Sir.: You have done a service by publishing the full
text of Mr Benn's thoughtful letter to his electors on the Common Market. It highlights perhaps the most important argument in the forthcoming referendum debate, which pros and antis must never lose sight of. He points out that "The parliamentary democracy we have developed and established in Britain is based, not upon the sovereignty of Parliament, but upon the sovereignty of the people ..." Mr Benn further states that the sovereignty is lent to MPs to.exercise on their behalf. But it is equally lent to their locally elected councillors when decisions affecting local issues are made. It will no doubt be lent by the Scots and Welsh to their elected representatives when the proposed regional parliaments are established. By the same token some of their sovereign powers will be lent to their European MPs, once the European Parliament is directly elected.
What is'unacceptable to Mr Benn, as it has long been to many of us staunch Europeans, is that legislative powers exercised collectively by Community governments in the Council of Ministers, are not directly accountable to ordinary citizens. Unless Mr Benn believes that parliamentary democracy is an exclusively British privilege, he ought to welcome the historic decision of the Paris summit to extend it to the whole Community by 1978. Instead of the unholy anti-Market allianee of the Nationalist Enoch Powell and the Socialist Wedgwood Benny the sovereignty of the British people would surely be better served if those eminent Parliamentarians fought each other for election to the European Parliament, and thus extended British democracy to the whole Community.
Ernest Wistrich Director, The European Movement, Europe House, IA Whitehall Place, London SW!
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