Thursday 31 March 2016

Port Talbot shows up the EU phile lies

Better, safer, stronger in the EU is the Cameron big business mantra. I doubt the soon to be redundant workers at Port Talbot will see it that way. Taha/Corus want to shut down Port Talbot. They don't want to sell it to a possible competitor. Their preferred solution is to shut down Port Talbot and transfer the work to their Dutch plant which has lots of spare capacity. This makes perfect business sense and its what will happen. Cameron, Corbyn, Welsh politicians and trade unionists will huff and puff and put rescue plans on and off the table ad infinitum but Port Talbot will close.

What annoys me that as a junior civil servant in 1972/73 I pointed this was the long term future of UK manufacturing in the EEC and was told by the now Sir Humphreys to shut up or be exiled to the DVLC at Swansea, a fate worse than death for any ambitious civil servant.

The Spanish, Italians, Germans, French and Dutch will continue to play the EU subsidy game and keep their steel industry extant using in part UK money appropriated by the EU. But as McCoy said frequently on the SS Enterprise to Captain Cameron Juncker, "You canae beat the laws of Physics / Economics." They will run out of money eventually and squabble in the true European tradition that generated two World Wars. Remember the EEC grew out of European Coal and Steel Community of the early Fifties. Self sufficiency in steel for armaments is close to the mid Europeans heart and a source of national pride or as Bismark put it, " Guns or Butter" with the French its guns or cheese.

I feel very sorry for the Welsh workers who have been unscrupulously exploited by generations of Kinnocks purporting to stand up for them whilst keeping their own snouts deep in the EU trough. It happened in Scotland both in steel and shipbuilding, it happened in Scunthorpe and it happened on Deeside but the South Wales populace has voted for dodgy selfserving Labour politicians for many years and now they are having to pay for their tribalism. All tribal voters should take it as a salutary warning and learn to think for themselves. Out sourcing your thinking to dodgy politicians leads only to your enslavement.

6 comments:

Edward Spalton said...

I think this is spot on and was known to the higher civil service and HMG well before your time. I have a memoir from a junior diplomat who was involved with the necessary alterations to the Geman Occupation Statutes in 1950 to permit the formation of the Coal and Steel Community. He maintains that MI6 and HMG were well aware that the French and German governments had secret arrangements to cross-subsidise each other's heavy industry when in competition with Britain in order to "pastoralise" the British economy. My informant was so disgusted with his duty as conference secretary that he resigned his promising career, rejoined his regiment and went to fight in Korea, becoming as he more recently remarked " the first fruitcake".

Eric Edmond said...

Thx Mr Spalton. Its good to know that others trod the path before me. I only started in 1972!
I had to got to Brussels 75/85 and I was astonished at the visceral hatred of the Anglo Saxons by French and German Eurocrats. Quite simply the only thing they agree on is to hate the Brits. If we depart they will rapidly fall out and we will have done Europe a great service.

The FCO did not seem to accept that their running the world pre 1914 was founded on the might of the British Navy which was unchallenged from 1805 to 1916. The British Navy in turn was created by UK heavy industry which HMT failed to nurture.

People get the governments and civil service they deserve. We took our eye off the ball big time and handed it to the Franco Prussians.

Stephen Harness said...

So who condemned our fishing industry as a price worth paying to join the EEC and what pastime or employment did the EEC decide the UK could have?

Edward Spalton said...

Stephen,

The Campaign for an Independent Britain has just published a very powerful account, entitled
"The Betrayal of Britain's Fishing" (28 pages) by John Ashworth of Restore Britain's Fish, an industry insider. It pulls no punches and lays bare the deceitfulness and incompetence of British Ministers. A very good bargain indeed at £2.50 (cheques payable to CIB or use Paypal on website (below) . Order from

Mrs Angie Reynolds
Brentwood House
Cornsland
Brentwood
Essex
CM14 4JL

Tel 01277 219140
jareynolds105@gmail.com

If you can spare a fiver, we will also send you FLEXCIT/THE MARKET OPTION (48 pages normally £5 on its own) - so far the only thought-out plan for swift extraction from the EU, maintaining market access.

This is the distilled version of the 420 page plan available electronically on our website
www.eurosceptic.org.uk

Eric Edmond said...

Mr Harness it was Heath who described giving up control of our Fisheries to the EEC as a price worth paying especially as fisherman had no votes in Bexleyheath or any other Tory seat.

Stephen Harness said...

Thank you for this. Coming from a fishing family and once proud fishing town, I already know the answers and I have read plenty on the subject. But many thanks for the responses from Eric and Angie.
My thoughts are that Napoleon was right and we are a nation of shopkeepers. That being fact our government become shop owners with little ambition to market British goods.