Anti Common Market League - Spring and Summer 2002

"And that's the EU." I gasped in disbelief as our guide pointed to a grand palace which we walked past on our tour of Tallinn's mediaeval city in the heart of Estonia's capital. We had already gazed admiringly at some thirty or more fine buildings, each one centuries old, but this one was as grand as the President's palace, and grander than any of the embassies. Inside were about fifty EU Commission staff. What were they up to? League members can guess: they were engaged in what they were pleased to call "information".

Virtually anyone in Estonia of the slightest consequence can obtain an invitation to a several-course lunch accompanied by a succession of wines when their hosts can explain all the good things about EU membership. From the Palace flow pamphlets, leaflets, posters, cassettes and videos. From there also go speakers to discuss, wherever two or more are gathered together. How much it all costs we do not know but it must by now reach millions of pounds. Yet Estonia has a population of no more than one of England's smaller counties. We can imagine what the effect of all this propaganda would be in, say, Dorset or Suffolk.

Despite that, the bombardment of propaganda - actively condoned by the government - has so far failed to change the No majority in the opinion polls into Yes. However, the barrage has cut the "No" majority quite seriously. That the EU Commission staff has not yet succeeded is due to the "No" movement. It is in the hands of a small band of activists who are extremely well-informed, articulate and politically respectable. Needless to say, they are seriously short of money. If the referendum goes the wrong way, that will be the only reason.

It was to give them support that the Congress was held. Attending were representatives from kindred organisations from nearly all the countries in the EU as well as from Norway and Switzerland. As President of the Anti-Common Market League, I was the only one from the UK. I was also the only one whose native tongue was English, yet that was the one language spoken at all times. It made me realize how influential our own country could be in Europe if only the Government spoke the words that the ordinary people on the Continent want to hear.

Everyone there came at their own expense, giving up a long weekend with enthusiasm. That, of course, is one of the differences between the two camps. Europhiles do nothing unless paid fully for their efforts, and many earn a fat income for what they do for their europhilia. Remember how Heath received £4,000 for going around the country in the 1975 Referendum.

Eurosceptics, though, do get a reward: they meet lots of good people with sincere beliefs which in itself is a pleasure. On this occasion, as on so many others, my reward was to leave reassured for the umpteenth time of one fact about what Helmut Kohl called "one country - Europe".

It is that his objective is rotten to the core.

Readers will be aware of the European Union's desire to expand its Eastern boundary to take in as many as possible of the nations of Central and Eastern Europe recently escaped from Soviet captivity. The political elites of these countries are being lured by the promises of wealth and seats at the top table in Brussels, although there is evidence that the negotiations are now giving some of them second thoughts.

While some of these countries' peoples share their leaders' dream, others are wary of falling into the clutches of a Western superstate, having just escaped from an Eastern one. Estonia is a case in point, and towards the end of last year the League's President, Sir Richard Body, attended a conference in Tallinn, organised in conjunction with TEAM - The European Anti Maastricht Alliance - to boost the Estonian "No" campaign. His account of the way in which the EU is blatantly spending large amounts of taxpayers' money - our money, given the large British contribution to the EU budget - on propaganda and junketing in a country which is not even a member of the EU should give us all pause for thought.

We are also pleased to carry another article about the Estonia conference from Ulla Klotzer, Chair of Alternative to EU - Finland. Opponents of the EU from different countries have never had the slightest difficulty in working together, illustrating the internationalist nature of our campaign against the EU, as opposed to the supranational nature of the European Union itself.

Vladimir Bukovsky is better placed than almost anyone to attest to the parallels and similarities between the Soviet Union and the European Union, and his speech at the League's well-attended meeting earlier this year has raised awareness of this aspect of the EU. Those who didn't hear the speech, or who want to hear it again, can obtain it on tape or CD; details are given later in this issue.

Much heat was generated in the media about the strong showing of the Front National in the French elections, and the advance of far-right parties in various other European countries.

It seemed to escape most commentators that the resurgence of the far right in France coincided with the replacement of the Franc with the Euro, a far from popular move. Since they were unable to express their disgruntlement through the mainstream parties, voters chose the alternative.

In the United Kingdom, still with its own currency, voters can express their view on this question through moderate parties and candidates, and do not have to go to the political extremes of right or left. But if the Pound is suppressed and the Euro takes its place, the electorate may feel that the political system has failed them and may feel forced to extremes, as in France. This would be particularly unfortunate for the United Kingdom, where freedom of speech and robust debate have been the norm, and where extremes of right or left have rarely been significant forces.

We apologise for the failure to bring out an issue of Britain in the Spring quarter, which was entirely the responsibility of the Editor. We hope, however, that readers will feel fully recompensed by this issue being of double length. Normal service has now been resumed.

During the Maastricht referendum campaign in 1994 the Finnish EU-critical movement got a lot of support from the other Nordic countries. Since the EU-debate started much earlier in the other Nordic countries than in Finland we desperately needed arguments, speakers, methods of campaigning, etc. The financial means of the No-side were very limited and thus efficiency was necessary.

Starting off in a hopeless situation we reached 43 per cent No in the referendum in the autumn 1994.

The opinion polls promised us only around 25 per cent some days before the referendum. And of course - as in all other countries where referendums have been held about EU treaties - we would clearly have won if we would have had the same financial means and the same possibilities to be heard in the media.

Since the Finnish No-movements have limited possibilities to pay back our debt to our friends in the Nordic countries we have decided instead - to the benefit of all European EU-critical movements - to concentrate our scarce resources on the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

Alternative to EU in Finland has been the initiative-taking organisation behind the series of European Futures Congresses that have been held in Warsaw in 1997, in Budapest in 1998, in Prague and in Helsinki in 1999, in Bratislava, Budapest, Zalaegerszeg, Ajdovscina and Ljubljana in 2000 and in Gothenburg and Tallinn in 2001. For all these congresses we have hired an Estonian double-decker bus passing through the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

In this way we have sponsored their participation in EU-critical congresses in parts of Europe where the costs can be kept at a minimum level.

And thanks to understanding and generous lecturers also from Western Europe, who have paid all their expenses themselves, we have been able to spread information, build up efficient networks, make friends and learn to respect each other.

The work that our friends in the Baltic States and in Eastern Europe are doing is admirable.

The pressure on people openly expressing their EU-criticism is extremely hard. In some cases people have even been expelled from their jobs. Most people are struggling hard in order to manage the costs of everyday life, unemployment is growing and there is very little or no public funding for EU-critical information.

Still people are ready to criticize and debate - and it is the obligation of the Western European EU-critical movements to support them in all possible ways. People in the Baltic States and in Eastern Europe are getting more and more suspicious about the EU-project and the benefits of it. If some of these countries could reach a No in a referendum about EU-membership it will gain us all!

Her many friends and colleagues were saddened by the death on 1st July of Elizabeth Christmas.

Elizabeth had been an active supporter of the League since its earliest days, and many of her older friends remember learning about the Anti-Common Market movement through her organisational work with pioneers such as Mr. John Paul, Lord Hinchingbrooke and Sir Robin Williams. Almost until the end of her life she hosted meetings of the League's committee most hospitably.

It is thanks to the devoted work of people such as Elizabeth Christmas and her colleagues that our movement grew, so that there is now reason to think that the majority of our fellow countrymen are firmly opposed to any closer integration with the European Union, such as giving up the Pound for the Euro.

In addition, Elizabeth served for a remarkable fifty years as a Councillor in Kensington, and was twice Mayor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. She supported many charities, particularly the RSPCA, and was an active member of her local church.

She is being missed not only as a public figure and a colleague but also as a friend.

Mr. Bukovsky spent twelve years in Soviet prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. He would have been spared all this if he had recanted his anti-Soviet views and stopped speaking out for freedom. He was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR in the 1970s.

His answer to the question was summarised: "I lived in your future, and I didn't like it!"

He drew a number of parallels between the two Unions. Although one was created by violent revolution, the other by stealth and subterfuge, both were intent on suppressing their nation-state components and replacing them with a single giant state, and making people citizens of the Union rather than of their own nations.

The power of the EU over its member states was in large part concealed by the fact that people still enjoyed economic and political freedom, while the Marxist-Leninist system of the USSR left people in no doubt who was boss.

The USSR, he said, was an openly ideological state. The EU, less apparently, has an essentially statist ideology, in which there is an atmosphere of bullying towards those whose views differ from those of the centre. Under the Treaty of Nice, the emerging European police force will have diplomatic immunity and even more power than the KGB. "You are in the process of losing your freedom", he warned.

The USSR Constitution did contain the theoretical right for member republics to secede, although even to talk about the possibility of secession placed one in great danger. The EU treaties contain no procedure for member states to leave. The EU is even now in the process of drawing up its own constitution, which is intended to override the constitutions of the member States.

Mr. Bukovsky also drew parallels between roles of the unelected and unaccountable Commissars of the Soviet Union and those of their unelected and unaccountable European Union counterparts, the European Commissioners.

In the USSR, corruption had become institutionalised throughout the system. It started at the top and worked its way right down to the bottom. The history of the EU's finances - particularly in regional aid and the Common Agricultural Policy - was remarkably similar.

These similarities were by no means coincidental. In 1992, Mr. Bukovsky had access to the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, and discovered a plan for the USSR and its satellites to merge with the European Community (as it then was) to create a "common European home".

This message of foreboding was, however, leavened with hope. The European Union, Mr. Bukovsky said, would be easier to defeat than the Soviet Union. Opponents of the EU were not likely to be sent to gulags - if only because the EU does not have a Siberia! (Instead, however, they might be sent for "counselling".) The EU, he said, lacked the ruthlessness - and the ability to kill - of the USSR. He and his fellow dissidents knew the Soviet Union would collapse but never thought they would live long enough to see it. "If we could do it", he said, "for you, it will turn out to be much easier than you think".

Opinion polls suggest that there is a definite majority against surrendering the Pound and adopting the Euro.

The first reason is patriotism. We do not talk about it a lot in the United Kingdom. But in practice, over several hundred years people who live in England, Scotland, Wales or Ulster have fought or risked death to maintain the British way of life: freedom, traditional law and order, democracy and justice, and respect for the Crown which has been clearly assured in 2002. The more we learn about the political life of the European nations - revolutions, violence, corruption, bureaucracy - the more we prefer our own ways. Giving up our monetary system would be an important step towards giving up our independence.

The second reason for keeping out of European law and economic control is the cost of them. Every detailed survey indicates that being subject to the European economic system would cost us a great deal more.

At the time of writing, the press is predicting a ten per cent anti-Euro majority, and is also condemning European plans to strip the Home Secretary of his powers to keep murderers in prison once a Parole Board has decided they can safely be released (The Times, 29th May).

It is noticeable how seldom supporters of European control are willing to consider in detail the European financial system, which has taken on a large number of well-paid staff in addition to the previous civil services of European countries. The previous civil services have to keep the previous and necessary administration systems working; civil servants do a necessary and useful job when democratically controlled. Civil servants to run the European Union come at a considerable cost -an extra cost, as the ACML has frequently indicated in the past. Small, local organisations work better than vast bureaucracy.

If we are determined to oppose the Euro and further subjection to European control, how do we go about it? There are many anti-Market organisations. The ACML, one of the earliest, perhaps the earliest, largely but not entirely consisting of Conservatives, was founded by the late Lord Hinchingbrooke; its President now is Sir Richard Body, a leading MP for many years.

Opinion polls and personal observation always agree in suggesting there is a majority against surrendering the Pound and adopting the Euro. As long as this remains the case there is not likely to be a referendum. But the powers that be think otherwise; what can we do to increase the probable majority against the Euro?

First of all it seems desirable that anti-Euro organisations should co-operate more closely. As we get to know one another, better co-operation will build up. We speak for what I believe is the oldest anti-Euro organisation, the ACML. Many individual enthusiasts have published books and magazines and built up groups; and it is to be hoped they will learn to co-operate more and work together even better.

Most important for us perhaps is to get keen individuals working together, for instance by recruiting more members for the League. In canvassing at elections, especially local elections, I have been struck by how much influence at how little cost local enthusiasts have. The best way to ensure one's supporters turn out to vote is for their neighbours to call upon them. The cost is low - printing a single leaflet - and I have found that people do turn out and vote if called upon by friends and acquaintances, and even by neighbours not previously acquainted. We should be thinking now about what we can do, and when.

On 13th September last year, the Reverend John Papworth, Editor of Fourth World Review was fined £50 at Swindon Magistrates' Court for refusing to return his Census Form. His reason for refusing was that the information provided would help to increase the power of the Government, which was intent on delivering our country into a European superstate.

Not everyone will agree with Mr. Papworth's reasoning, and the question of whether to engage in civil disobedience of this type should, of course, be a matter of individual conscience and judgement. Nevertheless, in conducting his case Mr. Papworth delivered a characteristically eloquent and passionate address in his defence, which gained some coverage in the media; below are some edited extracts from it:

I read in the press that more than a million people have not returned their Census forms. Why am I being singled out for prosecution? Our country is faced with the gravest crisis in all its history, a crisis in which its very existence as a nation is being sedulously assailed by people in high places seeking to see our nationhood swallowed up in a federal Europe.

If I were to complete the Census form I would be increasing the power of the Government, and Government today is using its power to promote mischief, sedition and treason. By its actions the Government has broken the bond of trust that should prevail between government and the governed. It is using the power of law to usurp law itself and to reduce law to a mere adjunct of political scheming in which the framework of justice is destroyed.

I am told that "Europe" will bring peace. Has any large federation of power achieved that goal? Has the federal government of the USA, which has been involved in every major war of the last 150 years? Has China, with its invasion of Tibet and its arms build-up in North Korea? Has India, which has had a military confrontation with every one of its neighbours since colonial power was transferred from London to Delhi? Has Russia, which even now is waging war against Chechnya? Has it escaped notice that every one of these federal powers is at the forefront of nuclear armaments programmes and maintains enormous, standing armies?

Has it escaped notice that moves are already afoot to create similar military might for a federal Europe? What else can bigger armies and bigger bombs presage but bigger conflicts and bigger wars?

Has it escaped the notice of our sedulous plotters for the abolition of British sovereignty that of the top forty of the world's richest nations, thirty of them have populations of less than ten million? Is there not in any case something as unrealistic as it is morally squalid in assuming the validity of targets of limitless economic expansion, when the same assumption has already polluted the planet, has destroyed a vast range of species which form part of the complex interlocking life support systems on which all life is dependent, and has devastated the stocks of the world's finite resources to a degree which will inevitably beggar our posterity?

I protest even more strongly at the wholesale perversion of the democratic process which all this secret and devious europlotting has engendered. My understanding of democracy is that we, the people, elect a government to govern in accordance with what we want; the process now seems to be reversed so that the Government is impelling people to accept what the Government wants, after people have been subjected to a softening-up process and other devious manipulative strategies.

Such steps bespeak contempt for people and a thoroughgoing contempt for the democratic principle, and when one adds the maze of secret plotting that has preceded it, the barrage of tendentious and utterly misleading propaganda at taxpayers' expense that has sought to block off critical appraisal, the immense levels of outright deceit that has accompanied it, all with the object of transferring the sovereign powers of Parliament to a ludicrously unrepresentative cabal of boardroom puppets in Brussels, it makes it clear that our nationhood is in dire danger.

It is "dead souls" who are engaged in this mischief, and it was Jefferson who declared that a country which trades its independence for economic advantage deserves to lose both.

Britain is not just a pocket and a stomach, and it is an insult to human stature to seek to impose a rigid framework of narrow economic calculation on every aspect of its life to a degree which distorts its own sense of itself and imperils its existence, not least when the calculation itself is so obviously erroneous. My country is not a shopping mall or any business that might be merged or taken over by another. Britain is a culture, a history, an identity, a body of law and custom, a corpus of traditions and decency, of fair play and equity, traditions which embody respect for truth, concern for the underdog and above all which involve upholding the banner of freedom and even justice in defiance of the direst odds.

I have been addressing you as an accused person charged with an offence. I find myself addressing a court containing yourselves as magistrates, sundry court officials and members of the police force. Despite our different roles, we all of us have one thing in common; we are all citizens of a sovereign state and all subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

I take it we all have a common concern for the preservation of that sovereignty, and if there are any among us who do not then I have nothing to say to them except that in the court of honour and of history it is they who are in the dock and it is I who might claim to be a witness for the prosecution.

We live in momentous times and each one of us must consider the way we respond, at a time when with guile, deceit, outrageous abuse of office, and the wanton expenditure of public monies on lying propaganda, sedulous attempts are being made to induce a mood of apprehension and panic in the public at large that if we refuse to surrender our sovereignty we may lose some imaginary crumbs from the Brussels table.

Is it not time to tell these traders and traducers of the public weal that we have had enough? That we shall no longer be silent as moves designed to betray our history, our nation and its destiny are calculated and engineered, and that we will fight this monstrous wickedness with every breath and bone of our bodies, and that we will dare and dare and dare again until we die rather than acquiesce in the most awesome degrees of betrayal our people have ever encountered?

And let me not be subject to sneers about xenophobia. My late wife, to whom I was happily married for many years, was a Frenchwoman, and my children are of Anglo-French parentage. I have a love of German poetry and literature; I have a passionate admiration for Italian renaissance painting and of its ancient cities and architecture; and I have made a deep study of Swiss political institutions, for which I have a profound respect.

I do not claim to be an admirer of European culture for the simple reason that no such culture exists; what does exist and compel my admiration is the multitude of cultures of Europe in all their variety and splendour, glories I have no intention of seeing snuffed out by the uniform dead hand of a Brussels bureaucracy

Sir,

I find the Editor's reply to Kathleen Garner's letter unconvincing. The discrepancy between Tory words and deeds, which reflects the support of the party hierarchy for virtually all aspects of the EU, continues even in your own publication.

Take, for example, Hugh Gilmour's article, Election Strategy. It is all very well for a party member to say, in a restricted-circulation newsletter, that (the party) should remind voters that the sad state of Health and Education is "largely due to the waste of money and administrators' time and energy on European policies", but this isn't echoed by the party leader. He has been banging on about Health and Education for weeks in the Commons, yet despite having had ample opportunity, he has not once mentioned the impact of the EU on these services.

Let's be sensible! If the party leader won't say it, let alone do it, why on earth should he get our votes?

John Atkinson,

Burghfield, near Reading.

Sir,

I notice in your Winter issue a letter from Kathleen Garner boasting that she is a member of the United Kingdom Independence Party. Surely she should be ashamed of this as, by UKIP's intervention at the General Election, thirteen seats went to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. If UKIP had not stood in these seats, they would have gone to the Conservatives, and Mr. Blair's majority would be twenty-six votes less in the House of Commons. Mrs. Garner must surely come down to reality and make up her mind whether by belonging to UKIP she is a supporter of the Labour Party.

It would have been better if UKIP had followed New Britain's example and only fought seats held by Labour or the Liberal Democrats. In the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency, New Britain got 888 votes, more than UKIP got in any similar inner city area.

Yours faithfully,

Dennis Delderfield,

National Chairman, New Britain, London El

The Editor writes:These two letters encapsulate the two main ways of pursuing our aims, which can be summarised as being the fundamental and the pragmatic approaches. Our campaign is broadly-based and tolerant, and is capable of accommodating both approaches.

This correspondence is now closed.

We reproduce below extracts from Hansard involving questions asked by Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Chairman of the Campaign for an Independent Britain), which reveal very clearly a Government Minister's refusal properly to answer questions put to him:

1st July 2002: Written Answers (Official Report, col. WA6)

Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked Her Majesty's Government:

(a) whether they will provide details of each section of each Act of Parliament in force relating to any duties and powers of

(l) the Bank of England or

(2) any Minister of the Crown,

which would be transferred to the European Central Bank or other institution of the European Community in the event of full accession of the United Kingdom to the euro monetary system; and

(b) whether they will place details in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If government, Parliament and the people -in a referendum - decide to join a successful single currency, the transfer of legal responsibility for monetary policy to the European Central Bank would entail changes to the domestic legislation of the United Kingdom governing the formulation and conduct of monetary policy, at least to the extent necessary to ensure compatibility with the EC Treaty and the statute of the ESCB.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked Her Majesty's Government: Whether any decision to abolish the pound and adopt the euro would be irrevocable; and, if so, how the constitutional principle that one Parliament cannot bind its successor would be maintained.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I refer the noble Lord to the comments I made during the debate on 24th June 1999 (Official Report, col. 1063).

Baroness Young asked Her Majesty's Government: Whether they would intend any British entry to the European single currency to be irrevocable.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, any country which chooses to enter EMU does so on the basis that it is an irrevocable step. The treaty contains no legal basis for a member state withdrawing from EMU. That is why we are determined that any decision on UK membership of EMU must be based on a thorough assessment of the national economic interest, and would need to be agreed by government, Parliament and the British people.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that he made an extremely important statement when he answered the Question? Is he further aware that what he did was to drive a coach and horses through the basic principle of our constitution that one Parliament cannot bind its successor?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I had no intention of making an extremely important statement, either in my original Answer or in any subsequent answer. I am reflecting government policy, which has not changed for a considerable period.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will my noble friend answer the question?

It will be seen that Lord McIntosh refers Lord Stoddart to comments he (Lord McIntosh) made on 24th June 1999. However, as will be seen above, in the exchanges on that day Lord Stoddart attempted, unsuccessfully, to get Lord McIntosh to answer the question!

No doubt to the surprise of the chattering classes of Islington and their ilk countrywide, this year has seen clear and powerful demonstrations of patriotism celebrating the institution of the Monarchy.

Notwithstanding this, that great example of the Islington chattering classes, Mr. Anthony Blair, and his coterie in H.M. Government, press on both overtly and covertly in their plans on behalf of the EU - in breaking up the country into regions owing allegiance to Brussels.

Regionalisation

Masquerading as devolution, we have already seen the creation of assemblies in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London. The idea of regional governments, set up to by-pass national governments in favour of Brussels, is one of the three central pillars of EU integration, together with the Single Market and Single Currency. The process is greatly helped by making it impossible to receive Brussels regional funds (one-third of the EU budget) without regional bodies to receive them.

Thus it is that Mr. Prescott has set up "regional development agencies" for the eight remaining English regions (the UK is to be divided up into twelve regions - Scotland, Wales, Northern freland, London and these eight regions).

More and more powers are being transferred to these so far unelected regional authorities. Ultimately they will have their own education authorities and police forces. This is being done in the hope that, when the electorate is presented with the possibility of directly elected assemblies for these regions, people will vote for their creation.

This is part of the continuing attack on our state: EU diktats from above, making laws which Westminster has no power to prevent or amend; and regional government from below, competing with Westminster and dependent on Brussels finance.

We should not be surprised that Mr. Blair and his coterie have done nothing to enlighten the British public about this. Regrettably, precious little has been done by the Conservatives either (and of course nothing at all by the Liberal Democrats).

In reality, rather than representing the inhabitants of a region, the role of a regional assembly will be as the catspaw of Brussels, wholly bypassing Westminster; the satraps running these assemblies will take part in a never-ending competition of toadying to their Brussels puppet-masters to see who can get more funding. Westminster will pay £1.4 million of taxpayers' money per hour to Brussels, who will dole out what is in reality our money to those running the regional assemblies, who will then spend it in ways directed by and approved by their Brussels bosses in the Committee of the Regions.

Threat to Liberty

Mr. Blunkett, a member of Mr. Blair's coterie (otherwise known as HMG), is doing his best to remove as many civil liberties as possible. He does not, of course, put it like that. Dancing to the tune set by his masters in Brussels, and in order to move towards the continental system of law based on the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Roman Emperor Justinian, (an inquisitorial system rather than our adversarial system), and the Code Napoleon, he proposes amongst other things a serious erosion of the right to jury trial and abolition of the 800 year-old double jeopardy rule (that a person cannot be tried a second time for the same offence).

This last rule has for centuries prevented the individual from being harassed by the State; self-evidently a second trial would be prejudicial if a judge ruled that "compelling new factual evidence" had come to light. Under the pretext of combatting terrorism, Habeas Corpus and the presumption of innocence have been abolished by the Extradition Act, which brings in the EU Arrest Warrant.

Habeas Corpus is the right not to be held for longer than twenty-four hours (or up to seven days in very exceptional cases) without the prosecution (the State) producing a prima facie case against you in open court - or releasing you. This basic guarantee of freedom has existed for centuries in Britain. On the Continent, someone can be imprisoned for weeks, months and sometimes longer pending investigation.

The EU Arrest Warrant will result in Court officials in any EU country being able to order the arrest in Britain of British subjects and their immediate deportation to, and imprisonment in that country, for weeks, months or longer, for virtually any criminal offence, including many that are not even crimes in the UK (such as "xenophobia"). This will be done with there being no right to a public hearing, and without any evidence having to be produced in a British Court, or a foreign court, until the trial - which may be months or even years after their arrest.

Thus have Messrs. Blair and Blunkett undermined a principal bulwark against the creation of a police state. They pretend that the European Convention on Human Rights will provide adequate protection. It makes no provision for Habeas Corpus at all, merely referring to a right of a prisoner to a public hearing in a "reasonable time"; for Italy (and under Corpus Juris), it is six months, renewable! This is nothing less than barbaric.

Our Law Subservient

Despite clear public opposition, we shall shortly witness another example of the basis of our common law being overturned. The Herbal Medicines Directive (HMD), for which the big pharmaceutical companies have been lobbying for years, will enshrine the principle of continental law that things can only be allowed when they are specifically authorised. The British tradition, now being reversed, is that everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited because it is harmful. HMD encapsulates the principle "guilty until proven innocent".

Since many herbal products cannot be patented (i.e. "owned" by pharmaceutical companies), there will be no-one with deep enough pockets to pay for the very expensive licensing procedures which will be needed to demonstrate that a particular herbal remedy is safe. (Testing will cost up to £250,000 per ingredient in a pill, some having seventy ingredients.) Effectively thousands of herbal preparations will be banned - not for health reasons, but to boost the profits of the pharmaceutical companies.

Stability threatened

The stable government which our country has enjoyed does not rest on force, but on ingrained observance and respect for the law, for our common law. Our system has prospered through managing change by gradual evolution; this ensures the greatest number consenting to reform.

What we now have is great change wrought by administrative fiat -for what else is it when more than seventy per cent of the laws now being imposed upon us are done so by the EU, with no possibility of our own elected representatives at Westminster either changing them or preventing their imposition?

Mr. Blair is only the latest leader in a long and shameful tradition of appeasement - yet another leader who has no faith in our country. Surely only a timid, capitulating cast of mind can lead him to advance the case for this country to be subsumed into a new country called the European Union, for he cannot advance as a reason the parlous condition of the country. What he seeks to do by abolishing the Pound and embracing full Economic and Monetary Union with the EU is the very opposite of what a previous Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, said in 1950:

Loss of self-governance

Embracing EMU means the permanent and irrevocable loss of self-governance. What is at stake is nothing less than the loss of national, democratic self-determination (sovereignty). At present, EMU operates without a government accountable to an electorate. We must remember, however, that EMIU is not truly an economic project; it is a giant leap towards full political integration, transferring power from accountable national institutions to bureaucratic EU-wide institutions.

Parliamentary democracy, as it used to be practised in the UK, is based upon the sovereignty of the people, who lend their sovereign powers to Members of Parliament to use on their behalf for the duration of a single parliament. These powers are then returned intact to the electorate, to whom they belong, and are then lent once more to the MPs of the next parliament.

Because of membership of the EU, all Britons are subject to laws and taxes which their MPs do not enact; they are made and implemented by EU institutions which the people do not directly elect and which they cannot dismiss through the ballot box. Parliamentary democracy obliges MPs to listen to the views of voters between as well as during General Elections, thus facilitating peaceful change through Parliament meeting the needs of the electorate. By these means the British people have been protected from the worst abuses of power by the State, their basic liberties defended, peaceful change made possible with reduced risk of civil disorder, and consent created for the law-making process.

By contrast membership of the EU, by permanently transferring financial and legislative powers to unaccountable, unremovable EU institutions, insulates these institutions from British voters, whose opinions, therefore, need carry no weight and whose grievances they cannot be compelled to address. The fundamental character of the EU's institutions severely circumscribes the operation of Parliamentary Democracy, undermining the rights of the British people.

To date the UK may be said to have delegated its sovereign authority to the EU; the UK remains sovereign so long as it retains the ability to renounce the treaties and repeal the statutes which delegate the exercise of important elements of administrative, jurisdictional and legislative authority to EU institutions.

EU Constitution being planned

Presently meeting, and chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, is the EU Convention for a Constitution. This is fully expected to bring forth a draft EU constitution. The EU Commission has submitted proposals which include an end to all vetoes and opt-outs (such as Britain's opt-out from EMIl), a constitution and single EU foreign policy (and a single asylum and immigration policy), with the Commission having control over national budgets and representing the Eurozone at such ujstitutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The conclusions of the Convention are to be put to a treaty conference in 2004.

Should the Commission be successful in their plans, and should the British Government sign up, it may be that we shall have to place our reliance on a continuing oath of allegiance to the Queen on the part of the armed forces as our remaining hope for extricating ourselves from the sinister bureaucratic bog called the European Union. Additionally, or possibly alternatively, large-scale civil disorder may well arise when the significance of the loss of any ability to influence or elect a government that can do or change anything on behalf of the British electorate becomes glaringly obvious to that electorate.

Where are the MIPs who will put Country before Party and take us out of the EU and back to the sunny uplands of prosperity and independence?