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 ’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 ‘ 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- 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 confer- ence 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. 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

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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. ‘Take back con- did, or have lost father, or brothers, or hus- trol’—the mantra chanted by Leave cam- bands who fell fighting in Europe. I say to paigners like witch-doctors performing an you now, with that experience in my mem- incantation—usually meant ‘take back con- ory, that joining the Community, working together with them for our joint security and trol of Britain’s borders’. Immigration was so prosperity, is the best guarantee we can give powerful a campaign issue because it ourselves of a lasting peace in Europe.15 did not only speak to concerns about race—though this was evidently part of the mix—but also made manifest something The language of wartime resistance was also more visceral: a sense that voters were no claimed by the Out campaign. Anti-Market- longer permitted a say on something as fun- eers published a newspaper called Resistance damental as who could live or work here. News, and the group of MPs around Marten That spoke to a wider sense of disempower- was known as the ‘R’ Group for the same ment, a sense that people’s communities reason. Voters were urged to ‘honour the were changing and that no one had asked memory of the dead of the two world wars them whether they approved. Conversely, who made the supreme sacrifice in order to the argument that sovereignty could only be maintain our freedom’.16 Christopher Frere- exercised in partnership had lost some of its Smith, who ran the Get Britain Out cam- resonance, for Britain had no recent experi- paign, likened pro-Marketeers to the ‘guilty ence—as it did in the 1970s—of the incapac- men’ who had betrayed their country at ity of government to function in isolation. Munich in 1938.17 Voters were warned not This fed, in more nebulous fashion, into to be ‘fooled by the press bosses and the the discussion of war. 1975 was closer in establishment politicians. They were wrong time to the First World War than we are about Hitler and they’re wrong again’.18 today to the Second. Most of the leading In 2016, very few campaigners had experi- campaigners in that referendum had direct ence of war. David Cameron was widely experience of military conflict: Ted Heath mocked when he tried to make the case for had fought in the Normandy landings, Tony the EU as a vehicle of peace. More attention Benn had served with the Royal Air Force, was paid to ’s comparison while Willie Whitelaw won the Military between the EU and the Third Reich, while Cross as a tank commander. Neil Marten Michael Gove (ignoring his own advice to had fought with the Resistance in France ‘be careful about historical comparisons’) and Norway, while his opposite number in likened those ‘experts’ who warned against ‘Britain in Europe’, Con O’Neill, had interro- Brexit to the Nazi smear campaign against gated Hitler’s former deputy, Rudolf Hess. Albert Einstein.19 The trivialisation of the Ernest Wistrich, who ran the ground cam- War—which seems to have morphed from paign for the European Movement, had ‘their’ to ‘our’ finest hour—was one of the escaped from Poland shortly before the Nazi most depressing features of the 2016 cam- invasion and subsequently fought with the paign. Certainly, it seemed to have lost its Polish division of the RAF. utility for Remain campaigners.

ATALE OF T WO R EFERENDUMS: 1975 AND 2016 3

© The Author 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 The Political Quarterly Collective irresponsibility the negotiations and mocked Boris Johnson in Parliament, his authority to temper the debate The conduct of the campaign was as different was gone. The ensuing rancour would proba- as its content. In 1975, as in 2016, Wilson sus- bly have ended his premiership even if the pended collective responsibility and allowed result had been different. ministers to campaign on either side. That produced occasional moments of friction, as when Roy Jenkins primly declared that he False prophets found it ‘increasingly difficult to take Mr Benn seriously as an economic minister’.20 In In 1975, as in 2016, a great deal of ink was 2016, by contrast, it produced such spectacu- spilt on the likely consequences of the refer- lar ‘blue-on-blue’ bloodshed that the media endum. Yet looking back on the predictions made in the aftermath of the vote, it is diffi- talked of very little else. fi This cannot be explained solely by the cult to nd a single one that stood the test of coarsening of political debate in recent years, time. The referendum did not, as Wilson pre- dicted, bring ‘fourteen years of national or by the echo chambers of abuse con- ’ 23 structed on social media. It is also linked to argument to a close. It did not strengthen the role of the prime minister. In 1975, Labour moderates against the extremes; it Wilson played little public role in the did not restore Ted Heath to the centre of campaign. With Roy Jenkins, Shirley British politics; it did not weaken Tony Benn Williams and Bill Rodgers leading the or challenge the authority of trade union Labour charge to stay in, while Tony Benn, leaders (mostly anti-Market) to speak for Daily Barbara Castle and Peter Shore fought to get their members. Nor did it, as the Express exulted, mean that Britain was now out, Wilson could present himself almost as ‘ ’ ‘ ’ 24 a spectator, bemused by the ‘exaggerated decisively and irrevocably European. ’ ‘ ’ If the crystal ball proved so erratic in 1975 claims and doctrinaire views of both sides. — ‘They are screaming so hard at one another’, following a referendum that had gone he complained, ‘that they will not merely entirely as predicted, and which endorsed 21 status quo— fi deafen people, but confuse them’. That the we should be wary of con - position of baffled scepticism—dismissive of dent prophecies at a moment when the most ‘ ’ basic assumptions of foreign and economic the theology of the Marketeers, but fi reluctantly persuaded of their economic case policy have been overturned. It is dif cult to —located him very close to the swing voters see clearly when the plaster is falling from the ceiling. One thing that may perhaps be who would decide the result. As The Guar- fi ’ dian commented, ‘it is Mr Wilson’s very said with con dence is that Harold Wilson s scepticism about what he calls Common reputation has rarely stood higher. In win- Market theology which makes him such a ning a referendum on Europe and keeping Pole Star for the wandering voter’.22 Britain out of a disastrous US-led war, he achieved two feats that evaded his more cel- David Cameron did not have that luxury. ‘ ’ With the Labour party convulsed by its own ebrated successors. Doing what Wilson did internal nightmares, under a leader whose has proven harder than it looked. own fervour for the EU burned less than bright, and with no one in his own cabinet Notes willing to take a lead, Cameron had little 1 S. Bush, ‘Why David Cameron’s Harold Wilson choice but to run the Remain campaign him- ’ self. That disabled him as a mediator between tribute band faces a hostile crowd , New States- man, 9 June 2016, http://www.newstatesman. the two sides, making it almost impossible for com/politics/uk/2016/06/why-david-cameron- him to moderate the behaviour of Leave cam- s-harold-wilson-tribute-band-faces-hostile-crowd. paigners in his own cabinet. This was exacer- (accessed 7 July 2016). bated by the fact that his own political style 2 Hansard 883, 16 November 1974, 1128, 1139. tends to the slashing and contemptuous— 3 S. Wall, The Official History of Britain and the something Conservatives enjoyed less when it European Community: Volume II: From Rejection was directed at them, rather than at Labour. to Referendum, 1963–1975, , Routledge, From the moment that Cameron returned from 2013, p. 527.

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The Political Quarterly © The Author 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 4 ‘Dracula v Frankenstein’, Liverpool Daily Post, Britain Joined the Common Market, London, 12 May 1975. Thames and Hudson, 1973, p. 149. 5 N. Ascherson, ‘Auction of fear featured in Scot- 16 Letter from F. Hoyle, Bristol Evening Post,31 tish campaign’, Scotsman, 5 June 1975. May 1975. 6 ‘Speeches in Scotland’, Scotsman, 4 June 1975. 17 ‘Britain faces “new Munich”’, , 7 ‘Britain “knackered” if we quit market’, Scots- 20 May 1975; ‘Instant break-up by antis’, Daily man, 2 May 1975. Telegraph, 7 June 1975. 8 ‘Report on E.E.C.’, 29 May 1975, NOP/8580/ 18 ‘Common Market Vote No’, Papers of the 03, Marten Papers, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Campaign for an Independent Britain, Lon- Hist. 1133, fs. 34–68. don School of Economics [LSE], CIB 10/2 9 B. Johnson, ‘The only continent with weaker GBO. economic growth than Europe is Antarctica’, 19 ‘Boris Johnson: the EU wants a superstate, just Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2016, http://www. as Hitler did’, Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2016, telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/29/the-only- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/ continent-with-weaker-economic-growth-than- boris-johnson-the-eu-wants-a-superstate-just-as- europe-is-an/ (accessed 7 July 2016). hitler-did/; ‘Michael Gove compares experts’ 10 Reprinted in D. Butler and U. Kitzinger, The 1975 warning against Brexit to Nazis who smeared Referendum, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1976, p. 301. Albert Einstein’, 21 June 2016, http://www. 11 ‘Way to end 2 ½ years of disaster’, Morning telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/michael-gove- Star, 5 June 1975. compares-experts-warning-against-brexit-to- 12 Margaret Thatcher, ‘Our duty is to make it nazis-wh/ (accessed 7 July 2016). “yes”’, Conservative Monthly News, April 1975. 20 J. Campbell, Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life, 13 Speech by Winston S. Churchill, Manchester, 8 London, Vintage Books, 2014, p. 447. May 1975, Britain in Europe Papers, Parlia- 21 ‘Wilson woos ditherers’, The Sun, 30 May 1975. mentary Archives, BIE 19/49(b). 22 ‘‘Mr Wilson’s decisive role’, ,13 14 Posters can be found in the archives of Britain March 1975. in Europe, Parliamentary Archives, BIE/18. 23 ‘End of 14 years’ argument, Mr Wilson says’, 15 Prime Ministerial broadcast, 8 July 1971, in Times, 7 June 1975. Uwe Kitzinger, Diplomacy and Persuasion: How 24 ‘Opinion’, The Daily Express, 7 June 1975.

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© The Author 2016. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2016 The Political Quarterly