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The first Europe referendum proved that the people don’t always know better than politicians
50 years ago today, the British public voted decisively to stay in the European Economic Community. The winning side in a referendum always think they have settled the question, but the 1975 vote proves how wrong they are, says Eliot Wilson
Fifty years ago today, on Thursday 5 June 1975, British voters did something unheard of in the country’s history. They voted in a nationwide referendum. It was held by Harold Wilson’s Labour government to determine, prophetically, whether the United Kingdom should stay in or leave the European Economic Community.
Britain had been a late and awkward arrival at the European party. A decision not to join the European Coal and Steel Community had been taken in May 1950 at a poorly attended cabinet meeting of only eight of 18 members; the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and the foreign secretary, Ernie Bevin, were both absent. But the attitude had been summed up in a perhaps-apocryphal remark by the Foreign Office’s Europe expert, Roger Makins. He had told visiting European........
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