I can’t remember
the exact date, but I think it was sometime in 1974, just before the referendum
on continued membership of the Common Market. Plaid Cymru was invited to
send a delegation to Brussels and Luxembourg to learn more about the
institutions. About ten of us went, on
what was obviously an attempt to persuade us not to campaign for a ‘no’ vote. On that, it failed.
We had talks from
the office of the Commission, as well as visiting the Parliament. But perhaps most instructive, to me, were the
visits to the offices of two of the Permanent Representatives.
As well as visiting
the office of the UK Permanent Representative, Dublin gave special permission
for us (there was some concern about being seen to be interfering in the
affairs of another state) to visit the office of the Irish equivalent to get an
Irish perspective on the same issues.
The contrast between the two was stark.
It certainly helped me to understand why the Irish had a different
attitude to the European project.
At the office of
the UK Rep, we were very formally ushered into a room where a senior civil
servant with a suit, a bow tie, and a very posh accent politely offered us tea
before asking how we thought they might be able to assist us. At the Irish office, the host wore an
open-necked shirt and a sports jacket, and said something like “Come on in boys
– would you like a whiskey?”
That’s superficial
stuff, of course, but it reflected for me the underlying current of the subsequent discussions that the Irish
were into enthusiastic membership and collaborative working; the UK
were more about maintaining a ‘relationship’ with the institutions.
The way in which
people use language often reveals a lot about the underlying attitudes. The language being used by politicians and
commentators alike about the current situation in the EU is a case in
point. Time and time again, we hear the
phrase (or variations upon it) that there should be a renegotiation of “the
relationship between the UK
and the EU”.
The very words
serve to frame the context. They convey
a message that the EU is somehow something different and separate; there’s an
implicit externalisation. It puts the UK in a
different position to the ‘Europeans’.
It’s perhaps a reflection of a long insular history. (I’d like to be able to say that it’s an
English problem, and that Wales
is different – but anyone who believes that attitudes in Wales are very much different on
this question is probably delusional.)
It reflects the
observation that I made all those years ago about ‘membership’ vs. ‘relationship’;
no UK Government has never quite made the jump from the latter to the former. Cameron is merely carrying on where his
predecessors left off. But he’s taking
us down a very dangerous road. It might
suit the speculators in the City, but it will not help areas such as Wales. Rhodri Morgan’s point in Saturday’s Western
Mail about looking after the interests of Airbus rather than the interests of
the City is a very valid one.
I campaigned for a ‘no’
vote in 1975, and still think that was the right position at the time. (Actually, our slogan – ‘Europe
yes, EEC no’ - was rather more sophisticated than that. Probably too sophisticated to be able to
communicate it effectively). But after
that vote, the facts changed, and I, like others, came in time to accept the changed
context.
The EU is far from
perfect. There is much that I would like
to change. But we cannot, as some of the
cheering Euro-sceptics seem to think, turn the clock back – being outside the
EU now would be a very different prospect to remaining outside in the
1970s. Europe
and the world have changed and isolation is not a good place to be.
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