European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall give way shortly, but I want to take a few moments to recall, if I may, a little of my personal history and to revert briefly to the early 1970s. I had come from Australia as a student, as many hon. Members know, and had only recently made my home in this country. I was an enthusiastic young member of the Labour party, and I went, as enthusiastic members do, to the Labour party conference. In search of enlightenment, I went to the fringe meeting of the Labour Common Market safeguards committee, no less—and fringe indeed it was. I had the opportunity to listen to two gentlemen who were then Members of this House—Bryan Gould and the late Peter Shore. As an expatriate Australian, I had some sympathy with Bryan Gould's position. He was particularly worried about New Zealand butter, and distressed that the United Kingdom, by joining the Common Market, as it then was, would turn its back on the Commonwealth, with its system of Commonwealth trading preferences, and abandon the farmers of Australia and New Zealand. The more I listened to him and to Peter Shore, the more horrified I became by the chauvinism, protectionism and sheer little Englandism of it all, and I decided there and then that I would have no truck with that.