As the euro nears its ignominious collapse, and opposition
to the EU evidently becomes more mainstream in the UK, I find it interesting to
look back on the fact that I have been a lifelong and unrepentant Anti, however
much of a nonconformist and a maverick this would have labelled someone with
overall centre right sympathies in years gone by.
Being one of the many who were too young to vote in
the 1975 referendum on what had only just become the European Economic
Community in place of the Common Market, I can still cast my mind back to my
teens and recall that my own political instinct even then was to believe it wrong
that foreign institutions and judges should make law that the UK did not want
and still had to obey, and that we should contribute billions of pounds to EEC
coffers and only get a fraction back after redistribution to other members and the
cut for bureaucrats’ upkeep. And in those days there were the tales of the
scandalous waste of the EEC butter mountains and wine lakes.
Yet it was still a mantra of the Conservatives, even
under Margaret Thatcher, that EEC membership was good, and that only the
Bennite Left and a few other eccentrics from the right wanted the UK out. Of course
they glossed over the distinction between the socialist siege economy of the
former and the worldwide free market thinking of the latter, and peddled this
great myth that British “influence” in the EEC would bring those wayward
continentals into line.
What of the eighties, as the EEC became the EC?
Well, we had the Falklands War, where UK support from our so-called European partners
was at best lukewarm and at worst undermined by French Exocet sales to
Galtieri. We had the increasing awareness that the liberalising instincts of Maggie
were being undermined by the torrent of EC regulation, as Brussels institutions
steadily increased their power grabs. The great Lord Denning was moved to
confirm that his earlier description of European law as an incoming tide flowing
up the estuaries was now like a tidal wave bringing
down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses, to the dismay
of all. Had he lived beyond 100, he would probably have referred to it as a
burning oil slick. And then Maggie was deposed…
Curiously, as Tory enthusiasm for what was soon to become
the EU began to dampen (not that they did anything about it), Labour repudiated
the anti-European stance of the Benn-Foot era. Possibly because they realised, thanks
to the infamous Jacques Delors proclamation that in time to come virtually all
new law and regulation would be made in Brussels, this would be a far more
effective vehicle for stealth socialism than heavy direct taxation and
nationalisation.
None of it affected me, though. I was just as opposed to
UK membership of the EU as its predecessor acronyms, on broadly the same
grounds throughout. And now I begin to wonder whether this is soon to become
mainstream thought rather than the mark of a nonconformist, maverick or free
thinker.
Let’s close with an ironic note that the customary labels
Europhile and Europhobe owe their origin to ancient Greek – “love” and “fear”
respectively. How annoying it is, though, that this time honoured ancient
language should not quite be capable of providing a decent label for dislike or
distrust of the EU. I have used “Eurosceptic” in the title of this article but
the word is, frankly, the bastard offspring of ancient and modern and does not
adequately convey the state of mind of an all out EU opponent. The prefix “mis”
– think misanthrope – would be ideal but “miseury/miseurist” are not likely to
catch on. There is always the thought of the suffix “apistia”, meaning
mistrust, but this leads unfortunately to the noun “Eurapist”, which looks too
much like a Freudian description of a Brussels squanderer to anyone unaware
that the first syllable is to be emphasised. Perhaps we should have a
competition for a suitable term, to run in parallel with the next Europe Day?
