Referendum - another song for Europe, honest

It strikes me that we often think there are problems with the EU. There aren't, really. Most of the EU member states and their electorates are perfectly happy with the vast majority of what Brussels does, nearly all of the time. (Maybe bar Greece). The problem is that we have a problem with the EU: many of us just don't feel we really belong and I don't think we ever will. We'll always be on the edge, wanting to be enthusiastic members of a club that isn't quite the one on offer.

This, of course, hasn't changed much since we joined.

And, don't kid yourself, the two times we've been offered a say it's only been because the ruling party has been unable to resolve their contradictions and have gone there as the only way out for them. In other words, the problems are our own and of our political parties, Labour in the 70s and the Tories now. Wilson had the problem then, Cameron does now.

My favourite musician/poet Roy Harper wrote a song about the 1975 referendum. It's called, er, Referendum. I've been listening to it a lot lately - it's a cracker of a track. Because of the similar circumstances outlined above, the song works just as well in 2016:

Roy’s 1970s lyric	And how it plays in 2016
There was a man from Muddlebro’	Cameron is certainly muddled
Whose problems he lay down	Exactly – his problem, with is party, laid at the doors of others
Upon another’s doorstep, in a distant strangers’ town	The negotiations were done in Europe
But forgetting what he’d come for and in patronising tones	Cameron seemed to totally forget his promise to us that he would “sort” the immigration problem and “not take no for an answer”
He gave them all his clothes and bread To stop their moans and groans	He gave away his negotiating position to keep them quiet (one can imagine the moans and groans from the others)
(Guitar break)
“It’s not your fault where you were born” He said, all condescending “We cannot all be made like me with lots of true blue blending”	I don’t know about Wilson’s negotiators in 1975, but Cameron is a toff, after all
“But never mind, we’ll pass the hat around our gracious nation” The strangers held their laughter back Remembering their station	One can imagine a lot of eye rolling from the other parties in the negotiation
(Guitar break)
Back home in the Heads of State The people’s memory woke	This is a wordplay – the country literally resides in the heads of its people, not the Heads of State doing the negotiations
And yet the yapping didn’t stop Whoever rose and spoke	Well, there’s a lot of yapping, isn’t there?
But in the fields potatoes flowered And gulls came with high tides And men came back from cutting wood And gathered by firesides	But life will go on regardless

Roy was playing with a band at the time and the song is one of his rockiest. Of course you can listen to the song online. There are some live recordings which are good but the studio version, featuring two blistering guitar breaks by Chris Spedding (of Motor bikin' fame) can be heard at https://vimeo.com/53923894 (though I've no idea what the guy who posted the video was on....)