CIB videos show how we were betrayed

The Campaign for an Independent Britain has produced three short films of interviews with former Labour MPs Nigel Spearing and Eric Deakins regarding the early 1970s debates in Parliament on Britain’s entry into the European Union (or Common Market as it was called at the time).

CIB Chairman George West says: “I urge you to watch these three short films, which are essential viewing for everyone who cares about British sovereignty and democracy. In the films, Nigel Spearing and Eric Deakins, veteran Parliamentarians and heroes of the anti-EU movement, give us their unique insights into how we were duped into joining ‘Europe’. I regard it as a privilege to have been associated with these visionary people who had the courage to do all in their power to try to prevent Britain’s entry into the Common Market in 1972 and later campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the 1975 referendum on whether or not we should stay in.

“Nigel was the last MP to make a speech before the winding up speeches at the third reading of the European Communities Bill in the House of Commons. The Bill was passed by an incredibly narrow margin (309 votes in favour of Common Market entry, with 301 votes against). It just so happens that on that very evening I sat in the Strangers’ Gallery at the Commons, believing that Heath was not being truthful and that only trouble lay ahead. I sat there worried sick about the future for my tiny son and daughter, and the future of Britain’s engineering and manufacturing industries in which I worked for over fifty years.”

Nigel Spearing on how Britain was duped
How the British people were duped
Eric Deakins on how Britain was duped

Making Europe an election issue

Parliamentary candidates quizzed on Britain's EU membership

Will the next General Election bring more Eurosceptics into the House of Commons? That's what the Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB) - the cross-party anti-EU organisation - is aiming to discover through a major new initiative that it is rolling-out to constituencies throughout the UK.

Candidate2010.com will call on more than 2,500 would-be MPs to share with the electorate their views on the question of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. While opinion polls show that the great majority of Britons believe the UK would be better off out of the EU, this view is currently not reflected by the majority of MPs or by leadership of the three main parties.

CIB Chairman George West explains: "The forthcoming General Election will see a large-scale influx of new MPs. Many of our current representatives are standing down this year - some of them due to the expenses scandal - and others will be defeated. So, whether or not there is a change of government, there is certain to be a transformation in the composition of the House of Commons.

"Candidates of all parties are already jockeying for position in their local media, sharing with us their views on everything from global warming to the siting of the local Tesco. But on the most important issue of all – that of whether Britain should be a free, sovereign nation, or a mere province of the European Union – there is huge diversity of opinion within the main parties.

"That is why Candidate2010.com is challenging individual Parliamentary candidates from across the political spectrum to tell their constituents precisely where they stand on this pivotal issue. Through Candidate2010.com voters can track candidates' attitudes to Europe. .

"We are calling on individual constituents to write to their would-be MPs to find out where they stand. Although Candidate2010 doesn’t urge people to vote for any particular party, those candidates who include in their election address a specific pledge to work towards the UK's withdrawal from the European Union stand to gain many extra votes, as opinion poll after opinion poll shows that the overwhelming majority of the British electorate dislikes the fact that this country is being dragged deeper into the EU.

"Whether or not the main parties want to face up to this all-important subject,CIB intends to ensure that the EU is a major issue in the 2010 General Election."

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HOW YOU CAN HELP

* Send the press release above to your local newspaper
* Visit Candidate2010 at www.candidate2010.com (username and password=’guest’)

Where will your next MP stand on Europe?

The forthcoming general election will see a large-scale influx of new MPs. Many of our current “representatives” are standing down, either having been caught with their fingers in the till over the expenses scandal, or have simply worked out that they are not going to win anyway.

Candidates of all parties are already jockeying for position in their local media, sharing with us their views on everything from global warming to the siting of the local Tescos.

But on the most important issue of all – that of whether Britain should be a free nation or a mere province of the European Union - many of those who seek to represent us are strangely silent.

That is why the Campaign for an Independent Britain has launched an important new initiative – Candidate2010 – which challenges would be MPs to share with the public their views on the question of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.

Check it out at www.candidate2010.com

REAL UKIP

Is there now a need post Dec 1st to take to the streets?

Ten Years on

The TaxPayers Alliance is pleased to announce that the first 5,000 copies of their new book, Ten Years On by Campaign for an Independent Britain committee member Dr Lee Rotherham, are now available for CIB supporters to order free on a first-come-first-served basis.

Here's a taster of what to expect from the book, which features a foreword by The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh and an epilogue by best-selling author Frederick Forsyth: "If you traded something, made something, sold something, ran something, policed something, protected something, transported something, communicated something, fished something, grew something, stored something, repaired something, bought something, spent something, exchanged something, taught something, learned something, powered something, healed something, published something, researched something, reported something, supported something, Brussels had a say in it. The EU was everywhere. Now, ten years on, things are very different…"

Britain has been a member of the European Union for a third of a century, enduring all the waste, fraud and red tape that Brussels could imagine. But what would it be like if one day Britain just said ‘Enough’? Ten Years On takes us to a world where they have done just that. Dr Rotherham’s new book imagines a future where Britain is free to control its own affairs, to strike its own deals and to decide its own fate.

This is your opportunity to get a vivid glimpse of how the future could be very, very different.
Get your copy from: http://www.greateudebate.com/order/

Cameron must face reality, say Eurosceptics

Conservative leader David Cameron must match rhetoric to action if he is to have any chance of winning the confidence of voters in his ‘new’ policies on Europe, say Eurosceptics.

“Too many times we have heard opposition politicians talking the talk about ‘standing up’ for Britain in Europe,” said George West, Chairman of the cross-party Campaign for an Independent Britain. “Following hard on the heals of his climb-down over his ‘cast iron’ promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Cameron has much to do to persuade the British people that he in earnest about reducing the role of the EU in our national life.”

“The sort of ‘a la carte’ Europe that Mr Cameron now seems to favour runs entirely contrary to the whole thrust of ever deepening European integration over the past fifty years, and is explicitly ruled out by the Lisbon Treaty which Mr Cameron now says we are powerless to repeal.”

Campaign for an Independent Britain also notes that the Conservative leader’s call for a ‘Sovereignty Acr’ is a clear admission by Mr Cameron that Britain is no longer a free and independent nation.

“Sooner rather than later the fundamental question of Britain’s overall relationship with the European Union must be addressed,” said Mr West. “Supporters of the EU are already raising the spectre that Mr Cameron’s policies will lead to Britain leaving the EU altogether. Good. Such an outcome should not be feared. A Britain outside the European Union would be freed from the straitjacket of rules, taxes and regulations that have crippled our economic life and right to self-determination for a generation.”

Challenging media bias

By Andy Smith

Press & Public Relations Officer, Campaign for an Independent Britain

On Britain’s relationship with the European Union, says Rod Liddle, former editor of the Today Programme on Radio 4, “The BBC is undoubtedly institutionally biased.” Liddle is one of a growing number of current and former BBC staff who have admitted that the Corporation has its own political agenda. Europe is not the only subject on which Britain’s official Public Service Broadcaster suppresses alternative viewpoints. Regarding “the other side of the story” on climate change, TV presenter Peter Sissons recently claimed that “It is effectively BBC policy … that those views should not be heard.”

There is a common misconception that Britain has a free, pluralistic and diverse media, and that the wide variety of political opinions expressed by columnists in the national daily and Sunday papers – including Eurosceptics such as Christopher Booker, Peter Hitchens and Simon Heffer – highlights this diversity. But while columnists like these undoubtedly provide a range of refreshing alternative viewpoints, including scepticism about the EU and climate change, they are not typical. Most newspaper editors and senior journalists are, like their opposite numbers in the broadcasting world, unashamedly pro-European and dismissive of Eurosceptic opinions.

The British press is far from diverse. Editors and senior journalists, including the lobby correspondents who report from Westminster, are guilty of “groupthink”. While a few columnists are willing to challenge the Establishment consensus on Europe, those in charge of the nation’s daily and Sunday newspapers, TV and radio stations, and leading press agencies, are not. The view that we are in the EU forever, and only extremists and cranks believe otherwise, is so deeply ingrained in the higher echelons of the British media that any organisation or individual calling for the UK to withdraw from the European Union is automatically written off as “beyond the pale”. This is the challenge that the Campaign for an Independent Britain faces on a daily basis.

In my role as Press & Public Relations Officer for the CIB, I am in regular contact with journalists and broadcasters, and try to provide them with a steady flow of news and comment from an anti-EU perspective. They listen to what I have to say, they take notes, and they sometimes even call me back later for more information. Very occasionally, they manage to persuade their editors to let them squeeze a quote from me, and a name-check for CIB, into their reports. But hardly ever will they publicise CIB’s call for Britain to leave the EU. Quite simply, we are seen as a useful source of information about Europe but our uncompromising withdrawalist policy makes us “too extreme”.

No newspaper, not even the broadly Eurosceptic Daily Express, the most maverick (and in some ways the most patriotic) of the national dailies, has been willing to promote the CIB or align itself publicly with our cause. That is why we have had to produce our own tabloid newspaper – Free Britain – and why we concentrate most of our PR efforts on the regional and local press which is less susceptible to the “groupthink” of the national media. We are also focusing much more attention on the web. In addition to our own site, www.eurosceptic.org.uk, and our blog site, we post news and information on numerous other websites and online magazines, and endeavour to secure online coverage wherever and whenever we can.

We will of course continue to fight to get our message across in the “mainstream” national media. But until the Great British Public wakes up to the true extent of media bias and control, and starts to challenge the pro-EU mindset of those in senior editorial positions in Britain’s newspapers and broadcasting organisations, CIB will be fighting an uphill battle.

Help us challenge the media consensus on Europe. Write to the editor of your daily or Sunday paper and urge them to give a fair hearing to anti-EU opinions. Write to the Director-General of the BBC and to the Head of News & Current Affairs demanding that the Corporation upholds its Royal Charter commitment to “due impartiality” and that it airs “all significant viewpoints” including that of CIB, Britain’s leading cross-party Eurosceptic organisation.