Dear Lord Chancellor,
Your recent publication, Inside Britain - a guide to the UK Constitution, must be one of the most deceitful, inadequate and deliberately ill-informed documents ever published in the English language. Geobbels would have been proud of it. To claim that it is aimed at older teenagers is an insult to their intelligence, a disgrace to our heritage and a deliberate attempt to mislead future generations of adults.
But should we be surprised? We have had to endure more than forty years of successive governments dumbing-down constitutional education in our schools - all part of a politically motivated process to remove knowledge and understanding of British sovereign rights and freedoms. This process, insidiously started by Wilson and Jenkins in the 1960s, has produced at least two generations already with little idea of what their true rights and freedoms are.
This pathetic publication continues the process. It is a disgrace. Its more glaringly obvious errors include:
Now for the desperate claim that this booklet was aimed at older teenagers. I have frequently found that even young teenagers are perfectly capable of understanding all of the above, and more. When speaking to school classes about these great issues of state - which I do often - their grasp of the facts and the sharpness of their questioning leaves me in little doubt of their full understanding. They know they have a heritage; they know it is a vital protection of their rights and freedoms against the power of the state, and - above all - they understand that it really matters. They are learning to enjoy and - hopefully - respect and protect that heritage into the future.
Our young deserve much better than your shoddy work. How dare you insult them thus? I strongly urge you to recall and pulp the entire print-run and start again.
Yours sincerely,
Ashley Mote,
Author, Vigilance - A Defence of British Liberty.
Thank you to those who have responded to the suggestion of a change in the League's name to: Get Britain Out League (formerly Anti-Common Market League) founded 1961.
All responses received so far have been either favourable or neutral, with no objections. However, the Committee will not make a final decision until November, so any further views will be welcomed.
One thing we know about the European Union is that it will demand ever greater sums of our money. Already Britain pays about £12 billion in tribute to Brussels, of which some £8 billion finds its way back here, although largely in ways that Brussels, not Westminster, decides. A lot of our money is used to fund the fraud, waste and inefficiency for which the EU is notorious. Following Mr Blair's cave-in at last December's summit, Parliament will soon be asked to approve further increases in our contributions.
To top this, the EU budget Commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaite, has recently written to the British government asking for a further £2 billion, to go towards a £24 billion fund for aid to former colonies of EU countries, although - incredibly - Commonwealth countries are to be excluded.
Already Brussels has appropriated much of Britain's overseas aid budget, and spends it far less efficiently than we would if we retained it under our own control. They really must regard us as "the mugs of Europe" to make such an insulting request as this - but given the supine nature of our government, what else can we expect?
We were sorry to learn of the recent death of Mrs Diana Christmas. Diana Christmas fully supported her husband John Paul when he was responsible for founding The Anti-Common Market League in 1961. She also supported him when the international oil company for which he worked forced him to resign from his senior executive position when he refused to stop his work against the then Common Market and his opposition to British membership. For many years after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband in 1969, Diana remained an active member of the League's Committee. After her remarriage Diana continued her support of the League, although her attendance at Committee meetings was now less frequent owing to living some distance from London.
In previous issues we have reported on the proposals to merge our local police forces into sub-regional forces - a step along the road to regional forces based on the EU's regions. These proposals have now been dropped, for the time being at least. It is estimated that the work that had to be done on this matter cost the police forces of England and Wales around £8 million - money that would have been put to far better and more appropriate use in preventing crime and catching criminals.
In its attempts to regionalise just about everything, so as to have control over more and more aspects of our lives, the EU's regional tentacles have even extended into sport. One example of this is to be found in netball, which has recently disbanded its long-established county structure in favour of a regional set-up.
Susan Graham, Interim Chief Executive of England Netball, explained: "As regional sports boards focus on delivery at a regional level within sport in general, and regions become the focus for delivery for sports in England, so England Netball has responded by making structural changes to its management."
An example of how this affects the game at a local level can be found in Surrey, where the captain of the Surrey County netball team, Lucy Barber, said that she was "confused and saddened" by the decision to call time on county netball. She said: "We had a reunion dinner after our last game. One woman, who was in her eighties, could trace her involvement in county netball back seventy years. It is a shame that all that tradition is coming to an end, especially when nobody really seems to know what is going to happen next year."
Ms Barber is also captain of The Downs netball club, based in Epsom. She added: "The Downs are the only side in Surrey currently playing at the highest level of club competition. What will happen to talented girls who don't live close to a good club side? It was a big deal to be selected for your county, but more importantly it was the only place where many talented girls could get a good game. My concern is that, without the county set-up, the sport will lose many good players."
No mention of the EU is made in any of this. But can it be imagined that this would have happened without the hand of Brussels behind it?
The European Parliament has given the go-ahead for the creation of an EU Gender Institute. The institute is supposed to gather and analyse information on gender-related issues. Slovenia, Slovakia and Lithuania are vying with one another to host the new body. The budget for the new body is £8 million per annum.
New translation and interpretation rights for the Irish language will cost the European Parliament more than 677,000 euros (£470,000) per annum. From 2007, MEPs will be able to speak in the chamber of the European Parliament in the Irish language with interpretation, even though no more than five MEPs have the fluency to do so. The European Parliament already has 20 recognised languages and 380 language permutations.
As of 11 July the monthly meetings of EU finance ministers (Ecofin) have been broadcast live on the internet, in an effort to introduce more transparency into Brussels decision-making. However, in the first broadcast meeting the cameras were only left on for the two least sensitive discussions - one on the Finnish Presidency's programme and another on the mandate of the European Investment Bank. As ministers turned their attention to the more troublesome and interesting issue of the Stability and Growth Pact, Finnish Finance Minister Eero Heinaluoma announced, "I now end the public session of this council", and the cameras were turned off!
New research released by global credit insurer Atradius shows a significant shift away from support for the euro among UK exporters. 56.7 per cent would vote No in a referendum on the euro - compared with 49.8 per cent in 2002, while 43.3 per cent are in favour of joining, compared with 50.2 per cent in 2002. According to the poll, of those who would vote No, 43.7 per cent believe the euro would contribute to a European superstate, 37.6 per cent are concerned about the constitutional implications and 18.7 per cent believe it would weaken relations with the United States.
This was the question which Mr Ashley Mote, Independent MEP for South-East England, attempted to answer in his address to the League's most recent public meeting, held at St John's Church, Waterloo, on Friday 21st July.
During his two years as one of our elected representatives at Brussels, Mr Mote has discovered that the European Commission has set up some 3,000 secret committees which have infiltrated the European Parliament and departments of national governments. These committees have enormous influence, and our traditional form of government has been replaced by new and unseen forces, imposed upon us by deceit.
We see the effects of this in nearly every aspect of politics. At the recent World Trade Organisation negotiations, Britain was not represented by one of its own Government ministers, but was simply included within the EU delegation, led by none other than Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Our own Civil Aviation Authority has been superseded by the European Air Safety Agency, based in Cologne. The European Defence Agency, the European Space Agency and the Galileo project are all going ahead.
The intentions behind the EU were always to leave national institutions in place while taking them over from within, so that they would do the bidding of Brussels and implement the policies of the EU without people realising what was happening.
When Greece was given grants for new olive groves, it was the Greek government and not an independent inspectorate which checked them; the same thing happened in Italy and other countries. This creates an institutional mindset for corruption which is embedded in the EU, and which has been imported into Britain over the last 30 years. The EU, said Mr Mote, is an invention of the 1950s to solve the problems of the 1930s. If starting today, we would not invent anything remotely like the EU. It stifles enterprise, wealth creation and employment creation, and has more in common with the USSR than with the USA.
The corruption has spread into the processes of democracy itself. As we have seen on numerous occasions, the attitude is "if it's Yes, we carry on; if it's No, we carry on".
It is well known that the European Union budget is biased against Britain, and this is likely to worsen. Draft proposals published by the Government show that from next year large parts of the UK will no longer be eligible for EU regional aid, in which they give us back a fraction of our own money. The proposals show that the percentage of the UK population covered by "Regional Selective Assistance" will fall from 31 per cent to 24 per cent, with only Cornwall and the Scilly Islands, West Wales and the Valleys, the Scottish Highlands and Islands and Northern Ireland being eligible for funding. This is in line with the EU's plans to redistribute more of the aid budget to poorer regions in new member states. This is on top of the wasteful and harmful way in which much of the EU aid is spent.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that flaws in the way that EU structural aid is calculated mean that Luneburg, one of the richest regions in Germany, is set to receive 900 million euros (more than £600 million) of EU regional aid money between 2007 and 2013. EU regional aid is based upon average income per head in the region. Most of the inhabitants in Luneburg actually work in the city of Hamburg, so their income is recorded there, giving the impression that the suburbs are poor when in fact they are among the richest in Europe.
Sir,
Writing as a member of the Conservative Party I have to agree that your correspondent, Kathleen Garner (Summer 2006), very accurately describes the lies and deceit that went hand-in-hand with the Heath government's move into Europe. The Major government used every means at its disposal to see that the Maastricht Treaty was forced through the House of Commons in spite of the activities of his so-called "bastard" MPs. I was expelled by the Conservative Party when I stood as an Independent/Anti-Federal Europe candidate in Honiton in the 1992 General Election, polling 2,175 votes. At the subsequent General Election in 1997, I worked for the late Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, whose candidates saved several deposits - including Honiton.
I later re-joined the Conservative Party. I and very many others are doing our best to change the Party's policy on Europe from within and will continue to do so. However, it is patently obvious that the United Kingdom Independence Party has failed to win a single seat in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections despite fielding hundreds of candidates at each election, and it will not be possible for it to win any seats in the future unless the present first-past-the-post voting system is changed. UKIP - like all the other fringe parties - is destined to remain in the political wilderness, for the simple reason that they are all perceived to be single-issue parties and, sad to say, the general public does not rate our membership of the EU as within the top ten of its national priorities.
Yours faithfully,
David Owen,
Exmouth, Devonshire.
Sir,
Like Kathleen Garner, I find it somewhat insulting that you should consider us soft enough, having switched from the Conservative Party to UKIP, to go back to such a thoroughly dishonest party.
Over the years, while it has consistently sold us out, the Conservative Party has fraudulently obtained millions of votes by claiming to be Eurosceptic. Even now, after so many betrayals, there are many in that party who still wait for the Tory knight to gallop up and save them from the evil empire. It will not happen!
It is difficult to know whether to treat Eurosceptic Tories with pity or disdain: disdain at their being too naïve to see the obvious, or pity at their having waited so long for a leader who was conservative with a small "c", only to be saddled with yet another who is Conservative with a capital CON.
Yours faithfully,
John Atkinson,
Burghfield,
nr. Reading, Berks.
The Fever of Discovery - the story of Matthew Flinders
Marion Body
New European Publications 1-872410-45-6
250pp. £15.00
One of the reasons for opposing British membership of the EU is the consequential weakening of the Commonwealth, whose enormous scope for encouraging co-operation, trade and cultural links among many and diverse independent nations around the globe has been ignored and woefully underestimated. Much of the Commonwealth's history is scarcely known here in Britain, where it all began, and this book, by the wife of the League's President, illuminates an important early part of this story.
Matthew Flinders played a significant part in the early history of Australia, helping to thwart French designs on the newly-discovered continent and going on to chart, with remarkable accuracy, most of Australia's coastline. After other adventures in his short but eventful life he died aged forty, worn out in large part by the strains of his endeavours.
Flinders hailed from Donington in Lincolnshire and, while her husband was the local Member of Parliament, Lady Body met Flinders' great-granddaughter there, sparking her interest in this remarkable man.
This is a well-written book, augmented by extensive illustrations, and combines a detailed historical account with a vivid pen-portrait of Flinders; the reader inevitably rejoices at his successes and sympathises with him in his tribulations. Remarkably, this is Lady Body's first book.
Available from bookshops, or from the publishers at 14 Carroun Road, London, SW8 1JT.
In a powerful speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in May, Derek Clark, United Kingdom Independence Party MEP for the East Midlands, received cross-party support when he denounced the EU's almost deliberate destruction of developing countries' natural resources. He called for the EU to repatriate fisheries policies, rather than use them to wipe out the fleets of those less fortunate than ourselves. The full text of Derek Clark’s speech is as follows.
"Madam President, we are constantly told to listen to the people, not least by the Greek President this very morning. Let us do that and recognise that the people, when asked directly, say No to the Constitution, not least because they view with dismay the allocation of more and more of their money to pre-accession and even pre-candidate countries, some of which are undeveloped. Here it is essential that developed and undeveloped countries be separated and that these funds be not for European countries alone. So the EU should remember Third World countries outside the EU where its funds would be put to better use. In fact, its activities often lead to poverty in the Third World, which is why my party wishes to put this aid back in the hands of Member States alone. Only yesterday, this House voted to allow EU fleets the rights to fish the waters of Sao Tomé, Príncipe and Angola.
"We all know what happens next: the EU fleets rape the waters putting locals out of business and destroying fish stocks for years to come. What price external relations then? Yesterday, we gave rights to EU fleets to fish Moroccan waters and specifically rejected proposals that Member States could prohibit their fleets from fishing the waters of Western Sahara. Half the people of that unhappy country live in Algerian refugee camps because of Morocco’s military takeover. Now there is political, uncivil insecurity for you! Thus is Western Sahara impoverished when it could be helped. But there are only 300,000 people there; they have renounced violence, unlike some other countries in receipt of EU funds, so the world forgets them."
Dr Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for South-East England, added, "The fisheries agreement as it stands would give boats of EU countries the right to exploit the natural reserves of the Saharawi people - a right they have explicitly not granted and which the occupying nation, Morocco, has no legal right to grant. Putting the official stamp of approval on any deal with Morocco over EU access to the territory it occupied during its invasion of Western Sahara - including the territorial waters - will make the EU complicit in terrible and ongoing human rights abuses.
"If the EU is to be a force for peace it simply must respect international law intended to protect nations from occupation and invasion. Failure to do so will send out the signal that countries' annexing their neighbours and persecuting indigenous peoples needn't present a bar to their doing business with the EU."
Sir Digby Jones, former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, has said that he is becoming increasingly "cynical and frustrated" over EU membership.
"If you criticise Europe, people say you are a Eurosceptic, which I am not. I am a Euroreformist. I wouldn't suggest pulling out, but I do think serious questions need to be asked about the value added involved". He said that French opposition to reform of the Common Agricultural Policy sent his "blood pressure through the roof".
When traditionally pro-EU folk such as Sir Digby say such things, we can be sure that something is seriously rotten in the EU. Perhaps Sir Digby will soon come round to seeing withdrawal as a serious option.