Trapped Agenda - Beyond The Referendum Party by William Shepherd
Troubadours & Princes Yes to a Nobler Europe Trapped Agenda Introduction
Since its landslide victory in the British parliamentary election of 1997, New Labour has by its actions revealed much more of its political agenda than was apparent from its election manifesto. In doing so it has become clear that Tony Blair's personal commitment as well as Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson's public commitment is to the Maastricht Agenda. It has also become clear that the former Labour Party leader, the European Commissioner Neil Kinnock, is close to the New Labour party leadership while the pro-Maastricht former head of British Petroleum, Lord Simon, has been given control over the day-to-day implementation of the Maastricht Agenda.
Nor are these isolated cases. John Edmonds, the GMB union boss, has long worked to persuade the trade union movement of the need to combine at a European level both as a defensive measure against transnational corporations and as a way to reform corporate govemance and increase the power of unions through the European back door. Meanwhile behind the scenes at the European University Institute in Florence, the former Labour Treasury spokesman Stuart Holland, who had argued in the seventies against the 'uncommon market' and in the eighties in favour of a united European front against Japanese industrial might, has been writing the European Commission's blueprint for economic and monetary union. The European Imperative appeared quietly at the end of 1993. "The report," wrote Jaques Delors in his introduction, "makes a consistent case for both enlarging the Community while also deepening cohesion." To New Labour Stuart Holland is now 'one of us'.
So steadily the breadth and depth of New Labour's commitment to the Maastricht Agenda becomes apparent. New Labour may no longer question the principles underlying the agenda. This is off message. The only politics are in the timing and in the degree of public persuasion to be deployed.
Since the 1997 election, the Conservative Party has elected William Hague as its leader on an anti-Maastricht ticket ... and with Lady Thatcher's support. Hague defeated the pro-Maastricht former chancellor Kenneth Clarke in the final ballot. One of Hague's first acts was to appoint Lord Parkinson, a close political ally of Margaret Thatcher to do what Peter Mandelson did for New Labour and make the New Conservatives electable. Meanwhile the Euro-sceptic wing of the Tory Party would seem to have wrested control of party policy from the Euroenthusiasts, thereby enabling Hague to make an early policy shift from a 'wait and join' policy to a principled opposition to the idea of Great Britain joining a single European currency.
Amidst all this, whither Liberals and Social Democrats? A month ago, one of the mysteries of British politics was the enthusiasm of liberals and democrats for the Maastricht Agenda. Intemal power struggles seemed the only possible explanation. Roy Jenkins is a former President of the European Commission and David Owen has resigned three times in his political lifetime, with the EU as the most important issue each time. But on 24th January 1998 David Owen suddenly appeared in the pro-Maastricht Economist with a two-page signed article 'Yes to Europe. No to federalism'. Whither the Liberal Democrats?
Referendum Movement
Sir James Goldsmith's death shortly after the 1997 election resulted necessarily in the emergence of a new leadership for the Referendum Party consisting of the original inner circle ... minus Sir James. Influential in this group are Lord MacAlpine, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Patrick Robertson, John Aspinall and Edward, Sir James' older brother. Since last May's election Lord MacAlpine, chairman of the Referendum Party under Sir James and formerly Margaret Thatcher's party treasurer and fund raiser, has applied for the Conservative Party whip in the House of Lords, while Patrick Robertson, Sir James' chief of staff and an old business colleague of Lord Parkinson, has been negotiating for the Conservative Party to take Referendum Party supporters back into the fold.
Lord MacAlpine and Lady Annabel with the tacit agreement of others in the inner circle joined together after the 1997 election to launch the Referendum Movement, claiming direct descent from the Referendum Party and adopting its colours and using its mailing list to add weight to the claim. The aim of the Referendum Movement is to ensure that the British people are fully informed and consulted over relations with Europe and to safeguard democracy in the United Kingdom. And the first job is to stop the single currency by organising a fightback by ordinary people against a political and business establishment and a Brussels bureaucracy intent upon taking Britain into economic and monetary union within the next five years.
However the Referendum Movement has its critics, who draw attention to the democratic deficit in the inner workings of the Referendum Movement and express the suspicion that the Referendum Movement is a Tory device designed to reclaim Thatcher's children for the Conservatives. During the course of 1996 and 1997 a quarter of a million people joined the Referendum Party and on 1st May 1997 one million people voted for Referendum or Independence Party candidates. These votes cost the Tories 25 to 30 seats assuming two thirds of these voters came from 'instinctive Tories' who had previously provided the bedrock of the Thatcher revolution. Nearly all these 'natural born Tories' will feel comfortable reclaiming their Conservative Party membership cards and supporting the Referendum Movement.
But for the other third, there is a problem. And two groups are currently j ockeying for position to provide the non-Conservative Referendum Party rump with an altemative to the Referendum Movement. These are the 'XPC'and 'New Alliance'.
XPC
The Referendum Party was a fascist party in the sense that the leader and the party were one. Much of Sir James' support (including my own) was personal. 'Here at last is a man with the guts to stand up and say what everybody else is thinking ... and the balls to put his money where his mouth is'. 'The led' understood that they were foot-soldiers...'The Rabble Army' ... and were ready to follow their great leader wherever he would lead them.
However the 1997 general election demonstrated that a 'single issue party', whatever the issue and whatever its legitimacy as the single issue, would always be sidelined in a general election by the democratic campaigning skills of any two or more opposing 'full policy parties'. This will also be the case in byelections if Robin Page's humiliating experience as the Euro-Realist candidate in Winchester is anything to go by. The electorate takes the view that the power their vote gives them is limited to 'kicking the rascals out' or 'giving the devils you know one more chance'. As an electorate, it will not use its vote for any other purpose. The Referendum Party's call for emergency powers..."Lend Us Your Vote (or you will never cast a meaningful vote again)" ... was a failure. Indeed the sharp rise in 'The Couch Potato Vote' from 22.3% in 1992 to 28.4% in 1997 suggests that the response from the pubs and the back streets was 'Don't matter who you vote for, the Govemment always gets in'. Under the current British electoral system, the power of a single issue party seems to be restricted to that of undermening the credibility of the competing 'in-pirates' and 'out-pirates'...to the benefit or detriment of the 'full policy parties'. The introduction of a two-step French-style electoral process would call for a reassessment of this opinion.
XPC was started up by Philip Slater, a former Referendum Party candidate, as an information exchange for other ex-Referendum Party candidates and currently issues a monthly newsletter under the imprint of The Referendum Press. As an organisation, XPC has no visible means of financial support but gives the impression of having the endorsement of many ex-Referendum Party candidates ... although the extent endorsement can be converted into commitment is unclear. Whether XPC has the wherewithal to hold up during 1998 as the dust settles after the post-election confusion and the initial enthusiasm wanes is open to question. XPC is seeking to change the rump Referendum Party from a fascist to a democratic party and to build an organisation on a constituency base that can fight future general elections as a New Democratic Referendum Party.
New Alliance
New Alliance has appointed a former Referendum Party Deputy Regional Campaign Manager, David Soutter, as chief of staff. Unlike the Referendum Movement or XPC, New Alliance seems to be close to the UK Independence Party, whose leader Alan Sked resigned after the 1997 election. The problem is that unity in opposition to Maastricht will soon be replaced by disagreement on the nature of a nobler Europe. Sir James and many of his followers (including myself) saw themselves as 'Good Europeans', believing in a Europe of Nations. Their complaint was against the Maastricht Agenda with its long-term game plan of whittling away at the strengths of the nation states. Not so the UK Independence Party. As the UKIP candidates pointed out during local campaigning, the UKIP was the only truly anti-Europe party. Their aim was an independent United Kingdom. The UKIP was the natural home for 'Little Englanders'. But on the evidence of the Alexandra Palace rally, many became Referendum Party supporters instead ... to the embarrassment of the Referendum Party... and the relief of the Conservatives.
In October 1997 New Alliance organised a forum in London and at the end of the year David Soutter, writing as the New Alliance chief of staff, addressed a letter to fortner Referendum Party candidates on Referendum Party headed paper, suggesting (in deflance of the Referendum Movement's top brass) that the Referendum Party would continue as part of the New Alliance coalition. New Alliance seems to be seeking a role as an umbrella group. It claims the credit for brokering the deal that led to Robin Page standing as the sole 'Euro-Realist' candidate at Winchester. It would clearly like to take the lead in the 'No to The Euro' campaign. But if its supporters are of the calibre of Sir Alan Walters, Bill Jamieson and Bernard Connolly, then it might do better to see itself as a new Fabian Society ... one hundred years on ... providing the Euro Realist movement with a policy development capability. Significantly New Alliance seems to have the support of the professional staff of the Referendum Party and the blessing of Sir James' party in the European Parliament, the Europe of Nations Group.
Real World
A year and a half ago Jonathan Porritt, enviromnental campaigner and founder of the UK Ecology Party, launched 'Real World' ... an alliance that included Charter 88, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Save The Children. The aim of this coalition of environmental groups, voluntary aid organisations and constitutional reformens was to lobby the govermnent for sustainable development, social justice, democratic renewal and community regeneration. Real World's agenda bears a striking resemblance however to the political programme implicit in Sir James Goldsmith's book The Trap.
Sir James' analysis is rooted in an intimate acquaintance with the ways of money and power while Real World's agenda comes from decades of alleviating the consequences of actions emanating from this very same world. In The Trap, principled opposition to the Maastricht Agenda is not an end in itself but an urgent first step along a much broader political and economic road. In the same way as Quinton Hogg's postwar ciassic The Case for Conservatism represents a path the Conservative Party failed to tread. So the post-war agenda developed by J.B.Priestley during the Hitler War is the fork not taken on the Labour Party's road to power. But beyond policy lie always the personalities of politics. It was not to be. For as Barbara Castle remarked recently; Labour politicians of her generation were brought up to despise Mr. Priestley ... or at least the Yorkshire ones were. How interesting then to find so many points of similarity between J.B.Priestley's call for radical change half a century ago in books like Topside and Let The People Sing and Sir James' clarion call in The Trap. Indeed the current Priestley revival might yet produce 'the third way' that New Labour, New Conservatives and even Real World politicians claim to be seeking.
J.B. Priestley was against a one world state where the masses were ruled over by their masters. What Priestley wanted for the English was village cricket. But instead they were being given professional football. Though saddened, he did not despair. He had a dream. Priestley's dream was of a world of thousands of walled gardens. In these walls there would be little gates. And within the walls people would celebrate creation and community. This was no utopian dream. He laid it out in a piece of fantasy fiction entitled Festival in Farbridge. He realised that something was going badly wrong. But even amidst the mad, mindless pursuit of power, property, privilege and profit ... first for the masters and then for their huddled masses ... Priestley at least was able to understand why it would not last.
The political programme in The Trap and the underlying political principles inherent in the 'Priestley Agenda' fit surprisingly weil with the idea of 'variety' and the sense of 'organic growth' that Quinton Hogg regarded (along with 'patriotism') as the essence of 'Conservatism'. Together these provide a sound foundation for a 'full policy party' capable of competing successftilly for seats in future Westminster and Strasbourg parliaments. There is a groundswell of public opinion in favour of a new politics ... provided it is grounded in the thinking of the twentieth century and not on dusty tomes from the nineteenth century ... and beyond.
Trapped Agenda
The 1997 Westminster elections were the first of several major political battles Sir James Goldsmith expected to wage in the United Kingdom. Next would have been the struggle that is now upon us to stop the English (I cannot speak for Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast) from becoming embroiled in the European single currency ... the economic means towards a political end. Up until the moment he knew his cancer to be terminal, Sir James would have been willing his mind to see beyond the Referendum Party. I might be quite wrong about this, but my hunch is that Sir James would have been casting around for a way to improve his position ahead of the next battle. If I am right, then I might also be right in thinking that his calculations would have led him to think in terms of a second front. Beyond the Referendum Party would be a Referendum Movement. Of that there can be no doubt. No military commander abandons the ground he has captured. But a second front? What form might this have taken?
Of course I cannot know. But I am willing to hazard a guess. Sir James' second front would have taken him beyond the Referendum Movement, for he was distrustful of permanent organisations. The movement would succeed ... this he would not doubt ... and then it would disband. Meanwhile, arising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Referendum Party would come a new 'full policy party' grounded in the agenda he laid down in The Trap. How ironic it would be if Sir James' real agenda were trapped, not by the tragedy of his untimely death, but by a failure of nerve and imagination on the part of his dearest ffiends and closest colleagues. Goethe once said: "In boldness is genius". Sir James knew this. It was always Jimmy's Way.
About the Author
William Shepherd attended the same school as Lord Simon, John Edmonds and Stuart Holland ... one political generation removed ... before reading engineering at Cambridge University and economics at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities. He counts channel tunnels, multi-storey car parks and misplaced faith in the future of generalists among the sins of his youth.
In the 1970s William Shepherd worked on World Bank feasibility studies in Africa and the Middle East and taught business and finance at the University of East Africa before retuming to the UK to work under Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy integrating the British subsidiaries of an American transnational corporation with its European operations.
In 1989 after a decade doing interesting work in Cambridge USA, Martha's Vineyard and MIT, William Shepherd authored a book on the future of European politics entitled The Rise & Fall of The Swedish Green Party (1982-1997).
In the 1990s, between script writing for Swedish film makers and doing more interesting work, William Shepherd has been a contributing editor to Fourth World Review, the London-based political journal edited by Edward Goldsmith's friend and coileague John Papworth and regarded by Sir James Goldsmith as an essential part of his own political education. Fourth World Review is one of the few political joumals With an unbroken 25-year record of principled opposition to the Maastricht Agenda and in 1990 became the first to publish Sir James Goldsmith's political writings.
At the 1997 Westminster elections William Shepherd stood as the Referendum Party Candidate for Oldham West & Royton and had the dubious distinction of watching New Labour's Environment Minister Michael Meacher amass more votes than all the other parliamentary candidates put together.
Troubadours & Princes Yes to a Nobler Europe Trapped Agenda