-:Undertaker:-
29-04-2012, 12:23 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/9233096/Europe-alienates-us-all-as-foretold-40-years-ago.html
'Europe' alienates us all - as foretold 40 years ago
With chilling candour, a paper from a senior government official laid out the difficulties that Britain would face in the proposed Common Market.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02205/page29-europe_2205826a.jpg
The Greek disturbances and national strike are the most vehement expressions so far of Europeans’ political disaffection
All across Europe, from riots in Greece to those protest votes for Marine Le Pen and George Galloway, we see signs of how alienated people now feel from the “political class” which rules over our lives, out of touch with the rest of us, without meaningful opposition, no longer responsive to any democratic control. I am reminded of a document I discovered in the National Archives at Kew in January 2002, when sifting through papers released under the 30-year rule relating to Britain’s negotiations to join the Common Market. It was a confidential 1971 memorandum, clearly written by a senior Foreign Office official, headed “Sovereignty and the Community”.
With chilling candour, this paper (from FCO folder 30/1048) predicted that it would take 30 years for the British people to wake up to the real nature of the European project that Edward Heath was about to take them into, by which time it would be too late for them to leave. Its author made clear that the Community was headed for economic, monetary and fiscal union, with a common foreign and defence policy, which would constitute the greatest surrender of Britain’s national sovereignty in history. Since “Community law” would take precedence over our own, ever more power would pass to this new bureaucratic system centred in Brussels – and, as the role of Parliament diminished, this would lead to a “popular feeling of alienation from government”.
It would therefore become the duty of politicians “not to exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular measures… to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community”. Politicians of all parties should be careful to conceal the fact that controversial laws originated in Brussels. By this means it might be possible to preserve the illusion that the British government was still sovereign, “for this century at least” – by which time it would no longer be possible for us to leave.
In other words, here was a civil servant advising that our politicians should connive in concealing what Heath was letting us in for, not least in hiding the extent to which Britain would no longer be a democratic country but one essentially governed by unelected and unaccountable officials.
One way to create an illusion that this system was still democratic, this anonymous mandarin suggested, would be to give people the chance to vote for new representatives at European, regional and local levels. A few years later, we saw the creation of an elected European Parliament – as we see today a craze for introducing elected mayors, as meaningless local figureheads.
But where the author was perhaps shrewder than he knew was in predicting how all this would eventually lead to “we the people” feeling alienated from the whole process of how we are governed. We now see a gulf yawning between, on the one hand, the consensus government of our new nomenklatura and, on the other, all the rest of us, aware that we are democratically powerless. To the growing groundswell of contempt and resentment that this is creating, those who rule us with such sublime incompetence will eventually find they have no answer.
(Anyone wishing to read the relevant document may find it, with commentary, at www.eureferendum.com.)
I repeat over and over the nature of the EU project, because, as the Foreign Office and former Prime Ministers admit themselves - it is a project which is intended to abolish the country and which will naturally leave the demos feeling alienated which increasingly we do. The phrase "whats the point, they're all the same" didn't fall from the sky you know.
Thoughts?
'Europe' alienates us all - as foretold 40 years ago
With chilling candour, a paper from a senior government official laid out the difficulties that Britain would face in the proposed Common Market.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02205/page29-europe_2205826a.jpg
The Greek disturbances and national strike are the most vehement expressions so far of Europeans’ political disaffection
All across Europe, from riots in Greece to those protest votes for Marine Le Pen and George Galloway, we see signs of how alienated people now feel from the “political class” which rules over our lives, out of touch with the rest of us, without meaningful opposition, no longer responsive to any democratic control. I am reminded of a document I discovered in the National Archives at Kew in January 2002, when sifting through papers released under the 30-year rule relating to Britain’s negotiations to join the Common Market. It was a confidential 1971 memorandum, clearly written by a senior Foreign Office official, headed “Sovereignty and the Community”.
With chilling candour, this paper (from FCO folder 30/1048) predicted that it would take 30 years for the British people to wake up to the real nature of the European project that Edward Heath was about to take them into, by which time it would be too late for them to leave. Its author made clear that the Community was headed for economic, monetary and fiscal union, with a common foreign and defence policy, which would constitute the greatest surrender of Britain’s national sovereignty in history. Since “Community law” would take precedence over our own, ever more power would pass to this new bureaucratic system centred in Brussels – and, as the role of Parliament diminished, this would lead to a “popular feeling of alienation from government”.
It would therefore become the duty of politicians “not to exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular measures… to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community”. Politicians of all parties should be careful to conceal the fact that controversial laws originated in Brussels. By this means it might be possible to preserve the illusion that the British government was still sovereign, “for this century at least” – by which time it would no longer be possible for us to leave.
In other words, here was a civil servant advising that our politicians should connive in concealing what Heath was letting us in for, not least in hiding the extent to which Britain would no longer be a democratic country but one essentially governed by unelected and unaccountable officials.
One way to create an illusion that this system was still democratic, this anonymous mandarin suggested, would be to give people the chance to vote for new representatives at European, regional and local levels. A few years later, we saw the creation of an elected European Parliament – as we see today a craze for introducing elected mayors, as meaningless local figureheads.
But where the author was perhaps shrewder than he knew was in predicting how all this would eventually lead to “we the people” feeling alienated from the whole process of how we are governed. We now see a gulf yawning between, on the one hand, the consensus government of our new nomenklatura and, on the other, all the rest of us, aware that we are democratically powerless. To the growing groundswell of contempt and resentment that this is creating, those who rule us with such sublime incompetence will eventually find they have no answer.
(Anyone wishing to read the relevant document may find it, with commentary, at www.eureferendum.com.)
I repeat over and over the nature of the EU project, because, as the Foreign Office and former Prime Ministers admit themselves - it is a project which is intended to abolish the country and which will naturally leave the demos feeling alienated which increasingly we do. The phrase "whats the point, they're all the same" didn't fall from the sky you know.
Thoughts?