My first direct political memory, unmediated by television, is of the 1975 European referendum campaign. As a bleary, tousled teenager I was dragged along one evening by my father to an anti-Brussels rally in a nearby village hall. There, we sat on canvas seats and listened to a politician passionately warning us that a “yes” vote would mean food prices rocketing and food scarcity – a return to malnutrition, to famine in the fat farming valleys of East Scotland. I’d better not say which party he came from, but it remains a powerful player in Scotland today. As we left, feeling a little shaken, I asked my dad whether he’d brought me along because he agreed with the speaker. Certainly not, he replied. It was tripe. He had brought me because he wanted me to think hard before ever believing anything that a politician said.
And here’s a book about the campaign that ought to get people hot under the collar, above all today. Had the leaders of the wretched 2016 pro-EU referendum effort read this gripping account of the 1975 one, and learned the obvious lessons, they might have won their contest. They can be excused, but only because this book hadn’t been published in time.
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