Turning the clock back or the problem of referendums

The issue of Britain’s membership of the European Union has bedevilled British politics since the 1960s.   There was the initial failures to gain entry into the Common Market during the 1960s largely because Charles de Gaulle said ‘non’.  Then there was the final agreement to enter under Heath’s government in 1973 and a referendum confirming this decision by a significant majority in 1975.  Why people voted in favour of the EU in 1975 was a combination of things: for some who had been fought or been brought up in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was about establishing European security; for others in was about the potential for British economic development within a free trade area, a truly ‘common market’; what it was not for the overwhelming majority of people was support for a federal vision of Europe and therein lies the problem.  As the EU expanded, the argument for greater federalism became stronger, reinforced by the introduction of the euro while Britain stubbornly held on to its notion of the EU as a free market for Britain’s goods.  The result has been an increasing mismatch between what Britain wants from the EU and what the overwhelming majority of countries now in the EU want.  While Britain’s economy was growing, despite calls from some for withdrawal, had there been a referendum on continued membership it is likely that it would have been won.  The benefits of membership outweighed its disadvantages but the banking crisis after 2008 changed that.  Britain had become increasingly sceptical about the EU and the unwillingness of the Labour government to do what it promised in terms of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, a fundamental constitutional change in all but name and the chaos within the euro-zone reinforced this. 

Not only do we now have a mismatch between the political classes in Britain and the developing European project but we also have a growing mismatch between the views of the general public and the political classes who appear unwilling to do what the public has long called for, a referendum on the issue.  This is hardly surprising since the three main political parties in Britain are all committed, in one way or another, to continued membership of the EU with only UKIP taking the alternative view.  The mainstream politicians do not like referendums unless they know they will get the answer they want and this explains why, despite fulsome promises in the past, no government since 1975 has been willing to carry their promises into practice.  In fact, many argue that referendums do not sit well with representative government: we elect politicians every five years on the basis of their manifestos and if we do not like what they do we have the opportunity to vote them out at the next election.  But Europe has become such a corrosive issue within all political parties, despite the focus on divisions within the Conservative party, that a referendum on Europe now seems almost inevitable in the next five years.

The difficulty is what will the referendum be about.  Broadly, the political classes and the public generally fall into one of three positions on Europe: those who want to leave; those who want to re-negotiate membership but want to remain in the EU; and those who take a more federalist stance.  Those who want to leave call for an in-out referendum to settle the issue; those who want to re-negotiate are willing to accept a referendum on the terms agreed; while those with a federalist position want no referendum at all.  As David Cameron prepares or revises his speech on the EU, the harbingers of doom have emerged from the woodwork with the American government, British business leaders, politicians ‘close’ to the German Chancellor and today Michael Heseltine all warning about the consequences of leaving or re-negotiating Britain’s place in Europe.  But, as committed Europeans, they would say that wouldn’t they just as those in favour of leaving say that this would provides opportunities for Britain to exploit and would not result in an implosion of Britain’s economy.

The critical question is whether re-negotiating Britain’s position in the EU will actually work.  Looking at the issue from continental Europe, why should other members of the EU allow Britain to re-negotiate its role at all?  European politicians are becoming increasingly and justifiably irritated by Britain’s position and could easily turn round and say you’re either in or out…a view with which I entirely sympathise.  Alright, you don’t have to go down the federalist route if that’s what you want to do but, if you want access to the ‘common market’ then you have to accept that this comes with existing obligations.  If not, we can do perfectly well without you.  So have your in-out referendum and make up your mind. 

The problem is that it isn’t as simple as that despite all the rhetoric from UKIP and other politicians.   You can’t turn the clock back to 1973 and unpick all those directives, regulations and statutes that have come from Brussels or that have been produced by the British Parliament and if you cannot do this, then concrete links with Europe will remain but without any of the benefits we do gain from membership.  Those who seek exit see the issue as one of constitutional sovereignty while those in favour tend to look at the matter from an economic perspective and, of course, both are right.  If we do have a referendum and, despite different pronouncements on the issue I am yet to be convinced that we will, whatever the question I have grave doubts that it will resolve the issue: if we voted to leave, then those in favour of remaining will still be calling for this and vice-versa.  My own view for what it’s worth is this: we made a decision in 1975 and, despite the way in which the EU has evolved since them, I still think this was the right decision. 

Richard Oastler and factory reform

John A. Hargreaves and E. A. Hilary Haigh, (eds.)

Slavery in Yorkshire: Richard Oastler and the campaign against child labour in the Industrial Revolution

(University of Huddersfield), 2012

238pp., rrp £24 paper , ISBN 978-1-86218-107-6. The book is also available at £20 from www.store.hud.ac.uk.

In Kirkheaton churchyard near Huddersfield there is a fifteen-foot stone obelisk topped by a flame that commemorates ‘The dreadful fate of 17 children who fell unhappy victims to a raging fire at Mr Atkinson’s factory at Colne Bridge, February 14^th 1818.’ All the dead were girls; the youngest nine, the oldest eighteen. The fire started when at about 5 am a boy aged ten was sent downstairs to the ground floor card room to collect some cotton rovings. Instead of taking a lamp, he took a candle that ignited the cotton waste and fire spread quickly through the factory turning it into a raging inferno. The children were trapped on the top floor when the staircase collapsed. The entire factory was destroyed in less than thirty minutes and the boy who had inadvertently started the fire was the last person to leave the building alive. It is not surprising that child labour and the need to regulate it became a national issue in the early 1830s. There had been factory acts in 1802 and 1819 and further agitation between 1825 and 1831 but the legislation was too limited in scope and its enforcement proved difficult. There were, for instance, only two convictions while the 1819 Act operated. It was at this stage that Richard Oastler, a Tory land steward from Huddersfield, burst upon the scene when his celebrated letter on ‘Yorkshire Slavery’ was published in the Leeds Mercury on 16 October 1830.

It is over sixty years since Cecil Driver published his study of Richard Oastler and fifty years since Ward’s study of the factory movement in the twenty years after 1830 appeared. This excellent volume, a fitting conclusion to the University of Huddersfield Archives’ Heritage Lottery-funded Your Heritage project, re-examines Oastler’s impact and draws parallels between the campaign to abolish transatlantic slavery and the campaign to restrict the use of child labour in Britain. Written by some of Yorkshire’s leading historians, the collection of essays provides a rounded assessment of the contribution of Richard Oastler to both the emancipation of children from the horrors of factory labour and the broader emancipation of society from the evils of slavery whether in Britain or in its Empire. The book is introduced by University of Huddersfield historian and Pro-Vice Chancellor Professor Tim Thornton and the foreword is from the Methodist minister Revd Dr Inderjit Bhogal OBE, who chaired the initiative Set All Free that marked the bi-centenary of the act to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. The volume begins with an elegantly written introduction by John A. Hargreaves who positions Oastler and the subsequent chapters within the context of the four decades from the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the passage of the Ten Hours Act for factory workers in 1847. This is followed by James Walvin, the doyen of the abolition movement, on William Wilberforce, Yorkshire and the campaign to end transatlantic slavery from its inception in 1787 to the end of the apprenticeship system in 1838. It is a succinct, synoptic analysis not only on what happened and why but also an acute critique of the prevailing historiography especially in its discussion of the impact of the abolition movement on reforming movements from factory reform to Chartism. It was Oastler who maintained that the cause of anti-slavery and Chartism were ‘one and the same’.

The remaining chapters focus on Oastler and provide important reappraisals of different aspects of his life. D. Colin Dews examines Oastler’s Methodist background between 1789 and 1820 demonstrating that his association with evangelicalism stimulated and sustained his commitment to the ten-hour movement while John Halstead explores the Huddersfield Short Time Committee and its radical associations between c1820 and 1876, a particularly valuable discussion of generational differences with Huddersfield radicalism. Edward Royle considers the Yorkshire Slavery campaign between 1830 and 1832 through a close consideration of coverage in the regional press. Janette Martin examines Oastler’s triumphant return to Huddersfield in 1844 after he had served more than three years in jail for debt relating this to Oastler’s skills as an orator and the importance of processions to nineteenth century radicalism; for instance, John Frost’s equally triumphant return to Newport in 1856 after over a decade as a transported felon. The volume ends with a chapter reassessing Oastler and his impact on the factory movement and on radical politics more generally.

Oastler and other reformers may have been successful in their campaign for the ending of child labour but coerced labour remains an important problem in a global economy where labour costs need to be kept low to meet consumer demands for affordable products. The ‘Yorkshire Slavery’ that Oastler so eloquently exposed can still be seen not just in the developing world but, as recent cases of ‘slavery’ brought before the courts demonstrate, in Britain as well. This excellent volume, beautifully illustrated and presented by the University of Huddersfield Press shows not simply the contribution Oastler made to achieving a sense of childhood largely devoid of economic exploitation but that the campaign he initiated in late 1830 remains a campaign that has yet to be concluded. After nearly two centuries as a global community we have yet to eradicate economic inhumanity and exploitation for profit.