Heath’s open secret

Helen Thompson (“Consent: the dynamite at the heart of the British constitution,” July) maintains that a telegram that Edward Heath sent to his chancellor in March 1973, in which he “quietly noted” that his government’s “goal” was “economic and monetary union,” shows that he was “outright dishonest with the electorate about how he envisaged the Community’s authority developing.”

At a much-publicised meeting in October 1972, the leaders of the six existing members of the European Community and of the three nations who were about to join it openly committed themselves to achieving full economic and monetary union by 1980. Against this background, it is hard to see how a telegram sent five months later, in which the British prime minister stated that this remained his government’s objective, can justify a charge of dishonesty.

Dermot Gleeson worked for the European Commision in the 1970s and is a fomer trustee of the BBC