In 1973, General De Gaulle, the French nay sayer had left office and Britain joined the EEC and the great British public voted a resounding yes in Ted Heaths EU referendum two years later.
Given that Britain was only just emerging from a Golden Age when we had never had it so good, why would we vote to join with Europe?
Socially, though we were essentially naïve and bigoted, Britain had morphed into something closer to what it is today than it was in the 1950’s. A generation of better educated adults was emerging into a world of calculators, sound systems and computers. The teenager had been invented and we had entered the era of ‘free love’, feminism and the permissive society. The Aristocracy were all but defunct and as poor as church mice and the man from the Beeb no longer wore a dress suit and talked with a plummy accent. Being working class had been made fashionable in 1960’s by films like ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’ starring Albert Finney and ‘Alfie’ starring Michael Caine. But perhaps, most of all the television and foreign holidays had opened up the world beyond our doorsteps. Europe was no longer a strange place beyond the water that we didn’t really understand, nor saw a reason why we should unless we were asked to go to war. The 6 o’clock news and radio 4 invited the common man to have an educated opinion on the British economy and foreign affairs.