Yes to Europe

If Harold Wilson had foreseen the 2016 referendum, would he still have consented to hold one in 1975 on Britain’s continued membership of the European Community (EC), or Common Market? One of the many striking things about Robert Saunders’ excellent book is how many politicians and commentators in 1975 thought a referendum—the first in Britain’s history—a terrible idea. The Sun called it a ‘constitutional monstrosity’ that menaced the survival of democracy. Margaret Thatcher said it was a ‘device of dictators and demagogues’ (p. 5). By 2016, the political climate had changed in ways Wilson could not have anticipated, but appreciation of those changes should have given David Cameron pause in his assumption that voters in referenda always favour the status quo. Saunders’ book is an in-depth and even-handed analysis of the 1975 referendum campaign, and a perceptive commentary on politics and society in mid-1970s Britain. In 1975 the Church was one of the largest voluntary organizations in the country, with three times the membership of the political parties, and clergy who often had strong links with Europe. John Gummer—between times a Conservative MP—was the driving force behind the group ‘Christians in Europe’, who commended the Common Market for God’s blessing. The Bishop of Manchester worried that the ideal of European brotherhood might be ‘lost for fear of the price of sugar or of occasionally having to speak a foreign language’ (pp. 214–5)

Democracy · Economic history · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Referendum · Sociology · Status quo · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law