Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the first political meeting that I attended was as a teenager in 1968 to hear an erudite but rather dry speaker extol the virtues of the Common Market. His arguments, but even more so the wartime experiences of my father and grandfather, clinched my support for entering the Common Market. My father had seen action at Monte Cassino and in the north African desert, his brother was killed in the RAF, and their father had been in the Flanders trenches and later in Mesopotamia and the Holy Land. Siegfried Sassoon’s Great War poetry, read in Picardy last week under leaden skies, 100 years after 20,000 British and Empire soldiers lost their lives on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, vividly recalls those catastrophic events. Sadly, another generation later, such powerful and shocking patriotic experiences seem to have lost much of their resonance.

My support for what became the European Community was also inspired by Europe’s founding fathers: Adenauer, Schuman, Monnet and de Gasperi, who were shaped by their own harrowing wartime experiences at the hands of Nazism and fascism. They were Christian humanists who believed in subsidiarity, solidarity, the promotion of the common good, social justice and reconciliation. It was for those reasons that in 1975, as a young local politician in Liverpool, I campaigned for Britain to stay in the Community, and 67% of the British people agreed.

In the intervening years, what went wrong and what has changed? By 2007, the Community had morphed into a Union and that year I spoke against the Lisbon treaty, because I do not believe in a centralised European superstate, replete with a common currency—so disastrous for countries such as Greece—a European army, or its other trappings. One size does not fit all and is contrary to subsidiarity.

Although I, along with my family, voted to remain in the European Union, it was clear to me that there would be a win for the leave campaign. This was confirmed when I chaired a public debate in Lancashire a week before the vote. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, reminded us about the problems of binary choices; I could not help thinking that if a third option had been available on the ballot paper I would have voted to remain and reform. Binary choices are by definition narrow, when most things in life are invariably more complicated and subtle. Similarly, in Scotland a third option of devo-max—rather than independence or status quo—would have united rather than divided. If we are to have more referenda we should think far more carefully about the questions we ask.

Just before the vote, someone close to me said she did not know anyone who was voting leave. That comment graphically illustrates how dangerously separated and divided our country has become—it is not only on the London Underground that we need to mind the gap. But the spectre of inequality referred to by the most reverend Primate reminds us that not just gaps but chasms are opening up in society. We need to understand that many people feel powerless, disaffected and angry. Many of them are from northern towns and live in poorer communities, dangerously disconnected from the political classes. It would be disingenuous beyond belief to caricature or dismiss all those who voted for Brexit as xenophobes or racists. I say that as someone whose mother was an immigrant whose first language was Irish, and who greatly prizes this nation’s diversity. But let me also be clear that the scapegoating and hate-mongering, and the deployment of poisonous xenophobic arguments not seen since the days of Peter Griffiths, will have long-term consequences for community cohesion. It is much easier to summon up the tempest than to quell it, and to call up the furies than dismiss them. In this respect I echo the remarks made throughout your Lordships’ House. The Government need to act immediately to make it clear that people settled here will not be weaponised in the coming negotiations. Failure to do so will further poison our world.

Many of the votes cast were angry votes. That anger, fuelled by a scepticism about Europe’s failure to deal with a mass migration of terrified people, was hardly assuaged by Jean-Claude Juncker’s arrogance in telling us just days before this tumultuous referendum that however we voted it would not make any difference. The Junckerism seems to be catching. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said unwisely last week that, “There has to be a way to resist public opinion”. It is bad enough that millions of our poorer citizens believe that the establishment has become impervious to their fate, but it would be unbelievably dangerous to tell 17.5 million people that they will be resisted and not listened to. The key to the future is surely to be found in Article 50, which specifically requires the European Union to listen to an exiting member and, in the words of the article, to take,

“account of the framework for its future relationship”.

This crisis must now be used to create a range of new relationships at every level, perhaps modelled for instance on the EU framework programmes such as Horizon 2020, which is so important to UK science. Switzerland, Israel and Norway are all part of Horizon 2020, but of course are not part of the European Union. It is imperative that political paralysis does not delay work in forging such relationships. These are urgent questions and the Government simply cannot go into hibernation. Skilful negotiators will need wise heads, steely nerves and steady hands to see whether within the framework of subsidiarity, solidarity and the common good we can create new opportunities to live together amicably. We owe it to those who bought our own and Europe’s freedoms with their blood and their lives. We also owe it to all those who now feel marginalised or fearful for their own futures.