LET us hope that in 2003 we will be given the promised opportunity to vote on our relationship with our fellow Europeans in the Union.

We need a referendum, because it would involve us all in a debate on what the fact of our being Europeans means to us.

The rights and freedoms which we value are the result not of the wars we fought against Spain, France, Holland and Germany over many centuries. They are the fruits of the inspiration which we Europeans drew from each other in our common drive to bring about a just society and the rule of law.

It is not chance that the same process did not occur elsewhere in the world.

Equally, it is not just chance that European opinion is against starting a war with Iraq; nor just chance that the governments of the European Union signed up to the Kyoto treaty on the environment, where Australia, the United States and other non-European states have declined to do so.

Europe has a brutal and cruel history, not least in its exploitation of peoples in other continents. But against that and as a result of that dark side, it has a glorious common history of progressively striving to create a society where citizens enjoy not just freedom of conscience and freedom under the law, but equally freedom from poverty, ignorance and disease.

British thought and British experience are an indivisible element of European commitment to these civil values. Compared to these values, the state of the British economy, which by its nature is short term, is peripheral. We should not hold back and deny geography and our history.

Maurice Vassie,

Deighton, York.

Updated: 11:30 Monday, January 13, 2003