The Rise of Euroscepticism in Britain: The Case of the Referendum Party
In 1997, 5 million households received a video cassette in their mailboxes that discussed a European superstate that would take away all of their liberties. However, the movie did not produce the anticipated results at the time. The Referendum Party, which sent those videos, received only 2.6 percent of the national vote and won no seats. Tony Blair, who was strongly pro-EU, was elected Prime Minister and the Europhiles had a significant triumph at the time. However in 2016, with the Brexit referendum, UK citizens voted to leave the European Union. This significant shift in beliefs over 19 years raises two questions: When did the Eurosceptic movement truly rise in Britain, and how did it rise?
The Eurosceptic movement did not take off immediately. In 1975, a precursor to the Brexit referendum occurred, with the public being asked whether the UK should stay in the Common Market or not. Almost the entire political establishment supported the yes vote, with only a diverse coalition of left-wingers like Tony Benn, right-wingers like Enoch Powell, and several regionalist parties backing the no vote. It resulted in a landslide triumph for the pro-EC side, with two-thirds of Britons choosing to stay in the Common Market.
The anti-European movement genuinely began in the 1990s, when it evolved from a fringe movement with largely far-right and far-left sympathizers to a major issue dividing parties, particularly the Conservative Party. This was caused by a variety of circumstances. First, the European Economic Community was becoming a far more cohesive structure, which frightened many people and raised concerns about a Britain run by grey bureaucrats in Brussels. The Maastricht Treaty, in particular, caused concerns among independent-minded British citizens, who believed it gave the European Union far too many powers. Second, the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, who previously wore a jumper made from the flags of the EEC member states to support the stay vote in 1975, was turning drastically against Europe, especially for Conservatives. She reaffirmed her support for the European Economic Community in her well-known Bruges Speech, but she also strongly disagreed with plans for deeper federalization. Many Tory MPs followed the lady’s lead. When John Major, a far more Europhile, was appointed prime minister, this became an issue for the Conservatives, and it resulted in multiple short-lived expulsions and frequent backbench uprisings on European concerns. However, all three main parties (Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats) had leaderships that supported European unity, which led to a demand for a consistent anti-European party. A number of smaller parties tried to satisfy that desire, but none of them were as successful as Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party.
The infamous Anglo-French businessman Sir James Goldsmith was charged with asset stripping, which is the practice of purchasing businesses at a low cost, selling off their valuable assets, and abandoning the remaining businesses to go bankrupt. Due to Harold Wilson’s infamous “Lavender List,” his knighthood was controversial as well. By the late 1980s, this divisive billionaire was deeply worried that Germany would become the dominant superstate inside the European Economic Community. When the European Union was founded, he believed it had come to pass. This topic grew so important to him that he was elected to the European Parliament in 1994 as a member of a French party that was skeptical of Europe. However, he felt it was insufficient, so that same year he founded the Referendum Party in the UK, a single-issue party.
Goldsmith: European Parliament via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Farage: Euro Realist Newsletter via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Both cropped.
The Referendum Party’s primary objective was to hold a referendum on the nature of the United Kingdom’s EU membership. James Goldsmith himself provided nearly all of the funding and had total control over the party apparatus. Compared to other Euroskeptic parties, such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the party was well-organized and linked since Goldsmith brought many of his previous connections to this new establishment. The party launched its own newspaper, regularly hosted well-planned conferences that were only accessible to media outlets that shared its views, and even received endorsements from a variety of celebrities. It even briefly gained an MP when a Conservative MP named George Gardiner defected to it, after being deselected by his local party. The party had candidates in nearly every constituency at the 1997 general election, with the exception of those in Northern Ireland (because of an agreement with the Ulster Unionist Party) and those run by candidates who favored a referendum on the European Union topic.
However, the party was unsuccessful. Only 42 candidates received more than 5% of the vote. When James Goldsmith passed away from pancreatic cancer a few months later, it ultimately came to an end. The rival Eurosceptic party UKIP, which Nigel Farage co-founded in 1993, soon acquired a large portion of the party’s activist base. About 160 of Goldsmith’s previous candidates joined UKIP when Michael Holmes, the party’s chairman at the time, gave Farage instructions to do so.
Ultimately, despite the Referendum Party’s failure in the 1997 general election, it catapulted the call for a referendum on the European Union into mainstream politics. This is can be seen by the Conservative Party’s growing Eurosceptic rhetoric, prior to David Cameron’s offer of a vote on the EU in 2013. This promise eventually led to Britain leaving the European Union. Thus, the once-fringe idea of leaving the European Union evolved into a mainstream idea, and ultimately a reality.
SOURCES
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/news/05/0501/goldsmith.shtml
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332
Editors: Hasan H. Karamuk and Göktuğ Orhan (Sky)
Cover photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash.
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