A Stitch Up

Calling England picks up on further evidence that the 'Great Debate', as Ted Heath called entry to the EEC between 1970 -1975, was fixed and particularly "engineered to produce a yes vote [in 1975], funded by the CIA" And surprise surprise the BBC helped in the deception "by removing anti-EEC broadcasters and providing extra air-time for the pros together with slanted pro-EEC programming."

From a pamphlet titled Britain Overseas Spring 2000, the relevant extract below begins page 12 (Calling England's original link seems broken but here it is via Wayback Machine):

Tucker: I went to the European Movement, and talked to them, and they helped to put the funding together for breakfasts which we held at the Connaught Hotel. Ernest Wistrich (Director of the European Movement) was there, actually to be briefed in many ways. Norman Reddaway (an official at the Foreign Office) was
the person given to us by the Government, as our liaison man and he came to the breakfasts.

Cook: The Information Research Department (of which Norman Reddaway was a member) at the Foreign Office seems to have had links with the intelligence community. Certainly, earlier in his career Norman Reddaway’s Information Research Department played a part in destabilising the Sukarno regime in Indonesia in the 1960s.

Tucker: During that time … we got an extra five minutes on the ITN News in the evening added for us to give information.

Cook: That five minutes came out of a direct negotiation with (ITN News Editor) Nigel Ryan at one of those breakfast meetings?

Tucker: Yes – I mean it was a wonderful, wonderful news opportunity.

Cook : And Radio?

Tucker: Jack de Manio was a (Radio 4 Today programme) presenter who was terribly anti-European, and we protested privately about this and he was moved.

Cook : By Ian Trethawan, Director of BBC radio and a known friend of Edward Heath.

Tucker: We issued a newspaper, called the ‘British European’, edited by that famous cartoonist, Phillip Zick, and we distributed massive numbers of them freely. We used to have, for instance, in the Summer, on the beaches, young women giving them away and they used to wear T-shirts with the message ‘Europe or Bust’.

Cook: T-shirts, a newspaper, bumper stickers, posters, a pop song, not to mention breakfasts at the Connaught Hotel. Making friends and influencing people on this scale never comes cheap. So who was picking up the tab?

Spicer: Within business and industry there was a great deal of support and of course money … the figure of £5 million has been bandied about … which flooded in to the European Movement and to the Conservative Group for Europe.

Cook: And who paid for the breakfasts at the Connaught Hotel?’

Spicer: I think this was … you have to talk to Geoffrey Tucker.

Cook.: Who paid for the breakfasts?

Tucker: Well, I’ve never had much knowledge of the funding. The European Movement certainly paid for some of them. I don’t know …

Cook: It is sometimes alleged that the funds that came to the European Movement had come in rather curious ways from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States. Is that something you’ve heard?

Tucker: Yeah … and I was absolutely astonished by it. I was rather tickled about it. Frankly, I didn’t care where the money came from. I didn’t know about it. It could come from anywhere as long as it was there to do the job.

Cook: That allegation that the CIA was involved in promoting a united Europe. It was the simplest of questions which led to the most surprising discovery about Edward Heath’s campaign to persuade the British people that to join the EEC was in their best national interests. Who paid for the European Movement? Who financed the publicity campaign?

And:

Aldrich: I was absolutely astonished to discover that the library had the entire archive of a CIA front organisation which documents from start to finish funnelling millions of dollars into Britain – with all its accounts, with all its receipts and correspondence, for example from British Labour MPs to individuals in American intelligence organisations. So I was absolutely astonished when I opened these dusty brown cardboard boxes not considered to be terribly important … and discovered one of the most exciting intelligence archives of the post-war period.

Cook: That begs a question – why was Washington so interested in Western Europe?

Aldrich: The US had invested a great deal of money in European recovery with the idea that only a recovered Western Europe would be able to resist Soviet encroachment … and the US was keen to see a federalist Europe because it views Europe almost in its own image. The Americans continually talk about the United States of Europe.

Cook: So if the CIA were bankrolling European Union, how come no one noticed who was paying the piper?’

Aldrich: The whole accounting structure of the European Movement was designed to hide the fact that CIA money was coming in. And the way this was done was to have a core budget which covered the fairly mundane activities of running the European Movement’s office, paying for the cleaners etc. All this came out of money that was generated in Europe. The CIA money was hidden by putting most of the operational costs, for example, the European Youth Campaign, into special budgets which were not subject to the normal accounting procedures. It was possible to hide CIA money and to make sure that most people in the European Movement were unaware that this CIA money was coming in. Very few people at the top were actually aware of where this funding was coming from.

And nothing has changed since:

America has publicly voiced its concern about the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union, stating that London's "voice" within the EU is "critical to the United States".