The long awaiting referendum vote is finally near. After listening to each side bang on with less than accurate figures and statistics; making most of them looking like complete buffoons to think that they can pull the wool over the voters eyes, it’s time to decide.
Joining the European Community in 1973 with its half a dozen wealthy countries, is a far cry from today’s mega state with its 28 members. Britain’s wealth has seriously diminished as a result, not to mention the massive rise in the population due to free movement.
As a farmer we have been looked after well by being part of Europe with its Common Agricultural Policy. It was successful in achieving its goals of plentiful food at a time of need after the World Wars. Without the militant French farmers, farm payments would have diminished or ceased in the 1980s when farmers finally turned famine and hunger, into feast and humongous and embarrassing food mountains.
Brussels dictates our everyday life on the farm, from the crops we can grow to the ones we can’t. Natural England, led by the EU, has taken this on board with its new Countryside Stewardship Scheme to protect the wildlife and have also upped the hoop-jumping we have to go through. Just to be on their scheme, that we didn’t want to join, they now require a forest full of paperwork, photos of every field, ditch, tree and hedge; along with wanting to know the number of sheep and cows in each field throughout the year!
Our farm would be farmed completely differently without all this interference and probably would include very few, if any, livestock on it. Joseph Stalin would have been impressed how the “free” world had achieved this level of dictatorship in a country that is a democracy!
So do we vote out and risk losing all our farm payments that the business depends on, or stay in and see our great country’s independence diminish yearly until we can’t cough or sneeze without asking Brussels first?
It appears from the signs adorning farm land around Rye, that I am not alone in thinking that the endless rules and bizarre regulations that accompany farm payments are causing more time and stress than they are worth. The polls in the farming press are indicating well over 70% of farmers want out. The reality is that this will probably not be enough and our hopes will all but fade come June 24.
Simon Wright is a farmer at East Guldeford where he and his wife Ann also run holiday cottages. Click here to visit their website
Photo: Library image
It’s really good to see measured, balanced information like Simon’s piece – recognising both sides of the argument and reaching an informed conclusion. I’m not a farmer and have to respect the judgement he has reached.
But at the same time the conclusion worries me. Membership of the EU is about long-term development of policies across every aspect of society. The fact that one particular policy isn’t right is not in itself a reason to leave – even if that one policy looms large in your own life. What if we all divorced our partners because there was one specific thing we didn’t like about them – would there be any marriages left? And we live in a hugely interconnected world where isolation carries great risks. In this respect the word has changed greatly in the last 50 years – the notions of sovereignty that the BREXIT campaigners espouse seem to me to be mostly meaningless in today’s world – just a sentimental appeal to past glories. We must and will be interconnected with Europe – the choice is only do we have any control over how that works or not. Leaving the EU actually means less control, and in any meaningful sense that must mean less “sovereignty.”
So surely the better approach, even for a farmer, is to stay in the EU and redouble the efforts to reform it? The frustrations we all have with the EU are shared by other member states too – with some skilled leadership could we not do a better job than we have so far at galvanising reform? David Cameron’s “reform or we will leave” approach was idiotically naive and guaranteed to have everyone else digging their heels in. He did it because of promises made to address divisions within his party, which is hardly a good basis for sorting out complex international relationships and polices!
I’m not suggesting EU reform is easy or a quick fix, but this is a VERY long term decision – far more so than any election. There is a clear majority of younger people who favour remaining in the EU – better that we vote for the interconnected future they want, than vote to escape from the frustrations of our past experiences.
Thank you Sandy Rodger for your measured comments. It is a once in a life time vote and I am not prepared to vote out on a decision which will have a profound effect on how my grandchildren live in the rest of this century.
I am also not prepared to collude in the break up of a relationship of countries which have fought each other in the past. That is too close a memory and I have been grateful for the peace we have experienced since the end of the last war and I put that peace down to the integration of our commercial interests and the disincentive created thereby to create war again
EU is a pure dictatorship. You will never get another say in your life if you vote to stay in. Out is the only option for the future of your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The men & women in two world wars did not fight for us to just give our country away.