Petrina

Three meetings all on one day for Eurosceptics -2 UKIP and one CIB .

Here is the official write -up of the CIB`s .
I was pleased to see that although a good many of those who attended were already committed eurorealists belonging to UKIP or CIB or other groups quite a few were members of the public who had come in to hear the speeches.



PRESS RELEASE

SUNDAY 6 APRIL 2008: Release time immediate





BRITAIN WOULD BE ‘BETTER OFF OUT’ – BUT PRO-E.U. POLITICIANS ARE LYING TO KEEP US IN



Eurosceptics have already won most of the arguments about the EU but have so far been unable to de-rail the “European project” because too many politicians have a vested interest in keeping the EU on track.



Daniel Hannan MEP (Conservative MEP for South-East England), speaking at the annual conference of the Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB), said that CIB had been “right all along” and should take heart in having “comprehensively won the argument” about UK membership of the EU.



“On one level we have been enormously successful,” Hannan told a packed meeting at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. “Nobody in the UK now thinks we should have a single European currency, a common system of justice, a common defence policy or a common foreign policy. But somehow, despite public opinion having turned decisively against the EU, the European project continues uninterrupted. The politicians are too wedded to staying in the EU at all costs. Our democracy has been subverted to the point where a political party is unable to deliver on a key election pledge because that would mean abandoning the principle of EU membership.”



As recent House of Commons debates on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution had shown, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg both had to deceive the British Parliament and people “because that is what is required in order to keep the European project on course”. Hannan added that the EU’s hold on politicians was so strong that Bertie Ahern had resigned as Irish premier so that the forthcoming Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would not become “a referendum on sleaze”.



Gerard Batten MEP (UK Independence Party MEP for London) said that British membership of the EU had been promoted through “misrepresentation, deceit and outright lies”. Batten, who is also UKIP’s candidate for London Mayor, said that mass immigration into Britain, the result of the EU’s policy of free movement of labour, had been proved to have “no economic benefits” and was severely overloading the UK’s public services. “But uncontrolled immigration has a very specific purpose,” he told the meeting, “and that is to destroy our national identity. That’s why the EU promotes immigration.”



Batten explained how much Britain’s membership of the EU was costing British taxpayers – over £50 billion per annum (or £5.7 million every hour) – and said that it was clear we would be “better off out”. Our EU membership was defended on the grounds that it promoted trade, but in reality, said Batten, the UK had accumulated a staggering £359 billion trade deficit with the EU, with many European countries becoming dependent on their trade with Britain. “There are no risks to us if we leave, as they need us more than we need them. And if we came out, the money we’re currently wasting on Europe could instead be spent in Britain for the benefit of British people.”



Neil Herron (Metric Martyr Defence Fund) said that despite recent comments to the contrary by the European Commission Vice-President it was actually “still a criminal offence to defy Europe by selling goods in imperial measurements. This ban is a violation of our human rights.” The Metric Martyr Defence Fund, with the support of CIB, was actively fighting the ban, he said. The case brought by Hackney Council against Janet Devers would shortly come to court. “It’s set for a jury trial,” Herron told the CIB conference, “and we’re delighted. Where in this country are they going to find a jury who’ll convict a 63-year-old East End pensioner simply for selling fruit & veg by the pound?”



He urged CIB supporters to “fight hard against the EU all the way, because in the end we’ll win. We must fight all the little battles as they come along because that way we’ll win the war. We have to draw a line in the sand and say ‘No’ to the EU.”



Dr Bob Spink MP (Independent Conservative MP for Castle Point, Essex), CIB Chairman, said that according to recent polls the majority of Britons now favoured loosening the UK’s ties with the EU. “We need to re-negotiate our relationship with Europe. That’s the majority view.” He added that the Common Fisheries Policy was “the single most powerful reason for leaving the EU. We are a maritime nation, an island nation, but we have lost control of the waters around our coast. It’s ridiculous that under the Common Fisheries Policy more fish are thrown back dead or landed illegally than are landed legally.”



Dr Spink also attacked the “widespread fraud and corruption” in the European Union, and cited the refusal of the EU’s own Court of Auditors to sign the EU accounts because of discrepancies. “If the European Commissioners were directors of a company they’d be in prison by now. What these people are doing is taking money from British taxpayers, from British pensioners, and from British public services. It’s a scandal. All of us would be better off out of the EU.”



CIB is the leading cross-party Eurosceptic campaigning organisation, with members from both Houses of Parliament and from all walks of life. For more information please visit the website Campaign for an Independent Britain



-Ends





Andy Smith FCIJ

Press Officer – Campaign for an Independent Britain

Editor – Free Britain

Press Enquiries 07737 271676

Website Campaign for an Independent Britain

Email press@eurosceptic.org.uk

Petrina

FROM DANIEL HANNON`S BLOG

The worst thing in politics is to be right before your time. At best, you’re remembered as an irritating cleverdick. More often, you’re dismissed as a lunatic who wouldn’t shut up about something-or-other (precisely what is always conveniently forgotten).

Tony Benn: 40 years ahead of his time?
Tony Benn: 40 years ahead of his time?

I’ve just spoken at the AGM of the Campaign for an Independent Britain. A lot of people, even moderate Eurosceptics, write off the CIB as being obsessive, extreme, monomaniacal and the rest. But what exactly is it that its members want?

They want to repeal Sections Two and Three of the 1972 European Communities Act: the clauses that provide for the supremacy of EU law over British statutes. This position is now becoming general everywhere except among MPs; and even these will eventually turn and swim with the current.

What happens when they do? Will they say: “We owe a massive apology to Tony Benn and Sir Richard Body and Peter Shore and Sir Teddy Taylor and Enoch Powell: they could see all this 40 years before the rest of us”? Will they hell! What they will say is: “Ah yes, Dick Body: absolute headbanger. Can’t remember what his issue was, but he had a bee in his bonnet about something-or-other. Quite the maverick, I’m afraid.”

That’s always the way in politics. The cautious men, the careful men, the men who wait until everyone else has spoken before they voice an opinion, will assiduously claim authorship of the new policy. This, after all, is how they maintain their reputation as men of “judgment” and “bottom”.

And the poor souls who foretold the whole story in the 1960s? They will go to their graves unwept, unhonoured and unsung.

They will have one consolation, though, worth more than any garland: they will know that, but for them, nothing would have changed.

“There is no limit to what a man can achieve in politics,” Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “provided he is indifferent as to who takes the credit”. Amen.
Posted by Daniel Hannan on 05 Apr 2008 at 18:49