[…] of the Labour Party. But by 1979 Callaghan was triumphant. Brown was a comical, ridiculed drunk. Wilson was forgotten and discredited. Jenkins had left to become an EEC Commissioner. Barbara Castle, too, had gone to Europe, as Leader of the Labour Group of MEPs. The period 1979-1980 saw Callaghan basking in a kind of […]
[…] Heath’s wishes prevailed in 1972-3 when, without telling his party or his cabinet, he decided to try and reconstruct the British economy to make it fit for EEC entry. In Heath’s day the major co-conspirator in the project was the Cabinet Secretary Sir William Armstrong. With Blair it was his chief media wallah, Alistair […]
[…] this off but once he had done so the Halifax/Butler point of view largely disappeared from UK politics to re-emerge, it could be argued, in various anti- EEC campaigns from the 1960’s onwards. One has to say that the PRO records show Churchill possessing great moral authority:……. Nazism and Hitler were uniquely evil….Britain must […]
[…] and in 1974-75 to ensure continued EU membership in the 1975 Referendum. For simplicity, the term European Union (EU), rather than Common Market, European Economic Community ( EEC), or European Community (EC), will be used throughout this article to refer to the post-war project of European integration. In the beginning The post-war project of […]
[…] Heath years. His account confirms the analysis I offer of this period in chapter 1 of The Rise of New Labour. Obsessed with British entry into the EEC, Heath embarked upon his ‘dash for growth’, and turned the bankers loose. Having worked in the City, Nott saw immediately how disastrous the so-called Competition and […]
[…] on which the words quote Jack Straw unquote are identifiable.’ IRD is dead! Long live IRD In the months before the 1973 Referendum on entry into the EEC, IRD entered the fray on the ‘Yes’ side. The little that is known about its operation is recounted in the excellent Lashmar/Oliver book, reviewed below. As […]
[…] into Careerism, Thatcherism and Atlanticism. Correctly, the authors attribute most of the key changes to Blair’s predecessors; Neil Kinnock, who accepted the inevitability of membership of the EEC, and John Smith who accepted the futility of trying to run Keynesian economics in one country. This, latter belief, as the authors note, was considered proven […]
[…] about Bilderberg cited by Peters, which the editor had baulked at. The largest group of articles are those commenting on or opposing Britain’s membership of the then EEC and the propaganda being put out in favour of it. The second biggest group is articles criticising the City of London. In the Financial Times? The […]
[…] as to how to integrate the party with the new form of statehood that will emerge in about ten years time. Blinded by the idea that the EEC offered unfettered free trade, the Party entered into the Treaty of Rome promising that it would have no impact on British sovereignty. But now the British […]
[…] the manufacturing base after the Thatcher governments had a go at it. This country’s fishing industry was largely wrecked as part of the price of entering the EEC in 1972. The steel industry was ‘rationalised’, and, like coal, was mostly closed in the 1980s. Agriculture is being reduced under ‘set aside’ schemes and another […]
