by Jonathan Roberts
“There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty,” said the white paper of 1971 that began our entry into the European Economic Community.
It was the start of a debate on the future of the UK and its place in the modern world, but one that paid little attention to what part of our sovereignty should be defined as ‘essential’.
“In the modern world, no country can go it alone,” read the government pamphlet issued during the referendum of 1975. Amidst rising unemployment and persistent recession, joining a free trade agreement with our closest trading partners was seen as a welcome opportunity to turn the economy around. We needed jobs and prosperity in a rapidly changing world, and the Common Market was sure to deliver it. This, twinned with assurances on national sovereignty, was the argument that persuaded the electorate to ratify the UK’s entry 2 years earlier.
And in many ways, it worked. When international trade forms such a fundamental part of UK GDP, easy access to a market of 500 million people has immense value. Within a few years of the Common Market coming into force, airlines, as an example, had increased their flights to European destinations by 60%, and new opportunities for trade, business and tourism flourished. The freedom of movement, in many ways a libertarian principle, was matched by new protections for working people that prevented exploitation at home and abroad.
But as an electorate, our agreement to join the Community was on the condition of protection of sovereignty and the preservation of democracy. And it is here that, as the EEC became the European Union, the ‘project’ started its road to democratic illegitimacy.
Our ability to protect British sovereignty was then, and continues to be, on the decline. In 1975 we were told, in the same government pamphlet, that “No important new law can be decided in Brussels without the consent of a British Minister, answerable to a British Government and a British Parliament…the British Minister can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax.” It provided reassurance to an uneasy electorate. But whilst this claim may have been true at the time, that time was long ago.
