Nine years ago, during the Maastricht referendum campaign, I was asked to go head to head on the subject with a leading Irish socialist in a debate at University College Dublin. There was a small reception beforehand, at which my debating adversary and myself had a brief, fairly friendly chat. When the time came to go on we found ourselves walking side by side along the tunnel leading to the lecture hall.
For want of anything better to say, the leading Irish socialist asked me did I come here to UCD. I replied in the negative. Oh, yes, he said, of course, coming from the west, you would have gone to UCG. I again shook my head. Oh. He paused momentarily in the tunnel. And where did you go, then? I replied that I had not gone to university and he looked at me in astonishment. I was first to speak. During that campaign I had written several articles opposing the Maastricht Treaty, and as a result had several times found myself sharing a platform with the late, great Raymond Crotty. Through one thing and another, I had arrived at a fairly definite sense of why any extension of the European project should be questioned and resisted. I gave my usual spiel and sat down. The leading Irish socialist then got to his feet and began: I am puzzled as to why so many people are opposed to the European Project. I often wonder if perhaps it isn't a lack of education or something.
At that moment, any residual doubts about opposing the European project left me forever. For here was a man regarded as a paragon of democratic virtue who had climbed to the top of the political profession on the basis of his commitment to the underprivileged in Irish society. Although nobody else in the room had any sense of what he was talking about, he was expressing himself in the most eloquent terms to me, saying: I believe there is one truth, which can only be arrived at by dint of the correct instruction and training, and I have nothing but contempt for those who, not having followed the same path, have the ignorant impudence to disagree with me. In recent years I have not written much about the European project, not because I have been furthering my education but because I had a sense of having lost the argument. Back at the Maastricht stage, we were given a straight choice, democracy or money, and we took the money. I believe that, once bought, one should have the decency to stay bought. I had also, I confess, become a little bored: other matters have seemed to me, shall we say, marginally more interesting. Let us be honest, your average telephone directory is more interesting than material relating to the EU and its various treaties and initiatives. Whenever I have attempted to read an EU document I have been struck by the thought that such mind-numbing tedium is not arrived at by accident but is part of a strategy to deter inquiry.
This tedium has infected also the other side. For 10 years, I have received, at the rate of at least one a week, communications from the astonishing Anthony Coughlan, seeking to inform, perhaps even educate me about the dangers of further convergence and the threat of a European army.
I confess that I do not read them all, that sometimes my eyes fix upon the distant horizon as my hand drifts towards the bin. And yet, I am awestruck by the fact that these documents continue to arrive, that at least once a week, Anthony Coughlan prepares another paper relating to some aspect of the European project, makes multiple photocopies of it, which he folds into envelopes and sends to people like me.
This, it strikes me, is what democracy is supposed to be about. If only those in favour of the European Project had showed this level of commitment and respect, I might be able to trust them, and perhaps they might not now be staring defeat in the face. But when I look around the Yes platform and see the same smug and arrogant faces representing the same powerful vested interests, hear the same dismissive responses to honest questions, note the same old hectoring tones, I run back towards the No camp. Those who have opposed the relentless and dishonest expansion of the European project have had nothing to gain from this endeavour for themselves. Several of them, several times, have been prepared to stake everything they possessed to fight the most powerful forces in the land.
And when you ask one of them for a simple rationale of his scepticism, he is usually able to give it to you in the kind of short, simple sentences which are comprehensible to those of us who have not had the benefit of a university education. Last week, when I asked my old friend Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, why he was still fighting after all these years, he answered: "Because I don't want my sons to die in a European army." That sounds good to me. When I scan the headlines looking for arguments from the Yes side, I read that we have a moral duty to ratify the treaty. I suppose staying bought is a kind of moral obligation, but even so I intend, yet again, to vote No.