George MacDonald Fraser is remembered for his series of novels starring Harry Flashman, a skirt-chasing rogue and officer caught up in the great military campaigns of Victorian Britain.
The acclaimed author was an unabashed patriot given to colourful views. A few years before he died in 2008, when Tony Blair's Labour government was seriously considering that the UK should join the euro, he wrote an article that was as brilliant as it was provocative — arguing that the EU was a disaster zone and closer involvement would lead only to catastrophe.
Here, we reproduce it...
Lovable rogue: George MacDonald Fraser's adventurer Harry Flashman
Suppose in 1945, with the Nazi war machine smashed and Britain rejoicing after the greatest victory in her history, we had been told: 'Of course, 50 years hence your leaders will have surrendered your sovereignty to the people you've just defeated and those you've liberated.
'In effect, they will be your masters, your lawmakers — oh, and incidentally, it will be a crime to sell in pounds and ounces . . .' The prophet would have been ridiculed, perhaps even reviled as a traitor, and probably put in a padded cell.
Well, it has happened.
Since 1973, when the country was dragooned into the Common Market by Edward Heath, successive governments, with a cynical disregard for public opinion, have squandered countless millions of treasure for the benefit of the moocher [cadging] nations of the EU, and in return our farming and fishing industries have been brought to the brink of ruin, our constitution undermined and our laws, passed by properly elected Britons, brushed aside whenever they are at odds with the directives of unelected foreign bureaucrats whose corruption is a byword, in whose appointment we had no say, but whose will is sovereign while ours goes for nothing.
Having been sold out not just tamely, but positively eagerly, we have seen despatched to the governing bodies of Europe our sorriest political failures, cast-offs and has-beens, who of course are pro-European to a man, since Europe has provided them (and in some cases, their families) from time to time with a gravy-soaked alternative to the unemployment they deserve.
We, and other European nations, have to pay for a 'Parliament' which has rather flatteringly been described as 'an unspeakable assembly . . . of self-important nonentities', and which not only performs no useful function but is a positively harmful and colossally expensive dead weight existing for nothing but the benefit of its members.
Worse still, our leaders have been criminally stupid in embracing, and enshrining in our law, the wicked and misguided twaddle of European 'human rights', submitting to the ruling of that unqualified kangaroo assembly, the European Court, and using all this farrago of Continental nonsense as an excuse for destroying the fabric of our nation.
'We have to do it because Brussels says we must.' How often have we heard this pathetic whine from a gutless government?
Is it not remarkable that Britain, with a record on human rights superior to any other nation's, Britain which has done more to spread honest law and democracy than all the European states together, Britain whose ideas and ideals have been adopted by every respectable people on earth, should be lectured on 'human rights' by the Continent which gave us the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the French Revolution and subsequent horrors of Napoleonic aggression, the police state, fascism, communism, and other benefits too numerous to mention — to say nothing of being so wicked, corrupt and feeble that within living memory it had to be rescued by Britain, America and Russia.
Brazen impudence is too mild a phrase for the effrontery of the European Court in issuing its diktats to us, and supine behaviour of all our political parties who have been so craven and witless as to accept them.
Europe is simply not fit to have any say in British affairs
I am ranting, no doubt about it. But then, I am enraged at what has been done to my country by the contemptible dross elected to Westminster in evil hours, worst of all the Heath government which gave Britain its death blow, and New Labour who have trampled on the corpse.
But not half so angry, I dare swear, as our forefathers would be if they could see the betrayal, by worthless politicians, of the country they worked so hard to build, and the surrender of the precious freedoms won by better men at Trafalgar, Waterloo, Flanders and El Alamein and in the skies above the Weald of Kent.
'Oh, emotive drum-beating!' I can hear the snoopopaths cry. 'Jingoism of the most Victorian kind, a bellow from a bygone age!' That is how they see their country's past, and are too stupid and complacent to look to its future. But even they would do well to ask themselves what Churchill and Elizabeth I would have thought of the pass to which Britain has been brought in the past half-century. It will be said that these worthies belonged to other times, and their notions are out of date. Not so.
The freedoms they believed in are eternal, and we will lose them for ever if we allow ourselves to be conned or bullied into, first, joining the ludicrous euro, and inevitably thereafter, railroaded into a European superstate, a union of European soviets controlled by people whose ways are not our ways, whose values are not our values, and whose polities have shown themselves inferior to ours at any time during the past millennium.
Consider how willingly they accept dictatorship, whether of Louis XIV or Napoleon or Hitler or Mussolini or Franco, and compare their pathetic record with ours.
Europe is simply not fit to have any say in British affairs.
Corruption is plainly endemic; the bribe, the backhander, the favour, the nepotism, the freebie at public expense — these are the air the EU breathes, and there are signs in our own political establishment that the infection is spreading, although we still, fortunately, have some way to go before our scandals reach European proportions.
The totalitarian dangers of Europeanisation are to be seen at every turn.
![Since 1973, when the country was dragooned into the Common Market by Edward Heath, successive governments, with a cynical disregard for public opinion, have squandered countless millions of treasure for the benefit of the moocher [cadging] nations of the EU](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sB351xVuwKqFVmHxOzOJU_Ujyo-doccw1l8_mE6oOqgt8SzFaDOPkrG4JRKlZ-OCo1arjsNwm3YSrNmr78nENMOyWxLVwNfmZcGwyEYtImoxpPcQSwFS6H5IO6sjUCFb_zuNNoYKt-b6-Yf1TGwEuQYABr1VdQDnt16r32QYMo64gqkI725_3RyolH9SKToPU2xxrLJFMGMUTXW25huQAcKHwrEvDXaMp077PMM48JhuO9yVovC5pGhS1j=s0-d) |
| Since 1973, when the country was dragooned into the Common Market by Edward Heath, successive governments, with a cynical disregard for public opinion, have squandered countless millions of treasure for the benefit of the moocher [cadging] nations of the EU |
It is European gospel that EU Commissioners must put Europe ahead of their national loyalties. Personally, I am conscious of no obligation to Bulgaria or Romania, to name but two, and the last thing I want is these sponger nations consuming our national wealth and, in time no doubt, imposing on us the 'democratic ideals' they learned under communism.
The great mystery is why the Eurofanatics want to see us under the sway of Brussels.
It has already cost us a fortune and done us untold damage: why should they wish to cost us more and damage us still further?
The motive of those on the European gravy-train is plain enough, but what's in it for those commercial interest spokesmen who clamour for the euro and closer integration?
Short-term profit? Perhaps; there are those quite base and stupid enough to think the loss of national sovereignty a small price to pay for lining their pockets.
They would probably be on the Right, but what attracts the Left? Being part of a glorious union of Socialist Republics?
There are some, to be sure, who have entirely different notions about independence and national honour and integrity from the rest of us.
The child of, say, Balkan immigrants may well have a different concept of what it means to be British (supposing he has any at all beyond possession of a passport) than the man or woman whose ancestors have been here for a thousand years. (And that will be denounced by liberals as an abominably racist thing to say. Which doesn't stop it being true.)
One way or another, the question whether Britain remains a free nation or becomes the vassal of a totalitarian Europe will be settled soon, and those who oppose our further integration would do well to remember, and proclaim as widely and as loudly as possible, the unashamed dishonesty that has characterised the pro- European movement from the beginning. Not since Lenin and Hitler cast their obscene spells has there been a political campaign so blatantly mendacious. In 1973, we were assured it was merely a Common Market, and that no political union was envisaged: it is now shamelessly admitted that this was untrue, that political union was the aim from the start.
The British people have shown that they want neither, and a growing number would like to see us out of Europe altogether
Whether one can trace this back to Vichy France's collaboration with Nazi Germany, and the plan drawn up by the defeated Nazi generals in 1946 for an armed and united Europe dominated and led by Germany, is a matter for conjecture; what is certain is that the past 30 years has seen the mischief moving into high gear: lie has been piled on lie, deceit on deceit, and folly on folly, and there can be no one, surely, so naïve as to suppose that the underlying motives of the Euromaniacs are pure and altruistic.
It has actually been pretended that European Union has kept the peace for half a century. This is one of the silliest lies; the peace has been kept by nuclear deterrence — and the fact that Germany has been in no position to flex its military muscles.
One need cite only a few examples of the Europhiles' lack of scruples. There was the refusal to accept the original Danish 'no' vote [in a 1992 vote on the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the EU and paved the way for the euro], with the referendum being re-run so that the Eurocrooks could get the right answer.
Also, the sorry lie that failure to join the euro could jeopardise eight million British jobs. And the disgraceful conduct of the Conservative government in bullying and blackmailing its backbench sheep at the time of Maastricht.
But the most dishonourable ploy of all has been the red herring thrown in the public's face by the European lobby implying that the sovereignty issue is irrelevant.
For sovereignty matters above all, the right to make our own laws (thrown away with the incorporation of the mad and disgusting European Convention on Human Rights into our domestic law, which has already caused disruption in our courts), the right to be independent of the unworthy, undemocratic, unprincipled, authoritarian, bureaucratic rabble of Brussels.
That, first, last, and every time, is what matters. In comparison, 'economic criteria' pale into irrelevance. We do not need the euro, the Monopoly money which begins to bear a close resemblance to French Revolutionary and Weimar currency.
Those who do want it parrot the cry that common currency will not lead to political union, but that is a falsehood wasted, for everyone knows that political union, the declared aim, would be inevitable.
The British people have shown that they want neither, and a growing number would like to see us out of Europe altogether.
It is probably the knowledge of this that has driven the scaremongering of the Europhiles to the point of desperation. My fear, and it is a growing one, is that pusillanimous, foolish and morally bankrupt politicians will complete the process begun by Heath in 1973, and Britain will become a helpless cog in the European machine, a mere province of the Holy Brussels Empire without real power or influence in the face of our traditional enemies.
Babble about being 'at the heart of Europe' is wishful thinking.
My hope, and it is a fervent but slender one, is in two stages.
First, I hope to see the British public resist the propaganda onslaught of the pro-Europeans, in which the broadcast media, led by the BBC, have shown themselves willing tools of the government, and vote a resounding 'no' in the referendum, if and when it comes.
I believe they will, in spite of Blair's patronising arrogance in suggesting that Britons can be 'educated' into compliance. My second stage, whether a referendum were 'no' or not, is less probable. I want to see the whole rotten edifice of the EU collapse in ruin, and if Britain can emerge from the wreck with her nationhood intact, then whatever temporary damage she has suffered by her ill-starred involvement will have been a small price to pay for independence.
I suppose it is just a pipe-dream, but if we must, in the mysterious future, belong to any bloc, for God's sake let it be the North American one.
However the ethnic mix of the United States may have changed, they are our people still, in language and culture and ideals.
Nothing but good come could of a reunion of the English-speaking peoples — not only Britain and American but the old Empire and Commonwealth countries, our kinsfolk, who stood by us when Europe crumpled, and who, we may hope, would be magnanimous enough to forgive and forget our betrayal of them in 1973.
Alas, it is probably too late, not only to hope for a North Atlantic Union, but to prevent Britain being sucked into Europe. The poor stewardship of the Conservatives, no less than the apostasy of the Labour Party, has left the pass wide open for sale.
While Labour stood firm, and there were enough Tory patriots to stand too, we could hope, but that hope is fading now.
How tragic, how degrading, that the marvellous thing that was Britain, the wonder of the world, should after all the travail and suffering and heroism and sacrifice and sheer bloody genius of centuries, end with the sorriest of whimpers, sold down the river by mere politicians, unworthy and third rate.
Adapted from The Light's On at Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser, published by Harper Collins at £8.99. © George MacDonald Fraser 2002. To order a copy, call 0844 571 0640 or visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk
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