1975 and 2016

The Political Quarterly A Tale of Two Referendums: 1975 and 2016 ROBERT SAUNDERS ONE OF the more bruising comments on The difference was that Wilson had a clear David Cameron’s premiership is that it boils sense of what he wanted to achieve. Wilson’s down to one recurring theme: ‘doing what renegotiation left untouched what he con- [Harold] Wilson did, only a little bit worse’.1 temptuously called the ‘theology’ of the EEC, In the wake of the referendum, that verdict but targeted very precisely the complaints of now looks generous. Like Cameron, Wilson moderate sceptics in his party. Left-wing was a reluctant European who led a divided euroscepticism centred on four core concerns: party at a time of rising euroscepticism. Like that it was a capitalist club; that it was a Cameron, he pledged to renegotiate the betrayal of the Commonwealth; that it was terms of British membership and put them bad for poorer countries; and that it was to the public in a referendum. The difference draining money from Britain. The first group lies in the verdict. When the polls closed on were offered a new regional development 5 June 1975, Wilson had won a landslide for fund, together with assurances on industrial membership, winning more than two-thirds policy. For Commonwealth enthusiasts, there of the popular vote. Every part of the United were improved terms of trade for New Zeal- Kingdom voted to stay in, with the excep- and and other importers. Though not formally tion only of Shetland and the Western Isles. part of the negotiations, the Lome Convention By contrast, Cameron has presided over also suggested a new direction for the Com- the biggest policy failure by a British govern- munity, offering to developing countries a ment since the 1930s. The referendum has massive aid package and improved terms of destroyed his premiership and set off an trade. A new funding mechanism provided a earthquake beneath British politics. What refund on Britain’s contribution to the Com- Stephen Bush called his ‘Harold Wilson tri- munity budget, though it would later prove bute band’ looks more like an evening with hopelessly inadequate. Alice Cooper, complete with make-up, live At the same time, the direction of travel snake and intimations of the apocalypse. for the EEC seemed relatively benign. Under Comparisons between 1975 and 2016 are the ill-fated Ortoli Commission, the move- of course approximate, for Britain and the ment towards ‘ever closer union’ appeared EU have changed significantly in the mean- to have ground to a halt. Wilson assured time. Yet it is still worth asking what went Parliament that ‘there is not a hope in hell— wrong, and why Wilson’s referendum for- I mean in the Common Market’—of eco- mula worked so poorly for his successor. nomic and monetary union in the immediate future.2 Helmut Schmidt told a press conference that ‘pontificating and proclaiming the Renegotiations European targets for the day after tomorrow’ 3 Like Wilson, Cameron approached the rene- was ‘European cloud-cuckoo-land’. It was gotiations with a single purpose in mind. during the renegotiation period, in 1974–5, The object was not to transform the EU, for that the European Council was formally this could only have been done as part of a established, making heads of government, reforming alliance. The object was to give rather than the Commission, the central deci- his own party members, who had spent sion-makers of the Community. The future years cursing the EU by bell, book and can- of the EEC looked to be intergovernmental, dle, permission to change their minds. That not supranational, diminishing fears of a imperative was particularly pressing for European ‘superstate’. Wilson, who had voted against the European Cameron was neither so lucky nor so skil- Communities Act in 1972. ful. Having set on a strategy of © The Author 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 1 renegotiation, he appeared to have not the a Yes vote.8 By contrast, warnings issued by faintest idea what he wanted to achieve. the Treasury and the IMF in 2016 seem not to Where Wilson sought practical improve- have hit home with voters who had no lived ments that targeted specific grievances, experience of shortages or power cuts. Polling Cameron was driven back onto the ‘theol- in 2016 suggested that voters expected the ogy’ of the EU, negotiating an opt-out country as a whole to be poorer in the event from a commitment to ‘ever closer union’ of Brexit, but did not envisage adverse conse- that governments had always insisted was quences for themselves. meaningless. Meanwhile, the integrationist In any case, anxieties about the economy pressures unleashed by the crisis within no longer worked automatically to the the euro zone provided a far less benign advantage of the Remain campaign. In 1975 environment for public debate. While it had been a truism that Britain was the Cameron could parade his various opt-outs, ‘sick man of Europe’, outpaced on every this risked confirming a perception that measure by the dynamic economies of the Britain had lost control over the direction Continent. Cartoons represented the UK as a of travel. sinking ship, its sailors paddling desperately towards the sanctuary of the Common Mar- ket. In 2016, by contrast, the euro zone Dracula vs Frankenstein seemed mired in debt, stagnation and soar- As a result, the ‘renegotiations’ proved irrele- ing unemployment. Time and again, Leave vant to the campaign. Instead, Cameron was campaigners repeated the slogan that Europe forced back onto ‘Project Fear’, the strategy had the slowest growth rate of any continent that had brought (short-term) victory in the other than Antarctica. For many voters, it Scottish Independence vote. Here, too, he was was now the European ship that appeared 9 playing from the Wilson songbook. The 1975 holed beneath the waterline. campaign was described by one newspaper as ‘a spine-chilling horror epic’, with ‘the ‘ ’ defenceless voter’ caught up in ‘a nightmarish Take back control duel between Dracula and Frankenstein’.4 Debates about sovereignty also had a differ- Another called it an ‘auction of fear, a compe- ent character. Contrary to popular mythol- tition to make your flesh creep’.5 Pro-Market- ogy, sovereignty was extensively debated in eers warned that a vote to leave would mean 1975. The slogan ‘The Right to Rule Our- ‘the closing of schools and hospitals and the selves’ was emblazoned across the literature stopping of roads, railways and mines’.6 Ted of the ‘Out’ campaign, while a pamphlet sent Heath predicted a Soviet invasion and the to every household proclaimed that ‘The return of rationing, while the veteran trade fundamental question is whether or not we unionist Vic Feather told a press conference remain free to rule ourselves in our own that Britain would be ‘knackered’ outside the way’.10 Neil Marten, the Conservative MP Community—’and I don’t want to see us who chaired the ‘Out’ campaign, told jour- knackered’.7 nalists that ‘While food and jobs are vitally Strikingly, those warnings resonated in the important, the real issue is whether we vote 1970s to a much greater extent than in 2016. away our political birthright ... There is no This was partly because they connected with other issue’.11 ‘In’ campaigners argued that it recent experience. For a generation that had was economic weakness, not European inte- lived through rationing, seen oil prices gration, that threatened UK sovereignty. In quadruple in 1973 and queued for sugar in the 1960s, Labour’s ‘National Plan’ had been 1974, the prospect of economic catastrophe ripped up by the currency markets and the was not something abstract. Private polling in devaluation of sterling. Spending commit- May 1975—at a time when inflation was near- ments had been struck down by Britain’s ing 25 per cent—found that more than half of creditors at the IMF. Margaret Thatcher dis- voters expected ‘an immediate economic and missed as ‘an illusion’ the idea that Britain political crisis’ in the event of a decision to ‘could regain complete national sovereignty’ withdraw, a conviction that strongly favoured by leaving the EEC.12 The hope was that, by 2ROBERT S AUNDERS The Political Quarterly © The Author 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 pooling some of Britain’s formal sovereignty The language, memory and lived experi- in the EEC, Britain would gain more effec- ence of warfare saturated the campaign in tive power over its own destiny. Winston 1975. Advocates of membership used the Churchill, grandson of the former prime poppy—the flower of remembrance—in their minister, told voters that ‘We have not gone literature. ‘Nationalism kills’, warned a pos- into Europe in order to lose our sovereignty ter. ‘No more Civil Wars’. Another reminded but to regain and enhance it’.13 voters that ‘Forty million people died in two At its best, this sparked a sophisticated European wars this century. Better lose a lit- debate on the meaning of sovereignty in a tle sovereignty than a son or daughter’.14 In globalised world. The problem for Leave a broadcast announcing the completion of campaigners was that it barely registered negotiations in 1971, Heath had appealed with the electorate. ‘Sovereignty’ was a low- explicitly to his own experience in war: salience issue for voters more concerned with jobs and prices. In 2016, by contrast, Many of you have fought in Europe, as I sovereignty acquired a hook.

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