E.E.C.–Three words that stand for a curse!               [1970] 

[This article by Desmond Greaves was carried in the January 1970 issue of the “Irish Democrat”, when  Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was exploring the possibility of joining the then European Economic Community following the resignation of French President Charles De Gaulle.  De Gaulle had vetoed British membership of the EEC on two occasions.  The article illustrates Greaves’s awareness of European supranational integration as being a profoundly reactionary and anti-democratic development from its earliest conception. The article originally carried the title below.] 

CRIME! … Against the workers, against democracy, against Irish freedom, against peace…Three words that stand for a curse

The greatest political crime of our lifetime is being plotted. Plotted by smooth-tongued hypocrites who act as public frontmen for big business.

Plotted in the open by men confident that they control every channel of communication and that they can fool people into acceptance or make their opposition ineffectual.

That crime, if it comes off, will begin with British entry into the E.E.C., the European Economic Community or Common Market.

First it will be a crime against the workers. All attempts at concealment have failed on one thing. That is that food prices will go up by nearly one-fifth as England is forbidden to buy Dominion food except on payment of a vast levy.

The reason why Pompidou agreed to Britain’s coming in was nothing to do with Harold Wilson’s frank blue eyes or General De Gaulle’s snooty nose [Pompidou was De Gaulle’s successor as French President].

It was simply this.  As long as it was agreed that England would get no mercy over food prices and the full levy of £500 million a year would be paid to France, England became an asset not a liability.

Five hundred million.  That was the sum they had to raise in the crisis of a couple of years ago. You have raised it once. Do you want to raise another £500,000,000 to save the balance of payments?

Second, it is a crime against democracy

It means that the ordinary people are going to lose what little control they have of what is done in their own country.

It will be impossible to prevent foreigners buying up farms and houses in Ireland.  They would all have a right to do it under the Treaty of Rome. And already the BBC is getting England’s blow in first by urging Englishmen to buy up and “re-populate” Co. Kerry.

It will be impossible to do anything to save Ireland from the most ferocious foreign competition her industries ever faced. The only escape will be to let the foreigners have them.

And don’t think agriculture is safe. The huge agricultural surpluses of the Common Market will have to be dumped somewhere.  And we can’t all be dumping.

Third, it is a crime against Irish freedom. 

The dream of an independent Republic, one and indivisible, disappears for ever into thin air.

It is clearly stated that after economic union the English politicians are looking for political union.

The ordinary people are to lose control of their national parliaments, which will subside to the status of local authorities. There cannot be a democratic European Parliament. The peoples of the separate countries could not understand debates carried on in a babel of languages.

 But there is no intention of having a Parliament. The plan is in effect to wipe out European democracy, and replace it by the dictatorship of big business, working through a group of high-salaried bureaucrats – the Eurocrats. 

Imagine going to Brussels to get a fishing pier repaired in Co. Galway!

Already students in colleges are being indoctrinated to vie for positions in this bureaucracy. They are being taught that the great evil in the world today is nationalism. It is not. It is big business, the dictatorship of wealth. And it was not nationalism that caused the last war, but big business.

Finally, it is a crime against peace.

The English politicians are saying that their aim is to complete the European structure by means of a military union.

What conceivable purpose can they have?

It can only be one thing: war against Russia. 

The war plotted by Neville Chamberlain that didn’t come off because in 1939 Hitler refused to play ball. And Ireland could not be neutral in future.

Do the politicians know they are doing this? Do they consciously choose this result from their policy?  Are they not afraid of being blown up?

Who knows? There are revelations in last month’s “Irish Socialist” that the “Irish Democrat” would be afraid to print. One thing is certain, there can be no protection for the small man, except that war doesn’t take place.

The tragedy is that Irish politicians do know where it is all leading. And they are still prepared to take Ireland in. It is as if they were hypnotised by the inevitability of the whole thing. But it is also because they know that the alternative to going into the EEC is social change such as is being advocated by Sinn Fein and the Workers’ Party.

The hope is that the people will be clearer-sighted than their leaders, and that Ireland will pull back while there is time.