Product Description

The authors of this text argue that Britain's membership of the European Union is turning out to be a catastrophe on a far greater scale than our politicians or media have been prepared to recognize. The once admirable dream of a united Europe has in practice been hijacked by a bureaucratic monster. The book suggests that as Brussels-style regulations reach ever further into every area of British life, nothing is spared - the London double-decker bus, Britain's air safety rules, even the British oak tree, while industry is threatened with confusion and chaos. But the authors argue that behind this lies an even greater disaster, suggesting that Britain's politicians have been reduced to helpless puppets by a form of government which is entirely new. The country, according to this book, has passed under the rule of a political system which is no longer in any meaningful sense democratic, where much of the law takes the form of edicts issued by officials in Brussels or Whitehall without any political control. The authors have spent two years examining the "Euro-system". Economically, politically and psychologically, they argue, it is now inflicting so much damage on Britain that the only course is to leave the EU.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5343206 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 255 pages

About the Author
Dr. Richard A.E. North is a leading agriculture policy expert with experience of both the private and public sectors. He is the author, with Christopher Booker, of two books on bureaucracy and the EU: The Mad Officials and The Castle of Lies.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful demolition of EU
THIS BOOK covers an extraordinarily wide range of subjects, mirroring the European Union's attempts at universal control of our national life. Among many other matters, it analyses Major's abortive `beef war', the Common Agricultural Policy fiasco, the Common Fisheries Policy disaster, what the authors call `The single market: the great illusion', VAT (the EU tax), the single currency, the European Court of Justice's role, and the systematic deception practised by the EU and its supporters.

The key to understanding the EU is to see that it is an attack on our political independence. All the rest follows from this; if we lose sovereignty, we suffer ever-growing economic damage, agricultural disaster (`set aside', burning crops, grubbing up apple trees), ever-increasing and ever-widening VAT, the destruction of our fishing fleet and of our fish stocks, and the many appalling abuses, absurdities, frauds and extravagances that the authors chronicle.

On the drive towards a single European state, they write that, "For the French, the Germans, the Commission and other countries, the move to economic and monetary union agreed at Maastricht was the central thrust of their drive towards the complete integration of the Community into a single state, of which the further additions planned at the IGC, such as a common foreign and defence policy, were only corollaries which must logically follow. Mr Major's refusal to discuss the Single Currency issue had been a crucial part of his strategy to divert British attention from what was really going on in the rest of Europe." They say that the present Government "no more spoke and acted on behalf of the interests and wishes of their fellow-countrymen than the Vichy government had acted for the people of wartime France."

During the 1992 election campaign, the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Parties (and, for that matter, the SNP and Plaid Cymru) barely mentioned the Maastricht Treaty. The Treaty aimed to end our economic and monetary sovereignty by imposing Economic and Monetary Union. Monetary Union means a single currency, to be called the euro; Economic Union means a single economic policy, a single taxation and spending policy, which we already know as monetarism. The authors sum up: "In short, the coming of full `Economic and Monetary Union' would mean the most complete surrender of sovereignty any country could contemplate, short of being physically occupied by an enemy power."

This book tells us a lot about the way our political leaders have cheated and lied in their efforts to destroy our independence. In 1990, Heath was asked if had in mind `a United States of Europe' when he took us in to the Common Market: he replied, `Of course, yes.' That is not what he said at the time!

In 1992, Honourable members and noble Lords solemnly debated and voted for a Treaty that they had not even seen. The Government had not yet published the Maastricht Treaty, and neither Commons nor Lords insisted on seeing it before voting for it. Douglas Hurd even said that he had not read it before signing it!

ECONOMIC EFFECTS

What of the EU's much-vaunted economic benefits? Surely, such far-reaching sacrifices of sovereignty could only be justified by some pretty hefty gains? In 1971, Heath said that joining the Common Market would have `positive and substantial' effects on our balance of payments. What really happened? From 1973 to 1995, our accumulated trade deficit with EU was £100 billion; we had a trade surplus with every other continent: our accumulated trade surplus with the rest of the world came to £80 billion.

The European Exchange Rate Mechanism, EMU's forerunner, cost us at least £70 billion in lost output and jobs during the two years that we were in it. On 10 September 1992, six days before Britain left it, Major declared that "the soft option, the devaluer's option, the inflationary option would be a betrayal of our future, and it is not the Government's policy." The Government, the Opposition and the country's leading institutions all agreed that devaluation would be a disaster, and that the ERM was inevitable and wonderful. The subsequent devaluation has led to the lowest level of inflation for 40 years. And this miserable Government tries now to take the credit for the consequences of our leaving ERM!

The EU has some very large tax rises waiting for us. In 1977, the 6th VAT Directive obliged all member states to harmonise their VAT systems by 1997: Jacques Santer recently said that this was `a priority'. This would mean 17.5% rates of VAT on our domestic heating, children's clothing and shoes, books and newspapers, tickets for rail, air and bus, new houses, and food. VAT on food would add £7 billion a year to Britain's shopping bills. Our exemption on food is being reviewed this year. The Maastricht Treaty says that all states must accept the fully-harmonised VAT system, with no more derogations (that means us!)

Our total budgetary contributions to the EU since we joined are £100 billion. In 1995, we contributed £7.7 billion to the EU (£132 per person) and received back just £4 billion in grants and subsidies. The contributions come from the working class; the grants and subsidies go to companies, landowners and big farmers.

The EU's effect on our capacity to grow good cheap food has been disastrous. The CAP adds £1000 to the average family's food bill every year. In 1995 alone, the EU spent £439 million on destroying food. The CAP gave 13 companies and landowners £500,000 each; 5000 big farmers got £50,000 each. That is a total of £256.5 million in subsidies just to these 5013. 80% of subsidies go to 20% of farmers. Between 1990 and 1994, over 300 abattoirs were closed down, destroying jobs and causing needless suffering to animals which had to be transported ever further for slaughter.

A report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1995 detailed the CAP's failings but concluded "most other EU governments appear strongly attached to the CAP in its present form." So it is impossible to reform the CAP, although all Parliamentary parties endlessly pledge their intent to do so. The only way to improve our situation is to leave the CAP.

EU FRAUD

Clearly, the EU has an uphill job trying to persuade us that losing our sovereignty gives us more power and that economic destruction brings progress. So it resorts to systematic deception to try to make us accept their theft of our sovereignty.

For example, in 1994 the CBI surveyed what its member firms thought of a single currency. It sent a questionnaire to 624 selected firms; 206 replied. Only 59 firms, just 28% of those replying, favoured joining a single currency. 115 firms, 56%, said a single currency might help their business in the long run but `was not a necessity'. 181 firms, 88%, opposed any `deepening integration' of the EU.

Government and CBI spokesmen added the 28% and the 56% together to claim that a majority of CBI members favoured EMU. So the Government and CBI leaders creatively defined 59 firms, 0.7 % of the CBI's 8,000 members, as the majority!

For a more realistic picture, it is necessary only to notice that in 1995 the Federation of Small Businesses (membership 70,000) voted to leave the EU, and that in 1996 2000 members of the Institute of Directors at their annual conference voted overwhelmingly against joining a single currency.

The authors give another example of the kind of sharp practice that the EU uses. In 1994, a body calling itself the `Higher Education European Social Fund Services' sent letters to British universities saying: "The receipt of future ESF support .. [would be] .. Influenced by the amount of publicity given to ESF projects." No wonder that corruption and fraud are on the increase!

In all, we should congratulate the authors for their unremitting assault on the European Union and all its works. They have made a massive contribution to upholding our sovereignty.

The Amazing Deception
Christopher Booker's book is the most fascinating story of deception ever published. Anyone who would like to know a little more about Britain's real place in the EU should read this book, and learn of the deceipt, half-truths and outright lies supplied by the shadowy EU figures to give their takeover of half a continent a form of legitamy.

If only a tiny percentage of Booker's account is to be believed (and it happens to be fantastically well researched), our new masters in the EU will have finally achieved what Hitler set out to do, and all without a shot being fired.

For readers from overseas wondering what all the fuss is about, remember the old Soviet Union? Well this book shows how the EU has adopted many of it's traits. END