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David Keighley

Bias by Omission? BBC under-reports latest EU assault on Internet freedom

Bias by Omission? BBC under-reports latest EU assault on Internet freedom

BBC bias comes in many forms. One of the most insidious is bias by omission, when the Corporation chooses not to report key developments or perspectives in areas of major controversy.

It is a major issue in the referendum campaign. For example, the Corporation barely touched the story about a poster – ostensibly designed to encourage ethnic minorities to vote – which crassly depicted those who oppose immigration as a bullying skinhead thug.

The reason? Covering the story would have unavoidably opened a can of worms in the ‘remain’ strategy.

Front-line presenters John Humphrys and Nick Robinson have both admitted that such bias has been particularly evident in BBC coverage of the immigration debate. The views of opponents of the unprecedented levels of mass immigration into the UK since 2004 have routinely been ignored by the BBC or, just as bad, dismissed as racism or xenophobia.

It has also applied for decades in the BBC’s general reporting of the EU. Until forced to change by the EU referendum rules, the BBC vastly under-reported the withdrawal perspective, and anything to do with the case against the EU, as Brexit The Movie so vividly confirms. Emphatically, you did not hear those arguments first on the BBC.

Although the BBC is now reluctantly giving the opponents of the EU some airtime, it is mostly through gritted teeth. The default-position is still almost invariably Brussels good, Westminster bad.

Evidence of this? As Andrew Marr illustrated vividly at the weekend ‘remain’ figures such as Sir John Major – who was given a platform to attack viciously his perceived opponents – often get much better treatment than ‘leave’ supporters.

Such negativity to the ‘leave’ case is abundant elsewhere. For example, Today presenters Justin Webb and Mishal Husain filed three-part special reports (from Cornwall and Northern Ireland respectively) about what were said to be the local ‘facts’ in the referendum debate. Both, it turned out, injected a central theme: the cardinal importance of ‘EU money’ to the deprived economies in each area.

Neither bothered to tell the audience in their relentless focus on EU benevolence the simple but vital fact that, in reality, ‘EU money’ is actually from the British taxpayer.

Compounding the glaring omission, Justin Webb seemed conveniently not to know that a recent official report commissioned on behalf of local ratepayers in Cornwall had found that the spending of £500m of this ‘EU money’ had been so questionable and inefficient that, for example, it led to the creation of only 3,300 local jobs at a staggering cost of £150,000 per job.

Such blatant bias by omission by the BBC in the EU’s favour extends heavily into other areas.

Take for example, the reporting of one of Brussels’ latest highly controversial initiatives: to combine with Microsoft and other web giants in rooting out what the European Commission calls ‘hate speech and xenophobia’.

The BBC web story about this enthusiastically declared:

‘Microsoft, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have pledged to remove hate speech within 24 hours, in support of a code of conduct drafted by the EU. The freshly drafted code aims to limit the viral spread of online abuse on social media. It requires the firms to act quickly when told about hate speech and to do more to help combat illegal and xenophobic content. The firms must also help “educate” users about acceptable behaviour.’

What’s not to like? But hang on.  Did no-one in the 8,000-strong BBC newsroom think to check out the potential threats to civil liberty and journalistic freedom involved in such a move? Seemingly not. There’s not a peep about such issues in the web story.

The reality – as the Spiked! Website eloquently explains – is that phrases as vague as ‘hate speech and xenophobia’ and ‘acceptable behaviour’ are a legal nightmare and a lawyer’s paradise. They can be interpreted with deeply sinister intent, and, for example, can be used by the EU to attack and attempt to silence those who disagree with its free movement of people and immigration policies. Indeed, that may be the central agenda here.

The background of this new move also speaks volumes about how undemocratic and insidious the EU is.  The loosely-phrased laws against hate speech and xenophobia were first enacted by the European Commission in 2008. Has anyone ever been seriously consulted about them? No.

Yet since then, a vast continent-wide operation has gradually been set up to root these twin perceived evils out, including a European Commission against ‘racism and intolerance’.

The latest initiative with a Microsoft, therefore, is arguably a very substantial intensification of the Commission’s assault on those who disagree with its policies towards free movement, as the reams of explanation in the press release about the development clearly show.

And the BBC accepts this without a murmur. Why? Because, it still instinctively supports the EU, and will publish derogatory views about Brussels only if forced.

In this referendum, the BBC should be grasping every opportunity to explore EU-related issues, and especially the controversy surrounding them. Andrew Marr will call Boris Johnson ‘abominable’ for daring to raise Hitler in connection with EU operations, but he and his colleagues ignore EU actions that are patently and blatantly a threat to our fundamental, hard-won freedoms.

John Wilkes? He will be surely turning in his grave.

 

 

Referendum Blog: June 6

Referendum Blog: June 6

‘ABOMINABLE BIAS’: Andrew Marr interviewed John Major and Boris Johnson on his show yesterday (5 June). The BBC has characterised in other commentary the battle now as a ‘blue on blue’ fight, and with only two Sunday shows to go before the referendum, these were ‘big beast’ interviews where there would be expected to be scrupulously balance. There emphatically was not.

One set of indicators were that Sir John Major was interrupted 1.4 times per minute, compared to Boris Johnson 3.4 times. Overall John Major was interrupted 22 times, and Boris Johnson was interrupted 60 times. The Major interview was slightly shorter, at 15 min 55 seconds compared to 17 min 34 seconds, but the difference in words – approx. 3,000 in the Major sequence, 3,600 with Boris –  was the result of different rates of delivery, for example John Major speaking more slowly and more emphatically. The Major interview was also not as confrontational, which also meant the word count was lower.

Of course words alone and rates of interruption are not measures of bias. But in this case they were important pointers because – as will be shown in the analysis below – Marr’s approach to Major was mainly to ask him his views and then to let him speak, with only a few challenging or adversarial questions. With Johnson, the approach was mainly confrontational, including allegations that the campaign in which he (Johnson) was a lead figure, was telling on occasions a ‘flat lie’ to voters.

Marr’s approach to Major – as already noted – was mainly to let him outline his case that Vote Leave was advancing ‘squalid’ arguments in their cause.  His first questions, in effect, gave Major a platform to confirm his views that Leave was guilty of deceit. The only points put to him that were slightly adversarial were that Leave was reflecting genuine concerns about immigration, that concern about Turkey joining the EU was genuine, too, because the effects of the referendum vote would apply for 30 or 50 years in the future, and that the direction of travel of the EU was towards a super-state.  Nothing was taxing, Marr gave Major plenty of space to put his answers (the longest response was 372 words), and he had a platform to attack attacked the Leave side with finger-pointing, anger-filled vitriol.  Marr did little to get in the way of this onslaught.

The approach of Marr to Johnson, as has already been partly established by the much higher rate of interruptions, was very different: much more adversarial and challenging.  The longest answer or explanation given by Johnson was around 220 words, and most responses were shorter than 100 words. He had less time for detailed explanation.

Further, Marr used several of the points put by Major as means of attack. He had been provided with ammo which Marr used without compunction. His questioning was focused onthe credibility of the Leave campaign in line with what Sir John Major had alleged. He put it to him that Leave’s claim that EU membership cost £350m a week was ‘squalid’ (adding that the money that came back helped farmers and universities); suggested that the economic performance of the single market was getting better, and even though VL wanted to leave it Johnson had accepted it could cause business uncertainty; that Johnson was saying that David Cameron was untrustworthy, thus personalising the campaign that the VL claim that Turkey would join the EU imminently was wrong; that Johnson had been wrong to mention Hitler in connection with the EU because the EU had been created to ensure European peace; that he had changed his mind about wanting Turkey to join the EU; that his campaign’s  claims about Turkey  were a flat lie and ‘hogwash’; that in the Turkey and the £350m claims, he and the leave side were engaging in ‘untruth politics’, that because of what was happening the Conservative party was falling apart;  and that Major had said that he was pursuing ‘out’ only for personal ambition, he was  following ‘the best route to Downing Street’.

In addition to this, in the interview of Johnson was a central hugely controversial point made by Andrew Marr that undermined both his credibility and suggested that in his views of the EU, he is not impartial. He put it categorically to Johnson that the he had been wrong to raise Hitler in connection with the EU because it had created to ensure peace, whereas Hitler had been bent on pitching nation states against each other. He stated:

‘In terms of the big picture, isn’t it pretty abominable to compare what the EU as it is today with Hitler and don’t you regret that? Hitler believed in strong nation states fighting each other which has been a long European tradition going right back to Gustavus Adophus and all the rest of it. It’s what the Europeans did and we were drawn in again and again and again. And the EU was set up to stop that happening and we have both lived through a period of peace which the EU has to be given some credit for’.

The reality is that the EU was not set up to establish peace.  Peace after the Second World War and into the Cold War was created in ‘Europe’ long before the EU was established by NATO. The EU itself did not exist in its present form until 1992, and before that, its successor body, the EEC had no major role in foreign policy, it was primarily a customs union.  The EU’s alleged role as the creator of peace on the European continent is therefore a myth perpetuated primarily by the EU itself and parroted by Europhiles as a reason for not limiting its powers. The real ideological reason that the EU was set up was that Jean Monnet, the prime mover in steps towards what became the EU from the 1920s onwards, wanted to hobble the sovereignty of Europe by creating a technocratic ruling body that would take their place. His vision of a EU driving force loyal to only the EU itself is now embodied in the European Commission.

For many reasons, therefore, this was seriously unbalanced journalism. Marr gave Johnson a far tougher time, and isolated out that the Leave side was conducting a campaign that included a central ‘flat lie’, ‘abominable’ references to Hitler, and general political untruths.  No similar claims were put to Sir John Major about controversy (for example) linked to ‘remain’ predictions about the dire economic and social consequences that would follow exit.  Marr himself showed his own political bias in the erroneous claims about the origin of the EU, and also ignorance. He compounded that by making this the basis for his claim that Johnson’s conduct had been ‘abominable’.

BBC Transcript of Interview with Sir John Major

BBC Transcript of Interview with Boris Johnson

 

 

Referendum Blog: June 5

Referendum Blog: June 5

FEEDBACK BIAS: Radio 4’s Feedback, presented by Roger Bolton, ostensibly examined on Friday listeners’ concerns that BBC coverage was favouring the remain side in the EU referendum debate. Michael Yardley from Colchester said:

….I’m concerned about the way the referendum’s being reported by the BBC. It’s my impression that Remain gets better placement in BBC headlines. I also think there’s been a failure to emphasise that many fear-inducing statistical projections made by the Remain lobby are just estimates, guesswork.

Now Roger Bolton – who was editor of Panorama when members of his staff controversially kow-towed to the IRA at Carrickmore – has got form in terms of bias in the presentation of Feedback. In the week when the EU referendum was confirmed back in February, he noted that there had already been listeners’ complaints and observed:

We begin with the much-anticipated announcement of a referendum on whether the UK should remain part of the European Union. And some listeners are already lining up to shoot the messenger.

Before he had even explained what the complaints were, or given any of the complainants a chance to be heard, he was thus dismissing the idea of BBC bias – complainants were simply shooting the messenger.

Four months on, with the referendum now fast approaching, has he and his programme improved at all?

The first point to note is that Yardley’s main point, that ‘remain guests ‘get better placement in BBC headlines’, was not dealt with at all. BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith – who was asked by Bolton to respond to the various points raised by listeners and viewers, did not refer to it, and neither did Bolton.

In the absence of such a response, relevant here is a tally Craig Byers has been keeping on his Is the BBC Biased? website. He noted on 30/5 that in editions of BBC1’s News at Six programme containing headlines about the EU referendum, 21 had led with points from the remain side, whereas only seven were the other way round.  That’s a ratio of 3:1.

The question that Smith did try to answer from Yardley was whether there was a ‘failure to emphasise that many fear-inducing statistical projections made by the Remain lobby are just estimates, guesswork.’ Bolton re-framed this and put it to Smith:

But I wonder if you’re also erm . . . finding it a little difficult to, er, how can I say? Take sides in the way perhaps BBC listeners would like you to take sides on matters of fact. Where one side makes a statement and another one, just, ‘Well that’s not true, it’s all rubbish’, whatever, but are you reluctant to go any further than simply say, ‘One side says this, the other side says the other.’

Smith’s response was extraordinary. He said first that the BBC so much leaned towards the need for impartiality, that they sometimes did not make judgment calls ‘that should be made’.  He cited the example of the Leave side claiming that Turkey would join the EU, and asserted that this was ‘factually wrong’ but said that there had been a lot of debate inside the BBC about this, and that this was diluted within the journalistic commentary to ‘Remain has said this is wrong’.

He stated:

in other words, we attributed the assessment to the Remain side, when we could, of our own, say ‘No, that is factually wrong.’ But, because as an organisation, more than any other organisation, there is a massive pressure and premium on fairness, on balance, on impartiality, I suspect we, we hold back from making those sort of calls, and I do think that, potentially, is a disservice to the listener and viewer.

Bolton then asked him about the BBC stating what the ‘facts’ were in the debate. Smith said there was so much controversy and complexity involved in what were ‘facts’ that it was ‘very difficult to present viewers and listeners with a whole string of unequivocal, clear as daylight facts about the EU.’

The implication being clearly that this was something that was not happening because of the difficulties involved.  Bolton did not press him further on the point and listener Yardley’s point was thus left dangling, there, only partly answered. What Smith did say was entirely in the BBC’s favour – in effect, they were so motivated by journalistic integrity they erred on the side of caution.

Is this true? Well, over recent days, BBC reporters have frequently noted that the economic part of the referendum debate is not the Leave side’s strongest suite, and when leave figures have tried to argue economic points, those same correspondents have stressed how many economists disagree.

In the same vein, the Vote Leave claim that EU membership costs the UK £350m a week has been subject to extremely close scrutiny on all BBC outlets, to the extent when on Today an 18-year-old ‘exit’ supporter mentioned the figure in passing, veteran BBC correspondent James Naughtie snapped at him in headmasterly tones and told him that he was definitely wrong (because the Commons’ Treasury Select Committee said so).

Various BBC programmes, such as Breakfast, have also wheeled out graphics to show how wrong the figure is.

Overall, Feedback was strongly biased against the complaint from Yardley, as it was against the Brexit side.  It was dismissed without considering the key points he made, and with undue focus on erroneous claims made by the Brexit side. Such cavalier dismissal of complaints is  endemic within the BBC.

Full Transcript:

BBC Radio 4, ‘Feedback, 3rd June 2016, Norman Smith and EU Referendum Coverage, 4.30pm

ANNOUNCER:    Now it’s time for Feedback with to Roger Bolton who talks to Norman Smith about listeners views of the BBC’s EU referendum reporting. He reveals which programmes listeners would like to hear much more of and asks is Radio 4 too posh?

ROGER BOLTON:             Hello. Three weeks to go to the biggest political decision for decades and the air is full of personal abuse, internecine strife and questionable statistics. Have you made your mind up yet and is the BBC’s European referendum reporting helping you decide where to place your cross? And who controls the agenda?

NORMAN SMITH:            We are there to report what the main combatants in this referendum say, do, argue and if they keep going on about the economy and immigration then I’m afraid the gravitational pull for us to do so, I think is pretty immense.

RB:        In feedback this week, the BBC’s assistant political editor Norman Smith admits that the BBC could be bolder in its coverage and that sometimes a desire to be impartial gets in the way. The immigration question has dominated the last few days of the euro debate and Pakistani immigrant families were at the heart of the latest instalment of the Radio 4 series Born in Bradford the presenter is Winifred Robinson.

Extract from ‘Born in Bradford’ and a comment on ‘From Our Home Correspondent’.

RB:        But first, to Westminster. I’m standing outside the Houses of Parliament where party politics are the order of the day and which is usually the centre of political coverage. Not for the next three weeks. The European referendum debate that split the parties, split the countries of the UK, and the vote that matters will not take place in parliament but all over the country on June 23rd. How well has the BBC has been covering this crucial debate which will decide our future for years, probably decades ahead? Here are some of your views.

MICHAEL YARDLEY:        It’s Michael Yardley and I live near Colchester in Essex. I’m concerned about the way the referendum’s being reported by the BBC. It’s my impression that Remain gets better placement in BBC headlines. I also think there’s been a failure to emphasise that many fear-inducing statistical projections made by the Remain lobby are just estimates, guesswork.

LEON DEVINE (phonetic) Hi, this is Leon Devine from Worksop in North Nottinghamshire. The whole debate seems to more about the leadership issue in the Tory party rather than the issues behind the referendum. I think the coverage from the BBC has been more geared to generating controversy rather than illuminating some of the issues.

RB:        One of the corporation’s key journalists covering the campaign is its assistant political editor Norman Smith and I’m going to the BBC newsroom in the Milbank building behind me, to put to him some of your concerns about the coverage. Norman Smith how long have you been covering this campaign, does it seem most of your life?

NORMAN SMITH:            It has been, I suppose, the longest running story in British politics because it is the fundamental story of who are we? Are we’re part of Europe or are we something slightly different? It’s about identity, it’s about those fundamental questions of democracy and sovereignty so it is one of the defining political stories which has shaped our whole political narrative, certainly since I’ve been working as a political journalist.

RB:        And yet, there has been criticism of the coverage of this campaign, some from our listeners, some from other figures, for example John Snow said that it erm . . .  was an abusive and boring EU referendum campaign, he cannot remember a worse tempered one. Do you agree with him?

NS:        I don’t actually, no.  I know what he’s driving at, and that the level of invective, acrimony, even personal abuse, has been pretty ferocious, but I think also we have tapped into some of the big issues and big arguments. I mean, most obviously immigration is right up there in the headlights and we have delved into the arguments about levels of immigration, are they sustainable, what can we do about it and I think it’s also reflected in arguments about the economy. So I don’t accept that it has just been a sort of ‘he said, she said’ row, I think actually there has been quite a lot of grit to this debate.

RB:        It has of course been a fight for the agenda, each side trying to choose the territory they feel is most favourable to them.  You’ve got a dilemma, haven’t you?  On the one hand, you’ve got to report the debates that . . . is happening, on the other hand, you have a wider responsibility to cover the issues that you may, and the BBC may believe are really important and should be taken into consideration?

NS:        Hmm.

RB:        How do you deal with that?

NS:        I think there are limits to how far you can book the news agenda and say, ‘enough immigration’, ‘enough economy’, we think we really ought to be talking about the impact on agriculture or universities.  We are there to report what the main combatants in this referendum say, do, argue.  I don’t think it’s up to us to, as it were, go AWOL and say, ‘Well, fine, but we’re actually going to talk about this, because we think that’s what voters are interested in.’ I think we are to some extent bound to reflect their arguments, and if they keep going on about the economy and immigration then I’m afraid the gravitational pull for us to do so, I think is pretty immense.

RB:        You see, again, criticism from some of our listeners, but also, I think, contained into academic reports suggest a degree of bias and concerns about who is appearing.  Leon Devine says, for example, who tweeted us to say, why Tory politicians dominating the airwaves, while others, especially from smaller parties are ignored.

NS:        I guess because the Tory story plays to a bigger narrative about who governs the country after the referendum. So there is, editorially, a pull because of all the question marks about Cameron . . . leadership.

RB:        But I wonder if you’re also erm . . . finding it a little difficult to, er, how can I say? Take sides in the way perhaps BBC listeners would like you to take sides on matters of fact. Where one side makes a statement and another one, just, ‘Well that’s not true, it’s all rubbish’, whatever, but are you reluctant to go any further than simply say, ‘One side says this, the other side says the other.’

NS:        Well, I, I think that is a valid criticism. There is an instinctive bias in the BBC towards impartiality, to the exclusion, sometimes maybe of making judgement calls that we can and should make.  We are very, very . . . cautious about saying something is factually wrong. As I think as an organisation we could be more muscular about it.  I’ll give you an example, which is one that cropped up, and there was a lot of debate within the BBC about it, was when the Brexit campaign suggested that Turkey was poised to join the EU, and that there was nothing we could do about it. Now that is factually wrong, but when we initially covered the story, I think we said along the lines of ‘Remain had said that is wrong’ – in other words, we attributed the assessment to the Remain side, when we could, of our own, say ‘No, that is factually wrong.’ But, because as an organisation, more than any other organisation, there is a massive pressure and premium on fairness, on balance, on impartiality, I suspect we, we hold back from making those sort of calls, and I do think that, potentially, is a disservice to the listener and viewer.

RB:        But perhaps there is a larger problem that you face – which is . . . we in the country in a very long campaign, a lot of us haven’t made up our minds, in a way want you to tell us how to vote, want you to give us facts.  And there are some facts, but in most instances, this is a matter of judgement, er, about the future, but about a value system about what we hold most dear . . .

NS:        Hmm.

RB:        . . . and you can’t tell us, the answer . . .

NS:        (speaking over) No, I mean . . .

RB:        . . . to those things, can you?

NS:        I’ve done things for erm . . . telly and radio, along the lines of ‘EU Fact or Fiction’ and they are complete nightmares to do, because every fact is a matter of argument, there are, there are no sort of biblical tablets of stone which empirically prove one thing or the other, they are used as ammunition in both camps. And it is very difficult to present viewers and listeners with a whole string of unequivocal, clear as daylight facts about the EU.  And I suspect that is the subject of huge frustration for listeners, as indeed it is, indeed, the journalists.

RB:        Tell me, the answer to this honestly – are you enjoying this debate?

NS:        It’s incredibly physically wearing, because it is honestly exactly like a general election, except it’s a general election which seems to have gone on even longer. But it is enjoyable, because it’s one of those moments in your journalistic life when you are on the cusp of history, because of the decisions we make are momentous, and they will affect not just me but my children and grandchildren, so you genuinely feel you are sort of there is history is being made, and that’s a huge privilege.

RB:        My thanks to Norman Smith, the BBC’s assistant political editor.  The referendum will continue to be a subject that listeners have strong views on, of course, in the meantime I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts on referendum coverage or anything you’ve heard on BBC radio lately, good or bad.

Photo by James Cridland

Referendum Blog: June 4

Referendum Blog: June 4

CORNWALL BIAS: Justin Webb is the latest Today reporter to go walkabout to get the perspective of the EU referendum ‘from different places’.  His destination was Redruth in Cornwall.

Previous News-watch postings on BBC’ presenters’ handling of the topic of ‘EU money’ have pointed out that they have missed from the equation the vital explanation that such cash is actually from UK taxpayers and only distributed by the EU.

Webb continued further down this route, and again exaggerated the pro-EU bias by over-emphasising at several points its role in the local economy.  More seriously, He seemed unaware until it was mentioned by an interviewee, of the Amion report into EU spending in the area commissioned by local authorities and published in 2015. This had severely criticised the way this money was spent and noted that only 3,300 jobs had been created by half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ cash.

In the first of three features, he spoke to Alan Buckley, vice-chair of the Cornwall Mining Association, and Donovan Gardner, who runs a local food bank. Buckley explained that as a result of its metal mines and engineering expertise Cornwall had been the NASA of the industrial revolution, but those days had long gone. Cornwall was now a place of service industry, low wages and zero-hours contracts. Gardner said the demand for his food back service was ‘unbelievable’ because of the austerity problems. He was doing 10,000 meals a month.

Webb then said to Buckley:

And what a lot of people say Alan, is the answer to that, in part at least, is European money which does flow into Cornwall, because of its, its status, if you can put it like that, as a poorer part of Europe, and yet you’re voting Leave?

Buckley said it was a secret ballot and he was not saying how he would vote. But he said of everyone he spoke to, farmers, ex-miners, engineers, he had hardly heard a voice in favour of staying. Justin Webb asked why ‘the money argument doesn’t swing it for you’. Buckley replied:

Well, the strange thing is, recently we were discussing this, among some friends, the money that’s supposed to come from Europe, and nobody, including, in fact, the letters to the local paper – where’s it gone? Nobody ever sees any benefit from it. If it does come here, who has it and where does it go, where is it spent? Because we don’t . . . we see no benefit from it.

Gardner confirmed that he was undecided in the vote. He confirmed that he was, then observed that no-one had well paid jobs any more and were going hungry for their kids. He said he agreed with Alan that it was unclear where the money had gone. There was the Heartlands place, but it did not employ many people.

Webb asked if he had applied for any European money, and then whether it would be available to him. Gardner said he was looking for money for his charity, but thought it was only available to ‘starter projects’. Webb, interrupted by a lorry passing, put it to him that ‘at the moment Europe isn’t a source for you’. Gardner answered:

No, because European money is, is a project money (sic) er, it’s not sustainable money. If, if I want to start a new project, I could probably get European money, but next year it will be there.

Webb noted that Redruth town centre was run-down. He observed:

What, what, you need money injected into the place, don’t you? And if it doesn’t come from Europe, are you confident that it could come from Westminster?

Buckley replied that what was needed was industry, and explained that a hope was that a Canadian company would re-open one of the local mines. He claimed the prospects were good.

The second feature also came from Redruth. Justin Webb set the scene:

we’ve moved around to the side of the town, and I’m at a place that is very much benefiting, or about to benefit from EU money. It was a brewery, in fact, the chimney stack, the redbrick chimney stack is still very much in place, but the rest of it has been flattened and it’s being turned into a new archive centre, Kresen Kernow Archive Centre for Cornwall. Cornwall, of course, is paved with gold provided by the EU, it glitters around me on the streets here of Redruth in the early morning sunlight, well, not quite, in fact, as anyone who’s been to Cornwall and seen more than the beaches will know, there’s no gold on the streets, and in fact, the sun is more often reflected in the empty windows of closed-down shops. There is, though, a huge amount of European development money being spent around here. €6 billion in the programme lasting from 2014 to 2020. And it is money, of course, that colours that debate on the Europe referendum, in a sometimes forgotten corner of England. Well, this to most of us is Cornwall, I’m on the Bodinnick Ferry, it takes just a few cars at a time from Bodinnick to Fowey, and it’s all really picture postcard stuff, there are little boats, the water’s listening, you can come here and you can think, ‘Well, lucky Cornwall, lucky Cornish’ – what you don’t get a sense of is the simple fact that Cornwall is England’s poorest county. It qualifies for and it receives the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has an impact far away from the cream teas and the country lanes and the picturesque ferries.

Webb observed that IT company Headforwards was based in the Pool Innovation Centre, a gleaming new office block that ‘would not be here if it was not for funding from Brussels’.  Craig Girvan from the company said it was a ‘great investment coming from Europe that had ’indirectly has enabled us to exist and grow’.  Webb said:

Yeah.  So there’s no question at all in your mind that the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected?

CG:        Absolutely.

JW:       Alright then, if the benefits of membership are so clear, then it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it, on June 23? Well, no, not really.  I’ve come to Trago Mills, which is an out-of-town shopping centre near Liskeard. When you ask people here specifically about the money coming into Cornwall, even then their views about the EU are pretty mixed.

The first of two vox pops said that a lot of EU money came and went to the airport, so she would be voting to stay. Webb asked if there was enough to be sure ‘there were benefits from being in the EU. One vox pop agreed.

Vox pop two wanted money put into Devon and Cornwall rather than handed over to the EU.

Webb went to Trago Mills where he said there was a ‘slightly kitsch feel’, cockerels running around and a huge Vote Leave poster, along with a statue of the emperor Nero. There was a caption which said:

‘Nero only fiddled, Eurocrats practice grand larceny.’ – a clue as to the view of Europe held by the boss, Bruce Robertson.

BRUCE ROBERTSON:      Even by the EU’s own measures, it hasn’t done anything, we’re still deprived.  My view would be that . . . our own MPs would be perfectly capable of making a strong case for precisely what Cornwall needs in our own Parliament at Westminster, rather than having a few MEPs who cover from the Scilly Isles to Southampton, who are invariably a minority, because of what we are, in a parliament of 751 people . . .

JW:        (speaking over) (fragment of word, or word unclear) But isn’t it simply that with the EU there are set rules about the level of deprivation there has to be for you to get money, and if it were done at Westminster, there wouldn’t be those set rules, it would be all about politics, and you’d be competing with . . . central Manchester, with Scotland, with all sorts of other areas that also want . . . help. And you wouldn’t get it.

Robertson said that ‘we’ were not getting back a munificent bounty, only a small element of what was paid in  Webb said that ‘you are getting it, that’s the point’ –  under Westminster that might not happen. Robertson said there was nothing to say that would not change.

Webb moved on to Polkerris beach and observed that ‘everyone agreed’ that Cornwall could not survive on tourism alone.  He said:

…does the money come best from Europe, or could it come, as those in the Leave camp suggest from Westminster? Dr Joanie Willet works for Exeter University, but in the Penryn campus here in Cornwall.

DR JOANIE WILLET:        There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we would get money from Westminster.  We haven’t in the past, historically we really have not. All of the regional inequality measures that the government is trying to do, they’re all focusing on the North-South divide, nobody is talking about the south-west, and even fewer people are talking about Cornwall in particular.

JW:        Is the money argument going to settle it in the end?  Well, what we got a sense of in a day or two of talking to people here is that actually other things matter too.  A kind of sense of sovereignty, a sense of identity, whether you see that identity as being European or whether you see it very much based here in Britain.  It’s that feeling, that gut feeling about who you are and where you belong, that frankly seems to be deciding people here, just as much as the money does.  (sound of waves).

In the third feature, Webb was at Redruth railway station. He said trains went to all parts of the UK but they were slow ‘and that is part of what what makes Cornwall feel so separate, a separateness that affectes the debate on the membership of the EU’. He spoke to Loveday Jenkin, a former leader of the party for Cornwall and Bob Smith, a UKIP candidate in Carnborne and Redruth at the general election.

He asked Jenkin if she was English. She said Cornwall was a duchy and she was ‘Cornish British and a European’. Webb asked how that affected her view of Europe. She replied:

I think most people in Cornwall would say that erm, if we weren’t in Europe, we wouldn’t trust Westminster to give us more money.

JW:        Yeah, and that was something that has been said repeatedly to us during the course of the programme, but for what reason? Is it because they don’t care about you, or is it that you don’t care about them, in Westminster?

LJ:          I think it’s partly that they don’t even realise that we exist, quite often. I mean, a lot of people don’t realise the Cornish language exists, that . . . they realise that the Cornish are an indigenous group of people within, within the British Isles.  But it’s, it’s that lack of consideration.  We’ve seen all the money coming into HS2, and we look at the railway coming into Cornwall, and we haven’t had anything like the same investment.

Webb put it to Smith that when Westminster was left to look after Cornwall in the past it did not do a good job. He replied that if you develop a political system where ‘everybody’s forced to go to Brussels’ that is what happened. He pointed out that the Labour government in the 70s created intermediate areas and development areas.  He contended that Cornwall would not have more money it would not be filched off by the EU (‘not Europe’). It would not have to be given back with a sticker ‘this is sponsored by the ERDF’- leading to everybody walking around thinking how generous the ERDF is.

Webb said:

But do you seriously believe, when you think of the other competing parts of . . . England, never mind Wales, but just look at Westminster and look at England, the other competing parts of England that would be looking for funding, are looking for funding, are looking for help, are looking for development, that really Cornwall would be able to, to punch its weight in that fight?

BS:         Well, that’s why we’ve got MPs, and I entirely believe that in a system of government the closer people are to those who govern them, the better we are. And what I believe is that parliamentary democracy is the worst system of government apart from all the rest.  We would have that money, we would have more money, and it would be better spent.  And if you look at the Amnion Report (sic, it’s the Amion Report) it’s an absolute disgrace what’s happened to the convergence funding.

Webb asked what the report was and Smith confirmed it was a report commissioned by Cornwall Council to look at the efficient of spending of the convergence funds.

Webb put it to Perkins that there was a view that quite a lot of the European money has been wasted, that some projects were a bit ‘touristy’ and were not doing much for people who lived there. He added:

it is that business of whether or not Europe money (sic) is well spent, and whether or not, actually it would be better if they were just . . . controlled closer to home?

LJ:          Well, I think the problem with that argument is that the European money wasn’t controlled closer to home, the problem was that Westminster government and Southwest Regional Development Agency, and all these different agencies have had their finger in the pie, managing the European money for Cornwall, and actually, if the programme had been managed in Cornwall and we were allowed to manage our own money coming back from Europe, we would do very much better. There are some really good European-funded projects, there are some places where money has been taken off, and the biggest thing in this current program is that all the administration is being done outside of Cornwall, and therefore the 10% administration et cetera, et cetera, all that money is being spent outside of Cornwall, rather than, than in Cornwall, which needs it.

Webb put it to Smith that it was not actually about money, it was about a sense of identity, it was whether you were a person who looked to Westminster, ‘or whether or not your prepared to be part of that ‘European mix’.

Smith said he was right, he had spoken to 19 people in Newquay yesterday and 15 would vote leave.

Jenkin said:

I think if Cornwall returns a Vote Leave vote, it will because of misinformation coming to the people of Cornwall. We do not believe that Cornwall would be better off outside of Europe. There are things that need to be changed in the way that Europe is managed, Europe needs to be more democratic, I’ve just come back from Brussels where we’ve been having a . . . a European Parliament inquiry on language discrimination, and people, the small regions across Europe are working together to improve things, and that’s what we need to do, we need to work together within Europe to make sure that the voice of the regions of Europe are h— is heard.

FURTHER ANALYSIS

In the first report, Webb emphasised as a key point that that lots of EU money flowed into Cornwall – to deal with local relative poverty and lack of work – and suggested to former miner Alan Buckley that despite that, he was sympathetic to voting leave. Buckley refused to be drawn on his own voting intentions, but said that many people locally were going to vote leave and Webb again asked why the money did not ‘swing it for you’? Buckley responded that no-one knew what the money had been spent on, nobody seemed to benefit. The second interviewee, food bank worker Donovan Gardner, agreed that it was unclear where the EU money had gone. Webb, emphasising from a difficult angle the importance of the EU funds, asked him why he had not applied for financial help from the EU. Gardner said it was because it was ‘project money’ and his food bank would not qualify.

In response, Webb changed tack but returned to the EU money theme. He observed that Redruth shopping centre was run down and needed money injected. He asked whether if it did not come from Europe, it could come from Westminster. Buckley replied that investment was needed from commercial sources to get local mines going again.

The editorial emphasis on the importance of the EU money continued to be the fulcrum in the second sequence. Webb opened with a long sequence outlining that the EU funds had been vital in the conversion of a local brewery into an archive centre. He then said a ‘huge amount of ‘European development money’ was being spent in the south-west region, six billion euros was earmarked between 2014 and 2020.  He said this ‘coloured the European debate’ in the area, then he noted that Cornwall was England’s poorest county and ‘received the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has impact far away from the cream teas’.

For his first interview, Webb visited a ‘gleaming new office’ he emphasised had been using the EU money.  Craig Girvan an IT company who worked there, confirmed Webb’s contention that these funds were very important. Webb put it to him that there was no question in his mind that ‘the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected’.  Girvan agreed.

Webb next went to the Trago Mills project, where the owner described the EU money as ‘larceny’ and argued that MPs should make decisions about local investment.  Webb put it to him that (unlike Westminster), the EU had ruled about the level of deprivation and therefore money from Brussels to Cornwall was guaranteed. Under Westminster that might not happen. The owner disagreed.

Next point of call was a beach, and Webb said everyone agreed that Cornwall could not survive on tourism alone, thus again stressing the importance of development funds.  He repeated the question whether the money would best come from the EU or Westminster. His next interviewee, Exeter university academic Dr Joanie Willett, said in response there was no evidence whatsoever that the money would come from Westminster because its focus was elsewhere, for example on the North-South divide.

Webb’s conclusion to this sequence was to ask the Today audience if the money argument would, in effect, be foremost in how locals voted in the referendum. He introduced for the first time that other issues, such as those hinged on local identity and sovereignty could also be involved just as much.

In the third feature, Webb opened by giving Loveday Jenkin, former leader of Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish nationalist party, the opportunity first to say that, if the UK was not in Europe, Westminster could not be trusted to give Cornwall money. Webb reinforced this by observing that this (point)had been said ‘repeatedly to us’ during the course of the programme.  He asked whether she believed it was because ‘they’ did not care in Westminster.  Jenkin said they did not even realise Cornwall existed, and pointed out that money had gone into projects like HS2 but not Cornwall.

Webb next suggested to local former Ukip candidate Bob Smith that Westminster had not done a good job of looking after Cornwall in the past.  Smith replied that this was not true and made the point that ‘EU money’ was actually from British taxpayers.  Webb asked if he seriously thought that in competition with the rest of the UK, Cornwall could win funds. Smith replied that this was the job of MPs to handle local interests.  Cornwall would get money. The recent Amion report (into the spending of EU funding) showed that it was a disgrace what had happened to the EU’s convergence fund. Webb asked what the report was (he thus appeared to be ignorant of it).

He then moved back to Jenkin and suggested that ‘it was a view’ that EU money had been wasted. Jenkin replied that the problem was really that different outside agencies including Westminster had had their fingers in the pie managing the EU money. If Cornwall had been able to manage its own money coming back from the EU, it would have been well spent. She maintained that there were some really good local EU projects.  A further problem in the EU funds equation was that management fees were (wrongly) being subtracted from bodies outside Cornwall.

Webb did not comment further, other than to say such factors would ‘energise’ both sides.

CONCLUSION

What was the underlying editorial approach to these three features?

From the beginning, the prominence in Cornwall of ‘EU money’ was stressed. In the first feature, it was the undoubted fulcrum of Webb’s inquiry. In the second, he opened by heavily focusing that the EU funds were transformative and central in that process. In the third, the local ‘Cornish’ party speaker put the core point that the EU cared for Cornwall, created vital new projects there, whereas Westminster did not care at all.

Webb included guests in the first sequence who both said that they could see no evidence of the benefits of the EU cash, and one said he was not eligible to apply.  In the second, the owner of a shopping project called EU funds ‘larceny’.  And in the third, the Ukip candidate argued that Westminster, not Brussels should be the channel helping Cornwall. He further pointed out that there was evidence of serious mismanagement of EU funds.

On that basis, the perspective that EU funds were a matter of concern and debate was clearly included.  But overall, from the off, Webb stressed in different ways their importance. It was the driving line in the editorial structure. Further, in the first and second sequences, he gave the last word to local figures who underlined the beneficial impact on the local economy. This biased  emphasis was compounded by the fact that Webb himself made no effort to explain that EU funds actually originated from the EU taxpayer (it was left to contributors to do so) and also by that there was no editorial effort to explore the Amion report.  It is prominent on the internet and could easily have been found by programme researchers., This was of central importance to the local application of EU funds, and to the conduct of the EU.

The bias here is compounded by the fact that in the earlier similar sequence of three features from Northern Ireland mounted by Today, Mishal Husain also stressed the importance of ‘EU money’ without proper explanation (analysed on News-watch here).  The programme should be looking at the EU equation from a different, more balanced perspective. The Amion report raised issues that Today emphatically is not.

Full Transcripts:

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 6.47am

NICK ROBINSON:             Now ahead of the referendum later this month, we’ve been doing a series of reports on the road to get a sense of the perspective from different places.  And this morning, Justin, lucky Justin, is in Cornwall, morning to you.

JUSTIN WEBB:   (laughter in voice) Morning Nick. And yes, it is lucky, and yes, it is a lovely place, and we’re in Redruth, right in the heart of Cornwall, but, at the same time it is a poor place – according to European statistics, in 2014 the second poorest region in the whole of northern Europe, after West Wales, so it’s erm, it’s very easily England’s poorest county.  And I’m joined by two people here will know all about the nitty-gritty of life in Cornwall, and the kind of things that will be . . . going to play, coming into play, when it comes to making a decision in June 23rd.  Alan Buckley is with me, former miner, vice-chairman of the Cornish Mining Association, good morning to you.

ALAN BUCKLEY: Good morning.

JW:        And Donovan Gardner, Donovan is, er, runs the Camborne-Pool-Redruth manager (sic) morning Donovan.

DONOVAN GARDNER:   Good morning.

JW:        Now, erm, just tell us a bit about the mining first of all, as everyone knows, there was mining in Cornwall and there isn’t any more, Alan, but, but when was the high spot, and what was this place like when it was at its height?

AB:        Well, for over 200 years Cornish mining was extremely important to the . . . to the, all British industries, in fact, without it the industrial revolution wouldn’t have happened, because of the copper and the tin they produced, but also because of the engineering, they led the world as steam engineers, and some of the finest engineers and inventors came from Cornwall, (words unclear due to speaking over) Camborne . . .

JW:        (speaking over) And this place, Redruth, Camborne et cetera, this was a wealthy place?

AB:        Absolutely, in fact, it has been said that Pool, between Camborne and Redruth was the NASA of the, erm, 200 years ago, because people came from all over the world, engineers came from as far away as Russia, came back from America just to . . . to see the machines they were making and to discuss with the engineers what they were doing.

JW:        And Donovan, what’s it like now?

DG:        Unfortunately industry has completely disappeared.  Engineers have gone, we are a service industry now, poor wages, zero hour contracts, part-time work, it is really a serious problem in this area.

JW:        How much demand is there for the service that you run at the food bank?

DG:        It’s unbelievable.  We started six years ago, six years ago next Monday actually, and we were going to run a food bank for two years, because of the austerity problems, and the financial problems. We’re now into six years, it’s getting bigger and bigger, at the moment we’re doing ten thousand meals a month from our three food banks in this area.

JW:        And what a lot of people say Alan, is the answer to that, in part at least, is European money which does flow into Cornwall, because of its, its status, if you can put it like that, as a poorer part of Europe, and yet you’re voting Leave?

AB:        Erm, I didn’t say I was voting Leave . . .

JW:        Oh . . .

AB:        . . . it’s a secret ballot, as we know, according to the law . . .

JW:        (laughs)

AB:        But erm, the strange thing . . .

JW:        (interrupting) You’re leaning . . . you’re leaning towards, you’re sympathetic to Leave, let’s put it that way.

AB:        Well, but it this way, everybody I talk to, whether they’re farmers, ex-miners, engineers (word or words unclear) or whatever, I haven’t well, I’ve hardly heard a single person in favour of staying. Erm . . . and that must be significant . . . (fragment of word, or word unclear due to speaking over)

JW:        (speaking over) But why doesn’t the money argument swing it for you?

AB:        Well, the strange thing is, recently we were discussing this, among some friends, the money that’s supposed to come from Europe, and nobody, including, in fact, the letters to the local paper – where’s it gone? Nobody ever sees any benefit from it.  If it does come here, who has it and where does it go, where is it spent? Because we don’t . . . we see no benefit from it.

JW:        Donovan you’re nodding?

DG:        Yeah, yeah (words unclear due to speaking over ‘I agree’?)

JW:        (speaking over) You’re undecided, aren’t you?

DG:        Yeah, I’m undecided because I believe that the rhetoric that we hear of one day to another, er . . . the people I meet in the food bank, to be honest with you, all they want to do is survive.  Er, you know . . . I see these people, dads that . . . don’t eat for three days to feed their children, you know, this is the . . . the disaster, er . . . years ago, when we had industry, they were well-paid jobs . . .

AB:        Yeah.

DG:        . . . er, we had people that could plan their life, have a mortgage . . . they can’t do it today, er . . . and as Alan said, where has the money gone?  As it gone to . . . er, we’ve got Heartlands, you know, a tourist place, it doesn’t employ many people.

JW:        Have you applied for any European money?

DG:        Er . . . no. Erm . . .

JW:        I mean would it be available to you?

DG:        I’m not sure, I’m not sure . . . unfortunately, I’m looking for money, well . . . as a charity, to sustain the project, er . . . I find the big money is only to starter projects.

JW:        A truck is just going past us, a lorry is going past, us and I think it’s going to pause for a second here, oh no . . . things are being delivered in the centre of, of, of Redruth.  Do you have a sense, will carry on, because I think it’s actually going to stop and then move on, yeah, there it goes, there it goes.  Yeah, so you . . . you basically, you need money from wherever you can get it, and at the moment Europe isn’t a source for you?

DG:        No, because European money is, is a project money (sic) er, it’s not sustainable money. If, if I want to start a new project, I could probably get European money, but next year it will be there.

JW:        Alan, what needs to happen to re-energise this place, because we’re here in the middle of Redruth, and it’s a perfectly nice morning, we’re in the shopping, pedestrian precinct, but there are quite a few shops actually, well not exactly boarded-up here, but I’m just looking down, there are charity shops . . .

AB:        Hmm.

JW:        . . . and there are shops that are obviously quite temporary. What, what, you need money injected into the place, don’t you?  And if it doesn’t come from Europe, are you confident that it could come from Westminster?

AB:        (speaking over) We need . . . we need erm, industry, obviously, and we need mining, and unfortunately, South Crofty Mine, which closed in 1998, March, and I, like many others finished mining, erm, that now has money coming from a Canadian source, they’re investing in it, because tin is a rare commodity, and where it is, they’ve got to mine it, and because it’s becoming a diminished supply throughout the earth, and because the stockpiles in China and America have gone and the prices going up through the roof, erm, the prospects for South Crofty are very good.  And men have continued to work there since the mine closed to prepare for the opening (this may be ‘reopening’ – but there’s a slight glitch in outside broadcast)

JW:        What an amazing prospect, that actually mining comes back here.

AB:        Oh yes, we feel it will, because the tin is needed and it’s, it’s here, and there’s a lot there. When the mine closed, there was still a lot left there.

JW:        Okay, well Alan Buckley and Donovan Gardner, thank you both very much for talking to me here in Redruth.

SM:       Justin, thanks very much . . .

JW:        (thinking he is off mic, to interviewees) That was great.

SM:       (laughs) That was great, thank you very much.

 

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 7.34am

SARAH MONTAGUE:      Well, as we heard earlier, Justin is in Cornwall this morning for the latest in our series of reports on the road, head of the referendum later this month.  Good morning Justin.

JUSTIN WEBB:   Yes, hello again from Redruth, we moved around to the side of the town, and I’m at a place that is very much benefiting, or about to benefit from EU money.  It was a brewery, in fact, the chimney stack, the redbrick chimney stack is still very much in place, but the rest of it has been flattened and it’s being turned into a new archive centre, Kresen Kernow Archive Centre for Cornwall.  Cornwall, of course, is paved with gold provided by the EU, it glitters around me on the streets here of Redruth in the early morning sunlight, well, not quite, in fact, as anyone who’s been to Cornwall and seen more than the beaches will know, there’s no gold on the streets, and in fact, the sun is more often reflected in the empty windows of closed-down shops.  There is, though, a huge amount of European development money being spent around here.  €6 billion in the programme lasting from 2014 to 2020.  And its money, of course, that colours that debate on the Europe referendum, in a sometimes forgotten corner of England.  Well, this to most of us is Cornwall, I’m on the Bodinnick Ferry, it takes just a few cars at a time from Bodinnick to Fowey, and it’s all really picture postcard stuff, there are little boats, the water’s listening, you can come here and you can think, ‘Well, lucky Cornwall, lucky Cornish’ – what you don’t get a sense of is the simple fact that Cornwall is England’s poorest county.  It qualifies for and it receives the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has an impact far away from the cream teas and the country lanes and the picturesque ferries.

CRAIG GIRVAN: So this is one of the eight rooms that we’ve got here at the Pool Innovation Centre (words unclear due to speaking over)

JW:        (speaking over) I’m with Craig Girvan, one of the founders of Headforwards, which is a software development company and it’s based in the Pool Innovation Centre, it’s a gleaming office block.  It would not be here if it wasn’t for funding from Brussels.

CG:        Being in this building has enabled us to grow our offering very, very quickly. (word or words unclear) in Cornwall aren’t . . . great, you know, so it’s not a great investment to create a building and put it there, so honestly, coming from Europe has enabled this to happen. Erm, and . . . indirectly has enabled us to exist and grow.

JW:        Yeah.  So there’s no question at all in your mind that the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected?

CG:        Absolutely.

JW:        Alright then, if the benefits of membership are so clear, then it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it, on June 23? Well, no, not really.  I’ve come to Trago Mills, which is an out-of-town shopping centre near Liskeard. When you ask people here specifically about the money coming into Cornwall, even then their views about the EU are pretty mixed.

VOX POP MALE:              I’ve lived in Cornwall for 30 years and I think it has benefited Cornwall for sure.  I work at the airport and . . . there’s a lot of European money that comes in and out of there. Yeah, I will be voting to stay.

VOX POP FEMALE:          I have seen projects that say they’ve been funded by money . . .

VPM:     So partly-funded. (laughs)

VPF:      Yes, well partly-funded, yes, so . . .

JW:        But you’ve seen enough of them to make it look to you as if there are benefits from being in the EU?

VPF:      It looks like it.

VOX POP FEMALE 2:       Definitely exit, because we put money into the EU, so why couldn’t we have put money into Devon and Cornwall, before handing it over to those Brussels people?

JW:        Trago Mills is peculiar in some ways, it’s got a kind of slightly kitsch feel to it, there are cockerels running around, there are water features, there is a huge Vote Leave poster, and a statue of the Emperor Nero.  And just looking down to the inscription underneath, it says, ‘Nero only fiddled, Eurocrats practice grand larceny.’ – a clue as to the view of Europe held by the boss, Bruce Robertson.

BRUCE ROBERTSON:      Even by the EU’s own measures, it hasn’t done anything, we’re still deprive.  My view would be that . . . our own MPs would be perfectly capable of making a strong case for precisely what Cornwall needs in our own Parliament at Westminster, rather than having a few MEPs who cover from the Scilly Isles to Southampton, who are invariably a minority, because of what we are, in a parliament of 751 people . . .

JW:        (speaking over) (fragment of word, or word unclear) But isn’t it simply that with the EU there are set rules about the level of deprivation there has to be for you to get money, and if it were done at Westminster, there wouldn’t be those set rules, it would be all about politics, and you’d be competing with . . . central Manchester, with Scotland, with all sorts of other areas that also want . . . help. And you wouldn’t get it.

BR:        We’re not receiving some munificent bounty, we’re actually getting back a small element of what we pay in, and we’re not (words unclear due to speaking over)

JW:        (speaking over) You’re getting it, that’s the point, you’re getting it, and under Westminster you might not?

BR:        Look, we’re getting it at the moment, but there’s nothing to say that that could change.

JW:        We’ve come back to picturesque Cornwall now, this is Polkerris beach, and it’s a lovely site, children playing in the water and lovely Sunshine and all the rest of it. What it really comes down to is this, everyone accepts that this isn’t enough, Cornwall can’t survive and prosper in the future by tourism alone, but does the money come best from Europe, or could it come, as those in the Leave camp suggest from Westminster? Dr Joanie Willet works for Exeter University, but in the Penryn campus here in Cornwall.

DR JOANIE WILLET:        There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we would get money from Westminster.  We haven’t in the past, historically we really have not. All of the regional inequality measures that the government is trying to do, they’re all focusing on the North-South divide, nobody is talking about the south-west, and even fewer people are talking about Cornwall in particular.

JW:        Is the money argument going to settle it in the end?  Well, what we got a sense of in a day or two of talking to people here is that actually other things matter too.  A kind of sense of sovereignty, a sense of identity, whether you see that identity as being European or whether you see it very much based here in Britain.  It’s that feeling, that gut feeling about who you are and where you belong, that frankly seems to be deciding people here, just as much as the money does.  (sound of waves)

NR:        Justin splashing about in Cornwall there.

 

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 8.29am

JUSTIN WEBB:   We’ve moved again round to Redruth Railway Station now, and you can go from this pretty little station, you can go west to Penzance, you can go east to Devon to London, further afield there’s a train about to leave for Glasgow in a few minutes’ time, that’s going to take its time because, of course, the trains here are very slow, and that is part of what makes Cornwall feel so separate, a separateness that affects the debate on the membership of the European Union. We heard a range of Cornish views during the course of the programme this morning, I’m going to finish with Loveday Jenkin, who is former leader of Mebyon Kernow, the party for Cornwall, and with Bob Smith who was UKIP’s candidate for the Camborne and Redruth constituency in the general election in 2015.  Morning to you both.

LOVEDAY JENKIN:           Myttin da.

BOB SMITH:       Good morning.

JW:        First, Loveday, that separateness, how do you describe yourself, what’s your identity?  Are you in any way English?

LJ:          No, no, no, and I have to take you to task about what you were saying . . .

JW:        (speaking over) I thought you would.

LJ:          . . . earlier about Cornwall being a county of England – Cornwall is managed as a county, within England, but it’s a Duchy and I’m Cornish and I’m British and I’m European.

JW:        And how does that affect your view of Europe?

LJ:          I think most people in Cornwall would say that erm, if we went in Europe, we wouldn’t trust Westminster to give us more money.

JW:        Yeah, and that was something that has been said repeatedly to us during the course of the programme, but for what reason? Is it because they don’t care about you, or is it that you don’t care about them, in Westminster?

LJ:          I think it’s partly that they don’t even realise that we exist, quite often. I mean, a lot of people don’t realise the Cornish language exists, that . . . they realise that the Cornish are an indigenous group of people within, within the British Isles.  But it’s, it’s that lack of consideration.  We’ve seen all the money coming into HS2, and we look at the railway coming into Cornwall, and we haven’t had anything like the same investment.

JW:        And Bob Smith, it is a fact, isn’t it, that when . . . Westminster is left to look after Cornwall, as it was in the past, it didn’t do a very good job?

BOB SMITH:       Well, if you’ve developed a political system where everybody’s forced to go to Brussels, er, that’s what you end up with.  But if you remember, the ’76-’79 Labour government, we had a policy then of intermediate areas and development areas.  We’d have had that money, we would have more money, because the money we give to Europe is filched off by the EU, not Europe, the European Union, and given back to us, with a sticker, saying ‘this was sponsored by the ERDF’ – and everybody walks around thinking how generous the ERDF is.

JW:        But do you seriously believe, when you think of the other competing parts of . . . England, never mind Wales, but just look at Westminster and look at England, the other competing parts of England that would be looking for funding, are looking for funding, are looking for help, are looking for development, that really Cornwall would be able to, to punch its weight in that fight?

BS:         Well, that’s why we’ve got MPs, and I entirely believe that in a system of government the closer people are to those who govern them, the better we are. And what I believe is that parliamentary democracy is the worst system of government apart from all the rest.  We would have that money, we would have more money, and it would be better spent.  And if you look at the Amnion Report (sic, it’s the Amion Report) it’s an absolute disgrace what’s happened to the convergence funding.

JW:        Which is a report that says what?

BS:         It’s a report commissioned by Cornwall Council to look at the efficiency of spending of the convergence funds.

JW:        Yes, there is a view here, isn’t there, Loveday, that quite a lot of the European money has been wasted, there are some projects that are a bit touristy people say, well, actually they’re not really doing much for people who, who live here, it is that business of whether or not Europe money (sic) is well spent, and whether or not, actually it would be better if they were just . . . controlled closer to home?

LJ:          Well, I think the problem with that argument is that the European money wasn’t controlled closer to home, the problem was that Westminster government and Southwest Regional Development Agency, and all these different agencies have had their finger in the pie, managing the European money for Cornwall, and actually, if the programme had been managed in Cornwall and we were allowed to manage our own money coming back from Europe, we would do very much better. There are some really good European-funded projects, there are some places where money has been taken off, and the biggest thing in this current program is that all the administration is being done outside of Cornwall, and therefore the 10% administration et cetera, et cetera, all that money is being spent outside of Cornwall, rather than, than in Cornwall, which needs it.

JW:        (fragments of words, unclear) In the end though, it’s not about money is it? It’s, it’s about a sense of identity, isn’t it, Bob Smith, there is this sense of whether you regard yourself as being primarily a, a, a person who looks to Westminster, or whether or not you’re happy to be part of that, that European mix?

BS:         I think you’re right, and I’ve been going round Cornwall a lot in the last few weeks, and er . . . what most people tell me, I was in Newquay yesterday, spoke to 19 people – 15 are going to vote Leave, 2 vote in, and 2 are undecided. I think Cornwall’s going to return a Vote Leave vote in this referendum.

JW:        Loveday?

LJ:          I think if Cornwall returns a Vote Leave vote, it will because of misinformation coming to the people of Cornwall. We do not believe that Cornwall would be better off outside of Europe. There are things that need to be changed in the way that Europe is managed, Europe needs to be more democratic, I’ve just come back from Brussels where we’ve been having a . . . a European Parliament inquiry on language discrimination, and people, the small regions across Europe are working together to improve things, and that’s what we need to do, we need to work together within Europe to make sure that the voice of the regions of Europe are h— is heard.

JW:        Alright, the decision not that far away now, the people of Cornwall energised by it on both sides, so thank you very much to Bob Smith and to Loveday Jenkin as well.

 

 

Photo by big-ashb

Referendum Blog: June 2

Referendum Blog: June 2

NAUGHTIE BIAS: On Tuesday, James Naughtie, now a roving BBC correspondent emeritus, assembled three Today features about the Scottish reaction to the EU referendum. They were seriously imbalanced towards the ‘remain’ side.

In the opening sequence, at 6.42am, Naughtie explored the views of a young ‘remain’ supporter and an ‘exit’ counterpart. Eloise Reinhardt, the remain speaker, was asked to contribute first and Naughtie let her make her point uninterrupted. Ewan Blockley, who was in favour of ‘out’, contributed next. After speaking less than 30 words, he was interrupted by Naughtie, who told him that his £350m figure for the cost of EU membership was bogus. Naughtie intervened again to stress that it was the Treasury Select Committee that said so.

Before Blockley could explain more, Naughtie cut him off and returned to Reinhardt. At this point, he shifted the agenda.  He suggested to her that if the national vote was leave on June 23, the majority of Scots would want a second referendum on Scottish independence, then that this could lead to Scotland joining the euro. This gave Reinhardt a platform to say she was   a strong believer in Europe because it supported smaller countries.

The agenda had thus been narrowed by Naughtie to consideration of the possibility of a second referendum. On that basis, he asked Blockley  how Scottish independence fed into the ‘Europe’ debate. Blockley replied that there had already been a vote on independence and it stood.

Naughtie then put it to Blockley that the Conservative party in Scotland under Ruth Davidson was more in favour of ‘remain’ than the party as a whole. His observation and question formed the longest contribution so far. It was thus posed a s a major point.

Blockley’s response was that he did not agree and that opinion about ‘leave’ among MSPs was being hushed up.

Naughtie chose not to explore that and turned again to Reinhardt. He reminded listeners that under 16s had voted in the independence referendum. This led Reinhardt to observe:

I think, especially among my generation, I think that erm . . . it was really important, it’s really important to stay within the EU. A lot of people are concerned with jobs, especially at my age we’re all leaving school are looking for jobs, and there was a statistic the other day, something like one in ten jobs are directly linked to our membership of the EU.

Naughtie asked her whether she believed this scare stuff – such as the bogus figure of £350m mentioned by Blockley – because her side had argued at the last referendum that George Osborne had led Project Fear north of the border. He noted that the ‘leave’ side was now claiming that ‘remain’ was a new Project Fear, Did she now believe what was being said?

Her response was that there had been ‘many mixed messages’ that were difficult to decipher. Naughtie – before she answered fully, thus letting her off the hook – asked Blockley why he did not believe the Chancellor, because he was a Conservative. Blockley confirmed he didn’t believe him. Naughtie stressed this was a contradiction, and Reinhardt joined in at this point by laughing.  Blockley said there were definitely differing views (within the Conservative party) but now Osborne was getting his statistics from the CBI and institutions funded by Brussels.

Naughtie again switched emphasis and asked both interviewees if their arguments were based on faith or facts. Both said it was both.  Naughtie finally asked Reinhardt if remain was going to win. She said it would definitely do so. He asked Blockley if his side could ‘pull back’. He replied they could.

Overall, Naughtie’s editing and presentation of this feature led to a strongly favourable projection of the remain case in Scotland.  Blockley was specifically challenged over his figures  pushed continually on the back foot and asked to explain what Naughtie perceived were contradictions in his stance. Naughtie emphasised that the Tories were split on this issue, but less split in Scotland, and favoured ‘remain’. Blockley’s responses to the barrage of pressure were of necessity fragmented and incomplete; he was given no opportunity to offer an uninterrupted expression of the ‘leave’ case from the Scottish perspective. The points that he was able to make were only that   that he believed in sovereignty, democratic will and economic prudence…the figure going from the UK to Brussels was too much; that the ‘leave’ component in the Scottish Conservative party was being hushed up, and that he believed that George Osborne’s Project Fear figures were being fed by the CBI and other Brussels’ sources.

Reinhardt by contrast had three uninterrupted opportunities to put her ‘leave’ case. She said in the three contributions:

I just feel the that if we were to come out of the EU that we would lose our seat at the table, especially within trade, we’re still going to need to pay into Europe, into the trade agreement, and I think that we would lose our seat at the table and that would just be . . . it’s too much of a risk right now…. I think, especially among my generation… I’m, I’m a strong believer in . . . in Europe, I think it’s . . . it is, it’s an institution that’s been there for many years, and it’s supported a lot of smaller countries. I think that erm . . . it was really important, it’s really important to stay within the EU. A lot of people are concerned with jobs, especially at my age we’re all leaving school are looking for jobs, and there was a statistic the other day, something like one in ten jobs are directly linked to our membership of the EU.

Naughtie suggested only one adversarial point to Reinhardt, that the ‘remain’ approach to Project Fear was contradictory, but did not push her to answer, and, in effect, let the matter go.

Naughtie also appeared to have an editorial agenda, which was to push the view that a ‘leave’ vote would lead to a second independence referendum. He steered the discussion in that direction almost from the beginning, and before Blockley had been able to explain fully the ‘exit’ case.  He stressed that the h Conservatives were split about the EU, but less so in Scotland, and focused strongly on a perceived contradiction in George Osborne’s stance to the Scottish and EU referendums. His line of questioning here allowed Reinhardt to join in his discomfiture by laughing at him.

This was projected as an equal exploration of the Scottish ’remain’ and ‘leave’ cases. It was anything but. The ‘leave’ side, because of Naughtie’s approach, was projected more favourably. Through his lens, it was what Scotland wanted.  In sharp contrast, Naughtie put across that the ‘leave’ argument was based on financial inaccuracy, and was being pursued inside a split Conservative party on contradictory statements by George Osborne.

 

SEQUENCE TWO: THE CLYDE

In the second sequence, based primarily in one of the few Clyde shipyards said to be still operational, Naughtie explored differences of opinion between two of the workers there, one of whom supported Brexit, the other ‘remain’.  It turned out, however, that although the exit supporter wanted to leave the EU economic grounds, in other respects he thought it was wonderful.

Before talking in detail to the shipyard  workers,  he included comments from two business analysts in reaction to the point that ship-building as an industry was suffering because it had no national strategy that would engender successful reactions to competition from abroad.  John Whyman, from the Lancashire Institute of economic research, argued that the EU did not allow one section of the single market to be treated more favourably than another, so it was not possible to help firms. He claimed leaving the EU would allow a more active industrial policy.

Naughtie said that Professor David Bailey, from Aston Business School thought this was wrong.  He declared:

There are good reasons for having rules on state aid, so that we get fair competition across the single market. But, this argument that that prevents us from having an effective industrial policy is complete hogwash. I mean, look for example, what happened in the steel industry recently, it was the British government that opposed higher tariffs at a European level against Chinese imports. And if you look at other countries in Europe, being part of the EU has not stopped them intervening to support their steel.

Naughtie then established that Iain Turnball, one of the Govan workers, believed that the EU helped the industry and if there was an exit, he feared they would not get work from elsewhere.  Naughtie then said John Brown favoured a ‘one nation’ industrial strategy, and claimed that other European countries’ failure to follow EU single market competition rules had cost the Clyde orders.

He noted there was ‘an extra ingredient here’.  Brown supported the one-nation industrial strategy, but was ‘never going to be a cultural Brexiteer’. He included a long quote from him:

We like being Europeans, we like being able to go to Spain, go to Seville, go to Rome, we like all that. My grandad’s name was Daniel McConnell, he was an immigrant, I’m married to a Bengali Scottish girl, my son is going with a Kurdish refugee lassie, so I don’t interested (sic) in (word or words unclear) and (word unclear ‘Poles’?) it’s the future for your kids and yourself, and I think a bigger (word or words unclear) that Europe provides us with a safer future, than a tiny wee island.

Naughtie concluded by observing that the question on the ballot paper on June 23 was ‘not the most important question’; the real question was more complex than ‘remain’ or ‘leave’.

Overall, Naughtie, put forward in his editing contrasting views about the way forward for both the ship-yard and its manufacturing sector generally, with reasonably balanced comment from two workers and two economists. The comments brought into play complex themes of industrial strategy and how EU regulations influenced the ability of UK business to compete (or not) in the EU and international arenas.

But the comment at the end from John Brown introduced a substantial imbalance. He argued that the EU was about being ‘European’, being able to travel, being multicultural, and about being safer than was possible in a ‘wee’ island.  No contrasting opinion was included.

 

SEQUENCE THREE: ANGLOPHOBIA? 

In the third of the sequence, Naughtie interviewed Dr Owen Dudley Edwards, an ultra-Scots nationalist who believes that the UK is a ‘grubby little corporation’, and  Alastair Macmillan, a business owner from the Scottish arm of Business for Britain.

Naughtie stressed again at the outset that Scotland was keener to remain than leave and wondered whether this was because of culture or economic self-interest, or what.

Dudley Edwards first observed that the Irish had loved the EU because they had spent so much time on Anglophobia. The Scottish did not dislike the English as much as the Irish, but did think that they got in the way of Scottish self-realisation. He then argued that he thought the Scots saw that the EU intervened in all sorts of ways that were in their interest. He claimed that the MEP Winifred Ewing had gone to the European Parliament in 1979 and it began to mean an awful lot to the Scots because she had ‘got a lot of grants and useful support’.  Naughtie joined in the Dudley Edwards’ explanation and suggested it was then that the SNP had ‘turned on its axis’ and became a euro-enthusiast party and ‘still was’.   Dudley Edwards agreed and said that Ewing had done a splendid job, and was ‘carrying Europe with her’. He said that when people thought about the European Parliament, they thought of her, and then she was succeeded by Neil McCormick. Another MEP just as good.

Naughtie then said MacMillan was a businessman who exported around the world. He asked whether he accepted that in Scotland the debate was more tilted to remain than south of the border. Macmillan said he did but not think the Scots, per se, were less Eurosceptic. Scotland had to be viewed as both part off the UK and at the same time very local.  The problem had been that Euroscepticism had been seen as part of ‘the Tory disease’. He asserted that Scotland was not Tory.

Naughtie responded:

Well, the Conservatives are now the second party at Holyrood of course, and one of the interesting things about that, and just to get you both in on this, is that Ruth Davidson, the leader, who had a very good campaign in the Holyrood parliament, erm, although she says she’s got all sorts of arguments against Brussels, she is leading her party . . . not united, of course, there are a lot of Conservatives who want to leave, but it’s more united than the party south of the border is. What’s your explanation for that?

Dudley Edwards said Davidson was a very practised campaigner, people warmed to her strongly, she had played the gay liberation card well in terms of her lesbian relationship, and  ‘seemed so unlike traditional Toryism’.  Naughtie wondered what Alec Douglas Home would have made of that.  Dudley Edwards observed that Davidson campaigned without mentioning David Cameron if she could ‘possible avoid it’.

Naughtie then returned to Macmillan and asked if the debate in Scotland was tied up with the national debate that can’t be untangled.  Macmillan replied:

I think that people have felt that, you know, they’re told by Labour, they’re told by SNP in particular that Europe is a good thing, and they’ve, you know, if you look to the fishing community, you look to the agricultural community, they’ve actually had to deal with Europe first hand, you know they, they are thinking, you know, a Scottish farmer poll is saying 69% want to come out. You know, the fishing people you know they’re very strong . . . it’s people, we have, up here, normal ordinary people have not had the experience of immigration from the EU which our southern cousins have had to the same extent, and I think . . .

Naughtie interrupted before he had finished and observed he thought ‘that influences it’.  He added:

A last question for Owen Dudley Edwards, it’s often said that if there were a vote to leave across the UK, particularly if, in Scotland the majority of votes had said ‘Remain’ that Nicola Sturgeon would be unable to resist pressure in her party for a second referendum, do you believe that?

ODE:      Yes, very much so, I mean, it has always been (fragment of word, unclear) implicit, because the whole thing was the referendum was carried against independence on the assumption, without anybody (word or words unclear) too much, that matters would remain as they were.  For the whole ballgame to be changed by the UK getting out of the European Union, against Scotland’s wishes, would make it overwhelming demands I think for independence, it would be very difficult for anybody to resist it.

Overall, in the third sequence, Naughtie’s main focus was to give Owen Dudley Edwards a platform to explain why he, a Scots nationalist, thought the EU was now perceived to be so beneficial to Scotland. He explained, in essence – without interruption and with help from Naughtie over why the SNP also came to be pro-EU – that Winnifred Ewing had won EU grants and that had turned opinion around, and also because the EU was a channel through which to attack and limit the influence of England.  Naughtie also gave him the opportunity, as the last word, to say that a vote to leave would be strongly against Scotland’s wishes and would lead to strong demands for another independence referendum.

Macmillan had two primary contributions. In the first – reacting to Naughtie’s point that Scotland was more pro-EU – he argued that the Scots wanted to be part of the UK, but were parochial in output and through what they read, saw Euroscepticism as a Tory disease.  In the second answering whether the argument that the question was tied up with the national question in a way that could not be untangled, he argued that despite what the SNP said, farmers and fishermen especially disagreed with what they had been told and wanted out.

Naughtie also introduced that the Conservative party in Scotland, led by Riuth Davidson, was more strongly pro-EU than in England. This allowed Dudley Edwards to observe that people had warmed to her because it did not seem like traditional Toryism, and that Davidson had made very shrewd use of ‘gay liberation’ in Scotland.

Was this ‘balanced’? The whole discussion was conducted on Naughtie’s framework editorial premise that the Scots were more pro-EU than the English. This this gave Dudley Edwards a strong platform to advance reasons why it was. He introduced a number of factors, including Anglophobia, the importance of EU grants, and the effectiveness of the SNP, the fact that Ruth Davidson was not a traditional Tory, and that she has effectively used the ‘gay liberation’ card.  Macmillan was on the back foot throughout because of the editorial thrust. He had to explain why the Scots were less Eurosceptic, and his answer was that the issue had been associated with Toryism. The second question was also complex, and he only had the opportunity to point out that fishermen and farmers in Scotland actually wanted out, despite what the SNP said. In summary Naughtie gave Dudley Edwards the opportunity to put forward a historically-based case; Macmillan was not afforded the same space.

Overall, the three sequences were strongly favourable towards the remain case. He also was at pains to establish stressed that a ‘leave’ vote would lead to fresh pressure for a second independence referendum.

 

Full Transcripts:

6.42am Young Voters in Glasgow

MISHAL HUSAIN:             Just over three weeks to go to the EU referendum, and in the latest of our series from different parts of the country, we’re in Glasgow this morning where Jim is gauging opinion, good morning Jim.

JAMES NAUGHTIE:          Good morning to you, Mishal, from Glasgow, under a China blue sky here, and we’ll be giving you some thoughts through the programme on the referendum north of the border, because there is, of course, an extra dimension to the argument here where the other referendum after all wasn’t very long ago.  It is of course, the national question.  Now, I’m with two young voters here in the centre of the city who take a different view, Eloise Reinhardt, who’s 18, and Ewan Blockley who’s also 18, they’re involved, incidentally, in the BBC Generation Young Voter groups.  Now, Eloise, you’re an SNP voter and you’re voting to Remain, why?

ELOISE REINHARDT:       Erm, I just feel the that if we were to come out of the EU that we would lose our seat at the table, especially within trade, we’re still going to need to pay into Europe, into the trade agreement, and I think that we would lose our seat at the table and that would just be . . . it’s too much of a risk right now.

JN:         Right, Ewan, you’re 18, same as Eloise, you’re saying ‘Leave’ – why?

EWAN BLOCKLEY:           I believe in sovereignty, I believe in democratic will and I also believe in economic prudence, and I believe that if we give £350 million away a week, I think that . . .

JN:         (speaking under, word unclear, ‘Well’?)

EB:         (fragment of word, unclear) You can call it a bogus figure, we’ll say £11 billion . . .

JN:         (interrupting) It’s not me that’s calling it a bogus figure, it’s the Treasury Select Committee, cross party, including some Leave campaigners who say it’s a bogus figure . . .

EB:         Who also in 2003 said the euro was a good idea, so I’m not going to be taking any lectures from them, but . . . of course, and erm . . . I believe that two hundred and fif— 230 million then, I think was the net figure, and I want that money to be spent here in Scotland and in the UK.

JN:         Right.  I mentioned therein introducing the two of you the national question, which of course is live here, the referendum, the decisive vote to remain in the UK nearly 2 years ago, but it’s nonetheless a live question.  How does it play, in your mind Eloise, for example, if Britain, if the UK as a whole voted to leave, would you want a second referendum?

ER:         Absolutely.  I think it’s really important to Scotland, I think we were lied to a lot during the referendum in Scotland, erm, and EU was brought up as such a big issue, it was, ‘You’re not going to be in the EU, you’re not going to . . .’ and all of a sudden (fragments of words, or words unclear due to speaking over)

JN:         (speaking over) In other words, the argument was (clears throat) if you want to remain in the EU – which a majority of Scots, apparently, according to all the polls do – er, you’ve got to vote ‘no’ against independence, that was said to years ago?

ER:         Yeah, absolutely, that was . . . that was such a major argument for many people that I know were undecided up until the very last minute.

JN:         So you would want a second referendum and you would vote for independence knowing that it would mean taking on the euro, because it would, if we were staying in Europe?

ER:         Yeah, absolutely. I’m, I’m a strong believer in . . . in Europe, I think it’s . . . it is, it’s an institution that’s been there for many years, and it’s supported a lot of smaller countries.

JN:         Right, Ewan, why do you, how do you think the, the argument over independence and Scotland’s position in the UK feeds into the European debate?

EB:         Erm, I actually don’t think it does, I think that we voted to remain part of a United Kingdom, I think we voted overwhelmingly, 55% voted in favour of the Union and we’re voting to come out of the European Union or stay in, hopefully, out on my stance, erm, as a United Kingdom.

JN:         One of the interesting things is that the Conservatives, now the second party in Holyrood of course, under Ruth Davidson are arguing.  Now of course, it’s not a unanimous view in the Conservative Party, or amongst Conservative voters, but nonetheless, the party as a whole is, I think it’s fair to say, more convinced about the arguments Remain than the party as a whole in the UK, the split is . . . is, is less – you would agree with that, wouldn’t you?

EB:         Erm, I would disagree, I’m a Conservative party member actually, in Scotland, and I believe that there is a lot more hushed-up talk, people are a lot . . .

JN:         Hushed-up?

EB:         Yeah, so I would say that there are a lot, there are, erm, MSPs who are supporting Brexit and will go and vote it, but aren’t willing to go against Ruth and the team.

JN:         Well, what do you, what do you think, Eloise, the general feeling is here, among people of your generation, and of course, it’s worth minding people outside Scotland that you had vote in the referendum, although you went yet 18, because 16 to 18-year-olds . . . you know had the vote in that referendum.

ER:         Erm, I think, especially among my generation, I think that erm . . . it was really important, it’s really important to stay within the EU.  A lot of people are concerned with jobs, especially at my age we’re all leaving school are looking for jobs, and there was a statistic the other day, something like one in ten jobs are directly linked to our membership of the EU.

JN:         Do you believe . . . Ewan was talking about, we were arguing about the bogus figure, the 350 million, do you believe all the scare stuff, because of course, in the erm . . . Scottish referendum itself, your side argued that that was Project Fear, when George Osborne said all these things.  You’re saying you now believe that in this referendum, you believe these . . . what the other side say are scare stories about the economy? (silence) So, Project Fear, that you complained about in the Scottish referendum, the Leave side say we’re seeing Project Fear again, but you actually believe what’s being said in Project Fear this time, don’t you?

ER:         Yeah, I think . . . I think that there’s been so many mixed messages from erm, sort of the UK and (fragment of word, or word unclear) government, I think it was really, it’s really difficult to decipher and understand that, especially (word or words unclear due to speaking over)

JN:         (speaking over) You’re a Conservative voter, why don’t you believe George Osborne?

EB:         (laughter in voice) Erm, I don’t believe George Osborne as much as I don’t believe Tony Blair with the euro in 2003.

JN:         Did you believe George Osborne in the Scottish referendum?

EB:         I, I did believe him, but the reason why I (laughter in voice) believed him . . .

JN:         (speaking over) Well, she didn’t, and she now believes him . . . you did and you don’t.

ER:         (laughs under)

JN:         You see the problem?

EB:         There, there is a definitely, erm, differing views, but I think (fragments of words, unclear) George Osborne is getting his statistics this time from the CBI and from erm . . . from institutions that are actually funded by Brussels.

JN:         Well, let me ask you something, is this an argument for you about faith in Europe and a belief in Europe, or is it an argument based on looking at figures?  Which is it?

ER:         Faith. Essentially, I think, especially from my generation, I have looked into the facts and figures and I’m, I’m really interested . . . I think that’s slightly unusual for an 18-year-old just leaving school, so I think a lot of our generation (words unclear due to speaking over)

JN:         (speaking over) Not in Glasgow, I would say, anyway . . .

EB:         (laughs) I’m the same, I didn’t look at the facts and figures, it’s very much that I believe my own . . .

JN:         (interrupting) It’s, it’s in your gut?

EB:         Absolutely, I’m British, I believe in Britain and I believe that we should govern ourselves.

JN:         Erm, just one last thing, you’ve got a lot of friends, maybe some common, I don’t know, you’re both in Glasgow, who do you think is going to carry the day, in Scotland, let’s just talk about Scotland for a minute.  Who’s going to win . . . here?

ER:         Erm, it’s definitely going to be Remain.  A hundred percent.

JN:         You’ve got no doubt about that?

ER:         No doubt about that.

JN:         Can you pull it back Ewan?

EB:         Erm, as, as an optimist, I would say that Leave has a chance, being on a street stall yesterday, I believe that once people listen to the arguments that Leave are presenting, that they will be more likely to vote Leave rather than the status quo.

JN:         Ewan Blockly and Eloise Reinhardt, here in the centre of Glasgow, will be back with you in an hour, but for the moment, thank you both very much.

 

7.42am The Referendum, Glasgow and Shipbuilding

JUSTIN WEBB:   Let’s get a further taste of the EU debate from north of the border this morning, Jim is joining us again from Glasgow, morning Jim.

JAMES NAUGHTIE:          Indeed, I’m in Glasgow, Justin, thanks very much, where the older generation look at the River Clyde and realise that it isn’t really the river they once knew, from the city centre here, if you look along the water, you would once have seen cranes and gantries filling the sky, all the way westwards to the sea.  Now, these shipyards from the late 19th Century onwards were the engine of Empire, they built navies and liners, and this was one great river factory.  No more.  The work has dwindled, a new industrial revolution has taken most of it away, and the whole iron landscape has gone.  I’ll be talking to some of the men who still build ships here in a moment about where their story sits in the arguments over Europe.  But first, to the Glasgow University archive, and Tony Pollard, archaeologist and historian at the University, to savour some of the history that made the Clyde.  We looked together at the beautiful plans for the doomed liner Lusitania.

TONY POLLARD:                             She was almost 800 feet long in reality, and what you’ve got here is a cutaway which shows all of the interior, so you’ve got the . . . the lovely salons, the luxurious passenger cabins, the engine rooms, it was liners like Lusitania that had really made the reputation of Clyde shipbuilding.

JN:         Looking back from today, it’s interesting to realise that it was always a precarious business, even the days of its great success, because there was competition everywhere?

TP:         Very much so, and the fact that these companies had to change their products and their technologies took massive investment, and at times that would be misjudged or it would be too late.  So this is nothing new.

JN:         When the Clyde was at its height, from the centre of Glasgow, as far as the eye could see down the river, it must’ve been just a hive of activity?

TP:         It was, and both sides were just chock-a-block with not just shipbuilding but all of the ancillary industries designed to support it.

JN:         And here, beside the Lusitania is a book called Scotland’s Industrial Souvenir filled with wonderful photographs and accounts of what’s been going on here, and a beautifully engraved pager, coloured page, advertising various firms who were doing great things, and prominent among them, the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Ltd, over at Govan, across the river from the archive here.  And I’m going over there now.

NEWSREEL:        A few hours earlier, at Fairfield Shipyard, Govan, the Queen launched the Canadian-Pacific liner Empress of Britain, here is the beauty that can only come from fine craftsmanship, handed down from father to son through the good years on the grim.

JN:         The glory days.  It’s so different now.  At Fairfield’s where so many great hawks were built, BAE Systems are building a few offshore patrol vessels, there are 800 men divided between here and Rosyth in Fife, who are clinging onto jobs.  When I sat down with some of the yard workers, I was reminded, however, that this isn’t new.

IAIN TURNBALL:              It’s often been very difficult, you could never plan for a future, because you never knew if you had a future.

JN:         That came about, Iain, because of . . . cheap work elsewhere in the world . . .

I:            Yeah, yeah.

JN:         I mean it was, like, Korea in the 50s, and then China?

I:            Yeah, you’re right there, (fragment of word, or word unclear) I remember being in Govan in the mid-70s, and they started selling the designs to the Japanese, to the Chinese and to other . . . countries.

JOHN BROWN:  You see, we don’t have an industrial strategy in this country.  We have a finance industry.  You cannot compete with the country like China on the basis of selling each other insurance policies.

JN:         The question is, do you need a national industrial strategy?  The director of the Lancashire Institute for economic and business research, Phil Whyman thinks a break with the European Union would help.

PHIL WHYMAN: The EU doesn’t want one section of its single market to be treated more favourably than others, so we can’t help our firms.  Brexit allows the possibility of doing things a different way, it allows the possibility of having a more active industrial policy.

JN:         But to David Bailey, Professor of Industrial Strategy at Aston Business School at Birmingham University, that’s plain wrong.

DAVID BAILEY:  There are good reasons for having rules on state aid, so that we get fair competition across the single market.  But, this argument that that prevents us from having an effective industrial policy is complete hogwash.  I mean, look for example, what happened in the steel industry recently, it was the British government that opposed higher tariffs at a European level against Chinese imports.  And if you look at other countries in Europe, being part of the EU has not stopped them intervening to support their steel.

JN:         Back to the Clyde, and John Brown and Iain Turnbull, workers here for more than 30 years, one thinks Europe helps, the other doesn’t.

IT:          If we come out of Europe, then are we going to get work from elsewhere?

JN:         You think there’s a chance?

IT:          I . . . don’t think there’s a chance, I think it’ll be stopped, we won’t get any other contracts.

JN:         You were shaking your head there?

JB:         In the 80s and 90s into the early 2000’s we were going to Germany and Holland to work, it’s . . . sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You go to Italy, Germany and Spain, and you see their big shipyards, when a government is determined to save its industry, then forces, money, finance and technology can be brought to save that industry.

JN:         And do you think that is irrelevant to as being in the EU?

JB:         What we need as an industrial policy.

JN:         But there’s an extra ingredient here.  John Brown can see the argument for a one-nation industrial strategy, but he’s never going to be a cultural Brexiteer.

JB:         We like being Europeans, we like being able to go to Spain, go to Seville, go to Rome, we like all that. My grandad’s name was Daniel McConnell, he was an immigrant, I’m married to a Bengali Scottish girl, my son is going with a Kurdish refugee lassie, so I don’t interested (sic) in (word or words unclear) and (word unclear ‘Poles’?) it’s the future for your kids and yourself, and I think a bigger (word or words unclear) that Europe provides us with a safer future, than a tiny wee island.

JN:         So, on the Clyde where the great industries have (word unclear, sounds like ‘winnered’?) away in the last generation, there’s a feeling that wherever you stand on the question being put next month, that perhaps is not the most important question – it’s what government, any government can do to help these industries match the challenges of the time.  And maybe that’s a question that’s even more complicated than Remain or Leave.

 

8.41am Scotland and the Referendum

JUSTIN WEBB:   Let us go back to Scotland now, we’ve been hearing regularly throughout this morning’s programme from Jim who was there, the latest of our series of reports on the EU referendum debate as it is being seen in various parts of the country, and Jim’s in Glasgow again this morning, hello again Jim.

JAMES NAUGHTIE:          Yes, morning again, Justin, now the tenor of the European debate in Scotland is influence inevitably by referendum memories from 18 months or so ago, we’ve been here before.  And that helps to sharpen the sense that the campaign here is shaped by self-awareness in Scotland, sometimes maybe self-obsession to0.  Well, how’s that related to the persistent message from opinion surveys that Scotland is, in general, keener to remain in the rest of the UK?  Is it culture, is it economic self-interest, or what?  I’m joined by businessman Alastair MacMillan who’s part of the Leave group, Business for Britain, Scotland, and also by Dr Owen Dudley Edwards, a nationalist by inclination, an Irishman of course, who’s taught and written in Scotland for most of his life.  And Owen Dudley Edwards, what’s your explanation for, relatively speaking, an enthusiasm for the EU in Scotland that appears to be, at least at this juncture, greater than it is elsewhere in the UK?

DR OWEN DUDLEY EDWARDS:   Well, one thing we could take from the experience of Ireland, Ireland went into the EU and loved it, partly because it had spent so much time (word unclear, ‘on’ or ‘in’?)  Anglophobia.  Now, I don’t think the Scots dislike the English as much as the Irish did earlier in the 20th century, though they certainly don’t do now, but I do think that the Scots in certain ways find the English . . . rule, or rule from Westminster, something getting in the way of Scottish self-realisation.  And from this point of view, the EU intervenes in all sorts of ways which may be, the Scots may feel it’s to their advantage.  I mean, particularly this worked out when Winifred Ewing was elected early in 1979, after the SNP had lost . . .

JN:         (speaking over) As a member of the European Parliament.

ODE:     As a member of the European Parliament, so that from the beginning, in a sense, when Winifred Ewing went to the European Parliament it began to mean an awful lot more to the Scots.  For one thing, she was tremendously successful as MEP for the . . . Minister for the Highlands, er . . . MEP for the Highlands and Islands in getting a lot of grants and useful support for that part.

JN:         And it was at that moment that the SNP turned on its axis and . . . and instead of having been a . . . an anti-European party, winning seats in the early 70s on the basis that the Heath terms of accession were bad, it became a euro-enthusiast party and still is, European-enthusiast?

ODE:     Very much so indeed, and Winifred Ewing, of course, did a splendid job in publicity, one might be unkind to say, for herself, but she was carrying Europe with her.  She liked to be called Madame L’Ecosse – what was really important that she was Madame Europe.  When people thought about the European Parliament, they thought of Winifred Ewing.  And after her, and MEP as good as Professor Neil McCormick, the great, and unfortunately now recently dead, law professor at Edinburgh.

JN:         Well, indeed.  Alastair MacMillan, let me bring you in at this point.  From a business perspective you want to leave, you think it will be better, as a businessman who exports from Scotland around the world.  Do you accept that in Scotland, the tone of the debate is . . . is more tilted to Remain perhaps than it is south of the border?

ALASTAIR MACMILLAN: I do accept that there are . . . is probably at the moment a majority to Remain, but I don’t think that the Scots are, per se, less Eurosceptic.  I think you have to look at Scotland as part . . . as very much, although part of the United Kingdom, it has, you know, a very parochial type of approach to newspapers and things like that are very much lo— far more local, and are far more (fragment of word, unclear) the media  up here, an enormous number of local newspapers, which, for a lot of people, is their main source of news . . .

JN:         (speaking over) Yeah.

AM:       . . . still, which is extraordinary, compared to the rest of the UK. And I think, and, and the media’s very much more deferential.  And added to which the . . . you know, Euroscepticism has been seen as a sort of Tory . . . disease . . .

JN:         (speaking over) Yes.

AM:       . . . and, you know, in Scotland we’re not Tory (laughter in voice) you know . . .

JN:         (speaking over) Well, the Conservatives are now the second party at Holyrood of course, and one of the interesting things about that, and just to get you both in on this, is that Ruth Davidson, the leader, who had a very good campaign in the Holyrood parliament, erm, although she says she’s got all sorts of arguments against Brussels, she is leading her party . . . not united, of course, there are a lot of Conservatives who want to leave, but it’s more united than the party south of the border is.  What’s your explanation for that?

ODE:     Well, for one thing, Ruth Davidson (word or words unclear) herself a very, very practised campaigner, and really made very shrewd use of a general sense of gay liberation in Scotland, and has announced she’s getting married to her lesbian partner.  But I think people warm to her very strongly there, it seemed so unlike traditional Toryism . . .

JN:         (speaking over) Well, I often wonder what Sir Alec Douglas-Home would make of that.

ODE:     But it’s also, I think, very important to realise that Ruth Davidson campaigned virtually without ever mentioning David Cameron and the other people, if she could possibly avoid it.

JN:         Do you feel that this argument here, Alastair MacMillan, is tied up with the national question in a way that can’t be disentangled.

AM:       I think that people have felt that, you know, they’re told by Labour, they’re told by SNP in particular that Europe is a good thing, and they’ve, you know, if you look to the fishing community, you look to the agricultural community, they’ve actually had to deal with Europe first hand, you know they, they are thinking, you know, a Scottish farmer poll is saying 69% want to come out.  You know, the fishing people you know they’re very strong . . . it’s people, we have, up here, normal ordinary people have not had the experience of immigration from the EU which our southern cousins have had to the same extent, and I think . . .

JN:         (speaking over) That, that is, yeah, that’s true, and you think that influences it. A last question few Owen Dudley Edwards, it’s often said that if there were a vote to leave across the UK, particularly if, in Scotland the majority of votes had said ‘Remain’ that Nicola Sturgeon would be unable to resist pressure in her party for a second referendum, do you believe that?

ODE:     Yes, very much so, I mean, it has always been (fragment of word, unclear) implicit, because the whole thing was the referendum was carried against independence on the assumption, without anybody (word or words unclear) too much, that matters would remain as they were.  For the whole ballgame to be changed by the UK getting out of the European Union, against Scotland’s wishes, would make it overwhelming demands I think for independence, it would be very difficult for anybody to resist it.

JN:         We, we shall see what happens after the 23rd, Alastair MacMillan, Owen Dudley Edwards, thank you both very much.

 

Photo by alasdairmckenzie

BBC1 NEWS ‘MAKE YOUR MIND UP’ FEATURES STRONGLY FAVOUR ‘REMAIN’ SIDE:

BBC1 NEWS ‘MAKE YOUR MIND UP’ FEATURES STRONGLY FAVOUR ‘REMAIN’ SIDE:

The BBC1 News at Ten flagship bulletin is carrying a series of reports which it says are about ‘asking about the factors that are likely to influence the way people vote’. They are obviously intended to inform the audience’s choice, and of course, the BBC will insist that they are balanced.  Analysis of the six reports broadcast as part of the strand between Sunday May 22 and Friday May 28 suggests very strongly otherwise.  In order to understand what is being presented, News-watch has dissected each report and looked at the presenter comment, and the ‘exit’ and ‘remain points’ made. The full transcripts are included at the end.

In summary points of concern that emerged were:

The reports stressed repeatedly that EU money was vital and beneficial to aspects of the UK economy – in building new sports facilities, and in stimulating business growth and revival in stricken economic areas.

On the other side of the coin, there was no explanation that ‘EU money’ actually derives from the UK taxpayer.  A fundamental part of the ‘exit’ side’s concerns about the EU was thus omitted from analysis. The only mention of its true origin was in passing from a programme contributor – a Welsh hill farmer who supported Brexit.

Northern Ireland, according to the BBC reporter who filed this edition, could return on Brexit to a regime of tiresome and economy-damaging border checks and the re-introduction of customs houses on roads throughout the province. It was stressed that ‘EU peace money’ had been strongly beneficial.

But there was no explanation that travel and border arrangements in Ireland are governed not at all by the EU but by bilateral UK-Eire arrangements under the Common Travel Area, which has existed for almost a century.  It was also not sufficiently explained that barbed wire border checks were introduced only to deal with security issues during the Troubles.

Analysis of the various vox pops (a central feature of all the reports) shows that broadly, those giving reasons for ‘remain’ were edited so that they included a wider and more coherent  range of views such as: the EU provided more opportunities for jobs and travel, that it promoted diversity, better security, that introducing border security was ‘completely insane’,  that the EU was not broken, that  being outside the EU would make the UK ‘very vulnerable’, that the UK was too small and no longer had strong enough armed forces to stand alone

‘Out’ vox pops points tended to be shorter and narrower in scope. They included: that the UK’s influence was waning in an expanding EU, that the EU had taken millions (of pounds) from the UK, that being in the EU allowed in too many immigrants and led to too much Polish food being in Tesco, that jobs were being lost to immigrants.

The vox pop imbalance was most pronounced in Mark Easton’s features from Eastbourne and Knowsley.  Each was very strongly weighted to the ‘remain’ perspective.  In Eastbourne, the contributions of the younger supporters of ‘remain’ were edited to suggest that the EU was vital to employment opportunities, a non-prejudiced outlook (more detailed analysis in the next section).  In Knowsley – which Easton said was likely by virtue of demographics to be among the stronger supporters of exit – he edited the contributions so that the ‘remain’; side were concerned about security, economic viability, because they liked being part of Europe, because the UK needed  to combine with others to reduce it vulnerability, and because being in ‘Europe’ was more comfortable. Those in favour of ‘out’ only said that they wanted to get Poles out because they got everything, and because there were too many foreigners who took jobs, Easton summed this up as ‘clear anxiety about the perceived threat from outsiders’.

The more detailed named interviewee contributions in the editions about Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland also tended to favour the ‘remain’ side. Barry McGuigan, speaking from a sports facility paid for (it was said) with EU peace money in Northern Ireland, claimed that joining the EU had been strongly beneficial for Eire, and felt on balance that the UK was part of Europe   The owner of a whisky distillery in Islay said that the EU provided an essential market for its product, that ‘exit’ would damage jobs and take the local economy back to ‘the dark ages’.  In Wales, a university lecture who had published research showing that the EU contribution to Wales was £79 per head, argued that local people did not appreciate that and were focused instead on immigration.

In these three editions’ the exit’ side from named contributors enjoyed much less prominence. From Ireland the DUP leader made what came across as an almost meaningless observation about border control; in Wales, a hill farmer said that EU subsidies were actually UK money and that exit would lead to less regulation; and in Scotland a small business owner argued that the UK could survive outside the EU. All these contributions were significantly shorter than the ‘remain’ contributions.

REMAIN

The arguments for ‘remain’ on an edition-by-edition basis were:

May 22:  Reporter Chris Buckler suggested that ‘out’ could lead to the re-imposition of customs borders and Northern Ireland-Eire roads, with associated delays and security checks reminiscent of those in the times of the Troubles. He stressed that Northern Ireland had benefitted from ‘peace money’. It had helped build a sports facility. Former boxer Barry McGuigan, in the sports centre, said that Eire had benefitted ‘enormously’ from being part of Europe. His ‘feeling’ also told him that the UK should be part of Europe.  A vox pop said the idea of re-introducing borders was ‘completely insane’.

May 23: Mark Easton said that polls showed that 70 percent of the under 25s wanted to stay in the EU.  In an Eastbourne college, one student said that she could not think of a single thing that the UK would lose by remaining or by the huge influx of migrants, another accepted that immigration ‘could cause problems’ but immediately countered that immigrants had helped ‘our country so much’, another supported ‘diversity’ encouraged by the EU, Another said he was very comfortable in the EU and it was not broken.  In the final sequence, a student ‘not wanting to sound rude’ said young people’s ideas about Europe were more valid because they were going to be here longer than the Over 50s, and students wanted to go to Europe, and travel in Europe, and study in Europe.  Another student contended that their chances of going to Europe as teachers – which they wanted to do – would be jeopardised is there was exit. Europe would also not be ‘so accessible’.

May 24:  Huw Edwards said that an academic report indicated that Wales benefitted by £79 per head from the EU. Reporter Hywel Griffith said that since 2000, millions of pounds had come to towns like Ebbw Vale from the EU, and there were signs of spending ‘everywhere’.  Dr Daniel Evans said that people in wales did not seem to be aware of the amount of money received by Wales from the EU and were instead talking about issues such as immigration.    A car business owner warned that uncertainty over the EU was bad for business and asked why a marriage that was working should end.

May 26: Sarah Smith noted first that polls showed 75% of Scots wanted to remain in the EU. She said that on Islay, the ferry docks had been completely rebuilt with millions of pounds from the EU.  She noted that the EU now bought 50% of the output from a revived local whisky distillery which was providing ‘much needed jobs’.  She added that the distillery owner believed that leaving the EU would have dire consequences.  The owner then said that an exit from the EU would be a ‘return to the dark ages’ that did not bear thinking about. The EU had lifted the local economy in a ‘a very dramatic way’.  Smith said after his contribution that he also believed that uncertainty about the EU could delay investment and cost jobs’. In Edinburgh, a remain campaigner emphasised that Scots were happy with the ‘third identity’ that EU membership gave them.

May 27: In vox pops in Knowsley, Mark Easton, the first contributor wanted to stay in for economic reasons, and the second for security.  The third liked being part of Europe and did not want to leave.  He found another vox pop who did not want to leave ‘because it had all changed now’. Someone else argued – in more depth – that because the UK was a ‘small unit in the world’ being alone meant that fighting was not possible, ‘I think it makes us vulnerable’.   The final vox pop agreed that the UK was a small country compared in square footage to the likes of Spain. Britain used to have a strong army, navy and air force, but now staying in ‘makes me feel comfortable’.

LEAVE

The equivalent analysis of ‘exit’ arguments was:

May 22, Arelene Foster, leader of the DUP in Northern Ireland, said:  “We have such good relations now that we will be able to build on that, and I don’t foresee watchtowers going back in South Armagh, if that’s what the question is… Well, as I say, there are borders all across Europe and those things will be negotiated if there is to be an Out vote.”

May 23: In Eastbourne, in vox pops, members of an Over 50s club said the EU’s influence in the EU was reducing because there were now so many members and another said that too many immigrants were coming to the EU. A third said the EU had taken ‘millions from us’. A student in separate vox pops accepted that ’immigrants could cause problems’.

May 24: Bridget Rowlands, a hill farmer, said that she received thousands of pounds in subsidies from the EU but this was British money that should not go through the EU in the first place. She said that EU meant many rules and regulations and did not feel that farmers benefitted from them.  Two vox pop contributors in Ebbw Vale said that immigration was a threat to jobs that should be ‘tightened down’.

May 25: A Broadway resident noted that an issue was that there were ‘two long isles’ of Polish food in the local Tesco, and that the change had been a revolution rather than an evolution (but said he was undecided in terms of the vote).

May 26: In Edinburgh, an exit campaigner said the EU rules prevented the UK having a say, and the EU had appropriated a lot of powers in such a way that it prevented Britons having what they wanted.  A Glasgow car parts business owner said he wanted out and wanted to end the notion that leaving would mean pulling up the drawbridge.

May 27: In vox pops opinions included (very briefly) wanting to pull up the drawbridge, wanting to be out for no specific reason (twice) , wanting to get ‘all the English in here’ and all the Poles out, a fear that immigrants were taken jobs, and ‘jobs were being thrown at them’.

 

BBC NEWS AT TEN TRANCRIPTS – MAY 22 to May 27, 2016.

May 22, 10.49pm – Northern Ireland

MH:       What would next month’s EU referendum mean for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to have a land border with another European country? In the first of a series of reports hearing views from around the UK – our Ireland correspondent Chris Buckler has been travelling along that border. Chris?

CHRIS BUCKLER:              Mishal, I’m standing right at the border, not that there is much sign of it today. Of course, it was very different during the years of Northern Ireland’s troubles when there would have been checkpoints, often queues of cars. And Leave and Stay campaigners have been involved in a heated debate about what would happen if the UK were to leave the EU. Could it mean a return of checkpoints and the end of completely open roads? As it is, the easiest way of knowing whether you’re in the north or the south is by looking at the speed limit signs. In the Republic, they’re in kilometres per hour, in the North they’re in miles per hour. And I’ve been taking a journey along that border, and I should warn you my report does contain some flashing images. Fermanagh sits at the edge of the UK. There is a point in this land where Northern Ireland ends and the Republic begins. But could that invisible border soon mark the line where the UK meets the EU? What looks like a haphazard red line on that map is actually the border and on this one road, as you’re travelling down it, you move in and out of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland several times. In fact, coming up here we’re just going back into Fermanagh, back into the UK. But during the violent years of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, there was huge security where the two countries met, and some are asking whether checkpoints would return if the UK was to vote to leave Europe.

ARLENE FOSTER MLA First Minister of Northern Ireland: We have such good relations now that we will be able to build on that, and I don’t foresee watchtowers going back in South Armagh, if that’s what the question is.

CB:        Nobody means watchtowers, but we need some kind of checkpoints, or something that says there’s a physical border there?

AF:         Well, as I say, there are borders all across Europe and those things will be negotiated if there is to be an Out vote.

CB:        Northern Ireland’s First Minister is a supporter of the Leave campaign. But other parties at Stormont are worried about the potential impact of an exit on the economy here, and the government in the Republic share some of those concerns. Approximately £1 billion of goods and services is traded between the UK and Ireland every week. Towns along this shared border have benefited from European peace money. It’s helped to build among other things this sports facility in Clones in County Monaghan. The town’s most famous son is former world boxing champion Barry McGuigan. But in the fight over Europe, he’s not sure which corner to be in.

BARRY McGUIGAN:        The south has benefited enormously from being part of Europe. I’m still relatively undecided about whether I now live in the UK or whether they should be part of Europe or not, and none of the politicians have convinced me, that’s the interesting thing. But my gut feeling tells me that the UK should be part of Europe.

CB:        Politically and practically, checkpoints on Irish roads might not be an option, but if Britain was outside of the EU and the Irish Republic within, migration controls might be necessary. Currently, you don’t need a passport to travel between these islands. But with modern security concerns, some have suggested that that could change.

VOX POP MALE:                             I think you should have to show passports regardless. You’re on a ferry, it could be anybody getting on this ferry. It could be terrorists getting on the ferry.

CB:        But other travellers, used to crossing seas and borders, don’t like the idea of new restrictions.

VOX POP FEMALE:          Where we live borders is completely . . . it’s completely insane, like again to re-establish a border.

CB:        Britain and Ireland have always sat apart from the rest of Europe geographically, but this referendum is about where the UK sits politically, and the final decision will make a difference across both islands. Chris Buckler, BBC News.

 

May 23, 10.28pm – Referendum Generation Gap

HE:        Well, with just a month to go to that EU referendum – we’re asking about the factors that are likely to influence the way people vote – and one of those factors, certainly, is age. Recent polls suggest that 70 per cent of those aged under 25 want to remain in the EU. It’s very different for those aged over 65 – nearly 60 per cent of those said they’d vote to leave. Our home editor Mark Easton is in Eastbourne with more on the generational gap, Mark?

MARK EASTON: Yeah, well this is a town, Huw, that likes to look out past the pier and across the water to its continental neighbours. And how people react to their neighbours really does depend as you say on their generation. It’s interesting, isn’t it?  The generation that voted us into Europe, the EEC back in 1975 now largely wants to vote out and the generation that’s not known anything different wants to vote in. I’ve been trying to find out why. On England’s southern shore Eastbourne is a mix of young and old. Some parts of the town are full of student digs and in others the average age is over 70. At an over 50s club a creative writing class where every single member tells me they’ll be voting to leave the EU. Where you live, John, I think what, 80-odd people, overwhelming support for Out?

JOHN:   I think basically they probably want to get the England that they knew when they were younger.

VOX POP FEMALE:          We are diminishing with our say, we are just one, first of all we were one in eight or nine, now we’re one in 32 (sic), we’re going to be one in 50, we’re going to be one in 100. We’ve got to scale back.

VOX POP MALE:              I think it’s ridiculous that the EU have dictated to us over immigration, that we’ve got no control over our borders, that so many immigrants are coming in. Many of them illegally.

ME:       Across town students dance to a different tune. Among these trainee physical education teachers, every single person tells me they’ll be voting to stay in the EU. I think your generation appears to be more comfortable with diversity, people moving around? VOX POP FEMALE 2:   Times have changed from the way that our grandads and grandmas’, like, generation, I think, like, diversity has become more, like, accepted.

VOX POP MALE 2:           I don’t do the same things as my grandma used to do back in the day. I just get on with it, you know,

VOX POP MALE 3:           If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, I’m a very proud Brit, but I’m very comfortable within the EU.

ME:       There is an argument that huge numbers of Europeans coming to the UK will change our identity somehow?

VOX POP FEMALE 3:       I can’t think of one British thing that we have to lose.

ME:       Control of our borders?

VPF3:    Yeah, I suppose, you do have immigrants who can cause problems and everyone are worried about, but then again you have the immigrants who come in who have contributed to our country so much.

ME:       With such different views on Britain’s relationship with his neighbours across the water we decided to invite representatives of both groups to meet here on Eastbourne’s historic pier. The generation gap is wide. Can it be closed? We took the search for common ground to the pier’s tearoom.

VPM:     These Europeans are taking billions of money, why would you want to stay in with them?

VOX POP FEMALE 4:       I think it is a matter of accessibility for us. A lot of us are training to be teachers and would like to be able to go and teach abroad and we feel that if we do come out then our chance of that would be jeopardised and it would not be so accessible.

VOX POP MALE 4:           They are interfering with our way of life. We didn’t ask them to but they are doing it.

VPF:      Everybody keeps coming over to us and we are going over to them, your jobs wouldn’t be there.

VPF3:    I don’t mean to sound rude but we are going to be here a little bit longer than you are so therefore surely we should have more say on it because we are the ones who like to go to Europe and travel in Europe, who might study in Europe, so therefore I believe that our views are a little bit more valid than yours.

ME:       But actually older people are much more likely to vote in the referendum than the young, so their voice will be louder. Young or old, it’s who takes part that may well decide Britain’s future relationship with its neighbours over the water. Mark Easton, BBC News, Eastbourne.

HE:        A quick reminder that Newsnight is coming on BBC Two, with a special programme asking what kind of country the UK would be if there was a vote to leave the EU.

 

May 24, 10.27pm – Wales and the Referendum

HUW EDWARDS:             Much of the debate in the EU referendum campaign centres on the cost of membership. A new report by the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University suggests that in 2014 there was an overall net benefit to Wales of around £79 per head. The Remain campaign says this would be at risk if Britain left the EU – a claim that is hotly disputed by those in favour of Leaving. Our Wales correspondent, Hywel Griffith, has been sampling opinion in South Wales.

HYWEL GRIFFITH:          From verdant hills to slowly greening slag heaps, a journey across the Heads of the Valleys Road reveals a lot about Wales’ past, but what about the future?

SAT NAV:            Proceed along the A465.

HG:        While it’s argued Wales gets more out of the EU than it puts in, the decision facing every voter is far from straight-forward. Bridget Rowlands farms above the Swansea Valley. Every year she receives thousands of pounds in subsidies via Brussels, but she argues the money is really British and shouldn’t go through the EU in the first place.

BRIDGET ROWLANDS Farmer:    So, obviously, the more area you’ve got, the bigger the payment is.

HG:        For Bridget, the EU also means a lot of rules and regulations. She’s not convinced farmers really benefit.

BR:        My payment is down considerably this year and, by 2019, it’s going to be down considerably more. So the amount of money that I’m receiving, if I’m in or out, it’s not going to have a significant impact upon me.

HG:        Head east and you come to some of the most deprived areas, not just in Wales, but in the entire European Union. Since the turn of the century, millions of pounds have come via the EU to towns like Ebbw Vale, which has lost its steelworks. There’s signs of spending everywhere, but that doesn’t mean voters here are desperate to stay in.

DR DANIEL EVANS Cardiff University:      The issues that people have been talking about, when they’re talking about the EU referendum, don’t seem to be about Welsh issues. They don’t seem to really seem aware of the amount of money that Wales has received from the EU. They really seem to be focussing more British wide issues – such as immigration, security and so on.

HG:        Only 2% of people here were born outside the UK but, for the voters we spoke to, immigration is the key issue.

VOX POP FEMALE:          The main concerns are people taking jobs and coming in and, with all the threats at the moment, it’s worrying because you don’t know who’s coming in and they’re not being vetted, and stuff like that.

VOX POP MALE:              I think we’re far too lenient and lax with immigration. I think it should be tightened down.

VOX POP FEMALE 2:       It probably has an impact but, obviously, you’ve got to have, you know, immigration and, you know, people coming in. You know, obviously, us going out to other parts of the EU, you know, so we can get jobs.

HG:        Over in Abergavenny, at the end of the road, they’re desperate to keep every avenue open. The boss of this car parts company says he’s already had customers, like BMW and Audi in Germany, asking him what’s going to happen – just the uncertainty is bad for business.

GEOFF HANCOCK Managing Director, NSA Ltd:   I think it’s the fear of the unknown. There’s a lot of ideas out there what could happen. But the fact is, we’re inside a marriage now which is working and why get divorced when there’s no need to?

HG:        Wales can’t choose its own direction in this referendum, it’s the UK as a whole that will decide whether staying in or leaving is the right route to take. Hywel Griffith, BBC News.

 

May 25, 10.27pm – Undecided Voters in Worcestershire

HUW EDWARDS:             Voters will go to the polls, four weeks tomorrow, in the referendum on Britain’s future in the EU and recent polls suggest that as many as a quarter of voters may not have decided yet whether to Remain or Leave. Our home editor, Mark Easton, is in Worcestershire tonight on the trail of the undecided voters. Let’s join him now.

MARK EASTON: Welcome to Worcestershire Huw, King John is buried in the cathedral behind me, and just across the city of Worcester is the scene of a famous victory for the parliamentarians in the English Civil War which is why the tourist brochures like to call it the home of British liberty and democracy.  But when it comes to the EU referendum, Worcestershire is divided.  All the local MPs are Conservatives, but they can’t agree on which way to vote, so I’ve been exploring what I call the agony of the undecideds. The jewel of the Cotswolds, the village of Broadway epitomises what JB Priestley called “the most English landscape, Conservative, with large ‘C’ and small it is an ancient place with a polished patina of self-assurance and conviction.” But when it comes to the EU referendum, resident Tories, like Peter Reading, find themselves undecided. His daily newspaper, and his party of course, seem equally unclear. Outside the Broadway Hotel, I met Peter and his wife Joan, among the 20% of Conservative voters who say they still haven’t made up their mind.

JOAN READING:              There are people on either side, on the yes and the no, who you admire their views and yet suddenly they’re antagonistic views and it’s who do you believe? Which side do you go for?

PETER READING:             I think my default position is probably to go out, but my head tells me that perhaps I should stay in, but I want to see the argument persuade me to stay in.

ME:       You don’t feel that? No. What about you, Joan?

JR:         It’s, I think, as Peter said, it’s almost a head and heart situation. You know, I’m British, I’m proud of being British and the things that we stand for.

PR:         Let me give you an example. If I go to our largest Tesco’s here, there are two long aisles full of Polish food. I believe that countries will always evolve but, at the moment, it is more like a revolution.

JR:         You know, why couldn’t we have some economists do a for and against without being biased? It’s getting . . .

ME:       You want the facts, don’t you?

JR:         I want the facts!

ME:       Clear, unambiguous, unbiased.

JR:         Yeah, I’m a scientists. I want the facts.

ME:       It’s a refrain you hear over and over again. People say they want more facts. They want the arguments clearly set out. And that’s probably why politicians are reporting large numbers turning up at village and town hall meetings and referendum debates, far more than at the general election. In the Cap and Gown, in central Worcester, the saloon bar is packed for a debate on the EU. There are supporters from both camps and the undecideds are here, too.

VOX POP FEMALE:          I think what’s difficult is dealing with all the nonsense and all the facts, (makes ‘quotes’ symbol with fingers) ‘facts’ that are coming out on both sides and I find I can’t believe any of them.

VOX POP MALE:              But I’m open-minded to change, if I get a sensible argument and so far I have not seen a logical, sensible argument.

VOX POP FEMALE 2:       You know, none of us have voted yet, we still can all be swayed in either direction, can’t we?

IN CAMPAIGNER:            I think we’re definitely better where we are in the EU.

OUT CAMPAIGNER:        We, from the Get Out campaign, do not wish to join the single market. Trade deals don’t sell goods . . .

ME:       Normally in politics people stick to well-trodden, tribal paths, but the EU debate has left many feeling they’re lost in the jungle.

CHAIR:  In favour of the motion, that being in the EU is good for business?

ME:       On the night, Remain narrowly won the debate, but many were still undecided.

VOX POP FEMALE3:        I don’t know. I’m… I’ve seen a lot of talking heads and I’d like to look at raw data.

VOX POP MALE 2:           People say one thing, people say another thing and you never know who’s telling the truth or who’s right.

ME:       Voters are having to do their own homework, consider the arguments, test the claims. Whatever the result, the process has at least been refreshing for our democracy. Mark Easton, BBC News, Worcestershire.

 

May 26, 10.21pm –  Hebrides

 SARAH SMITH:  In [the BBC TV debate from Glasgow, aired earlier], the Leave side then went on to argue that the money saved from not paying contributions into the European Union could be spent here in the UK on public services. Now, they were arguing about issues that matter across the UK. If you look at opinion polls here in Scotland, it’s very interesting: consistently about two thirds of voters here say they would like to remain in the EU. And I’ve been round the country asking voters what issues matter most to them, starting off in the Hebrides. Navigating through the swell of arguments in the EU debate looks a little different in Scotland’s more remote communities. On the Isle of Islay, the ferry docks at a harbour entirely rebuilt with millions of pounds of European funding.  And Europe consumes about half of the island’s exports of Scotch whisky. A recent surge in sales has seen the Bruichladdich Distillery brought out of mothballs, and it’s now producing over a million bottles a year, providing much-needed jobs.

CARL REAVEY Bruichladdich Distillery In here you’ve got the sweet . . . (word unclear) from the . . .

SS:         They’re convinced leaving the EU could have dire consequences for an industry the island relies on.

CR:        It has really lifted the local economy in a very dramatic way. And the thought that it might actually be threatened in some way is really quite scary, and the idea that we may return to those dark ages, which many, many, many people on this island will remember, doesn’t bear thinking about.

SS:         Whisky is one of Scotland’s biggest exports. Bruichladdich admit they don’t know what would happen to sales if we leave the EU, but say even that uncertainty could delay investment and cost jobs. Of course, people won’t choose how to vote based purely on whether or not they think EU membership is good for business. Less than two years after the independence referendum here in Scotland, voters know this is a decision which is not just about economics. The EU referendum also raises questions of identity and sovereignty. Voters must look into their hearts as well as their heads. In Edinburgh, people who are campaigning on each side to leave and to remain, think perceptions of national identity may help explain how Scots will vote.

LAURIE PRESSWOOD Remain Campaigner:           We’re very used to having a sort of split identity. So, you know, we would identify ourselves as being both Scottish and also British, which, I know they’re two quite separate identities, so I think perhaps we’re more accepting of having this third European identity.

SS:         Whilst those who want to leave feel they have lost control of the decisions that govern their lives.

MORVEN ALLISON Leave Campaigner:    There’s a lot of things that we don’t get our say in because of the EU having their own rules. Like, we’ve thought of, like, tons of things that we would like to control over here, but they take them over to the European Union and they’re like, ‘no, you can’t have that, you can’t have that.’ And it’s not . . . it’s not correct.

SS:         There are plenty of sceptics in Scotland. In what remains of the country’s industrial belt near Glasgow, workers worry about immigration and its impact on jobs.

ALASTAIR MACMILLAN: These are all fork lift pumps, principally for Japanese trucks . . .

SS:         In a factory full of hydraulic pumps, many of which are destined for Europe, worries about the economic impact of leaving the EU are dismissed. Trade will continue, they’re certain.

AM:       I think we’re to get out of this perception that if we leave the EU, we’re pulling up a drawbridge at Calais and we’re saying, ‘Right, we’re off on our own.’ That’s not going to happen, that’s . . . pragmatically, realistically, that is not going to happen.

SS:         Intriguingly, the parts of Scotland most eager to leave the UK and become independent are also the parts most likely to vote to remain in the EU. If they do so in large enough numbers, it could be Scottish votes that keeps Britain in. If that does happen, if there’s a tight vote, and it is seen to be a majority of Scots who voted to stay in the EU that keeps the whole of the UK inside, that could cause repercussions throughout the United Kingdom, there could be resentment about that. But if it goes the other way, if there’s a vote to leave, but a majority of Scots did vote to remain, well, Alex Salmond the former leader of the SNP, he said at this debate here tonight, he thinks that that would trigger a second referendum on Scottish independence, that within the two years in which Britain was negotiating to leave the EU, there would be another vote here in Scotland as to whether or not Scotland should leave the UK. The repercussions of this may be felt for quite some time to come.

HE:        Indeed, Sarah, thanks very much. Sarah Smith our Scotland editor in Glasgow.

 

May 27, 10.20pm – England and Englishness (Knowsley)

FIONA BRUCE:   Now, four weeks from today, we’ll know the answer. Will the UK be staying in or leaving the European Union? All this week, we have been hearing people’s views across the UK about the referendum. Tonight, we’re focusing on England and Englishness. Our Home Editor, Mark Easton, reports from Knowsley on Merseyside.

MARK EASTON: There’s nowhere in Britain as white, English and Christian as Knowsley. Immigration has barely touched this area. Only 2% of residents were born outside the British Isles. But it’s also the second most deprived neighbourhood in England, a place anxious about change. Experts have looked at all the numbers and concluded that this area should be among the most Eurosceptic in the country. But is it?

VOX POP MALE:              I personally think we should stay in.

ME:       Do you?

VPF:      For economic viability.

VOX POP FEMALE:          The country is getting a bit too overpopulated. And we need to, erm  . . .

ME:       Pull up the drawbridge?

VPF:      Yeah, 100%, that’s the word. (laughs)

VOX POP MALE 2: I’m going to vote stay in.

ME:       Really?

VPM2:  Yes. Purely for security reasons.

VOX POP MALE 3:           I like being part of Europe. I don’t want to be out of it.

ME:       You’re going to get a vote in a few weeks, which way do you think it will be, in or out?

VOX POP MALE 4:           Out.

VOX POP FEMALE 2:       Out!

VPM4:  Out. And sooner, the bloody better! (laughs)

ME:       It is only a snapshot, but it does seem opinions are more nuanced than simple analysis of the polls suggests. The referendum issues are complicated and disputed, far removed from the realities of people struggling to get by in one of the poorest and least-educated communities in the country. How do you feel about the European Union referendum?

VOX POP FEMALE 3:       What does that mean?

ME:       Really?

VPF3:    (laughter in voice) I don’t know what that means.

ME:       The polls suggest that places like this are more likely to want to leave the EU and there is clear anxiety about the perceived threat from outsiders.

VOX POP FEMALE 4:       My opinion is, get all the English in here and get all the Polish out. We can’t even get a house, the Polish get everything before we get them.

VPF3:    There’s more foreigners coming into our country and it’s hard enough for us to get jobs, but they seem to be getting jobs thrown at them, where we can’t get a job in our own country.

ME:       So you, you’d like to leave the EU?

VPF3:    No, I wouldn’t like to leave the EU, but what I’m saying is, it’s all changed now, hasn’t it?

ME:       It is a hard one, isn’t it?

VPF3:    Yeah, it is proper hard.

ME:       It is proper hard. The fear of change from being in the EU against the fear of change from being out. English nationalism tends to mean support for the Leave campaign. It is easier to love England than the EU. But in The Bulldog pub down the road, again, it’s not quite as simple as that.

VOX POP FEMALE 5:       I think we’re a small area, small unit in the world. I’m not sure that being alone, we could fight anything. I think it makes us vulnerable.

VOX POP MALE 5:           We’re a small country, maybe in size of square footage compared to the likes of say Spain. We are British. We are a strong nation. We used to have a strong army. We used to have a strong air force and a strong navy.

VPF5:    But I’m not sure going out and staying in there is going to be that much difference, actually.

VPM5:  So why vote for staying in?

VPF5:    Because it makes me feel comfortable.

VPF5:    Yeah, that’s your opinion. That’s fine.

ME:       What the people of Knowsley seem to be telling us is that if they vote in the referendum, it won’t be based on class or party allegiance, but on what makes them feel more secure, and the reason it’s so hard to call is that they know both options carry risk. Mark Easton, BBC News, Knowsley.

Mark Mardell wins Vince Cable award for balanced reporting as Germans warn of Brexit ‘nightmare’

Mark Mardell wins Vince Cable award for balanced reporting as Germans warn of Brexit ‘nightmare’

Mark Mardell, presenter of Radio 4’s The World This Weekend, has been on his travels again, this time to Berlin.  His purpose was to find out whether Germany – in his words the country that ‘ran Europe’ – would treat a UK exit from the EU with kid gloves or a mailed fist.  The structuring of the report left no doubt: Germany would be displeased.

His analysis was pitched in such a way that it prompted his studio guest, the former Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable – arguably one of the most staunchly pro-EU figures  in the UK – to say that the conversation he’d had in Germany was ‘very balanced and very good’.  The ex-business secretary added for good measure:

The only real, heavy endorsement of the Brexit position came from that ex— that, er, the MEP from the extreme right wing German party, which is not an endorsement I would want.

What was that ‘conversation’ as edited and presented by Mardell?

He spoke first to the Reuters Brussels correspondent, who confirmed that there had been secret talks by the EU to deal with Brexit and to head of the (associated) rise in ‘far right’ parties.

Next stop was Artur Fischer, CEO of the Berlin Stock Exchange, who warned that if the UK decided to leave the EU, it would not enjoy the economic benefits that it currently enjoyed.

Christian Ehler, a senior MEP from Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat party, warned that a European parliamentary report he had coordinated warned that a British exit would lead to a ‘nightmare’ – ’Mr Putin will laugh his butt off’.

Mardell noted that Ehler had also worked for Biotech, a multinational corporation, and asked for his reaction to Brexit in that capacity, too.   His response was that it would be ‘a disaster’ and ‘very messy’ and warned that jobs and big contracts involving companies such as Rolls-Royce in the supply of Airbus would be at risk.

The next interviewee was Daniela Schwarzer, director of what Mardell said was the ‘German Marshall Fund’s Europe programme’. What he did not say was this was an organisation set up in 1972 to foster stronger relations between the EU and the United States.

Schwarzer conceded that the UK might still be part of the Single Market, but warned that it would not be involved in the political decision-making of the EU. Prompted by Mardell, she also warned that it was important to stop (for the rest of the EU) the idea that this was ‘an easy game’ and to make it clear that a ‘visible cost’ was attached to leaving the EU.

Next up was MEP Beatrix van Storch, vice chair of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party. This, stressed Mardell, was ‘Germany’s hard right party’, though he did not explain any of their policies or why they had earned that label.

Van Storch said first that from the German taxpayers’ point of view, she wanted the UK to stay in the UK because it was the second largest contributor to the EU budget. But she added that on the other hand, she wanted the UK to leave, to show that it could survive and not everything would break down. She asserted that it would be possible to trade with Europe without being part of the EU. To suggest otherwise was ‘complete rubbish’.

Mardell chose not to explore this further. Instead he asked whether the political elites would react by saying that other countries could not follow their lead ‘like the Front National in France…’ you are not asking Germany to leave but they would not want to…anything that would encourage you either, I guess’

Van Storch replied that any attempted punishments would only encourage ‘these movements’.

Mardell then – without explaining specifically why – spoke to two students, who he said had studied in London and Paris as well as Berlin. His point was presumably therefore that they had balanced views about the EU and ‘Europe’.  One duly said it would be a shame if Britain left the EU because it was ‘very valuable’. The other was worried that British exit would lead to the need for the re-introduction of visas.

The next interviewee was Artur Fischer again. This time he warned that nationalism was not a good thing. British exit would lead to Germany becoming nationalistic again, and that would lead to the ‘thin layer’ of civilisation collapsing. The EU created the chance of compromise; without it he warned that Germany would instead look for ‘a winning’.

Mardell’s final port of call was Juergen Maier, whom he introduced as MD of Siemens. What he did not say is that the company is possibly one of the most pro-EU businesses in any EU country, and that it has been warning for many years about any form of Euroscepticism.

Mardell asked him what sort of a deal the UK would get outside the EU, and then carefully coaxed him to spell out each of the various obstacles. He made no attempt to be adversarial.  Maier warned that barriers to the imposition of tariffs would first be taken down, then that new rules that disadvantaged the UK would be written – without the UK being round the table – then that German companies, along with those in the rest of the EU, would find it more difficult to invest in the UK, and finally that it would take much longer than two years to negotiate any new arrangements.

In summary in this report from Berlin, Mardell produced two senior industrialists, one senior politician and two students to say that Brexit would be a more or less unmitigated disaster and nightmare for the UK and would lead to the rise of nationalism and collapse of civilisation. Against this torrent of Europhilia, he produced one AfD politician and stressed that she was from the ‘hard right’.  At various points in the report, he stressed how much of a threat the ‘hard right’ was seen to be and how the EU was fighting to prevent forces such as the Front National in France.

Mardell’s report was bookended at the beginning and end with discussion involving Vince Cable and Gisela Stuart MP from the Vote Leave faction.   Mardell first put it to her that a Vote Leave letter warning about levels of immigration did not say how exit would allow better control of the problem. She said a new points system with the people’s consent would be devised at Westminster that better reflected the economic needs of the country.

His next question was whether there was any unease about the growing attacks on David Cameron. Stuart responded that he had not spelled out the consequences of remain or immigration at current levels.   After the Berlin report, Mardell suggested that the UK would not get the sort of trade deal it enjoyed through being in the EU.  Stuart replied that the euro was pulling the EU down and Britain was best outside.  Finally, he asked her if British exit would be the end of the EU and whether that would be a good thing. She replied that the UK departure would allow closer integration within the remaining EU. Britain needed to get out because current performance in the Eurozone was dragging the economy down.

Before the Berlin report sequence, Vince Cable – in response to Stuart’s points about immigration – argued that the UK had signed up to free movement under Margaret Thatcher and that all reports from economists showed that immigration was good for the economy. He attacked the Conservative party for making promises about levels of immigration it could not keep.  He emphasised that immigrants’ contributions to the UK were overwhelmingly positive and that they swelled the tax income of the Treasury. In the final sequence, he reinforced Maier’s warning that exit would generate very serious uncertainty, and, in turn, a fall in living standards and business opportunities. He warned that leaving the EU would take the UK out of the single market ‘which was absolutely fundamental to our manufacturing industry and the traded sector of the economy’. He concluded:

it’s completely unnecessary to walk away from that, with all the uncertainty and all the damage that that will create.

Overall, this The World This Weekend sequence had superficially reasonably balanced contributions from Gisela Stuart and Vince Cable. But in between was a report from Berlin by Mardell that presented with only minor tempering, a full-on case for ‘remain’.  Those who disagreed were described as ‘hard right’. In that context, Stewart’s arguments for exit were totally swamped by Mardell’s overt bias.

 

Transcript of The World This Weekend, Sunday 29 May 2016

Bulletins

DIANA SPEED:      The infighting within the Conservative party has intensified with senior MPs and the Leave campaign making personal attacks on David Cameron and some Eurosceptic backbenchers suggesting there could be a vote of no confidence in him after the referendum. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove accused Mr Cameron of corroding public trust by failing to meet a promise to cut immigration. Here’s our political correspondent Susana Mendonça.

SUSANA MENDONÇA:       The Leave campaign say this spat is about the UK’s ability to limit EU immigration, but the sight of two senior Conservatives Boris Johnson and Michael Gove accusing the prime minister in such a public way of undermining the trust that voters place in politicians has made this debate deeply personal. And the infighting hasn’t stopped there – the employment minister Priti Patel has gone a step further in her criticism, suggesting that Mr Cameron was too rich to care about people’s concerns regarding migration. All of this appears to have unleashed the wrath of Eurosceptic backbenchers Leave campaigner Nadine Dorries has called Mr Cameron an outright liar and said a letter was being circulated among backbenchers calling for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, who she warned would be toast within days after the referendum even if remain narrowly won. Number Ten said the Leave campaign was just trying to focus attention away from the economic debate which it claimed Leave had already lost.

Main Story

MARK MARDELL: The prime minister stands accused in a letter from the Vote Leave campaign of corroding public trust by making a manifesto promise which it says is plainly not achievable while we stay in the European Union. That promise is to cut immigration to the tens of thousands; what makes the letter explosive is it’s signed by two of the most senior Conservatives who stood on that manifesto Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. But the issue itself is perhaps even more important than the impact on the Conservative party – the letter challenges the prime minister to admit that a vote to remain is a vote to permanently maintain free movement of people from the European Union including allowing what it calls economic migrants with or without a job, putting a strain on schools and hospitals and pressure on the wages of low paid British workers. To discuss that the former business secretary Liberal Democrat Sir Vince Cable and Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston Gisela Stuart who is the chair of Vote Leave and provides the third signature on that letter to the prime minister. Good afternoon to both of you. Gisela Stuart, first of all, conspicuous by absence in that letter is any way you would actually control immigration?

GISELA STUART:  It, actually, the letter has two points, first, it’s outlining the risks of remaining and it also makes it quite clear that whatever immigration policy you have, it has to have the consent of the people and therefore this is a letter which addresses both a democratic issue about consent, but also the economic consequences, particularly on the low paid if you don’t have control over immigration.

MM:       We, we know people are constantly (fragment of word, unclear) asking for facts in, in this debate, would you . . . are you talking about visas?  Are you talking about work permits, how would you control it if you got that power back?

GS:         Whatever system you end up with, and it will be a combination of something like an Australian points system, there’d be visa-free areas, but the key thing is, it’ll be, the decision will be made at Westminster in striking the balance between the economic needs of the country, the kind of skills we need and historic links, and it’s that absence of any control, combined with the economic pressures, because we’ve got an underperforming European economy, creates risk if we stay in.

MM:       So Vince, the letter is correct, isn’t it that without leaving the European Union you can’t fully control the migration of workers from Europe?

VINCE CABLE:      That’s correct, yes, it is a single market, it’s something the British sought originally and negotiated in Mrs Thatcher’s day, which is free trade in goods and services, free movement of capital, and free movement of labour, that’s the package, that’s what we bought into and it’s brought us . . .

MM:       (speaking over) Right, so, so it it . . .

VC:         . . . considerable benefits.

MM:       Is it correct that it corrodes public trust, because we can’t control that in a democracy?

VC:         I don’t think that (fragments of words, unclear) free movement of labour and the single market corrodes trust, but what has corroded trust – and this is one of the few points where I agree with Mr Gove and Boris Johnson – that when the Conservatives made this pledge to cut immigration to under 100,000 back in 2010, and then actually, foolishly, repeated it last year, for the very simple reason that you cannot directly control in a market economy levels of net migration.  It isn’t just free movement of labour in Europe, we can’t control immigration, we don’t have a wall to stop British people coming and going and the volume of people coming and going depends on the state of the economy.  And our total level of net migration also includes substantial numbers of people like overseas students, who are not immigrants at all.  So, the figure itself, I said repeatedly in government, my Lib Dem colleagues repeated it, this was a very foolish commitment to have made, and it has corroded trust, making a promise that could never be met.

MM:       Gisela Stuart, you’ve been on the battle bus with Boris Johnson, was there any sense of unease that they’re making this so personal, attacking the Prime Minister?

GS:         I think we, we have to challenge the Prime Minister who makes those promises, and . . . force him to spell out what the consequences of a Remain vote are.  And these consequences are spelt out in that letter: if you’ve got an underperforming economy in mainland Europe, and you cannot control people coming, then essentially, you will have huge pressures on . . . which will hit worse the low paid in this country.  And that is simply bad for this country, and the Prime Minister, I think, needs to answer the questions in that letter.

MM:       Sir Vince, you served in cabinet alongside these people, what do you think this sort of debate will do for, for them?

VC:         Well it’s not helping them, but can I just reply to Gisela’s points, which are perfectly fair.  Of course, there are immigration in some areas which do create pressure on some public services, though we do know from the work that’s been done that there is an overwhelmingly positive contribution to the British Treasury, therefore public spending from immigrant workers who are young and they pay taxes here, but one specific area I was responsible for in the coalition and that was low pay, and the Low Pay Commission on the minimum wage, and, and the simple truth of the matter is that low pay is protected, provided it’s enforced by the minimum wage. And . . . added to of course, tax credits, which I also believe in, and that’s the way to deal with low pay, and all of the research we did in the coalition government showed that there was very little impact of migrant workers for (sic, means from?) Europe on, on pay amongst low paid . . .

GS:         (speaking over) But the . . .

MM:       Vince Cable, Gisela Stuart, thanks very much.  We’ll be talking to you again in a moment, but the other great debate within the referendum campaign is what leaving would mean for our economy.  A lot would hang on what sort of deal we could do with the rest of the European Union. The first, secret, talks have taken place in Brussels about how to cope if Britain does leave, vote to leave in 25 days from now. Alistair Macdonald is the Brussels Bureau chief for the Reuters news agency and broke the story.

ALISTAIR MACDONALD:     Whatever the result is, the EU will have to respond and they want to respond in some kind of co-ordinated manner. We know that senior officials in Jean-Claude Juncker’s office, his chief of staff chaired a meeting at the beginning of this week with senior diplomats and ambassadors from a number of key countries, particularly France and Germany with a number of countries also involved, notably Slovakia and Malta who will be running the rotating chairmanship for European Councils over the next 12 months starting in July.

MM:       Any hints at all about what the attitude might be if Britain did vote to leave, what they might say?

AM:        They will say, almost certainly, they regret the British decision, that they respect the will of the British people and there’ll be a third, perhaps less clear message which is: this is going to be very painful for you, which is a way of saying, ‘please don’t anybody else try this at home’ they will want to head off centrifugal forces in other countries, they do not want Marine Le Pen in France, the Dutch Geert Wilders or a whole number of other Eurosceptic forces in Europe to take heart from this and start agitating.  So décourager les autres – as they say in Brussels.

MM:       Alistair Macdonald from Reuters. Indeed, there’s an irony here: if the UK votes to leave, the internal politics of the European Union might matter more than ever before for Britain’s future.  Would Europe’s biggest power, Germany, want to treat others with kid gloves or deal a blow with a mailed fist? I’ve been to Berlin to try to judge the mood.  In a big Berlin store, the sound from high-end hi-fi’s and speakers and headphones is testimony to Germany’s technological prowess, as are the rows of red toasters and espresso machines.  Outside, there’s a queue of Mercedes taxis.  Germans are proud of what they make and we like it to, last year, the exported £67 billion worth of goods to the UK, we were there third most important export market after the US and France, and they wouldn’t want to put that at risk, would they? Artur Fischer is CEO of the Berlin stock exchange.

ARTUR FISCHER:  In Europe, we agree on a number of rules in order to take down the trade barriers.  And Great Britain doesn’t like some of the rules.  Now, our industry will be against any kind of trade barrier, be it for countries inside the EU or outside the EU, they obviously don’t want it.  I work two days a week in London, and because of the EU, because of agreements, I don’t have to ask for a work permit, I just go over there and I work.  However, from a political point of view I’m pretty sure that Great Britain will not enjoy, after they left the EU, the benefits they currently have.

MM:       Berlin is not Europe’s economic powerhouse or manufacturing centre, but this friendly, attractive city is one of its political centres.  And I’m in the political quarter.  Fountains are playing in front of the white-walled, tinted glass cube that is the Kanzleramt – the Chancellor’s office.  Outside, fly side-by-side the German and the EU flags.  Angela Merkel runs a Germany from here, and arguably Europe, at least what she says matters hugely. Christian Ehler, is an MEP and senior member of her party, the Christian Democrats – and industry committee coordinator in the European Parliament, where some are braced for Brexit.

CHRISTIAN EHLER:             We were asked by the general secretariat what would be the result of an exit, and our report back has been pretty much easy, saying it will be a nightmare for three years. And I mean, Mr Putin will laugh his butt off.

MM:       Christian Ehler is wearing cufflinks.  One says, ‘trust me’, the other, ‘I’m a politician.’  But he also used to be MD of the multinational Biotech. What do you think would happen if Britain did vote to leave, what would be the reaction here?

CE:         Take my constituency, and one of the biggest employers is Rolls-Royce, I mean, it’s a totally integrated economy, and the reaction would be at first sight, total confusion.  I think the outcome for my constituency will be a disaster.

MM:       Why would it be a disaster for your constituency?

CE:         At the given moment, Rolls-Royces producing half of the engines for AirBus in Germany, shall we put the British out?  But then my constituency is out.

MM:       Would there be any political impetus to treat Britain, frankly, badly, so not to encourage other people to go down a similar route?

CE:         That doesn’t make sense, I mean that is, that is the thinking of the 19th Century, I mean, this discussion is driven to some extent in the UK and to some extent in other European member states by people having the arguments of the 19th of 20th Century.  We are beyond that.  My boys are attending school in England, my former company was heavily affiliated with UK, so it’s no longer that Germany or Europe treats the British in a certain way, I mean, it’s simply an integrated market and to sort that out is complicated.  Obviously, both sides have interest not to create a complete mess, but it would be a mess anyway.

MM:       I’m now in front of the wonderful Reichstag – a 19th Century building with a modern, glass dome, the past fused with the present. Modern Germany’s sense of self is very firmly intertwined with the European Union, which tempers its economic and political eminence of the continent.  The shocks of the migration and the Greek crisis, and the fierce criticism of Mrs Merkel’s conduct in both have meant to heightened awareness of the European project’s fragility.  If there’s another shock, the German political class’s instinct may be to wrap a protective arm around the EU.  Daniela Schwarzer is director of the German Marshall Fund’s Europe Programme.

DANIELA SCHWARZER:      One of the objectives on the German side will very likely be to have a good deal with the UK, but it is not part, obviously of the political decision-making of the European Union, but still a part of the single market.

MM:       There may also be a feeling, of course that we don’t want to encourage other people to do the same thing, particularly with the French elections coming up?

DS:         One motive will be not to make others think that this is an easy game – you have a referendum and then you get what you want, right?  So, there has to be a visible cost attached to the choice of leaving the European Union.

(German speech, ends with ‘Alternative für Deutschland’)

MM:       ‘Take part in the change’ – the slogan of the rising force of the AfD – Germany’s hard right party.  Just three years old, among the victors in the regional elections a couple of months ago.  They are watching our vote very carefully.  The party’s vice chair, MEP Beatrix von Storch says if the UK leaves, Germany will pick up the bill.

BEATRIX VON STORCH:      From the German taxpayers’ point of view, I would like them to stay because, as we all know, UK is the second-biggest net payer for the European Union, so, if they leave, it’s going to be even more burden on the German taxpayers.  On the other hand, I think it will be good if they leave, just to show that they will survive, because this is what now is told, if they leave, no one can leave, without the European Union everything will break down, you can’t trade any longer you can’t travel any longer.  I think it’s completely rubbish and I would like to see how it works.  And I think we will see that it’s possible to trade with (words unclear ‘a new’?) European Union, not being part of it.

MM:       And you don’t think that trade barriers would go up?  That there would be a reaction against it?

BVS:       I think it would be very stupid to punish the trade which serves the people on both sides.

MM:       Might there not be an instinct from the, the people that you’re against, the political elites in the European Union to say, ‘We can’t have this, we can’t have other countries following their lead, like the Front National in France’, and indeed, you’re . . . you’re not asking Germany to leave but they wouldn’t want to . . . anything that would encourage you either, I guess.

BVS:       If they start to punish the UK after they voted to leave, I think this will strengthen all the movements you want to leave the European Union.

MM:       Under the stony eye of a statue of Alexander von Humboldt, students at the University that bears his name in central Berlin, tell me how they see the UK. Nora and Theresa are both law students, who’ve studied in Paris and London as well as here.

NORA:    I personally think Britain is very valuable, I think it’d be a shame if they left.  I they’re also actually valuable by always being critical, because you always, you need criticism to develop something, to develop a project, to see where one needs reforms, what doesn’t work.

THERESA:             We don’t need visas, so we can just go to Britain with our passport.

MM:       Do you think that would change?

T:           I hope not.

MM:       (church bells) Just a Berlin church, but if Britain votes to leave, Europe’s politicians will be asking if the bell tolls for them too.  There will be reflex actions, some within the EU would see it as an opportunity to question its very purpose and direction.  But more would automatically, defensively, talk of building a better, stronger Europe.  Daniela Schwarzer again.

DS:         There has usually been a movement of deepening in a moment of deep crisis.  So take the Eurozone, or take the whole discussion on EU border controls and immigration policy, in a moment where the migration crisis hit.

MM:       Artur Fischer from the Berlin Stock Exchange has deep worries about what a British exit could mean for his country and the whole continent.

AF:         I always had a feeling that being nationalistic is not a good thing.  So, if the EU would be damaged and the value of the EU is already fragile, and if Great Britain is out, the temptation is that the German population will also consider what are the benefits, why don’t we do things on our own.  It gives you a very eerie feeling – how thin that layer of civilisation is. Look at it. We’re only a few years away from this, and we all call ourselves civilised and, like, you know, it’s not going to happen anymore.  We just have to make sure that people realise how small that step is and that we do everything possible not to cross that line.  And . . . to do that together with other countries in the EU gives us a chance . . . to come to a compromise, if we have differences of opinion.  If we are not in the EU we will not look for compromise, we will look for a winning.

MM:       Artur Fischer in Berlin. There are, of course, big German companies based here. One of the biggest, Siemens UK. I asked their CEO, Juergen Maier, what sort of deal he thought the UK could get outside the EU.

JUERGEN MAIER: Over a period of time there will be trade agreements that Britain can do with the EU, and of course with other nations. But the much more important thing here is the non-tariff barriers, which, over many, many decades we have taken down, we have created a level playing field across the EU, that’s what the single market is all about, and we would be outside of that signal market and we would, over a period of time, not from today to tomorrow, but over a period of time, we would see those nontariff barriers rising, and that would be a disadvantage to especially British manufacturing companies, who are exporting into those EU markets.

MM:       But why would they rise, because those on the Leave side have said time and time again that it’s in nobody’s interests, neither the remainder of the European Union, nor the United Kingdom, to have those sort of barriers raised.  It is of course true that, you know, Germany will want to continue to trade with Great Britain, as we will want to continue to trade with them.  But we will have just said, ‘Actually, we’ve left your club’, and in the real world what happens is that the people who are then left sat round the table – remember, we’re not around that table – they will be writing new standards, they will be done in a way that certainly does not advantage, and probably could disadvantage Great Britain.

MM:       Do you think there will be a difference in Germany between business interests if Britain leaves and political interest?

JM:         If we were in a situation outside of the European Union then, you know, companies like ours, but, you know, the many German companies we have that invest in Great Britain would find it more difficult to create new investments here, or, let’s put it another way they would just find it easier to do that for countries within the European Union.  And the interesting thing about it is that actually, currently, with us being in the European Union, we, in Siemens – and I know that from many other companies as well – we see the UK as a fantastic place to invest in new R&D.  You know, we think the environment here, the business climate, the investments that are going on are absolutely tremendous, so why make it more difficult for ourselves?

MM:       I suppose what I’m asking is if the German government and other governments in the European Union said, ‘Look, we’ve got to make it difficult for Britain, for political reasons, for the rest of the European Union’ – would businesses say, ‘No, come on, hang on, we can’t have that’?

JM:         No, I mean, there, there will no doubt be, you know, some of that, but what I think would happen is, is that, you know, the European Union would, would, you know, obviously accept the decision of the British people at the end of the day, and the European Union will do whatever it can to make sure it continues to prosper, invest and grow its activities in the European Union.  And yes, Great Britain would not always be right on the inside of the . . . of the negotiations, and, and that club. Would they completely alienate us and not want to work with us at all?  No, I mean that’s just . . . that’s just crazy thinking.

MM:       Do you have emergency plans, or plans for what you do if there was a vote to Brexit?

JM:         We haven’t, no, we’ve clearly er, you know, thought about some of the immediate risks and some of the things we might need to do, but the fact is, is that should there be a Brexit, there is this two-year period that we all know about.  My own view is, is that would probably end up needing to be extended, because it would take longer to negotiate trade agreements, so, you know, we would have that time in order to consider what we need to do around, you know, things like exports regulations and paperwork and red tape and, you know, all of these things that we’d actually have more of and not less of, you know, so we’d have plenty of time to work that out.

MM:       Juergen Maier. The Labour MP, Gisela Stuart, who was born in Germany and came here in 1974, and Sir Vince Cable are still with me.  Gisela Stuart, we got a sense there from Berlin that, you know, there wouldn’t be any desire to harshly punish Britain, but we just simply couldn’t expect the sort of trade deals that we have now?

GS:         Well, but it also ignores the, the real big game-changer in this whole conversation, which was the introduction of the euro.  We’ve had a European economy which, in the last decade, you know, hasn’t managed to grow in comparison to other economies.  You know, the US grew 6% faster.  So you’ve got a, a, a trading bloc that is actually not growing as fast as it could, you have got a single currency that requires much deeper integration, for Germany to succeed, we are not part of the single currency, and by that decision we would be much more successful if we were outside.  And Germany, for example has just introduced a minimum wage, which is lower than our minimum wage, so, if you’ve got high unemployment on mainland Europe, and you have got jobs and a minimum wage here, you will increase the pressure on the United Kingdom and the public services and all the things that we talked about before, which is why I say, you know, vote Leave on the 23 June.

MM:       Sir Vince, it’s a failing bloc and we’re better off outside it?

VC:         Well, some of the countries in the European Union have had . . . done very badly, of course Greece most extremely, Italy and others.  Germany, of course, consistently has outperformed the UK, has got much higher levels of productivity.  Spain is growing quite rapidly, it’s recovered, in many ways, from the crisis, so it’s a very, very mixed picture.  But I think your comments er, the, the conversation you had in Germany was actually very, very balanced and very good.  The only real, heavy endorsement of the Brexit position came from that ex— that, er, the MEP from the extreme right wing German party, which is not an endorsement I would want.  I thought Juergen Maier’s comments at the end captured it just about right, but you’ll have two or three years of uncertainty, probably upheaval is overstating it, but very, very serious uncertainty in the UK about where we go next as renegotiate new arrangements, and then you have a gradual loss of business and . . . undermining our living standards because of the difficulties of continuing to operate in the single market, which is producing common standards, particularly in manufacturing, which we’re no longer part of, I think that was a very good summary of the problem.

MM:       Gisela, you know there’s very deep worry among Germans about the future of the European Union if we left.  Would it be the beginning of the end?  And would that be a good thing?

GS:         I think the beginning of a managed process which would allow the Eurozone countries to achieve that deeper political integration which they need in order for their single currency to succeed, and for those countries who are outside to disentangle and establish different relationships.  And, you know, even in countries within the Eurozone which have got high growth, Spain still has 45% unemployment of the under 25’s.  This is a currency bloc which is in deep economic problems, they need to do something which is right for them, which is simply not appropriate for us, and the sooner we realise that a managed separation would be beneficial for both sides, the better.

MM:       Sir Vince, we’ve only got a minute left, but would it be the beginning of the end?

VC:         It would certainly be very difficult if we left, I’m not into kind of Armageddon-type arguments, but you know, Gisela’s argument that we have to separate ourselves, we are separated by the fact that we’re not part of the monetary union, that’s a decision we’ve made, and we’ve gone our separate ways, but you don’t need to compound the differences with the European Union by also leaving the single market.  The single market, which Britain sought and has profited from is absolutely fundamental, particularly to our manufacturing industry and our traded sector of our economy, it’s completely unnecessary to walk away from that, with all the uncertainty and all the damage that that will create.

MM:       Sir Vince Cable, and Gisela Stuart, thank you very much indeed.

 

Photo by Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Referendum Blog: May 29

Referendum Blog: May 29

NORTHERN IRELAND BIAS: On Friday’s Today programme (May 27), Mishal Husain presented three packages from Northern Ireland about the possible impact of Brexit. In the first she interviewed two Irish farmers – one for ‘remain’ and one for ‘out’- who worked near the Western border with Eire close to Londonderry.  In the second she moved to the border itself. She spoke first to two local businessmen who had benefitted from open borders and feared the consequences of Brexit, then to a DUP member who supported Vote Leave, and finally to a local academic who noted that barbed wire had gone up in Hungary and suggested the same might happen in Ireland as this ‘was a frontier as well’.  Finally, at 8.34am Justin Webb, in introducing the third package, noted that Ireland had benefitted from EU agricultural subsidies and also from ‘so-called peace money, infrastructure investments.’  He stated:

As a net beneficiary over many years, surely it is a given that it will vote to stay in. The polls suggest that Remain are in the lead, but the DUP – the party of the First Minister Arlene Foster is backing Brexit – the only one of the big parties in Northern Ireland to do so. Mishal is in Londonderry this morning,

Mishal Husain was on the peace bridge in Londonderry which she said had cost £14.1m and had been paid for by the EU. She said that the largest political party, the DUP, supported Brexit, but the majority of the other parties were supporting ‘remain’. She asked Gregory Campbell of the DUP why he supported Brexit, then Claire Hanna of the SDLP why she supported ‘remain’.

The issues here are not imbalance between contributors, as can be seen from the transcripts below. Each feature contained ‘remain and ‘leave’ opinion, and Husain allowed both sides to make their points. There was, however, significant bias towards the role of the EU in Northern Ireland.

In the first feature, Husain said she had heard nothing about immigration being an issue in the referendum debate but the money that came back to Northern Ireland in farming subsidies was mentioned. William Taylor, the farmer for ‘remain’ made the point that whatever happened in terms of the EU, subsidies would continue in one form or another. Husain seemed, however, not to register that, and put it to Robert Moore, the supporter of ‘out’:

But in purely financial terms, if you look at the level of subsidy that does come in to this region, farming subsidy I mean, from, from the EU, we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds a year, could you survive without that?

In effect, this was a question and a message based on that despite what both farmers had said, the EU contributed ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ to Northern Ireland.

At this point it is relevant that the exact figure is £349m, A quarter of that, however, is not directly to agriculture but is spent on rural development projects. It would have been helpful to have introduced this into the discussion to get exact scale. ‘Hundreds of millions of pounds’ could have been anything from £300m to £900 million and even beyond.

It would also have been helpful to have stated that farming is actually only 2.4% of Northern Ireland’s economic output; Husain suggested that agriculture it was a key economic issue, and in turn that EU subsidies were an important component of that. But was it actually?  Was it not rather one area where EU benefits could easily be identified and extolled?

The second feature, at 7.44am, found Husain actually on the Irish border. She noted first that it was not very obvious that it was a border, but observed that the referendum was raising questions about how border controls might operate in future.

What were those questions? Billy Kelly, a local historian provided Husain with her first raft of answers, but they were totally irrelevant to the referendum. He said that during the troubles, there had been a major terrorist incident in the local check point. Husain then asked what he remembered of passing through. He replied:

It was never something that you liked doing, because if there was even the slightest thing wrong you could be held for hours.

Next up was Kevin McCool, who had started with his father a tyre business that involved a lot of transactions in Eire. Husain asked if he was worried about how the referendum might affect him. He was, especially concerned about the ‘checkpoint’ issue that had been planted in listeners’ minds by the previous section. He said:

If the referendum was to pass . . . you know, is there going to be checkpoints, is there going to be customs there constantly, you know, I would say even a five or ten minute stop . . . it’s going to put people off. You know, there’s a lot of people . . . over the border, just over the other side of the border that do what we do, erm . . . at the minute there is a lot of people that pass them to come to us, but if it got to the stage where . . . for the sake of 5 . . . €5 or 5 sterling . . . or half an hour at, at the checkpoint, then they’re not going to cross, you know?

Husain went over the border to talk to Donal Doherty, another local businessman, the owner of a restaurant.  He said:

Everything he has changed. Two things: peace has got rid of all the army and checkpoints and everything associated with that, and as far as I’m concerned Europe and the free movement of goods made a huge difference in terms of taking customs posts off the roads and literally we can now see in this village where . . . this village was a stop village, because customs major stop, now it’s just a business…to trade in the whole of the North West.

MH: People here think in two currencies, making daily decisions about what to buy where, in sterling or euros. Many see themselves as part of a single, cross-border economy. But for Donal, the referendum means it’s an uncertain one.

DD: At this site here in Bridgend, for example, we are holding off on an investment on this site, heavy investment on the site, until we’re sure about Brexit, because there is nothing good about Brexit for any business around this border.

No doubt about that, then. Brexit would be the equivalent of Armageddon for local businesses. Having carefully established this point, Husain then spoke to the DUP, which, she said, ’has come out in favour of Brexit’. Local director of Vote Leave Lee Reynolds said that existing open border arrangements would not change, and explained that they pre-dated Ireland joining the EU and were enshrined in treaties. Husain was not convinced. She said:

But it would be much more than the border between the UK and Ireland, in the event of Brexit, it would be the UK’s only land border with the European Union. Are you saying it would be entirely unchanged? People would . . . cross it with exactly the same ease as they do today?

LR:         Yes.  We’ve looked at this, we are convinced that the Common Travel Aarea can continue to exist, and that people’s lives can carry on normally, that people will be able to travel across the border and trade across the border.

Husain then said:

Back on the road between Derry and Donegal, the traffic is flowing freely from one country into another. But Brexit would turn this border into the European Union’s external frontier. In that event, there would be more than trade to consider. Dr Eamonn O Ciardha teaches history and Irish language at the University of Ulster.

DR EAMONN O CIARDHA:           There are considerations with, you know, money laundering, with drugs, you know, human trafficking et cetera, and you know, Churchill famously talked about the Iron Curtain going up all over Europe.  An Iron Curtain has just gone up along the Hungarian border and the Slovenian border and the steel shuttering went up very quickly along the frontier of the European Union, and, you know, this is a frontier as well.

No doubt about that, either. Exit from the EU – despite what the DUP said – would lead to iron shutters going up.

At 8.34, Justin Webb, as has already been noted, introduced Husain’s next piece by stressing that Northern Ireland received a great deal of money from the EU in the form of agriculture subsidies, infrastructure investments and ‘so called peace money’, and was a ‘net beneficiary’. He said the money also benefitted the ‘healing process’, but did not say how much was involved. In fact, since 1995, the EU has contributed around £900 million to Northern Ireland on a match-fund basis. Webb made no effort to say that this was actually UK money in the first place, but did suggest that the EU grants were the reason that polls showed the ‘remain’ side was in the lead and noted that only one party, the DUP, was for ‘exit’.

After that curtain-raiser, Husain pushed home further to listeners the importance of the EU cash.  She said she was on Londonderry’s peace bridge, ‘a symbol of the money you (Webb)) talk about’ that was part of the peace process. She said specifically that the £14m bridge had paid for by the EU.

This was only partly true. EU money (originating from UK taxpayers) had contributed towards the bridge but the UK and regional bodies had contributed match funding, so only half the cost was actually met by so-called EU funds.

Husain then spoke to Gregory Campbell, the DUP MP for East Londonderry, and Claire Hanna, the SDLP MP for South Belfast. Campbell said that exit would lead to less bureaucracy and contended that the ‘European superstate’ could not be changed from within.  Husain countered by again stressing the importance of EU money.  She said:

But the reason that that is surprising, coming from where we are is because of the way that this region in particular benefits from money coming in from the EU.  We’re standing on this peace bridge right now, so financially, don’t the sums suggest that you should be in favour of remain?

Campbell made the point was that the EU money involved actually came from the EU. Hanna, in a contribution longer than that of Campbell, said:

Well, we’re very firmly, we think, firstly the economic case is very clear, one in eight jobs here is linked to EU trade, about 3% of GDP.  And as you said, investment across sectors, not least agriculture and, and, and community development, but invest like that under your feet.  We . . . we do get considerably more than our nominal share of the UK’s fees, so we think it would be lunacy for Northern Ireland in financial terms, but obviously, it’s a wider debate than that, and because of the values of Europe and the fact that in a big, wide and certain world, we don’t want to retreat into our shell any more than people across the water, who are supporting the Remain campaign too.

MH:       But if you look at one of the streams of money that’s coming in, farming subsidies, and talk to farmers as, as I have done today, you can see how hard it is for them already, how much farming income have dropped, so it’s not as if this region is doing fantastically well because of some of those streams of funding?

CH:        Well, we believe it would do considerably worse outside Europe, we have absolutely no expectation that the Conservative London, er, current Conservative London government would replace the money that we lose from the EU, we would, on the Barnett consequences, on the basis of need, we wouldn’t necessarily get that.  But the investment in our farming and our fisheries has allowed those sectors to modernise and to diversify, and the fact is, Northern Irish producers and agri-foods is a much bigger part of our economy here than it would be in England . . .

Husain did not challenge Hanna at all about the nature of the EU money  (in line with Campbell’s point) but instead only suggested that the sums emanating from the EU were not enough to deal with Northern Ireland’s problems. She then put it to Campbell that he could not be sure that the government would continue giving money to the province in the event of a UK exit. Campbell replied that the there was no guarantee wither that EU money would continue.

Husain then suggested that most Catholics favour ‘remain’, and Hanna responded:

Well I think the beauty, I think the beauty of this issue is that it is too important to view through any green or orange prison, and the fact that the Remain campaign is very cross-community, it includes two . . . nationalist and two Unionist parties.  I mean, yes, if you’re a nationalist it would copper-fasten partition, and it would throw up issues around the border again that we have got past, but, you know, for a Unionist like Gregory, we think it would precipitate the breakup of the Union as well, because the Scots would inevitably vote to leave if the UK leaves Europe.

Campbell countered by stating that the Scottish Nationalists were looking for any excuse for a second referendum. What counted was that exit from the EU would allow the UK to become more progressive.

Overall in the final feature, Husain and Webb stressed heavily how important that EU money was to Northern Ireland, not only for improving infrastructure but also in the peace process. Husain’s main intent thereafter was to push that point. She gave Gregory Campbell the opportunity to explain why exit would be beneficial and he did so in general terms, but her question to him again pushed the importance of EU cash to Northern Ireland to the forefront. Hanna was clearly attuned to Husain’s theme and all her points were crafted to amplify it.

Taking the three features together, the perspective pushed most strongly was that Northern Ireland benefitted from EU money in terms of agriculture and general infrastructure; that it was vital to the local economy and in the peace process.

The money was said to be ‘hundreds of millions’ but the exact sums were not given. There was no explanation, either, of the scale of the EU money in relation to GDP.  If it had been said that agricultural income was only 2.4% of local GDP, it would have helped viewers to put into context the EU’s contributions. The deliberate editorial vagueness over-emphasised the money’s importance.

Husain compounded this by wrongly giving the impression that EU funds had paid entirely for the peace bridge in Londonderry.

The sequence that explored what would happen to border controls if there was a Brexit vote, was also deeply misleading.  A major omission was the absence of an explanation that current border arrangements are based not on the EU at all, but on a bilateral agreement between the UK and Eire called the Common Travel Area (CTA). This was mentioned tangentially by the ‘exit’ speaker, but this only underlined the editorial failing to explain it.  Another major problem was that the first speaker talked about the checks that were in force at border crossings during the Troubles. These were focused entirely on national security, and anti-terrorism measures, and nothing to do with routine border controls. That was not explained to the audience and thus a highly misleading impression was generated that Brexit could result in the introduction of similarly highly inconvenient controls once more.

The two businessmen interviewed by Husain compounded this misleading picture. They were both strongly in favour of ‘remain’, and said in effect that their businesses would go bust because customs posts would be re-introduced. Lee Reynolds of Vote Leave begged to differ, but Husain completely over-rode his important core point about the CTA by concluding the sequence with observations from a historian who claimed that the Irish border would follow the examples of other frontiers in the EU where ‘steel shuttering went up very quickly’.  The Brexit points advanced by Reynolds were completely overwhelmed by the other material in the feature.

As already noted, the main thrust of the closing feature, both in the introduction and in Husain’s handling of the piece, was to stress the importance of so called EU money in Northern Ireland. No editorial effort was made to explain that this was not ‘EU money’ but that it came from British taxpayers.  Gregory Campbell pointed this out, but his points were in effect neutered by the overall editorial framework and comments.

Overall, Husain and Today wove a highly misleading impression that EU ‘investment’ was vital to Northern Ireland’s economic well-being; that exit would lead to the introduction of oppressive and highly inconvenient ‘steel shutters’ across the EU-Northern Ireland frontier; and that vital local infrastructure projects would be put at risk. Counter views were included, but they were swamped.

 

6.50am Report from Northern Ireland

JUSTIN WEBB:   Now, how is the referendum debate on our future in the EU playing out in Northern Ireland?  Mishal is in Londonderry, all this morning, in the latest of our series of reports from around the country ahead of June 23. Mishal, good morning to you, your with farmers?

MISHAL HUSAIN:             Morning Justin, yes, we’re in north-west Ulster, this morning, when people hear talk about the Republic, they say the South, but it’s really out to the west from where we are Molenan Farm, just outside Londonderry, and we are here because agriculture is such a big part of the economy in Northern Ireland, and therefore an important aspect of how people here see the EU. It’s interesting that since I arrived yesterday I’ve heard no mention of immigration being an issue in this referendum for people in Northern Ireland, but I have heard a lot of talk about money. The UK contribution to the EU and the funds that come back to Northern Ireland, for example, in the form of farming subsidies.  And I’m joined here by Robert Moore, whose family has farmed here at Molenan for 200 years, he grows barley, wheat, oats, oilseed rape, and he also has beef cattle, and by William Taylor who is a beef and sheep farmer from nearby Coleraine, and the Northern Ireland coordinator for the pressure group Farmers for Action UK&I, which is in favour of remaining in the EU, and William Taylor I would assume, that that is because of the farming subsidies?

WILLIAM TAYLOR:          Well, you’re partly right.  Let me be clear, with we stay in the EU or whether we leave, then everybody assumes that farmers will get subsidies, but the part that is always missing is that the corporate food giants take the subsidies from farmers by stealth, so therefore we have a problem on farm incomes, a problem that we think we can resolve by staying in the EU – in other words, holding the EU to account on the legislation, treaties and promises that are already in place, in other words the EU promises, through Article 39 of the Lisbon Treaty, that rural dwellers in short are to be properly rewarded for their work.  This is not happening, so we want to hold them to account on it, so we say, stay in and force them to walk the walk.

MH:       Robert Moore, you see this rather different?

ROBERT MOORE:            Well, we agree on many things, but yes I do, I, I think if we stay in, we won’t get any change.  Britain has been the biggest thorn in the side of the European Union for many years now, and I think if we vote to stay and then try to change things, the rest of Europe will say, look, either put up or shut up.

MH:       But in purely financial terms, if you look at the level of subsidy that does come in to this region, farming subsidy I mean, from, from the EU, we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds a year, could you survive without that?

RM:       Well, I think you have to start by looking at the total income from farming last year, which was, in Northern Ireland, about 183 million – that’s £53 million less than we get in subsidies.  It equates to approximately £7000 on average per farm business in Northern Ireland.  If I employ somebody, I have to legally pay them double that.  Now, that level is clearly unsustainable, and we have to change it, we have to do something different.  And I don’t see why we can’t do that, even if we leave the European Union.

MH:       So you’d be looking for a greater level of support from the UK government than you get at the moment from the EU?

RM:       No, not necessarily.  Erm . . . I think a different system would, would deliver that.  The biggest problem is within the supply chain, as William has alluded to. The . . . we are not getting our fair share of the margins within the supply chain. And I believe that EU policy is partly, maybe greatly to blame for that.

MH:       And yet, you see the EU as being a potential solution to that?

WT:       Let me clarify the situation, I have been to Brussels, as indeed Robert has and we understand how it works and ticks.  You have the Commission who work for the purpose that they serve, you have the . . . European Parliament that serves its purpose, and you have the Council of Ministers, who in effect, the guys that hold the purse strings and control, to a certain extent what the EU does financially. But the bottom line is that we are not getting our fair share of the cake, as Robert has alluded to, and we therefore have to find a way forward to solve this problem before all our farmers go bankrupt.  So, for us does not mean that consumers have to pay any more for their food, other than normal inflationary increases what it actually means is that we need legislation in place to force the corporates, the corporate food giants to pay farmers properly for their produce.

MH:       And you think the EU is a better place to do that.  Although you’re on different sides of the referendum debate, the strong sense I get from you is how hard it is to earn a living, let alone a decent living from a farm like this?

RM:       Yes, it’s become ridiculous, particularly the last few years.  This conversation would be very different if we were at least getting cost of production, and then the EU subsidy we get would be our income.  But now that we’ve gone below that, and the EU is doing nothing or saying nothing to either of us, to actually change.  They don’t seem to have a plan.  They’ve lost all direction, and I don’t think it’s beyond the possibility for the fifth largest economy in the world to devise a better system of its own.

MH:       Wouldn’t it be a simpler framework to get what you want out of, William . . . Taylor, if you were just dealing with the UK government, briefly?

WT:       Well, the UK government has had 20 to 30 years to help to do something for farmers and they have totally ignored the situation, because, like the EU, they’re in bed with the corporates.

MH:       Okay. But nevertheless you . . . well, yes, so you still think the EU is a better . . . better framework to do business in?

WT:       Purely because there is a legal route for us to achieve our legislation on farmgate prices, which is what we’re trying to do in Northern Ireland.

MH:       William Taylor, Robert Moore, thank you both very much.  This farm’s only about half a mile from the Irish border, but after 7 o’clock we will be right on the border to explore the particular issues that arise there.

 

7.44am Report from Northern Ireland

SARAH MONTAGUE:      How does the EU referendum look from Northern Ireland?  That’s what we’ve been asking this morning, in the latest of our reports from different parts of the UK, ahead of the vote. We heard from her earlier, let’s go back again now to Mishal who is there, hello again Mishal.

MH:       Sarah it’s not often you can say, ‘I have one foot in one country and the other in a second’, but I am standing this morning right on the border of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.  The traffic you might be able to hear now and then is on the main road between Londonderry and Northwest Ulster and County Donegal. It’s not a border that’s very noticeable, you have to keep your eyes peeled to spot where the road signs start to appear in Irish as well as English, the speed limit is in kilometres rather than mph, and the petrol suddenly gets cheaper.  But the EU referendum is raising questions about how this boarder might operate in the future – questions coloured by difficult memories of the past.

BILLY KELLY:       We’re on the site of a former British Army border checkpoint, which would have been a very substantial military construction or military base.

MH:       Historian Billy Kelly lived in this area through the troubles.

BK:         (fading up) The IRA kidnapped a man who worked for the British Army, they put a bomb in his van, told him to drive the van into the checkpoint, and when he drove it into the checkpoint, they detonated the bomb.

MH:       What do you remember of passing through this checkpoint?

BK:         It was never something that you liked doing, because if there was even the slightest thing wrong you could be held for hours.

MH:       With the referendum coming, the border is once again a talking point for local people and businesses.

KEVIN McCOOL:              My name’s Kevin McCool, it’s my father’s business, it’s a tyre depot, we started it twenty years  now, so it’s only . . . the last four to five years that I’ve come in and started taking over. It’s gone from strength to strength so . . .

MH:       Are you worried about the referendum and how it might affect you?

KM:       Worried, aye, I mean, we’re not too sure about what way it’s going to affect things at the minute, obviously we do a lot of cross-border trade.

MH:       Kevin now lives in the Republic, where properties cheaper, and crosses back and forth several times a day.  He relies on his suppliers and his Irish customers doing the same.

KM:       If the referendum was to pass . . . you know, is there going to be checkpoints, is there going to be customs there constantly, you know, I would say even a five or ten minute stop . . . it’s going to put people off. You know, there’s a lot of people . . . over the border, just over the other side of the border that do what we do, erm . . . at the minute there is a lot of people that pass them to come to us, but if it got to the stage where . . . for the sake of 5 . . . €5 or 5 sterling . . . or half an hour at, at the checkpoint, then they’re not going to cross, you know?

MH:       Just across the Irish side is another family business, Harry’s Restaurant, run by Donal Doherty.

DONAL DOHERTY:          Everything he has changed.  Two things: peace has got rid of all the army and checkpoints and everything associated with that, and as far as I’m concerned Europe and the free movement of goods made a huge difference in terms of taking customs posts off the roads and literally we can now see in this village where . . . this village was a stop village, because customs major stop, now it’s just a business (?) to trade in the whole of the North West.

MH:       People here think in two currencies, making daily decisions about what to buy where, in sterling or euros.  Many see themselves as part of a single, cross-border economy. But for Donal, the referendum means it’s an uncertain one.

DD:        At this site here in Bridgend, for example, we are holding off on an investment on this site, heavy investment on the site, until we’re sure about Brexit, because there is nothing good about Brexit for any business around this border.

MH:       But Northern Ireland’s dominant political force, the DUP has come out in favour of Brexit. Lee Reynolds is the regional director for the Vote Leave campaign.

LEE REYNOLDS: The border would operate essentially as it operates now.  We’ve had a common travel area between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, with the land border we’ve had, open freely for travel.  The arrangements predated European Union, they’re already recognised inside EU treaties and EU law, and it would be in our interests, islands interests and the EU’s interests for those to carry on afterwards.

MH:       But it would be much more than the border between the UK and Ireland, in the event of Brexit, it would be the UK’s only land border with the European Union.  Are you saying it would be entirely unchanged?  People would . . . cross it with exactly the same ease as they do today?

LR:         Yes.  We’ve looked at this, we are convinced that the common travel area can continue to exist, and that people’s lives can carry on normally, that people will be able to travel across the border and trade across the border.

MH:       Back on the road between Derry and Donegal, the traffic is flowing freely from one country into another. But Brexit would turn this border into the European Union’s external frontier. In that event, there would be more than trade to consider. Dr Eamonn O Ciardha teaches history and Irish language at the University of Ulster.

DR EAMONN O CIARDHA:           There are considerations with, you know, money laundering, with drugs, you know, human trafficking et cetera, and you know, Churchill famously talked about the Iron Curtain going up all over Europe.  An Iron Curtain has just gone up along the Hungarian border and the Slovenian border and the steel shuttering went up very quickly along the frontier of the European Union, and, you know, this is a frontier as well.

JW:        Hmm, that was Mishal in Ireland, North and South, and we’ll hear more from her later on in the programme.

 

8.34am Report from Northern Ireland

JUSTIN WEBB:   Of all the nations in the UK, Northern Ireland has received a great deal of money from European Union, farming subsidies, infrastructure investments, so-called ‘peace money’ to help heal the divisions of the Troubles.  As a net beneficiary over many years, surely it is a given that it will vote to stay in. The polls suggest that Remain are in the lead, but the DUP – the party of the First Minister Arlene Foster is backing Brexit – the only one of the big parties in Northern Ireland to do so. Mishal is in Londonderry this morning, good morning, hello Mishal.

MISHAL HUSAIN:             Justin, hello, we are in the Londonderry, Derry, city centre now, right on the peace bridge across the River Foyle, it’s a cycle and footbridge that was paid for by EU money, it cost about £14 million and it opened in 2011, a symbol of that money you talk about that did come in from the EU, is coming in from the EU, in support of the peace process.  So, let’s have a look at where Northern Ireland’s political parties stand overall on the referendum.  As you said, the largest party, the DUP has opted for Brexit, the majority of the other parties, Sinn Fein, the SDLP, alliance, and even the Ulster Unionists, the UUP, are backing Remain. We’re joined now on the bridge by Gregory Campbell, who’s the DUP MP for East Londonderry, and from Belfast by Claire Hanna, the SDLP assembly member for Belfast South, good morning to you both.  Gregory Campbell, that would be surprising to many people that your party has chosen to come out for Brexit, why?

GREGORY CAMPBELL:    Well, we think that the . . . the issues are fairly . . .while they are complex, they are fairly dramatic in terms of the emancipation that would occur to the United Kingdom if it were to leave the EU, restrictions of bureaucracy, the cost, the implications for continued European expansion, all of those things we think should propel most people to believe, even those who want change in Europe, but don’t, aren’t as dramatic as those who want to live completely, even those people should say, ‘We’ll only get change if we vote to leave,’ because there’s been a 40 year impetus, which has created the basis for a European superstate in Europe, and we will never change that from within.

MH:       But the reason that that is surprising, coming from where we are is because of the way that this region in particular benefits from money coming in from the EU.  We’re standing on this peace bridge right now, so financially, don’t the sums suggest that you should be in favour of remain?

GC:        Well, I think it would, if that was EU money, some sort of extraneous money that was injected into Northern Ireland, but most of it is our money, most of it is UK money that is recycled through Europe, and they keep most of it and then, out of their largess allow us to have some back to, to build structures like the one we’re standing on, on the peace bridge.

MH:       Well, let me turn then to Claire Hanna of the SDLP – why are you in favour of remain.

CH:        Well, we’re very firmly, we think, firstly the economic case is very clear, one in eight jobs here is linked to EU trade, about 3% of GDP.  And as you said, investment across sectors, not least agriculture and, and, and community development, but invest like that under your feet.  We . . . we do get considerably more than our nominal share of the UK’s fees, so we think it would be lunacy for Northern Ireland in financial terms, but obviously, it’s a wider debate than that, and because of the values of Europe and the fact that in a big, wide and certain world, we don’t want to retreat into our shell any more than people across the water, who are supporting the Remain campaign too.

MH:       But if you look at one of the streams of money that’s coming in, farming subsidies, and talk to farmers as, as I have done today, you can see how hard it is for them already, how much farming income have dropped, so it’s not as if this region is doing fantastically well because of some of those streams of funding?

CH:        Well, we believe it would do considerably worse outside Europe, we have absolutely no expectation that the Conservative London, er, current Conservative London government would replace the money that we lose from the EU, we would, on the Barnett consequences, on the basis of need, we wouldn’t necessarily get that.  But the investment in our farming and our fisheries has allowed those sectors to modernise and to diversify, and the fact is, Northern Irish producers and agri-foods is a much bigger part of our economy here than it would be in England . . .

MH:       (speaking over) Okay, Gregory Campbell (words unclear due to speaking over)

CH:        (speaking over) those (words unclear) compete on volume, they compete on quality.

MH:       I just want to put that to Gregory Campbell, you can’t be sure that the Chancellor, whether it’s George Osborne or someone else is going to match what you would lose?

GC:        But we can’t be sure that we’re going to continue to get the funding, that, that amount of funding of our own money in the future, in fact, whenever Turkey and the other accession states come into the EU, there is one inevitability about the money that is going to be available to UK farmers – it’s going to go down.  The uncertainty is by how much. So, for those who remain (sic) to try and project the issues as being certainty now within the EU and uncertainty without is really a total nonsense, there is uncertainty on either side.

MH:       Is there a relative certainty, though, that there is a sectarian divide in how people are going to . . .

CH:        (speaking over) No.

MH:       . . . vote here, Claire Hanna, most Catholics would be in favour of Remain (words unclear due to speaking over)

CH:        (speaking over) Well I think the beauty, I think the beauty of this issue is that it is too important to view through any green or orange prison, and the fact that the Remain campaign is very cross-community, it includes two . . . nationalist and two Unionist parties.  I mean, yes, if you’re a nationalist it would copper-fasten partition, and it would throw up issues around the border again that we have got past, but, you know, for a Unionist like Gregory, we think it would precipitate the breakup of the Union as well, because the Scots would inevitably vote to leave if the UK leaves Europe.

MH:       (speaking over) Right . . . that . . . potentially on your shoulders, Gregory?

GC:        (laughs) (laughter in voice) Well, I think we’ll, we’ll wear that quite well, no, I mean, the Scots and the Scots Nats particularly are looking for any excuse to rerun a second referendum, that, that, that simply doesn’t wash.  Do we want an outward-looking progressive United Kingdom that can trade freely across the globe, or do we want to stay within the confines of the EU that are going to restrict our growth?

MH:       Gregory Campbell, Claire Hanna, thank you both very much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Lindy Buckley

Refrendum Blog: May 28

Refrendum Blog: May 28

THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK? A poster published by the pressure group Operation Black Vote (OBV) showing a skinhead thug intimidating a sari-wearing immigrant – and aimed, say OBV, at encouraging ethnic turnout in the EU referendum – has been strongly attacked by the ‘leave side as divisive, negative stereotyping.

But the BBC has virtually ignored the controversy over the tactics and imagery being deployed.   Coverage was confined to an outline website story, a short interview on Radio 4’s World Tonight with the head of OBV and a Ukip spokesman, and brief, one sentence mentions on BBC1’s News at Six and on BBC2’s Newsnight.

By comparison, when Boris Johnson, of the ‘exit’ side, mentioned President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, BBC coverage was extensive across all outlets and included very strong attacks on Johnson’s motivation, with clear, repeated insinuations that he was being racist.

OBV is funded by left-leaning and EU-supporting trusts Esme Fairbairn and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

OBV’s advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, who designed the poster, say that the aggressive imagery in their poster is necessary and appropriate because the political campaigning has so far failed to cut through to the 4 million target audience.

Director Simon Woolley, in his The World Tonight appearance on Wednesday evening, said the poster was in response to ‘toxic’ claims about immigration by the ‘leave’ side in the EU debate. These included the mentions of President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry and an unwarranted attack on ‘diversity’ by Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip,

Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn is among those who has strongly attacked the poster. He observed:

Using grotesque racial stereotypes to scare white people is as despicable as it is desperate. This type of rabid propaganda has no place in an advanced democracy.

So what’s the difference between this hypothetical Vote Leave advert and the genuine poster campaign wheeled out by Operation Black Vote, which is led by a member of the Remain camp?

It features two people sitting face-to-face on a see-saw. One is an elderly Asian woman in a sari; the other a tattooed white skinhead jabbing his finger aggressively and snarling in her direction. The poster is going up on 37 digital billboards in London and Manchester in the run-up to polling day.

The justification for this demagogic imagery is that it is designed to encourage members of ethnic minorities to vote in the referendum and counter the ‘demonisation’ of foreigners and people of colour’ by the Leave campaign.

But the clear, not even subliminal or subtle, implication is that those who want to get out of the EU are all knuckle-scraping BNP boot-boys brimming with hatred for non-whites.

So why did the BBC virtually ignore the poster?

In the website copy about it, the headline is simply:  EU referendum:  White ‘thug’ poster aimed at black voters’.  The story lays out that Nigel Farage had said the approach was ‘disgusting’, an example of ‘sectarian politics’ and was trying to ‘divide society’.

But the bulk of the copy is focused on the OBV perspective., and contains quotes from both OBV director Simon Woolley and Magnus Djaba, chief executive of Saatchi and Saatchi, who was responsible for the poster design.  Most prominent is Djaba’s claim:

This is a message about democracy, not a message about race. Whichever community you’re from, it hits home.

The only other substantial mention of the poster on in The World Tonight, Simon Woolley was given clear space to make claims that echoed the website story and to amplify the message that elements of the debate had descended into race and ‘diversity’ based toxicity.  The presenter made no effort to challenge the use of the ‘thug’ imagery. Her main intent was to allow Woolley to explain why he thought it was necessary.

Steven Woolfe MEP, the Ukip spokesman on migration, was placed on the back foot by Wooley’s claims and the clear undertone that Ukip was being racist. His main focus was thus rebuttal.  As a result, he had only minimal opportunity to state that he believed the poster’s imagery was provocative, and the presenter did not explore further – her main focus was to give Woolley the opportunity to put his case.

Both The World Tonight and the BBC website, in the only mainstream coverage of this story, thus gave only minimal exposure to the alleged controversy over the poster’s imagery, and indeed, arguably glossed over it.  They publicised the poster gave OBV opportunity to put its case, but showed only minimal editorial curiosity about the extensive reaction to it, or to the debate about OBV’s motives.

Evidence of this was on Wednesday’s edition of Newsnight shortly after the World Tonight item was broadcast. As detailed by News-watch here, reporter Katie Razzall, explored at length the ethnic minority communities’ reactions in the Midlands to the referendum debate.  The only mention of the poster was at the end.  She said:

Operation Black Vote said today a third of Britain’s 4 million or so BAME voters are not actually registered. Today the organisation released this controversial poster in an attempt to encourage them to do so. Because minority voters’ apparent support of Remain could prove decisive, but only if they turn out to vote.

She thus acknowledged the controversy, showed the poster, but chose not to explore further, even though it was arguably of direct relevance.

Her approach was in line with the BBC as a whole.  They acknowledged a story and an organisation whose prime motives in devising this imagery were to purse the pro ‘diversity’, pro-immigration and pro-EU perspectives, but virtually ignored the controversy surrounding it.

Referendum Blog: May 27

Referendum Blog: May 27

CURRYING EU FAVOUR?: Both Newsnight on Wednesday night and Today on Thursday morning presented what might be called pre-emptive pieces in their  EU referendum coverage. ‘ Both carried items about the immigration statistics due to be published  during the course of Thursday and expected to show very high levels of new  arrivals beyond government targets. They can be described as ‘pre-emptive’ because – in that context – both can be seen as being clearly designed to limit the importance of claims that they said were going to be made by the Brexit side.

Nick Robinson said in introducing his item:

The release of the latest statistics is certain to fuel the debate about whether leaving the EU is the only way to regain control, not just of how many people come into the country, but who precisely – a debate that’s been fuelled by an argument about who should be allowed to come into cook up the nation’s favourite dish.

The debate over curry, it emerged, during Robinson’s carefully crafted piece, was that some curry restaurants were worried by new developments in employment law which forced them to increase the wages of chefs to up to £30,000 to chefs who were often from Eastern Europe. Robinson explained:

The voices you hear above the chopping and the sizzling are increasingly from Eastern Europe, as people born here don’t want the jobs, and tougher immigration rules means it simply costs too much to bring new chefs over from Bangladesh.

Pasha Khandaker from the Bangladesh Caterers Association was not happy. He declared:

We’ve been told by the British ministers to employ European Union peoples, and European Union peoples we welcome them, especially we’ve got some people who are interested to work from Romania and Bulgaria.  But they never, they never stay.  I don’t blame them.  There is a language problem, culture problem and mainly the smell problem for them is bad, they can’t stand the curry smell.  So where can I get these people from? So if JP Morgan can bring in skilled people from outside, or Big Brothers (?) can do it, why not from the small business, why is the double standard for the immigration policy?

NICK ROBINSON: How does your experience, as someone running a chain of curry shops, how has your experience affect (sic) your attitude as to whether we should leave or stay in the EU?

PASHA KHANDAKER:        We should leave the European Unions (sic) because the European Unions (sic) are creating many pressure (sic) specially for the migration, we could have a better migration, better skilled people from abroads (sic) we have to give chance from everybody in this world who is fit for the jobs. Not for their colour, not for their geographical identity.

Having thus identified the problem, Robinson then tracked down another restaurant owner from Epsom who agreed that finding and keeping the right staff had become more difficult but nevertheless thought the answer was to stay in the EU and be jolly grateful.  He said:

My decision would be to stay in, because . . . we’ve been fortunate to be able to tap into the Eastern European sector of the community who are willing to do the jobs that British people aren’t willing to do.  So we have economic migrants who are coming . . . coming in, working hard and fulfilling the vacancies that otherwise, right now, I think the restaurant would be closed, because we wouldn’t have stuff that we would need to do those jobs, that no one is willing to do.

In other words, that brilliant EU – despite its shortcomings – was filling the gaps through its free movement directive and solved  the problems caused by lazy and unwilling Britons.

Robinson concluded:

The Vote Leave campaign have gone so far as to claim that a vote to quit the EU would save our curry.  That would only be true though if the British people wanted their politicians to relax the immigration rules to allow more people to come here from outside Europe.  And the problem with that is even if you could switch off EU immigration just like that, there’s still an awful lot more people coming here than most voters say they want. Stopping or controlling immigration – that’s the main reason people who say they’re going to vote Leave give for choosing to vote that way, but even if we did leave, the debate about who we want here, how many we want here, what jobs we want people to do, would only just be beginning.

In other words, the immigration concerns of ‘leave’ suporters in the referendum debate were simply ‘dog-whistle’ type responses, and the voters who wanted controlled immigration and who thought that voting ‘leave’  would solve issues like this were being simplistic in their expectations.

The item by Katie Razzall on Newsnight the previous evening in her series Referendum Road was in similar territory. The Newsnight budget, however, stretched to a visit to the Midlands. Her purpose? Evan Davis explained:

Back to the referendum now. We heard Nick earlier reporting on arguments on the Leave side about focusing on immigration, whether it’s is in danger of alienating ethnic minority voters, but does a Commonwealth heritage make you more inclined to stay in the EU, or go?

In the event, it was neither, though in her exploration of Sutton Coldfield and beyond, those who wanted to remain seemed the most articulate and had most space to advance their reasons.  First stop was a curry house.  She explained:

Now curry has got mixed up in the EU referendum debate. Restaurateurs complain that tightened immigration rules stop them bringing in skilled chefs and other staff from South Asia. The Leave campaign is promising a vote for Brexit would change that. They say without open borders to Europe, Britain could re-forge its Commonwealth links.

Razzall spoke to three restraurant proprietors.  The first said he blamed the government and the EU for his staff shortages.  The second said he would vote to leave the EU in order to secure controlled migration, and to allow more immigration from Commonwealth countries. Razzall asked him if he had picked up this message from the Leave campaign, and he affirmed that he had. The third restaurant owner commented:

People who have no experience, people who even could not stand the smell of aromatic spices, how can you justify to recruit them, put them in the kitchen?

She then returned to the first restaurateur, asking, ‘Can’t you train them up?’ He replied, ‘They are not interested, full stop.’

Next up in Razzall’s package was the Sikh community. She explained:

The Prime Minister appeared on the Birmingham-based Sikh Channel recently arguing the case for Remain. British and minority ethnic voters could decide this referendum. According to the British election study, unlike white voters, who appear evenly split on the issue, two thirds of the BAME community wants to stay in the EU.

Davinda Bal, founder of the Sikh Channel, a television service, then declared:

It’s going to be largely a Remain vote for many, many Sikhs across the country. And certainly from our programming, we have been out in the Sikh community and we are getting an overwhelming sense that people want to stay as a part of the EU, because this issue really is about segregation and separation, and the Sikh community strongly believe in one world and one society.

KATIE RAZZALL: As well as live news and daily prayers, the Sikh Channel is running a nightly referendum programme up to the vote. I know Vote Leave has sort of raised the idea that if we stop being a member of the EU, we will be able to close our borders, which means we will be able to not take EU migrants necessarily, and choose to bring people in from the Commonwealth instead. Is that resonating at all with you or anyone?

DAVINDA BAL: I don’t think it resonates with the Sikh community very deeply, because it seems to be a bit of a shallow argument. We will replace one type of migration with another type of immigrant, or migration. That doesn’t seem to be . . .  ring true, and if there is any Asian communities who are supporting that sort of stance, there may be some self-interest in that they want to see people from their home countries be preferred.

Razzall’s next point seemed to be aimed at reinforce Davinda Bal’s argument. She said:

Long before EU citizens set up home in the UK, immigrants from Britain’s colonies were moving here, filling jobs created after the Second World War. When Britain last held a referendum on Europe, many argued we were turning our backs on the Commonwealth and those close historical ties. The Commonwealth diaspora helped make the West Midlands the UK’s most ethnically diverse region outside London, and it’s a key battle ground for the ethnic minority vote in June.

Of course the Midlands is now ethnically diverse partly as a result of the Commonwealth influx from 1948 onwards,  but her presentation was misleading because it gave no indication of the variations and scale over the years.  The earlier Commonwealth influx did not simply morph into the same rate of EU immigration after the 1975 referendum, and indeed the Commonwealth influx now – even with the current preference for EU nationals under free movement –  is higher than before the UK’s EU membership. This is what Migration Watch UK says about Commonwealth immigration from 1948:

The British Nationality Act 1948 granted the subjects of the British Empire the right to live and work in the UK. Commonwealth citizens were not, therefore, subject to immigration control but the Home Office estimate is that the net intake from January 1955 to June 1962 was about 472,000.[57]From 1962 onwards, successively tighter immigration controls were placed on immigration from the Commonwealth. In the 1960s New Commonwealth citizens were admitted at the rate of about 75,000 per year. In practice the new immigration controls resulted in only a modest reduction in Commonwealth immigration. The average number of acceptances for settlement in the 1970s was 72,000 per year; in the 1980s and early 1990s it was about 54,000 per year. From 1998 onwards, numbers began to increase very substantially.[58] In 1998, net Commonwealth migration leapt to 82,000 and continued to grow before peaking at 156,000 in 2004 before beginning to decline. Some historians argue that the majority of early “New Commonwealth migrants” were, in fact, British settlers and colonial officials and their descendants returning from Britain’s former colonies.

Razzall then spoke to the Chughtai family, who had come to the UK from Kashmir in the 1960s and had established a successful a clothing shop. She explained that Aftab Chughtai was a keen ‘outer’. He said that because most of his clothes were manufactured outside Europe, he wanted more competitive trade deals with the rest of the world:

AFTAB CHUGTAI: Most of the products that we sell now are manufactured outside of Europe, erm, so if we were to be able to have trade agreements with countries like China, with India, with Commonwealth countries, we would be able to be much more competitive on these goods coming over from there. We are paying into a club which we personally don’t see the benefit out of. What I would like is a fair immigration system.

KATIE RAZZALL: Is, is, do you feel there is an irony in the fact that somebody like you, whose parents came over, you were immigrants originally, and now you are complaining about new immigrants?

AC:        No. Immigration is good for a country. If we had a system which was fair, which went all around the world, so we get the best people from around the world, so we are able to get computer programmers from India, we are able to get nurses, doctors from any of the Commonwealth countries where they speak our language, they have the same law systems and everything as us, it is much easier. So immigration isn’t the problem, it is the levels of immigration.

Next stop was a Birmingham art gallery which was holding  an exhibition by black serviceman about their contribution to Britain’s armed forces. Few, she said, saw the Commonwealth as an important factor in deciding about the EU.  Donald Campbell, a former RAF Engineer said:

DONALD CAMPBELL:For me, our unity is strength, and if the UK leaves Europe, the UK will be on its own. So I think it will have a devastating effect on businesses. I know a lot of people are quite emotional about this, and say, you know, we’re losing our jobs to people from abroad, but . . .

KATIE RAZZALL:        For you it’s an economic argument?

DONALD CAMPBELL:        Yes, indeed.

Other speakers, presented as visitors to the exhibition, also gave their opinions, although no on-screen information was given on them, and one wasn’t named.  The first, Merisha Stevenson, had previously received free media training as part of the BBC’s ‘BAME Expert Voices’ – a programme designed to ‘increase the diversity of the experts our viewers see on BBC Television’ – and has co-presented shows on BBC West Midlands, although Newsnight chose not to indicate to its viewers in their captioning that, according to Ms Stevenson’s dedicated page on the BBC Academy’s website, she is a ‘business consultant, strategist and radio broadcaster’.

MERISHA STEVENSON:        When we have historically been the great nation that Britain managed to carve itself out to be, a big part of that was our link to the Commonwealth. There was our link to other parts of the world that actually helped us to gain our strength economically and politically. I think we are in a different world now. We don’t know what’s going to happen if we separate, and whilst some are arguing that yes, it could be better, that ‘could’ is a really, really big ‘could.’

CHERYL GARVEY:        I feel that some of the discussions and the things that people want to change are about really taking away some of the support mechanisms for people right at the bottom of society. If it wasn’t for Europe, we wouldn’t have a number of protections around maternity leave, the 48-hour rule, and if we remove all the protections then I fear that those sorts of communities will be exploited.

KR:        Older voters are more likely to be for Brexit, but that’s not how Rakeem Omar sees it.

RAKEEM OMAR:        My grandfather, for example, he came over here in the ’60s from Jamaica, so it took around six weeks to get here, and he really fought for a better life, and coming here, really working after World War II, the country was completely dismantled, and I think helping with others to put that back together, working in the NHS, building our country back again to really build a stronger, you know European Union, as well as obviously the UK. I think to leave that EU would really take away that legacy.

A final speaker in the art gallery, unnamed by the programme, saw things differently; he wanted resumed links with Commonwealth countries so more immigrants would start coming from those areas again.

Razzall concluded:

Will ethnic minority voters decide this referendum? Operation Black Vote said today a third of Britain’s 4 million or so BAME voters are not actually registered. Today the organisation released this controversial poster in an attempt to encourage them to do so. Because minority voters’ apparent support of Remain could prove decisive, but only if they turn out to vote.

What was Razzall’s goal in this rather complex feature?  How long she spent with the curry house owners in Sutton Coldfield is not clear. But what she included from her exchanges with them appeared to be aimed at establishing that the ‘out’ arguments about wanting immigration from the Commonwealth by curry houses and local businessmen were based on  pettiness (the smell of curry) and self-interest  so that they could find good chefs from their own background. In sharp and immediate contrast, the contribution she edited from her Sikh guest Davinda Bal – who wanted closer integration with the EU – was broader, more considered  and less self-interested. She included his explanation that the issue facing immigrants was about ‘segregation and separation’ and his community ‘strongly believe in one world and one society’. In the art gallery, too, the motives of her interviewees were edited to show them to be less selfish, based on a realistic and enlightened desire for international co-operation and to ensure the equity of EU law to help the disadvantaged ethnic community.

Razzall tacked on the end of the piece the perspective of the Operation Black Vote.  Her exit point was that the ethnic community ‘s support for the EU could prove divisive, and that a ‘controversial’ poster had been released by the organisation.

In fact, in many quarters, that poster was regarded to be hugely controversial, in portraying  what looked like a white – skinhead-type – thug intimidating a gentle, sari-clad member of an ethnic minority.  The motives of the Operation Black Vote organisation, funded by the immigration-supporting Esmee Fairbairn and Joseph Rowntree trusts, have been strongly called into question. Given that Razzall’s fulcrum appeared to be the significance of the ethnic vote in the EU referendum, it is hard to understand why she did not explore this further. It was a highly relevant news development.

Overall, both Razzall and Robinson in their respective reports were in clear pre-emptive mode. Detailed analysis shows that this was not straightforward, balanced reporting. Their  goal was rather to undermine claims by supporters of exit from the EU that an expected rise in immigration figures could threaten UK  curry houses. On route, Razzall assembled a feature that undermined as narrowly selfish those Asians who wanted more Commonwealth immigration. She also chose to ignore an important controversy about the portrayal of the immigration debate.

 

Photo by kkalyan