Written by Bryan Gould
Even at 12,000 miles distance, I was able to celebrate the moment when the UK left the EU. There was a personal element to my celebration. I recalled that, as I record in my published memoirs, I was shocked when I found myself – in a debate on the Maastricht treaty – speaking to an almost empty chamber, and my sense that, if British MPs couldn’t be bothered even turning up when significant powers of government were being handed over to an outside agency, I couldn’t see why I, as a Kiwi, should bother either – it was a significant factor in my decision to leave British politics and return to my native New Zealand.
So, as the whole ill-judged episode was brought to an end on 31 January, I celebrated – but my principal feelings were those of relief, regret and anger.
I felt relief that the British people’s decision to regain their sovereignty had at last been honoured. I felt regret at the wastage – of opportunity, of prosperity, of self-belief – that 47 years of vassalage had meant for us. And I felt anger at those who had led us into such a damaging dead end and who had more recently striven might and main to keep us there.
It was, after all, the predecessors of today’s remainers who had persuaded us to sign up to the ill-fated venture in the first place. They sold the idea to us on a false prospectus – that it would open the door to greater prosperity and that it would mean no loss of the powers of self-government.
I think I can claim to have been one of the few to have debunked such claims from the outset. I knew from my work in the Foreign Office and my years in our embassy in Brussels that the terms on which we were urged to join what was then the Common Market could hardly have been more calculated to weaken, rather than benefit, us.
The record shows beyond doubt that my fears were justified. The British economy languished, our trade deficit swelled, our manufacturing industry was decimated, our trading links with the rest of the world were weakened, our cost of living was pushed up – not entirely the consequences of our European involvement, it is true, since domestic policy mistakes also played a part – but the operations of the Common Market, then the EEC and then the EU, were clearly inimical to British interests over the whole period.
And all the while, as our economy faltered, we found that assurances that there was no intention to create a European super-state were just hot air. We found ourselves in an entity with its own central bank, its own supreme court, its own powerful executive and its own so-called parliament – all with the power to tell us what we could and couldn’t do, and all enjoying powers superior to those of our own institutions.
We have discovered just how far-reaching those shackles have been as we have struggled to disentangle ourselves from them through the exit process.
Those who had urged us on in the first place closed their eyes to these consequences. They were driven by what seemed to be an almost religious fanaticism, but which was in reality, I think, an expression of what they believed was a kind of cultural superiority. They saw themselves as European, rather than British, because they felt that, unlike their fellow-citizens, they alone were able to enjoy the great glories and pleasures of European civilisation – the music, art, literature, food and architecture. As a consequence, they were impervious to the concerns of those they regarded as their inferiors.
Leaving the EU has at last restored to us the chance to shape our own future. There seems no reason, looking forward, why two entities – the UK and the EU – with so many shared interests and so geographically close to each other, should have any difficulty in agreeing on a mutually beneficial trading arrangement and on a range of other useful co-operations on what I like to describe as functional opportunities – that is, we work together where it makes obvious sense to do so.
Our future is indeed bright if British energy and ambition are now put at the service of our own interests, rather than of some fanciful and elusive European identity. It might even be that Commonwealth countries like my own, so long cold-shouldered by the British, might be persuaded to forgive their ill-treatment and enter new arrangements that will benefit all parties.
Thank you for a great article Bryan. I’m not sure about an acceptable trade deal with the EU as there will always be unacceptable conditions attached. Let’s look to more trade with the Commonwealth rather than our traditional enemy across the Channel.
I have apologised to my Australian and New Zealand friends, and now do the same to you Bryan. ….. Edward Heath was a most accomplished liar and most of us fell for it, me included ! – By the late 1980s I wanted out, but I had to wait until PM Cameron gave us the chance in 2016 to vote on this matter. ….. It is true that on the run-up to the referendum, and beyond, both sides exaggerated facts, or just told lies, but this time we were hardened to political lies, and in any case I had already made up my own mind !
I am already enjoying Australasian wine to the exclusion of European. – Some are more than a match for European, and all are better priced with value for money. ….. Whether its my mate in Bonnet Bay, Sydney, or my mate at Mount Victoria, Wellington, they have both succeeded well in life, and I only wish I had joined them back in my 20s ! – A missed opportunity, but that’s life ! – Here’s to our corrected future !
There are war memorials all over New Zealand bearing the names of the dead. I sometimes what it must have been like to grow up as a young man, perhaps on the family farm, in a paradise like perhaps Wanaka, only to be dragged away to be slaughtered on a distant battlefield in a distant war that you knew nothing about.
Yet this is what happened to thousands of Australians and Kiwis, incuding Maoris and we cast them aside: we should be ashamed. Britain has gone but the war memorials remain.
Bryan Gould’s comments stir many memories of my valiant friends in the West-Country anti-Common Market League, based around Bath,/Radstock Shepton Malllet. We hear a lot about Nigel Farage but they were the salt of the earth. The Bath MP at the time was Chris Patten and he fattened himself on all sorts of projects not least being a tax-free EU Commissioner.
In those days there was no internet, We only had a table-top printing press to combat government propaganda which was everywhere and full of lies. Only the old telephone and our cars to go around al the party conferences. It was a heroic battle which was lost and after 47 years the damage it did must be huge.
May I list a roll of honour, like the fallen, as they have all gone I think and I am now 80.
Reg and Betty Simmerson, based in London.*Nigel Farage knew them) The Gaits, farmers, of Shepton Mallet, The Holdens from Radstock, Patrick Holden ran the printing press and went everywhere in his old Jag. Win from Bristol. Dorothy Austin and Nancy Spencer, Milborne Port, Dorset. One dear lady threw a flour bomb at Heath while he was visiting Weston-super-Mare and hit him. She was temporarily arrested. There were many others whose names I cannot remember but we salute you.
Meanwhile Edward Heath was awarded a large sum of money for his treachery, for promoting peace.
None Dare call it Treason.
“I felt relief that the British people’s decision to regain their sovereignty had at last been honoured.”……If only that were true. However the misnamed Withdrawal Agreement & Political Declaration forbid sovereignty, that is independent self-government, for Britain. For instance Part 2 of the PD forbids independent tariff & trade policies (paragraphs 17, 22 & 77) And the WA forbids independent military action (clause 6 of Article 129).
It’s a great relief not to have to apologise to every Australian and New Zealander I meet for the way their countries were treated by the UK and the EEC. As for the results in the UK of the ever closer union, our industry is weaker, our society more fractured and our future less assured.
Well done the pols, troughers all. It took a hero to stop your gravy train.
JF
One last time… Bryan, sorry for how you were treated.
I was shocked at the UK’s treatment of New Zealand and the other Commonwealth countries when the decision was made to join the EEC, a move which was probably the most influential factor in my decision to vote aginst the EEC in 1975. They were ‘family’ and did not hesitate to come to our aid at the darkest moments in our history. Very many of their young didn’t make it home again as their graves in France and elsewhere testify but we cast them adrift less than a generation later at the behest of our new best friends. Shame on us.
That is a most damning testament to the enormous betrayal by the corrupt liar, Edward Heath and his cronies.
I became anti-EU (or anti-Common Market, as it then was) in 1960. At that time I was a shorthand typist/dogsbody in a small department of the International Labour (work, not socialism) Office which is an agency of the UN in Geneva. One day we all arrived in the department with a humungous hangover so the boss, who was as bad as the rest of us, decided that since we wouldn’t get any work done, we’d go up to the UN to listen to whatever Conference was on that day — during the summer there was a Conference almost every day.
So, we staggered into the Conference Room, flopped down on to the seats and put on the ear-muffs to make it look as though we were doing something. The Conference that day was by the Coal and Steel Organisation, a fore-runner of the EU, although I didn’t know that at the time, and it was extremely dull. I dozed away until I suddenly heard the German delegate saying, in translation,
‘And we hope that within a few years, Europe will be one country.’
‘Goodness gracious me!’ I thought (using rather stronger language than that) ‘They’re at it again!!!’ Now, he might have meant this in the nicest possible way — all brothers and sisters together. But this was only 15 years after the end of the Second World War, and that was not the way I took it.
And seeing who is in charge of the EU at the moment, I think I was right.,
Great article Bryan. I have waited a long time for Brexit. I’m also angry at the wasted decades we spent on pandering to arrogant bureaucrats. I am feeling very hopeful for our future now that we will be freed from the EU’s chains. Let them build their EUSSR I want no part of it.
“I am feeling very hopeful for our future now that we will be freed from the EU’s chains.”……….Yes, but the Political Declaration now in force says that any “Free Trade Deal” we make with the EU must include “deep regulatory and customs cooperation” (paragraph 21). That sounds very much like the “close regulatory alignment” that Mrs May was committed to…….The idea of the EU doing a “Free Trade Deal” is rather curious anyway, as the EU exists to protect European producers from free competition in world markets.
Unfortunately some of us dont have dual nationality and cant retire to new zealand on British pensions. We have to live with the consequences of political decisions and a rigged system of access to political power.
Why should a kiwi bother? Well maybe because you were supposed to be representing the interests of your constituents? Clearly by giving up you did what all the rest were doing in Parliament and looked after yourself. Thanks Bryan.
Matt up north……….and the agenda to extricate ourselves from the shambolic and undemocratic European Union, was driven was driven by a politician outside the House of Commons, namely Nigel Farage, and by a political party that has only had two MP’s there, namely the UK Independence Party. Yes The Brexit Party came along much later, but the main driving force or vehicle was indeed UKIP and its activists, and for that all those who supported Brexit should be grateful.
Those who retired to Commonwealth countries had their pensions frozen from annual increases whereas those who retired to Europe have been allowed the increases.