Replies

SHe was in favour of the EU so long as it was a free trade zone - but her later writings show she was against any sort of political union and the creation of a "United States of Europe". She can hardly be called pro-EU in that sense.

The Tories are right to suggest we benefit from trade with the EU. However we should not surrender our laws, our traditions, our representative government to Brussels - too much has been surrendered already.

Regards, Ivan

The Tories are right to suggest we benefit from trade with the EU.

All countries benefit from fre trade, but just like Sweden Britain buys more from EU countries, than EU countries buy from Britain (or Sweden). We are also net contributors to the EU.

Also, as long as all EU countries are members of WTO we would be able to trade with the EU also as non-members.

Agree Ivan of course when I was growing up that was what the EU or Common Market was perceived to be it was only later that it metamorphosed into the United States of Europe.

I personally wish we had voted the same as Norway to come out on the referendum and stayed in and strengthened EFTA (European Free Trade Association) I was too young to vote at the time my parents did vote against which at the time was against the advice of the Conservative Party main platform of course people such as Enoch were anti. I often wonder if we have stayed in EFTA and other countries had not defected to the EC including the new free European countries if now EFTA would be the stronger trading block rather than the EU.

However we should not surrender our laws, our traditions, our representative government to Brussels - too much has been surrendered already.

That's why I believe that the election last Thursday was relatively unimportant compared to the key vote this month that will have a much larger impact on Britain's future -- and that is the vote in France on the Constitution.

That the French object to the Constitution on completely opposite ground to the British shows how very little "meeting of the minds" there truly is about Europe and the EU. I believe the EU Constitution is not a document that the people of Europe want and agree on, but an attempt by the elites in Europe (really the elites in France and their Belgian poodles) to increase their power. Why Britain would ever want to surrender its sovereignty to men like Jacques Delors and Valerie Giscard d'Estaing is astonishing to me. The goal of such men and the Continental European elite mentality in general is to weaken the Anglo-American relationship and to bring every other country in Europe down to their level of economic incompetence.

Margaret Thatcher was right in her book "Statecraft" - Europe needs the U.K. a lot more than the U.K. needs Europe.

The then Euroepan Common Market architects were clearly following the example of the German customs union (Zollverein) in 1834. In that case they hypothesised customs union created a unified economy which was a preclude to political unification. Had more British people at that time read more 19th century European history they would not have fallen into that trap that was the European Economic Community.