Plans and Lies - the long betrayal

Back in the early 1970s, prior to the last EEC Referendum in 1975, Britain’s ministers and civil servants were fully aware of the loss of democratic power they were signing up to. They were also concerned to hide the truth from the British public. From a secret Foreign Office file – FCO 30/1048 – the truth is even now emerging. Just one single paragraph -

26. To play an effective part in the Community British members of the Commission and their staffs and British officials as negotiators will necessarily assume more political roles than is traditional in the UK. The Community, if we are to benefit to the full, will develop wider powers and co-ordinate and manage policy over wider areas of public business. To control and supervise this process it will be necessary to strengthen the democratic organisation of the Community with the consequent decline of the primacy and prestige of the national Parliaments. The task will not be to arrest this process, since to do so would be to put considerations of formal sovereignty before effective influence and power, but to adapt institutions and policies both in the UK and in Brussels to meet and reduce the real and substantial public anxieties over national identity and alienation from government, fear of change and loss of control over their fate which are aroused by talk of the “loss od sovereignty”

To translate into modern vernacular, ‘Unelected officials will assume more power. This is needed to allow the EEC itself to develop new powers in new areas. Power will flow to the Commission and its officials from national democratic Parliaments. We mustn’t stop this, for it would hinder the Community’s expansion into a Superstate. We have to control the public’s reaction to losing real and democratic power’

They knew. They’ve always known. And they lied and they lied.