Dr Pennie Roberts - 14/02/2018

Even a cricket club wouldn’t be able to change its constitution on a simple majority’.


Letters to the Editor.

Dr Pennie Roberts has kindly shared a letter she had published in her local paper in response to a leave voter who accused remainers of being a metropolitan elite who are "... smug, self-centred and squalid, determined to talk the country down and refusing to see the restoration of sovereignty, control and glory that is so evident...". While Pennie's letter is a response to one particular 'leaver' her eloquent arguments can be used as a template for you own letters.

Other template letters can be found by going to Menu (top right) > Articles > Search and then selecting 'Template' from the list of keywords and clicking SEARCH.


Letter published in Glossop Chronicle 08.02.2018

Alan O’Day Scott (01.02.18) writes an impassioned defence of the vote to leave the European Union and launches an equally impassioned attack on the metropolitan elite calling them smug, self-centred and squalid, determined to talk the country down and refusing to see the restoration of sovereignty, control and glory that is so evident to Mr Scott.

I do not consider myself to be smug, self-centred or squalid nor am I from a metropolis although I have to confess to a university education and 40 years working in the public sector.

Mr Scott might be happy to dismiss my views and is clearly very angry at those of us who continue to question the wisdom of the decision taken in that ill-thought through referendum of June 2016. The outcome was within a few points and in countries more used to having regular referendums would not be considered the final say on such a major constitutional issue. As someone said to me the other evening ‘even a cricket club wouldn’t be able to change its constitution on a simple majority’.

We have been, are and always will be a sovereign nation; not even the current Prime Minister has questioned that; the EU has not taken away our independence; we have conceded some rights as we will continue to do with every trade deal we make, within or without the EU. We also give up a degree of independence to organisations such as NATO in the knowledge that being part of that organisation gives more than we lose; working together yields greater and better results.

On Saturday 27 January someone told me that we couldn’t trade with China because the EU wouldn’t let us; a week later we learned of the £9 billion trade deals the PM had signed off on her recent trip to China. Those deals were made with us as part of the largest trading bloc in the world, under terms and conditions negotiated on behalf of the 500 million people in the EU. Yes of course we will be able to negotiate our own trade deals if we leave the EU; we are a proud country of 60 million people, but is China really going to offer us better terms than our current EU ones? Why would they? They can trade with us now and the EU protects our manufacturers from being flooded by cheap imports – if you were China would you continue with that or seek terms that were more favourable to you and therefore less favourable to the UK?

We have never lost control of our borders. We are an island and our borders are very obvious and relatively easy to manage. I can travel between the countries of the EU without showing my passport but have to produce it to get back into the country of my birth. The conundrum of the border with the Irish Republic is one which may yet scupper the whole deal as it is yet another issue that was never thought through by those advocating leaving the EU. We are having to jump through hoops to solve a non-existent problem, but that seems to be the new normal.

0.11% of the UK’s gross domestic product goes to the EU as our contribution. In purely monetary terms we each pay 39 Euros each year to the EU for our membership of the club. What we get back is much greater than that; the CBI estimates that the net worth is 4-5% of GDP to the UK, or £62bn-£78bn per year 1. So yes, we each lose control of 39 Euros each year and gain from beneficial trade deals to a far greater extent. This is without quantifying any of the other benefits that come from being part of this great community of nations.

Mr Scott is rightly worried however about the overcrowded schools, doctor’s surgeries, clinics and hospitals. Although not mentioned by him there is also pressure on our roads, our housing, our railways. Surely Britain is full up and immigration has to be controlled to stop this? The reality is somewhat different I would argue. We have, and always have had, the ability to control immigration. Anyone who comes to the UK and hasn’t found work or other means of support within three months can be sent back to their home country. This is the case across the EU and is enacted by some other countries. Why have we never done this? Possibly because immigration is a perceived problem not a real one. We know that immigration is of net benefit to the UK. Like many western European nations we have a falling indigenous birthrate and a growing population of retired people. We need young productive immigrants to keep our society going and we know that immigrants are mainly of working age and do not come over here to live off benefits. They come to work – in our factories, our fields, our NHS, our social care system; without them this country will be poorer in many senses but most importantly we do not have the number of young people to keep our country going. This may be an unpalatable truth for some but we need immigration if we are going to prosper and deliver the services many of us want to retain. Mr Scott has reminded us that we currently have record low unemployment and yet there are still significant vacancies in the NHS, in teaching, engineering; fruit and vegetables are rotting in our fields because of a shortage of workers to pick them. We need immigration.

So what about the overcrowding? We are a small island and just can’t support all these people, allegedly. I was recently asked to estimate the percentage of the UK that is developed – the amount of our green and pleasant land that is now tarmac. I guessed about 25% but feared it might be more. The most comprehensive mapping of the UK ever undertaken shows that roads, railways, factories, housing, airports, schools and all other development makes up just 2.7% of England (2% of the UK as a whole).2 The problem is that it is that 2.7% that we all spend our lives on and so as the population increases we feel more crowded. The issue is not too many people, it is the lack of investment over decades in the infrastructure to house, educate, transport and look after our population.

I am sorry that Mr Scott feels that pointing out these realities means I am talking down this country. Remainers like myself who believe that the decision to leave the EU is a big, but inherently reversible, mistake are also called unpatriotic and undemocratic. My grandparents’ generation fought the 1st World War and 25 years later saw their sons and daughters fight again. I am a generation who has not had to fight for freedom and hope never to see my children or grandchildren go to war in the battlefields of Europe. War blighted Europe for centuries, 70 years of peace should not be lightly dismissed but lauded as one of the great achievements of the EU.

Democracy is equally precious and needs safeguarding at all times. It is however a process not a one-off event. An advisory referendum, not binding on parliament, gave an indication that a little over half of the UK population did not want to stay in the EU. But what if the people got it wrong? Is the majority view always right? As well as the centenary of the end of the 1st World War 2018 also marks the granting of the right to vote to women over 30 and working class men. This was not a popular, majority cause when the suffragettes started out; few people supported them and time and time again they were defeated by the majority view. Slavery abolitionists, gay rights activists, disability campaigners, those fighting racial and gender discrimination, all had to be prepared to take on the majority view and face accusations of being anti-patriotic and anti-democratic. Fortunately they persevered and society progressed. One of my great-aunts was a suffragette and when I wonder why I bother spending time and energy campaigning for the UK to stay in the EU I remember that she was fighting a much tougher battle with imprisonment and force feeding a regular punishment for standing up for what she believed. However I might object to being called smug and squalid I trust I will not be beaten up or force-fed for arguing that Britain’s membership of the EU is worth fighting for.

Dr Pennie Roberts

  1. http://www.cbi.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/our-global-future/factsheets/factsheet-2-benefits-of-eu-membership-outweigh-costs/
  2. http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/

Credits

Reproduced with kind permission from Dr Pennie Roberts, a contributor to 'The 48%' group on Facebook.
Share this article