Now that Boris Johnson has won a resounding victory in this month’s election, allowing him to pass his Bill which ensures the UK leaves the EU at the end of January, it is interesting to read comments from the past pertinent to Britain’s proposed membership of the Common Market and the folly of joining the bloc.
In June 1962 Field – Marshal Viscount Earl Montgomery took the unusual step of publishing a full-page advertisement in the Daily Mail under the headline – I say we must not join Europe. Monty was very concerned that membership of the Common Market would lead to the breakup of the Commonwealth. He wrote that the greatest stabilising factor in international affairs since the Roman Empire would then be wantonly cast away. He went on to ask about our staunch friends in Canada, Australia and New Zealand who fought under his command in Africa and Europe, many of whom gave their lives that we might have the freedom our country now enjoys. Are we now to throw overboard our friends who came to our help in the crisis? NEVER!
Monty wrote that the intention behind the Rome Treaty is something more than the Common Market; there would be no point in the Treaty if that was to be all; the “something more” is political unity, a Federation on the model of the USA. We could not possibly join that; it might well mean we have our laws made for us by Europeans and not by our own Parliament. What a frightful idea! He then went on to talk about military affairs and Britain being beholden to a European Strategy with her armed forces in a crisis having to take orders from Europe. He asks, “Are we to put up with all this? NEVER!”
Forty years later in 2002, Lady Thatcher published a book, Statecraft, in which she devoted 90 pages to Europe. She said the comparison with the USA is deeply flawed. Not only was the USA based on a common language, culture and values, it was forged by events. “Europe” is a result of PLANS. She went on to write that Britain must withdraw from the Common Agricultural Policy and take back control of its 200-mile fishing zone.
Other quotes from her book include –
Most of the problems the world has faced have come from mainland Europe ( Nazism… Marxism…) and the solutions from outside it.
Such an unnecessary project as building a European superstate will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.
The blunt truth is that the rest of the EU needs us more than we need them.
“The Nazis spoke in terms that may strike us as eerily reminiscent of today’s Euro-federalists.
We trade globally and we must think globally – not confined within the bounds of a narrow Europe.
And finally, she quotes Andrew Roberts, the historian saying: “By 1962, ( the same year he published the article from which I have taken excerpts), Field Marshal Montgomery found Churchill sitting up in bed smoking a cigar, shouting for more brandy, and protesting about Britain’s proposed entry into the Common Market.”
The question now is, as Britain moves into the negotiating phase, particularly on trade, will Boris be able to honour the prophetic words, sounding like voices from the grave, of these two great leaders?