.
In London Central, as in each Euroconstituency, a Euro-constituency council was set up consisting of six representatives from each of the parliamentary constituencies included within it, i.e. 60 in the case of London Central. The council in turn appointed a selection committee with two representatives from each constituency, with Mrs C.V. Prendergast of the Westminster Association in the chair.
Early this month the committee reduced the 60 to 20, on the basis of their records and biography. On 14 Jan, all 20 were interviewed: a five minute speech, with 15 minutes of questions. On 21 Jan, the six were reduced to three on the basis of a 10 minute speech, with 20 minutes for questions.
The man (no woman has survived that far) who made the strongest impression was, apparently, Sir David Nicolson, aged fifty-six, chairman of Rothmans International and former chairman of British Airways. The surviving three will appear on 1 February for the final selection before a meeting consisting of 25 delegates from each of the ten parliamentary constituencies: even unwieldier than Labour's final conference.
The whole enterprise has been coordinated by Brian Villette, agent for the Westminster Association, who was appointed Euro-agent in December. It would be surprising if his labours were not blessed with a Conservative victory in June in London Central. Even if the mood of the country as a whole was strongly pro-Labour and anti-EEC, would Labour antiMarketeers bother to vote an anti-EEC candidate into an assembly of which they both basically disapproved?
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