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On this day…

…an uneasy alliance of former enemies, having marshalled massive forces and waged a skilful campaign involving unprecedented levels of deception, was victorious in its battle to keep Britain in the Common Market.

18 comments to On this day…

  • …against a lying PM who was only elected by the narrowest of margins and used a bogus “renegotiation” with European leaders on harsh terms as an electoral gambit and after winning the election and gone through the motions with European leaders decided everything was hunky dorey and campaigned to remain with the community.

    I doubt you cold put a fag paper between Wilson and Cameron’s strategies.

  • For those Americans among us “fag paper” translates into American as “cigarette paper”. Mostly used in America these days for rolling other things than tobacco. Zig Zag. Which IIRC is French.

  • PersonFromPorlock

    Also used to set the ignition timing on car engines back in the day:

    1. Loosen distributor clamp and rotate the distributor head until the points open.

    2. Drop a cigarette paper between the points and rotate the head back until the paper is pinched between the points.

    3. Rotate the engine until the timing mark on the crank pulley is lined up with the index mark on the engine block.

    4. Grasp the cigarette paper and pull gently while rotating the distributor head to open the points: stop when the paper slips free.

    5. Tighten the distributor clamp. Voila! The ignition is now (approximately) correctly timed.

  • mojo

    It only goes back to 1950.

  • pete

    Don’t play the deception card.

    It makes you sound like a Guardian columnist.

    They always tell us how the public has been duped and voted against its best interests.

  • Regional

    Britain is too big a market for the E.U. to ignore so when the referendum occurs tell them and their regulations to fook off, they’ll still deal with you but on your terms.

  • Paul Marks

    Calling it the “Common Market” was part of the deception.

    The name was made up to hide the fact that the project was never about trade – it was about political union.

    It still is.

  • Mr Ed

    Note how the BBC in context side article refers to Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party getting 3% of the vote a year after it was set up in the 1997 GE but wholly omits any reference to UKIP or Dr Alan Sked.

  • Mr Ed

    A sensible government would ask a sensible House of Commons to declare that referendum result void for fraud by misrepresentation, and withdraw from the EU.

    Then require those in receipt of EU pensions or payments to register as agenta of a foreign power, as they do in the US, and rotate them through the stocks newly installed in Parliament Square for the EU fruit mountain to be disposed of.

  • Person from Porlock,

    That brought back memories (I was born in 1977 but used to work on an old Land Rover in my 20s). But I invested in a set of feeler gauges. 🙂

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    pete writes, “Don’t play the deception card. It makes you sound like a Guardian columnist.”

    It’s not “playing a card” to state the facts. Read the link under the word “deception”. During the years in which he was my MP, Sir Anthony Royle didn’t tell me or anyone else about this:

    The name of the late Sir Anthony Royle . . . appears in a list of 200 files quietly released at the National Archives in Kew.

    They relate to the work of civil servants in a secret department of the Foreign Office, The European Community Information Unit (1970-72), set up by Mr Heath in a bid to conceal any threat to sovereignty and revoke [sic, I think the BBC writer means “refute”] any anti Common Market arguments.

    Sir Anthony’s pro-Europeanism endeared him to Edward Heath and his stance both during the entry of the UK into the European Community in 1973 and in later Conservative relationships with Europe, was perhaps the most significant aspect of his political career.

    It is revealed in these files that in September 1970 as Foreign Office Minister he informed the secret government propaganda unit of its new duties in a five page memo after discussions with Geoffrey Rippon, the Europe Minister and Willie Whitelaw the cabinet fixer and Lord president of the council.

    Sir Anthony told the unit he expected them to find “independent” minded people to deluge newspapers with pro-Europe letters and to tour Britain on behalf of the pressure group the British Council of the European Movement. He told them they would receive a secret list of constituencies whose MPs were anti-marketeers.

  • RAB

    The Sage of Kettering is perfectly correct, it was never about a Common Market, it was always about the ultimate goal… The United States of Europe.

    I was old enough to vote NO in 1975 and will do so again this time. Fat lot of good it will do me though, for just like last time we will be swamped in paid for EU propaganda urging us to stay in (the joke is that we, ourselves, will have paid for it). Every Media outlet, especially the BBC, will be for it. All major political parties (except UKIP natch) will be for it, and all the crony Capitalist and money merchants will be for it… Got to build a monopoly or two boys, gotta build a monopoly or two… But no more than two, or your cartel may have problems.

    We were lied to last time and will be lied to this. Give up Sovereignty? Heaven forfend! This is merely a trade agreement for the betterment of all our peoples. Well that trade agreement suddenly had a flag that we are supposed to salute, an anthem we are supposed to get misty eyed about, two Presidents and Parliament buildings, a bunch of MEP’s who decide nothing, and the books have not been audited in nearly 20 years. If the EU were a commercial company, it would be in receivership by now. And ddon’t get me started on the Eurozone, which every country, including Germany, fiddled their figures to join.

    The EU is an artificial criminal construct, that has no reason to be and no hope of making life for its citizens better. But we, and the rest of Europe fell for it, and we will again.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    RAB, you write, “for just like last time we will be swamped in paid for EU propaganda urging us to stay in (the joke is that we, ourselves, will have paid for it)”

    Yes.

    EU can spend millions to back ‘yes’ vote

    DAVID CAMERON is facing a fresh revolt on Europe this week after lifting a ban on the government and the European Commission spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on pro-EU propaganda during the referendum campaign.

    The government’s referendum bill is due to receive its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday, paving the way for an in-out vote before the end of 2017.

    But senior Conservatives are furious that Downing Street has torn up protections that were in place for the Scottish independence and AV referendums to stop the government interfering dur­ing the campaign.

    The official “yes” and “no” campaigns will have their budgets capped for the duration of the campaign.

    But Cameron has scrapped the 28-day “purdah” period in the run-up to polling day that is supposed to prevent civil servants or councils from making official announcements relating to the EU.

    You also write, “But we, and the rest of Europe fell for it, and we will again.”

    Do you have the secret of infallibly predicting election and referendum results? That is a useful talent, and I expect you have won a fortune at the betting shops. Unburdened as I am with foreknowledge, I have hopes that this move by Cameron, if it is well publicised, may actually neutralise the propaganda advantage to the EU side of its larger budget. To safely cock a snook at at a bully is often popular.

  • RAB

    Natalie, I have no wish to be a Cassandra, but I have to weigh the weight of the forces against us… we who would leave the EU in a shot… and the vested interests that will not stop short of lying, to make us stay in.

    First there is iDave himself. Cameron is in the class of a middle ranking CEO, he doesn’t want to leave the EU. He doesn’t want the fuss and bother of it, nor does he have the imagination and belief to see how much better this country could be outside of it. He is trying to pull a Harold (one of the most shameless old phonies in British political history. The pipe and Gannex raincoat were props to fool the people you know. He didn’t smoke a pipe, but cigarettes, and the Gannex was a free advertisement for one of the Labour Parties donors). Harold came back with fuck all concessions from Brussels but claimed a glorious victory, and Dave will do the same.

    In 75, a large part of what we now call “Old Labour” were dead against the Common Market. Politicians like Tony Benn and George Thomas (both Labour Cabinet members) for good democratic reasons, the likes of the Trade unions were also against, but out of their own self interests. But the Labour and Lib/Dem’s (all 8 of them, chuckle) but more importantly, the SNP (all 58 of them) are solidly pro the EU. Only UKIP is against, and they have been demonised to hell and back already, haven’t they?

    All of the Press is going to be for staying in this time,except for blogs like this one and ours etc. The BBC certainly.

    I would like more time. For Greece to crash out of the EURO, and maybe Portugal, Spain and Italy too, to bring it home to our diverted by smoke and mirrors electorate, just what a ridiculous unsustainable fraud the EU actually is. Then with the scales fallen from their eyes, the British electorate can see a clear future not shackled to criminal fraudsters and wishful thinking fanatics, and build a new and prosperous global future.

    If it is so obvious that FIFA is a fraud, and the UN is a fraud, why cannot the people of this country and Europe itself see that the EU is a fraud?

  • Samizdata Illuminatus

    Time to get out altogether. Not like Norway, not like Switzerland, like Australia.

  • RAB

    I would like more time. For Greece to crash out of the EURO, and maybe Portugal, Spain and Italy too, to bring it home to our diverted by smoke and mirrors electorate, just what a ridiculous unsustainable fraud the EU actually is.

    If that comes to pass the vote won’t matter much. It will be strings where a steel box is needed. The strings will provide a little delay. And yes – as with all such things sooner is better than later – but it will not matter much for the long haul.

  • RAB

    Timing for a vote is crucial MSimon, and our opposition know it. It is obvious that Greece never can and never will, pay back the money it owes. It will only continue to borrow more. But yet they remain in the Euro. Why? because the Euro is political not economic, and European politicians cannot countenance any failure for their dream of ever closer union, aka the United States of Europe. So they will continue to fudge and hedge and pour a heap more pretend money into the equation to kick the can down the road. Any lie will do as long as their dream remains on the rails.

    Every rule they have ever made for themselves… no bailouts from the ECB to national govts etc have already been broken and continue to be. And yet the three legged donkey of the EU carries on down the dirt track to oblivion, all the time braying that it is the future!

    Nobody in Britain pays much attention to the EU at the best of times, or even the worst, just as long as we are rubbing along nicely, and we are at present. But like I said timing is crucial for an OUT vote, and the stark destruction of Greece and others crashing and burning not because they have just left the Eurozone, but because they were crazy enough to join it in the first place, will be the final slap in the face that the British electorate need to see starkly just what the EU is and intends to be.

  • CaptDMO

    MSimon
    For those Americans among us “fag paper” translates into American as “cigarette paper”.
    OT{slow day}
    Ah, thank you, although in context I can see the phrase mistaken for (ie) The New York Times.
    (Fag, or faggot, doesn’t ALWAYS connote “gay” male homosexual here. None the less, it’s STILL a “forbidden” word in open polite “spheres” of conversation, OTHER than “gay” homosexual bars, and metropolitan *ahem* “art” openings in general.
    “We’ve” generally called them “rolling papers” since the 60s. Those of us who actually used them for “home rolled” tobacco cigarettes (MUCH cheaper) used a generic all inclusive term-“makins”- amongst ourselves.
    MOST later stoners, oddly too lazy, or motor skill impaired, to practice “the craft” of rolling, used EZ Wider, 1.5 times as wide
    as say Zig Zag, or JB (aka Job), or my personal favorite, “Indian” Cannabis Indica, made in Italy of course, -but many stoners couldn’t figure out the “no gummed edge” concept of those.