Lessons of life that give a hint to future of the eurozone

In my lifetime, from birth in 1922, I have learned a lot of things about the UK, including two world wars and our Empire that helped us to come out on top of those wars, with a little help from our allies in the US. Both wars helped to bankrupt this country.

After the Second World War we had to borrow a great deal of money from the US, known as the Marshall Plan. It took us over 50 years to pay back and it helped us to recover and rebuild our industry virtually from scratch.

In those years of full employment, banks knew what they had to do.

They loaned our companies all the money they needed to rebuild and export our goods all over the world. In that period too we dissolved our Empire and initially helped all the countries, at that time shown on world atlases in pink, to opt out and if they wished to become what we know today as the Commonwealth, some of whom built their own economies and kept our democracy in the process.

At the same period of time, approximately 30 years, we lost our will to manufacture and export. The main reason, as I saw it and still do, is the Conservatives helping first the banking sector and later we were left with a service industry. We also lost industry because of greedy employers who saw that they could make more money from the banks and the service industry, so they closed down factories en masse and did not even think about using the new manufacturing technologies to develop business.

This leads me to the current problem of the European Union and the eurozone, because what occurred here is now happening in Europe we thought we had signed up for. What Prime Minister Edward Heath’s Conservative Party had signed for was for a European Government, which takes in money from members, gives it out to the poorer members which in the past was for new infrastructure, which we can’t even now afford.

They also decided that their government would make rules for every country, that in effect means we have very little say in our everyday lives. We are stuck with it, but in our case it’s a worse problem because the eurozone was going to pull the strings and they too are having problems.

There is a real dilemma of the continuation of the eurozone and its effect on the European Union economically. How will it affect the United Kingdom? If there is a firm stabilisation do we continue as members or do we stay as we are – a United Kingdom – with the pound as its currency?

Our industry, or potential industrialists, must be backed up by government as to what is the best way to start up. We have to try and cut down on the goods we take in now, that is good for the country’s economy.