I must challenge M Lawrence Holmes' assertion that anybody was "conned" over Europe (BEN, January 7). I spoke on Anti-Market platforms during the 1975 Referendum campaign against continued membership of the EEC, and one of the strongest arguments in my portfolio was that I didn't like the sort of Europe into which we were being ever more inexorably drawn. But to be fair I have to admit that my pro-European opponents argued in favour of the need to "share" or "pool" sovereignty with our European neighbours. They never claimed we could stay totally independent. Only someone who entirely failed to understand the nature of the international economic system would claim, as does your correspondent, that if we reject the euro, we will be able to maintain either independence or the right to rule ourselves, at least in economic matters. We haven't got it now, and indeed haven't had it for at least the last 40 years. International bankers, speculators, and global finance call the shots.True, a committee of the Bank of England fixes interest rates (and I didn't notice that they were particularly accountable) but they don't just fix them as they choose. And if the international financial community doesn't like their decision, they take it out on the value of the pound.

It was always true from the beginnings of postwar European integration that economic integration would carry with it a political dimension, for the simple reason that you can't let a bunch of economists, accountants and administrators loose on a real economy without providing a political institution to act as watchdog and overseer. And as to our representatives at Brussels being "unelected" I seem to remember voting for a Mr Titley (or some such) a while back. Or was that a hallucination as well?

Cllr Peter Johnston

Kendal Road, Bolton

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