Neave and me they knew that they had strong supporters of the Union. Their demand for extra parliamentary seats at Westminster to make up for the Province’s under-representation was likely to be supported by
In fact, there was very little that could be done by us to influence the vote. The minority parties would decide where they stood according to whether they thought that a general election was in their interests or not. In assessing that, each would look to the opinion polls. These suggested that a Conservative Government with an overall majority would be elected, which would greatly reduce the ability of a few disparate individuals to influence Government policy.
I was told some hours before I was due to propose the No Confidence Motion in the House that the Liberals would support the Government. I was astonished that they had signed up to such a bad deal. The pact would apparently last initially for the rest of the parliamentary session. The Liberals would not be members of the Government, but would liaise with individual ministers and send representatives to a joint consultative committee chaired by Michael Foot, the Leader of the House. The Government gave undertakings on direct elections to the European Assembly and devolution (accepting free votes on PR), promised to find time for a Liberal Bill on homelessness and agreed to limit the scope of planned legislation on local authority direct-labour organizations. It was a lacklustre shopping list. But, knowing that we were looking at certain defeat, with all the recriminations which would follow from the press and our supporters, it drained me of inspiration.
Angus Maude had helped me with the drafting of the speech. We decided to make it very short. In fact, it was too short. Moreover, it had been drafted when it seemed that we might be facing an immediate general election, so that positive statements of our policies had appeared preferable to detailed attacks on the Government’s. It received the worst press of any speech I have given. Of course, if I had read out the Westminster telephone directory and we had won at the end of the day no one would have bothered. But in politics, as in life, the ‘ifs’ offer no consolation. As I drove back to Flood Street later that night it was not my poor reception in the House or even the Government’s majority of twenty-four which most depressed me. It was the fact that after all our efforts the chance to begin turning Britain round seemed no nearer than before.
CHAPTER X
Detente or Defeat?
EUROPE
The first major political challenge I faced on becoming Leader was the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community, promised by Labour in Opposition as a way of keeping their party together. For a number of reasons I would have preferred a challenge on some other topic. Europe was very much Ted’s issue. He considered that his greatest achievement was to take Britain into the EEC and, now that he had lost the leadership, it was only natural that he would engage even more passion in the cause. As had become evident during the leadership campaign, there was some suspicion that I was less enthusiastic. Compared with Ted, perhaps, that was true. But I did genuinely believe that it would be foolish to leave the Community; I thought it provided an economic bond with other Western European countries, which was of strategic significance; and above all I welcomed the larger opportunities for trade which membership gave. I did not, however, see the European issue as a touchstone for everything else. Although I thought it best for Britain to stay inside the Community and make the best we could of it, I could equally well understand others who, on balance, took a contrary view. It did not seem to me that high-flown rhetoric about Britain’s European destiny, let alone European identity, was really to the point, though I had on occasion to employ a little on public platforms. For all these reasons, I was more than happy for Ted to take the leading public role on our side in the referendum campaign and for Willie to be the Conservative Vice-President of ‘Britain in Europe’ — the ‘Yes’ campaign organization which was set up in cooperation with pro-European Labour MPs and the Liberals, and of which Con O’Neill and later Roy Jenkins was President.
This arrangement had two advantages and two disadvantages. The advantages were that, though I would make some high-profile public appearances at the beginning and end of the campaign, I would have time for other things; and secondly, that the most committed Europeans of the Party would be able to throw all their energies into the front line. The two disadvantages, which perhaps I should have foreseen, were that Ted’s appetite for a return to power would be whetted, and that the forces inside and outside the Conservative Party which were determined to get rid of me would seek to use the all-party coalition campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote as the nucleus of a movement for a coalition of the ‘centre’.
I also faced a further unexpected intellectual difficulty. The position I inherited from Ted was that of outright opposition to the whole idea of a referendum on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional and un-British practice. There was no time to change this even if I had wanted to; only a fortnight after my accession to the leadership, the Government published its Referendum White Paper. It was, moreover, a rich source of party political advantage to attack the referendum as a constitutional monstrosity devised simply to keep the Labour Cabinet together. I was, however, uneasy. First, there was the obvious practical point that if, whatever protests the Conservative Opposition made, we were to have a referendum anyway, we would soon have to take it seriously — and be seen to do so — if we wanted to secure the right result. Secondly, and only vaguely as yet, I thought that it might be necessary at some time in the future to call for a referendum when a single issue divided the nation but not the parties, making a general election an inappropriate instrument for settling it. Similarly, a Conservative Opposition might seek one if a far-left government, supported by militant trade unions, sought to challenge fundamental freedoms under the cloak of constitutional convention.
I decided to read up all there was on the subject. The idea of a referendum had quite a long pedigree in British politics. From the 1890s to the 1930s it had variously been advanced — sometimes by Conservative Leaders — in connection with Irish Home Rule, the powers of the House of Lords, and the imposition of food tariffs. In 1945 Churchill had mooted the possibility of a referendum on extending the life of Parliament until Japan was defeated. In none of these cases had a referendum in fact been held. But it was clearly wrong to treat the case for it anything other than seriously. I was particularly taken with the assertion in the revised eighth edition of Dicey’s
I consulted Michael Havers, shadow spokesman on legal affairs, about these arguments. His reply, which at the time seemed to me a powerful one, was that, reviewing the cases on which the Conservative Party had supported a referendum, we could say that apart from the case of food tariffs, where the Party was trying to avoid a damaging rift (as Labour was now), the issues were all constitutional. Moreover, in none had Parliament already decided the issue and in none were we risking the breaking of a treaty unilaterally. He concluded that past precedent offered no justification for a referendum on EEC membership.
I had, therefore, thought through the issue thoroughly by the time I spoke in the House in the Referendum Debate on Tuesday 11 March. It would be my maiden speech as Leader of the Opposition. In spite of the reservations I had about the case I was making, it was the kind of speech I enjoyed. The main intellectual weakness of the Government’s case was the confusion about whether and how the referendum would be ‘binding’ on Parliament. If it was binding, then parliamentary sovereignty, which mattered a good deal to anti-Marketeers on both sides of the House, was infringed. If it was not binding, then what was its force? I did not in my speech rule out the use of referenda, but I urged that it would be necessary to consider the full constitutional implications. I rejected the argument put forward by the Government that the case of continued membership of the EEC was
