Referendum Party
The Referendum Party was a Eurosceptic, single-issue political party that was active in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 1997. The party's sole objective was for a referendum to be held on the nature of the UK's membership of the European Union. Specifically, it called for a referendum on whether the British electorate wanted to be part of a federal European state or to revert to being a sovereign nation that was part of a European free-trade bloc without wider political functions.
The Referendum Party was founded by the Anglo-French multi-millionaire businessman and politician James Goldsmith in November 1994. A Eurosceptic who had previously had close links to the UK's governing Conservative Party, he was also an elected Member of the European Parliament for the Movement for France party. He used his financial resources and contacts to promote the new venture, in which he was assisted by other former Conservatives. The party's structure was centralised and hierarchical, giving Goldsmith near-total control over its operations. Although not offering party membership, it claimed to have 160,000 registered "supporters", a number that was probably an exaggeration. The party gained a Member of Parliament for two weeks in 1997, when George Gardiner, the MP for Reigate, defected to it from the Conservatives shortly before that year's general election.
In the build-up to the May 1997 general election, the Referendum Party spent more on press advertising than either the incumbent Conservatives or their main rival, the Labour Party. It stood candidates in 547 of the 659 constituencies, more than any minor party had ever fielded in a UK election. Ultimately the party gained 811,827 votes, representing 2.6% of the national total; it failed to win any seats in the House of Commons. Support was strongest in southern and eastern England, and weakest in inner London, northern England, and Scotland. Following the election, psephologists argued that the impact of the Referendum Party deprived Conservative candidates of victory in somewhere between four and sixteen parliamentary seats. In the months following the election, the party renamed itself the Referendum Movement. Goldsmith died in July 1997, and the party disbanded shortly afterward. Some of its supporters reformed as a Eurosceptic pressure group called the Democracy Movement while many others joined Eurosceptic political parties like the UK Independence Party and the Democratic Party.
Formation
Background and ideology
The United Kingdom joined the European Communities in 1973. Following the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 the EC became the European Union.The UK's ratification of the treaty in 1992, followed by its passing of the European Communities Act in 1994–95, generated much controversy and infighting within the UK's Conservative Party, which was then in government under Prime Minister John Major. This caused considerable damage to Major's administration, which was increasingly unpopular among the British population. Various British newspapers, among them The Sun, The Daily Telegraph and The Times, had adopted a consistently Eurosceptic position. Opinion polls suggested growing opposition to aspects of the EU in the UK. More widely, the acceleration of the EU's integration process had resulted in the growth of Eurosceptic parties across many of its member states.The Anglo-French businessman James Goldsmith announced the formation of the Referendum Party on 27 November 1994. Goldsmith had once been a strong supporter of the EC but had grown disenchanted with it during the early 1990s, becoming particularly concerned that it was forming into a superstate governed by centralised institutions in Brussels. He opposed the Maastricht Treaty, believing that it resulted in increased German dominance in Europe. As an economic protectionist, he was also critical of the EU's signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, believing that global free trade would damage both the EU's economy and his own business interests.
Goldsmith had prior political experience, having been elected as a Member of the European Parliament in France as part of the Eurosceptic Movement for France coalition in June 1994. Although his father had been a Member of Parliament representing Britain's Conservative Party, and he had personally had a close relationship to the party when it was led by Margaret Thatcher, Goldsmith wanted to launch his campaign independently of the Conservatives, hoping that it could draw on cross-party concerns about the direction of the EU. At the time of the party's formation, Goldsmith had an estimated personal wealth of £800 million, and promised to put £20 million into the party. He pledged to spend at least £10 million on campaigning for the next general election, to ensure that his party was funded to the same extent as the country's larger political parties. Goldsmith's intervention in British politics has been compared with that of the multi-millionaires Ross Perot in the United States and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.
According to the political scientists Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford, the Referendum Party was "a classic single-issue party". Similarly, the political scientists Neil Carter, Mark Evans, Keith Alderman, and Simon Gorham described it as a "single-issue movement" that had attributes of both a political party and a pressure group. While it took part in elections, it focused on a single issue and stated that if it got Members of Parliament elected their sole aim would be to secure a referendum. It also claimed that on achieving its main aim, the party would disband, unlike most political parties; as Goldsmith put in his October 1995 "Statement of Aims": "This is a single-issue biodegradable party which will be dissolved once we have achieved our aim."
The referendum question which the party proposed was announced on 28 November 1996: "Do you want the United Kingdom to be part of a federal Europe or do you want the United Kingdom to return to an association of sovereign nations that are part of a common trading market?" The political scientists David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh noted that this question was often mocked for its "unrealistic ambiguity", and some journalists referred to Goldsmith's venture as the "Referendum Only Party". Goldsmith did not position the party as explicitly opposed to the EU, instead stating that it was "wholly agnostic" about EU membership and just wanted to secure a referendum on the issue. The wording of the party's main question led one group of political scientists to note that it "clearly revealed Goldsmith's Eurosceptic colours" and that the wider pronouncements of the party became increasingly Eurosceptic as time went on.
Establishment and growth
In its first year, the Referendum Party had little established organisation and largely remained a concept with limited concrete presence. Goldsmith's finances had allowed its appearance to be accompanied with mass publicity but it lacked the standard machinery of a political party, such as a mass membership or politically experienced personnel. To counter this problem, Goldsmith sought to create a sophisticated administrative centre and to secure the expertise to carry out a political campaign, establishing his headquarters in London. By October 1995, the party had established a hierarchical structure consisting of three tiers: the centre, region and constituency. Operating the centre was Goldsmith and a cabinet whose membership included Lord McAlpine, who was a former treasurer of the Conservative Party, and two former members of the Conservative Central Office staff. The centre had around 50 staff, who relayed Goldsmith's instructions through to the ten regional co-ordinators, who in turn transmitted them to the prospective candidates in the constituencies. This top-down and undemocratic structure concentrated decision making with Goldsmith and the centre and provided little autonomy for the regions and constituencies, although this was deemed necessary to ensure efficiency in its campaign.Rather than having members who paid a joining fee, the Referendum Party had "supporters" who could voluntarily donate money if they wished. By February 1997, the party claimed that it had 160,000 registered supporters, although some of these individuals had only requested information about it and had not actively registered as "supporters". The party issued a newspaper, News from the Referendum Party, to attract wider attention to its aims and broaden its support. One issue, published in February 1996, was delivered to 24 million households at an estimated cost of £2 million.
The party also sought to attract the support of prominent figures from business, the arts, and academia, inviting them to its major events. In October 1996, it held a national conference in Brighton, in which forty speakers addressed an audience of 5,000. Among the speakers were the actor Edward Fox, the ecologist David Bellamy, the politician George Thomas, and the zookeeper John Aspinall. The conference had been staged largely to impress the media, at a cost of £750,000, although unsympathetic media outlets were reportedly banned from attending. By the time of the conference, the party was increasingly reflecting its Eurosceptic intentions, particularly with the use of slogans like "No Surrender to Brussels".
Early supporters fell largely into three types: committed Eurosceptics, disaffected Conservatives, and those who—though not necessarily being Eurosceptic—strongly believed that the British population deserved a referendum on EU membership. At the time the new party was largely seen as a threat to the governing Conservative Party, which was experiencing high levels of mid-term unpopularity. In September 1995, the party began recruiting candidates to contest the next general election. Goldsmith was also able to obtain celebrity endorsements. Despite Goldsmith's longstanding criticism of the mainstream media—he had previously stated that "reporting in England is a load of filth"—the party used its finances to promote its message in the media. It hired Ian Beaumont, who had formerly been the press officer to Thatcher's government, to work for it. The party paid for many full-page and some double-page advertisement in the UK's national newspapers, as well as two cinema advertisements. This generated criticism from those who accused it of "cheque-book politics" in the manner of Perot in the US. This financial backing and infrastructure contrasted with that of another single-issue Eurosceptic Party, the UK Independence Party, which was operating with little finances and a skeleton organisation at the time.
Although the party had faced criticism and mockery, it gained much media exposure.
Two months before the 1997 election, the party gained an MP in the House of Commons when George Gardiner, the Conservative MP for Reigate, switched allegiance to the Referendum Party after his local Conservative branch deselected him due to critical comments that he had made about Major.