Sovereignty and the EEC
Sir: While still an anti-Marketeer, I dissociate myself from those on the right who are prepared to enter into an alliance with the far left to get us out. That cure is worse than the disease. The anti-Marketeers of the right value sovereignty above all things. Most of the left care nothing for sovereignty and would unhesitatingly support our membership of a United Socialist States of Europe. Their hatred of the EEC has nothing to do with sovereignty but is due to the lipservice it pays to economic liberalism, which, admittedly, in view of the CAP, the Community honours more in the breach than in the observance.
The common agricultural policy is very expensive to this country and would be sufficient reason to me for resignation from the EEC; but, of course, there are numerous others. For this reason, the Anti-Dear Food Campaigners were the only anti-Marketeers with anything of overwhelming importance to say during the referendum campaign. I think that the anti-Market cause was lost by the red herrings which diverted attention away from the issue of dear food.
I would like to know why Mr Powell changed his mind, for he has not always been an anti-Marketeer. It would be surprising if, when he supported our application for membership, he did not appreciate the cost to the consumer of the CAP. That would be quite out of character. Indeed, throughout the campaign, he laid much more emphasis on the issue of sovereignty (the loss of which is more apparent than real) than on the price of food. If he had emphasised the latter more, the anti-Market campaign might have been successful, in spite of Ben n.
It would be a mistake to blame all our present troubles on the EEC, as recent contributors to your correspondence column have done. The cost of supporting our monstrous public sector is greater even than that of feat herbeddinginefficient continental farmers. West Germany has to bear the latter cost too, but it has not prevented her from becoming the most prosperous country in Europe. Due to the success of her policy of economic liberalism, her Social Democrats are no longer socialists.
If it is true that a Labour government of the future would take us out of the EEC, let us hope that it is preceded by an administration of economic liberalism led by Mrs Thatcher. All the evidence suggests that such an administration would pursue that policy. There should then be a repetition of what happened when Erhard liberalised the West German economy, leading to such successful results that the German Social Demo
crats abandoned their socialism. If the same thing happened to the British Labour Party, I would vote for them if they, and not the Conservatives, promised to take us out of the EEC.
D. E. Folkes 5 Queen's Walk, Ealing, London W5
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