Former Scottish secretary and Tory Peer Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I voted to remain in the European Economic Community in 1975.
I thought I was signing-up to a common market or customs union.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would end up with the job-destroying, misery-creating, bureaucratic, wasteful, corrupt and undemocratic shambles that is today’s European Union.
Amidst all the claim and counter-claim that has characterised this dreadful referendum campaign, ask yourself one question.
If you were being asked to join the EU today would you vote to do so?
For me it’s like asking me if I would like to put my foot in a bear trap.
Unsurprisingly, those arguing for remaining in the EU have been unable to make a positive case for doing so.
Instead, they tell me I put my foot in it in 1975 and it will be so painful to extract it that I should stop struggling and accept my fate.
Apparently, my country is too small and weak to survive if released from the diktat of unelected European commissioners.
I should understand that the nation state is dead and that my children’s precious birth right of parliamentary democracy is obsolescent.
This is dangerous nonsense.
I believe in the United Kingdom and, if freed to govern ourselves from a failing European Union, that we’ve got what it takes to succeed.
In England they fought a civil war and cut off the head of a king for the principle that our laws and taxes could not be imposed without the consent of parliament.
In 1707 in Scotland we approved the Treaty of Union with solemn undertakings that Scotland’s legal system would be preserved. Look at us now.
According to the House of Commons library, more than half our laws and regulations are made in Brussels.
The prime minister says we need to be in Europe to influence decisions but he has voted against measures in the Council of Ministers he judged damaging to Britain’s interests on 40 occasions – and been defeated on 40 occasions.
Neither the Scottish Parliament nor the Westminster Parliament matter a jot if they defy Brussels. European law will always prevail.
One of the first acts of the Scottish Nationalist government in the last parliament was to pass a law introducing minimum pricing for alcohol.
I don’t agree with it but I defend the right of a democratically elected government, able to command a majority in the Scottish Parliament, to implement it.
Big business interests didn’t like it either so they went to the European Court which found it contrary to European law and therefore null and void.
Another example of the impotence of our elected representatives is the SNP’s promise to include in procurement legislation a requirement for all firms in receipt of government contracts to pay a living wage.
Again, the Scottish Government was forced to abandon the policy as it was in conflict with European law.
So much for SNP slogans about the European Union guaranteeing workers’ rights.
The Scottish Government must be the first nationalist organisation in history which wishes to surrender self-determination to an unaccountable supranational foreign bureaucracy.
Independence in Europe is an oxymoron, a cruel lie. Jim Sillars invented this slogan in the 1970s and true to his socialist and nationalist principles has now disavowed it and is campaigning to leave the EU.
As a boy I was brought up in Arbroath when the harbour was full of fishing boats and a hive of activity.
Today, they are ghosts from my past, destroyed by that vote some 40 years ago, when we surrendered control of our affairs.
A vote to Leave would give us back control of our fishing grounds and so much more.
It was from Arbroath in 1320 that the leading figures of the day sent a message to Rome: “We fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honours but for freedom alone which no honest man surrenders but with his life.”
For me this is what the vote in tomorrow’s referendum is all about.