| Sir:
Your cover story (“How the Tories can still win in Europe”,
14 November) quotes Liam Fox saying: “We can never allow defence
procurement to be a supranational issue”. If he really means
this, he is 70, if not 93, years too late. In November 1916, at the
height of the first world war North Atlantic U-boat threat, the Wheat
Executive was set up with the responsibility of deciding, on a supranational
basis, how much wheat should be sent to each of Britain, France and
Italy from the scarce supplies that were available. The principle
was extended to a wide range of materials and to the shipping needed
to carry them, with the creation of the Allied Maritime Transport
Committee in March 1918.
At the next moment of great peril, the same supranational
approach was adopted. The Anglo-French Coordinating Committee, set
up under the chairmanship of Jean Monnet in October 1939, had the
explicit mission to acquire military equipment and aircraft from
the United States jointly for France and the UK.
If scarce and badly needed military resources
can be put to best use by supranational means, why should we do
anything else? The nation would be better served by a future Conservative
government that thought more practically and less ideologically
on this matter.
Yours faithfully
Richard Laming
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