What did he say?
Given his background I bet he recognized the parallels between the old land feudal system and the new economic feudal system which they are trying to bring in.
"When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it."
"Britain's continuing membership of the [European] Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation."
We have confused the real issue of parliamentary democracy, for already there has been a fundamental change. The power of electors over their law-makers has gone, the power of MPs over Ministers has gone, the role of Ministers has changed. The real case for entry has never been spelled out, which is that there should be a fully federal Europe in which we become a province. It hasn't been spelled out because people would never accept it. We are at the moment on a federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach. In practice, Britain will be governed by a European coalition government that we cannot change, dedicated to a capitalist or market economy theology. This policy is to be sold to us by projecting an unjustified optimism about the Community, and an unjustified pessimism about the United Kingdom, designed to frighten us in. Jim quoted Benjamin Franklin, so let me do the same: "He who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserves neither safety nor liberty." The Common Market will break up the UK because there will be no valid argument against an independent Scotland, with its own Ministers and Commissioner, enjoying Common Market membership. We shall be choosing between the unity of the UK and the unity of the EEC. It will impose appalling strains on the Labour movement...I believe that we want independence and democratic self-government, and I hope the Cabinet in due course will think again.
If democracy is destroyed in Britain it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed,
I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.
‘There are three options open to us. One is to protect our parliamentary democracy, which would offend the
Community; the second is to abandon parliamentary democracy which would offend the Manifesto; the third
option is to fudge it.
‘This is the most important constitutional document ever put before a Labour Cabinet. Our whole political
history is contained in this paper. It recommends a reversal of hundreds of years of history which have
progressively widened the power of the people over their governors. Now great chunks are to be handed to
the Commission. I can think of no body of men outside the Kremlin who have so much power without a
shred of accountability for what they do.
‘The Community will destroy the whole basis on which the labour movement was founded, and its
commitment to democratic change. That’s one of the reasons we have a small Communist Party, why the
ultra-Left is so unimportant, because we can say to people “Change your MP and you can change the law”.
That’s where the attack on democracy is coming from. If we accept this paper, we’d be betraying, in a very
special sense, our whole history.’
