Sir: Like King Canute, some of your correspondents persist in
trying to stem the tides of history on Britain's decision to enter the EEC. In accordance with our timehonoured constitutional practice, Parliament, by a massive majority approved entry last October on the terms negotiated. The enabling legislation has passed through the Commons, and the Lords will no doubt follow suit. For years all political parties had been committed to entry, subject to satisfactory terms, and declared their intentions at succeeding General Elections, thus gaining the necessary mandates for negotiating for entry and approving the terms by normal Parliamentary means, This month the European Free Trade Association has in effect come to an end, and those EFTA members that are not becoming full EEC members have committed themselves to form a new free trade association with the enlarged European Community. In consequence British withdrawal from the EEC would also mean cutting ourselves off from a vast European free trading area comprising some 300 million consumers, a form of isolation which would surely bring total economic disaster to our trading island from which more than 40 per cent of our exports go to the European continent?
David L. V. Rowe Pitmore, Sway, Lymington, Hants.
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