Market matters
Sir: It is being suggested that it is unthinkable we should abrogate the Treaty of Rome, 1957.
The OEEC, formed in 1948 and extended later to include Western Germany, failed in 1957 to respond to a British initiative to set up a free trade area, and the seventeen nations represented therein split, six of them going on to form a community based on the Treaty of Rome.
Again as a result of a British initiative the Treaty of Stockholm was signed on May 3, 1960, to establish a free trade area from seven of the remaining eleven OEEC countries.
Whether the Treaty of Stockholm is still in being is to be doubted, but there are no grounds for pro-Marketeers suggesting that we cannot do unto the Treaty of Rome what was done to the Treaty of Stockholm in 1973.
Charles Roberts 73 Meeting Street, Quorn, Loughborough, Leics.
Sir: The pro-Marketeers wax eloquent on the lines that Westminster MPs should not be bound by the result of a referendum of the British people, yet they rush headlong to propel the British Parliament into the restrictive machinery of the bureaucratic Brussels "Iron Maiden."
Like Cassandra, they cry that if the answer is "No," Benn, McGahey, Scargill, Clive Jenkins and Co will isolate Britain in order to increase the Communist grip on Britain; and yet what about the very large and powerful French and Italian Communist parties with whom Benn etc will liaise if the vote is "Yes?"
D. Vigne Smith Springhead, Iwitchen, Craven Arms, Shropshire
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