A folk theory of the EEC: popular euroscepticism in the early 1980s

ABSTRACT The 2016 EU Referendum has renewed the focus of historians and social scientists on Britain’s historical relationship with Europe as they aim to develop a better understanding of ‘the road to Brexit’. The development of Euroscepticism in Britain has often been approached from an elite perspective, with a focus on the conflicting ideas and arguments between politicians, political parties, and the media. This article builds on existing studies by focusing on popular attitudes to Europe during the early 1980s. We analyse responses to a ‘special directive’ issued by the Mass Observation Project in the autumn of 1982 to mark the ten-year anniversary of Britain joining the European Economic Community (EEC). Reading this previously overlooked material for categories, storylines, and other cultural resources, we identify four key grievances MO panellists shared as common-sense evaluations of Britain’s membership of the EEC. We argue these grievances constituted a wider folk theory of Euroscepticism circulating in British society six years prior to Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech and subsequent debates about further integration in the early 1990s. In developing this argument, we contribute a better understanding of the content and origins of popular Euroscepticism in the 1980s.


Introduction
In the wake of the 2016 referendum result, there has been a renewed focus on the history of Euroscepticism as historians and social scientists have tried to understand why Britain voted to leave the EU. The 1975 referendum produced a 67% majority in favour of continued membership (with a turnout out of 65%) and is commonly assumed to have temporarily reduced the political salience of the issue of Europe in British politics. 1 Margaret Thatcher's 1988 Bruges speech is frequently identified as a crucial turning point that 'mainstreamed' or 'legitimated' Euroscepticism in Britain's political culture. 2 The growing Euroscepticism of the right-wing press, and Rupert Murdoch and News UK specifically, has also been recognised as one of the underlying driving forces behind demands for a second referendum on EU membership. 3 Political scientists highlight a post-Maastricht shift from the early 1990s that saw opposition to enlargement crystallise among a majority of Conservative MPs, which, in the words of Fontana and Parsons, meant 'the mechanisms pointing to a "Brexit" referendum were largely in place by 2005ʹ. 4 This transformation in British politics led Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to promise referendums on Euro membership and the Constitutional Treaty. The rise of Euroscepticism was also clearly demonstrated by the growth of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which gained more than 27% of the popular vote at the 2014 European Parliamentary Elections.
There havew been a growing number of historical studies that aim to contextualise this 'road to Brexit' in relation to Britain's imperial legacy and changing cold war relationships. 5 Other studies have focused on key events such as the 1975 referendum or Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988. 6 However, less attention has been paid to popular attitudes towards Europe during the intervening period of the early 1980s. In this article, we address this gap by looking at what people wrote about Europe in response to a 'special directive' issued by the Mass Observation Project in the autumn of 1982 to mark the ten-year anniversary of Britain joining the European Economic Community (EEC). This previously overlooked material does not suggest widespread contentment with a well-functioning EEC. When panellists wrote about the EEC, they tended to write about agricultural policy and regulations governing food products, and they tended to do so in negative terms. We identify four key grievances respondents shared as commonsense evaluations of Britain's membership of the EEC: membership had led to higher prices for consumers; the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was unfair and inefficient; there were too many unnecessary regulations governing food products; and there was too much exorbitant bureaucracy. We argue these common grievances panellists shared with each other provide evidence of a 'folk theory' of Euroscepticism available to British citizens six years prior to Margaret Thatcher's famous Bruges speech and subsequent debates about further integration in the early 1990s. In developing this argument, the article aims to contribute a better understanding of popular attitudes to Europe (as opposed to elite discourses) and the content and origins of popular Euroscepticism, which is what the responses to MO can add to existing studies of public opinion based on polling data. 7 The concluding section draws out the implications of our findings for existing debates about historical understandings of Britain's relationship with Europe and the development of Euroscepticism. The article begins by making the case for why we need a history of Euroscepticism 'from below' and explains why Mass Observation represents an ideal source base for understanding how citizens formulated judgements about formal politics in the past.

Euroscepticism in contemporary British history
The development of Euroscepticism in Britain has often been approached from an elite perspective, with a focus on the conflicting ideas and arguments between politicians, political parties, and the media. These histories have generally stressed Britain's semidetached or reluctant relationship with Europe. 8 Britain's 'awkward relationship' with Europe has long been understood as a cultural phenomenon-a product of Britain's search to define itself in the aftermath of Empire when Britain initially decided not to join the European Coal and Steel Community and EEC. 9 During the 1960s and 1970s, Euroscepticism was most commonly associated with the more radical left wing of the Labour party, who argued membership would prevent them from implementing a socialist programme. However, Kevin Hickson has recently demonstrated there was a tradition of Euroscepticism on the moderate social democratic wing of Labour too, defined by a commitment to sovereignty, a model of political economy based around national autonomy, and a belief in internationalism. 10 For the Conservative Party, Enoch Powell was the most prominent Eurosceptic voice during the 1960s and 70s, consistently questioning Edward Heath over entry and the loss of sovereignty he argued this would entail. In the centre, there was support for the EEC based on a pragmatic acceptance of the potential benefits membership could bring in a context of economic decline and decolonisation. 11 This centrist position carried the 1975 referendum, with voters following the elite cues of the main parties and business leaders. 12 Comparing the 1975 and 2016 referendums, Robert Saunders explains that Britain in Europe were successful because their campaign focused on transactional benefits in a context of perceived economic crisis, political instability, and geopolitical danger at a time of relative decline. Saunders concludes these arguments made sense in 1975, but very little of this message endured through to the 1990s. 13 People voted 'yes' in 1975 because it was a particular moment characterised by memories of the Second World War, fears of the Cold War and Communist expansion, anxieties about the end of empire and Britain's place in the world, and perceptions of a crisis in Britain. 14 The referendum result reduced the political salience of Europe because the result was clear (67% for 'yes'), it was accepted by the losers, and it was welcomed by every major newspaper. 15 Robert Nicholls argues there was a popular sense the 1975 referendum had put the issue of Europe to bed. 16 At the time, Butler and Kavanagh explained neither Labour nor the Conservatives paid significant attention to Europe during the 1979 election campaign and suggested the referendum had 'seen the centrist leaders of the main parties crush the anti-Europeans'. 17 Although Labour moved to the left after 1979 and voted at their 1981 Annual Conference to withdraw from the Common Market without another referendum, the policy was promptly abandoned in the aftermath of their heavy defeat at the 1983 election. The Conservatives displayed a united front during the 1983 general election campaign. Margaret Thatcher saw the EEC as 'essentially a Europe of separate nations with certain common interests'. 18 The Conservative Party had evidence the majority of their supporters voted to remain in the EEC in 1975 and sought to keep the issue low key, to avoid division and display unity prior to the election. 19 It was only in the period after their victory when tensions emerged that had less to do with membership and more to do with the extent of integration and budgetary contributions.
According to Martin Holmes:  26 Questions clearly remain about the position of Euroscepticism within British popular culture prior to Maastricht, which remains relatively unexplored. By the early 1990s, Euroscepticism was not just seen to be moving from the periphery to the centre of British politics, but from 'soft' (qualified opposition to European integration and/or specific policies or national interest-opposition) to 'hard' (principled opposition to the EU and a wish for withdrawal). 27 The Maastricht Treaty (1992) and EU enlargement (2004) fanned the flames of Euroscepticism. 28 Euroscepticism moved from economic-utilitarian opposition focused on economic integration, to political-cultural opposition focused on political integration. 29 Euroscepticism became better organised around this time, with the formation of the Anti-Federalist League, followed by the Referendum Party, which became UKIP. Eventually, all this pressure and the post-2008 economic crisis in the Eurozone, ultimately led to the 2016 referendum. 30 The outcome of the referendum, of course, depended on public opinion. Indeed, elite perspectives had interacted with public opinion throughout the last five decades. This interaction is captured by the key concepts of permissive consensus and constraining dissensus. The permissive consensus was characterised by public disinterest in Europe that enabled political elites to promote integration independently of the public's wishes. 31 This permissive consensus was gradually replaced with a constraining dissensus as negative opinions of European integration grew and the public began to diverge in their assessments of EU membership. 32 The dissensus was also characterised by the rise of Eurosceptic political parties and factions within mainstream parties. The permissive consensus to constraining dissensus narrative of Euroscepticism implies people were apathetic, indifferent, or mildly favourable towards Europe in the early 1980s. Public opinion was not initially perceived as an important issue for early proponents of functionalist approaches to European integration. Integration processes were understood as an elite driven venture. 33 Citizens were understood to be ill-informed and to lack coherent beliefs on policy issues such as foreign policy. 34 Initial studies of European public opinion suggested citizens were generally positively disposed towards integration and happy to acquiesce with national elite decisions. 35 These understandings of public attitudes were derived from the growing number of opinion polls and survey studies asking questions about European integration. The European Commission set up the Eurobarometer in 1973 to gather public opinion data throughout the European Community. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it found a combination of support and indifference across Europe. For example, a communitywide poll in 1973 found 74% of respondents supported Western European Unification. 36 The result was unchanged in October 1981. Support for EC membership was less favourable with 56% of EC respondents supportive of membership in 1973, which declined to 53% by 1981. 37 Surveying public opinion in the 1970s, Slater found both a high level of apathy accompanied by goodwill towards a united Europe. 38 In Britain, responses to Eurobarometer consistently showed UK citizens were more likely to hold negative attitudes to EU membership by comparison to citizens in other member states. 39 Anderson and Hecht find similar levels of negativity based on historical surveys gathered by the United States Information Agency to measure public attitudes to European integration between 1952 and 1969. 40 Public opposition to membership of the common market fluctuated from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. MORI's periodic polls on EC membership found high levels of dissatisfaction in the years following the 1975 referendum, with 60% saying they would vote to leave in 1979, which increased to 65% in 1980. 41 42 NOP polling showed 64% of people in support of leaving the EEC in June 1980, which declined to 48% in October 1981. In June 1983, it fell again to 28%. 43 While the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey found 45% of respondents supporting withdrawal in 1984, Curtice and Evans found it down at 17% in 1991. 44 To summarise, support for leaving was relatively high in the late 1970s and declined during the 1980s, with the odd bump along the way. 1982-the year of Mass Observation's 'special directive' on Europe -appeared to be a moment of significant, but declining support for leaving. Ben Clements has recently provided a comprehensive account of how public opinion towards Europe changed in post-war Britain based on responses to Gallup, Ipsos MORI, Eurobarometer, the British Election Study, and the BSA survey. 45 Between 1972 and 2000, Gallup asked "Generally speaking, do you think that Britain's membership of the Common Market/European Community/European Union is a good thing, a bad thing or neither good nor bad?'. Focusing on these responses, Clements' highlight a decline in support for membership throughout the 1970s, which was followed by an initial rise then fall in support during the early 1980s, before a steady rise in positive appraisals through the remainder of the 1980s. 46 At the time of the MO directive, fewer than 20% of respondents to the 1982 Gallup poll thought membership was a good thing. 47 These trends in support for membership mirror the trends in support for leaving the EEC reported above. Clements' analysis also identifies a clear shift in the partisan and ideological basis of popular Euroscepticism during the 1980s, with Conservative supporters becoming more hostile to membership and Labour supporters becoming more favourable. In 1983, 28% of Labour supporters wanted Britain to leave the Common Market compared to 6% of Conservative supporters. 48 In 1987, 39% of Labour supporters supported withdrawal, declining to 26% in 1997; the proportion of Conservative supporters supporting withdrawal increased from 24% to 37%. 49 Clements' research also highlights an ideological realignment of public opinion. In 1976, 24% of those on the left said membership was a good thing, compared to 55% of those on the right; in 2011, the proportion of those on the left expressing this view increased to 34%, whilst the figure for those on the right fell to 21%. 50 The proportion of those on the right expressing support for a unified Europe fell from 79% in 1978 to 50% in 1995. During the same period, the proportion of those on the left expressing support for a unified Europe increased from 56% to 70%. 51 Clements' findings fit with other studies that indicate a broader shift in the ideological location of anti-European sentiment from economic nationalist-or international egalitarian-arguments on the left, towards cultural nationalist arguments on the right. 52 This evidence of party realignment also challenged the conventional wisdom that parties 'lead' public opinion on the issue of Europe, which meant elites had to increasingly 'look over their shoulders while negotiating European issues'. 53 These existing studies show that opposition to European integration in the UK has ebbed and flowed over time. If there is a clear pattern from opinion polls, it is that Euroscepticism gradually became associated with supporters of the Conservative Party, those on the right, older people, and less educated people. 54 Explanations of popular attitudes towards Europe have often focused on demographic differences in age, education, partisanship and social class-at the level of the individual citizen or the locality in which they reside. In terms of the demographic or socio-economic basis of Euroscepticism, the historical trends have been more consistent than ideology or partisanship. Younger people and those with higher levels of income and education have been more likely to hold positive views towards European integration, while older people and those in less secure economic circumstances have been more Eurosceptic. 55 The political scientist Ronald Inglehart identified a division between parochial and cosmopolitan citizens in terms of their outlook towards Europe 35 years before David Goodhart made his well-known distinction between 'somewheres' and 'anywheres' in relation to support for Brexit. 56 Various theories were developed to explain shifts in public opinion, including: those emphasising economic and utilitarian motivations behind EU support; those emphasising national and cultural identities; those focused on the role of cognitivemobilisation and post-material values; and those focused on ideological and partisan cues. 57 Although we have a clear idea of how public opinion towards European integration developed in Britain from the 1970s onwards, there is an absence of citizens' voices in these debates. Existing studies show a comparatively high proportion of British citizens held negative attitudes towards Europe in the early 1980s, yet leave unanswered questions about the content and form of these attitudes, as well as their origins. In the words of David Thackeray, if we are to fully understand Euroscepticism as a historical movement, 'we need a clearer understanding of how Euroscepticism has developed as a popular culture, its myths, conventional wisdoms, selective reading of history, and as a plausible rhetoric of EU 'failure". 58 This is especially true for the initial period of membership between the 1975 referendum and Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988. We do not wish to deny the importance of these moments but suggest that focusing on key events risks ascribing too much agency to political leaders and newspaper editors. We need a better understanding of how elite ideas about Europe were received by the public and developed from below. Most of the survey questions mentioned above focus on 'hard' Euroscepticism-questions about whether people want to leave or remain. Responses to these questions show that hard Euroscepticism declined during the 1980s, but reveal less about popular Euroscepticism during this period. Was it absent, or was it present in softer forms?
The rest of the article addresses these gaps and complements existing survey studies by adding citizens' voices from Mass Observation in 1982. These responses are useful for developing a better understanding of the language citizens used to articulate their grievances regarding the EEC in the early 1980s. They show citizens were already drawing upon and sharing media stories about butter mountains, wine lakes, and the excessive bureaucracy of EEC institutions as they developed their attitudes towards Europe. We also demonstrate that citizens' judgements were shaped by their quotidian experiences as consumers of higher prices and the reduced availability of British produce.

Mass observation and political attitudes
In Autumn 1982, the Mass Observation Project asked its panel of volunteer writers to record their thoughts on Britain's relationship with Europe to mark the 10 th anniversary of joining the Common Market. The responses to this directive provide new insights into how people understood and wrote about the EEC during this initial phase of membership. The value and limitations of Mass Observation as a resource for understanding everyday experiences and popular attitudes in post-war Britain are well known. The responses have been used to demonstrate how individuals engaged with various cultural discourses circulating in British society related to a diverse range of subjects. 59 The common criticisms of Mass Observation are that the sample is unrepresentative in being predominantly middle-class, elderly, and female, and also self-selecting, which means volunteer writers are by definition particularly dutiful, engaged, reflexive, and critical. 60 However, concerns about representativeness can be reduced by sampling within the panel using the MO's database of panellist characteristics, alongside information found in the responses themselves. We purposively sampled the responses to include respondents from a broad range of gender, age, geographical, and (where possible) occupational backgrounds. Concerns about the representativeness of the panel are also reduced by our analytical approach. As we argue elsewhere, responses to Mass Observation provide a unique insight into popular understandings of formal politics in the past. 61 MO sources are most commonly analysed by what might be called 'reading vertically' for autobiographical life histories. Sheridan, Street and Bloom pioneered this approach by urging historians to pay attention to the social conditions of MO respondents and the significance of writing for MO within their individual life histories. 62 James Hinton has demonstrated how the biographies of panellists can be studied and used to illuminate granular historical processes shaped by the choices of these historical agents. Hinton has also suggested, however, that volunteer writing for MO provides researchers with access to the cultural worlds inhabited by the panellists; the worlds of discourse from which people in particular places at particular times construct their selfhoods. 63 This brings us to an alternative way of approaching MO sources, which might be called 'reading horizontally' for shared cultural resources. It is based in the claims of cognitive science that behaviour is shaped by understanding, which in turn is shaped by cultural models. MO sources are analysed for the cultural resources panellists use to construct their understandings, and especially the cultural resources they share with each other-and, plausibly, with other citizens in their families, friendship networks, workplaces, and audiences for cultural products.
Our 'horizontal' reading of the MO responses is similar to the thematic approach of other historians', who generally value responses to MO as a source of popular, 'ordinary', or certainly 'non-elite or official' opinion. 64 But what is popular opinion actually made from? Here, we draw on the work of political sociologist William Gamson and cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who both show how shared understandings and worldviews are drawn from the cultural resources of media discourse, the personal resource of experiential knowledge, and the popular wisdom and common sense that straddles both categories. 65 To establish these shared understandings and worldviews, we read the MO material for three specific sets of cultural resources. First, we read them for shared categories: words or phrases referring to particular characters, practices, or events that are used to represent a specific group or phenomenon in general. Second, we read for the shared storylines about Europe populated by these categories. Finally, we read the material for evidence of shared folk theories: sets of abstractions made up of these categories and storylines, and used to guide citizens' judgements of politics. 66 Folk theories are the framework of assumptions and linked ideas people routinely develop to explain the physical, technological, and social phenomena they encounter. Kempton explains folk theories are 'folk' because they are shared by groups of citizens and acquired from everyday experience and social interaction. 67 'Theory' here means citizens use abstractions to enable predictions and guide behaviour.
This approach is particularly useful for identifying the conventional wisdom and common sense underpinning public opinion towards Europe during this period. We know from political science that elite cues are crucial for shaping public opinion. 68 King argued elite cues were particularly important for shaping the result of the 1975 referendum, as voters-who lacked strong feelings towards the Common Market-generally followed the endorsements of the main party leaders and business leaders. 69 Yet we also know from political historians that it is essential to pay attention to the reception of political discourse and how political language engages with citizens' pre-existing beliefs. 70 As Cowan argues, MO is a useful source for understanding the relationship between high-political and everyday discourses. People do not just unreflectively parrot political language but selectively engage with idioms offered by politicians and the media. 71 As such, in contrast to the vertical approach of Sheridan and Hinton, our horizontal approach privileges generalisation over complexity and the specific context of individual panellists' total engagements with MO. To be clear, this is not because we think such contexts are unimportant. Rather, we are trying to identify the attitudes and understandings panellists shared despite differing personal contexts. These strengths and limitations of our horizontal approach are shared with similar approaches taken by other researchers. 72 Our focus on the cultural resources and folk theories citizens drew upon to formulate political judgements is particularly useful for capturing the reception of formal political language. The responses to Mass Observation provide a unique insight into how citizens interacted with formal political language as they formed judgements of Britain's relationship with Europe in the early 1980s.

Popular attitudes towards Europe
Responding to the 1982 directive on Britain's membership of the Common Market, some panellists felt unqualified to comment due to their lack of knowledge. A 31-year-old woman from London pointed out: 'First of all I must say that I know hardly anything about the Common Market'. 73 A 34-year-old man from the North West agreed: 'I find it very hard to write about this subject . . . I know a bit about the countries in the EEC but much less about the way in which the organisation of the EEC actually affects those countries, including Britain'. 74 Those panellists who offered a view tended to write in negative terms. The EEC was popularly understood as a boring subject that people did not talk about. This associate professional from Cheshire reported: 'No one seems to talk about the Common Market anymore; it is a subject too dull to be conversational material'. 75 A retired man from Bridlington suggested the Common Market was 'a non-event as far as the working population is concerned', whilst this 41-year-old local councillor in Fylde explained: 'people living here, in the North West of England, are not really very much interested or involved in the Common Market, or indeed influenced by it'. 76 Many confessed to knowing little about the workings of the Common Market, not really thinking about it, not knowing what they were talking about, being unsure of their ground, having no strong opinions, and finding it difficult to comment.
Given this generalised lack of knowledge, many respondents turned to their feelings and identity as they began to formulate their judgements of Europe and the Common Market. In the words of this 59-year-old woman from Chelsea: 'The CM is a matter of economics, and the plethora of facts and figures made it more, not less, difficult to understand what was intended . . . so I suspect most people's views, like mine, are based much more on a rather emotional feeling than on knowledge and understanding of economics'. 77 Some panellists were keen to identify as European. This women explained: 'after years of feeling against our going in and feeling very indignant with Ted Heath for purporting to speak for the nation, I felt we could not get out of it without massive upheavals and as small nation could not possibly go it alone now . . . Now I am somewhat resigned and feel it is probably a good thing politically. We are European by geography and we can't get involved in a war with each other'. 78 Another writer believed membership was a good thing but pointed out: 'I couldn't give any hard, rational reasons why. I feel European. I don't mean white, I mean European. I love European history, European culture, I feel I'm part of it'. 79 Other panellists were keen to differentiate themselves from the rest of Europe. This woman wrote: 'I think it is difficult for the British to think of themselves as Europeans (I know I find it very hard) perhaps it is because we have no land borders with other members'. 80 Another man agreed: 'We have less in common with France etc. than they have with each other and the idea of working towards a European government appals me. I have an identity of which I'm proud and that is British, not European.' 81 One panellist was keen to stress she supported the Common Market in theory, 'but, I feel that as a citizen of Britain (and not necessarily an especially patriotic one) I would not feel Britain was benefitting from a huge and imbalanced overuse of its facilities'. 82 Other panellists offered their general impressions or concerns about 'Europe'. For this panellist, 'European countries are treacherous by nature and whilst they are friends and allies on the surface, unless we are very wary they could become enemies overnight'. 83 Another woman described her colleagues as 'strong anti-black' and suggested 'Europeans were not considered much different', before going on to outline her own view: 'I often feel that keeping independent and keeping our heads down might be a better way to live. I certainly do not feel that we can rely on our EEC partners any more than we can rely on any other country'. 84 This panellist reflected on the lack of European identity within Britain and suggested the channel tunnel could have 'a profound psychological effect' as 'the millions going abroad that way would have begun to feel European'. 85 The responses to Mass Observation suggest there was a generalised lack of knowledge surrounding the Common Market in 1982. People were unclear about how it affected them and did not feel confident writing about this topic. These initial responses also show how people thought about the EEC in political-cultural terms and framed their judgements around feelings about being European or not. Despite this lack of clarity regarding the concrete implications of membership, there were four categories of grievances we can identify in the responses: the excess and injustice of the CAP; higher prices; petty and unnecessary regulations governing food products; and the exorbitant expense of bureaucracy associated with the Common Market.

The common agricultural policy
Panellists associated the Common Market mostly with agricultural policy and regulations governing food products. What they knew about both of these areas was largely negative. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was perceived as subsidising overproduction of certain kinds of produce and encouraging inefficient farming practices. The images of 'butter mountains' and 'wine lakes' are the most prominent categories panellists shared with each other when writing about the Common Market. A 56-year-old manager from Wales reported: 'Generally people seem to think the Common Market is a bad thing. The reasons? The biggest criticism is over the mountains of butter, beef, and even lakes of wine, and the criticism here is that instead of the surplus being sold at a more economic price to people within in the community, it is sold to outsiders who have just sat back and waited for the goodies to be dropped into their laps'. 86 Another panellist agreed: 'if it is not dull then it is a joke. All those butter mountains, wine lakes and so on-we ought to be appalled by the dreadful waste, but instead it's just an absurd sort of joke'. 87 This view was shared by a 24-year-old public sector professional from the South East of England, who wrote: 'At best, my impression is of constant bickering between countries over issues such as Common Agricultural Policy, butter mountains, beef mountains, and wine lakes. All apparently as a result of "encouraging" farmers to produce more. But to what purpose?'. 88 A retired associate professional also from the South East observed: 'Economically we seem to have had few benefits so far . . . there seems to be many petty rules which usually militate against the UK/farmer, but perhaps we shall catch up soon with the older members . . . protectionism seems to go mad and cause so many "lakes" and mountains which are sold off cheaply to Russia'. 89 Finally, this pensioner from London explained: 'The single worst stumbling block to approval or even acceptance of the Common market has been the CAP. Plenty of publicity is given to the butter (and other) mountains and those reports stick in people's minds'. 90 'Milk lakes' and 'butter mountains' exemplify the categories that, in the words of the previous panellist, stuck in citizens' minds when they thought about the Common Market. These categories populated a broader storyline, which was that the CAP was both inefficient and unfair. The overproduction of certain kinds of produce was not just seen as absurd but also unjust. There was a perception that Britain was losing out, as this administrator from the East Midlands explained: 'The butter, sugar mountains etc.-do not do much to endear the Common Market to the public. These should be used for the benefit of all C.M. members'. 91 A 33-year-old man from the South West agreed: 'Milk lakes and butter mountains are not an asset. Farmers sitting on their milk stools in their fields in the misty mornings of Northern France look very picturesque but it is an expensive way to produce milk and I don't see why we should subsidise them'. 92 The French, and French farmers in particular, were recurring characters populating this wider storyline about the CAP. 'One can't discuss the C.M. for too long without bringing up the filthy French', wrote a woman from Chelsea, whilst another panellist observed: 'The French do seem to bend the EEC rules to suit themselves'. 93 A 23-year-old woman from Scotland got 'the impression that there are mostly economic disadvantages for Britain', before commenting that 'veg shops sell a lot of French fruit and veg', whilst a retired Londoner reported: 'The French are widely thought to be the most self-seeking nation of the group'. 94 This professional from Yorkshire agreed: 'The French remain a highly suspect people'. 95 Britain was perceived to be subsidising overproduction and a policy that encouraged inefficient farming practices, and resulted in butter mountains and wine lakes that kept prices artificially high for British consumers. This panellist asked: 'Why should we pour money into the common market for the benefit of the Germans and the French? Especially the French, they don't play fair. Look at the way they are trying to ban Italian wines and our exports of lamb. And they don't want us growing King Edwards, Bramleys and heaven knows what else'. 96 The prominence of this shared storyline about the CAP is unsurprising and fits with the findings from qualitative research projects from the time. For example, Miles Hewstone's study of popular attitudes towards Europe found that knowledge of the community's principles and goals was limited and popular indifference was widespread. Hewstone gathered qualitative responses from university students across Britain, France, Germany and Italy between 1982 and 1983, which he aimed to use to establish the 'social representations' from which popular attitudes towards Europe derived. He noted the exception to indifference was attitudes towards the CAP, where he explained opinion was 'richer' but more negative and couched in 'simple, simplistic, metaphorical languageimages of butter mountains and wine lakes'. 97 These metaphorical images originated in the newspapers and other media sources, and were fully circulating around the 'mental landscape' of British citizens in the Autumn of 1982. 98 Seidel argues the CAP was at the centre and often the cause of Britain's awkward relationship with Europe. 99 The CAP was a major source of the EEC budget and Britain as a net importer spent more on the budget than other member states-apart from West Germany-but received little from the policy because it had a small and efficient agricultural sector. Seidel argues rising levels of inflation and unemployment from the 1970s meant the British public became increasingly hostile to the CAP and EEC membership. Seidel focuses on policymakers rather than public opinion and attitudes, but argues 'British politicians of both the Conservative and Labour Parties assumed the public cared deeply about food prices and the CAP's scandalous food mountains'. 100 The responses to MO show how these categories appear to have captured people's imagination. Importantly, they contributed to a wider storyline that the EEC was not just absurd but also that the CAP was inequitable and disadvantageous. These categories likely originated from newspapers and media coverage at the time, with Gliddon showing evidence of these metaphors appearing in both the BBC and ITN's coverage of the 1975 referendum. 101

Rising prices
Although the categories of wine lakes and butter mountains likely derived from media representations of the CAP, it is also important to recognise how panellists developed and shared categories about Europe in response to their personal experiences. The shared category of 'rising prices' is a clear example of panellists drawing upon their individual experience as consumers. One of the main reasons panellists perceived the CAP as unfair was because they believed it had resulted in rising prices in the shops. An unemployed 31year-old from London wrote: 'I don't think it's a good thing . . . I think it has increased the prices of goods in the shops as we have to keep in line with other common market countries'. Another panellist observed: 'Everyone used to blame it for higher food prices'. 102 A 63-year-old Scotswoman reported: After discussing the EEC with friends, neighbours, and colleagues, I can pick out one point which distresses nearly all of them. It may be, of course, that they are wrong, but this is their complaint -we are paying high prices for food we want but also high prices to get rid of what we do not want. The EEC has raised directly the price of sugar and bread. Indirectly, it has raised the price of many other products . . . many Scottish people feel we would do better if we could obtain supplies on the world market, or as we used to do from our Commonwealth partners. 103 A 33-year-old man from Yorkshire shared this common sentiment: 'it has always irritated me that while many prices rose because of membership (i.e. foodstuffs) this didn't seem balanced by falls'. 104 The category of higher prices shows how grievances did not just come from top-down media reports. As this retired man from the East of England put it: 'Membership of the Common Market for this country is on balance a bad thing . . . Politically there appears to be the interference in our internal affairs . . . Economically, this is more clean cut and clearly observable. First and foremost is the great big rip off we suffered by going decimal . . . the change in prices for many people was completely misleading'. 105 Or in the words of this 40-year-old manager: 'It certainly has not proved to be economical for the working-class housewife. In my opinion it was not a good idea at all . . . with prices rising every year-or every six months, what kind of income do politicians expect the working class to live on these days?'. 106 The category of higher prices shows how grievances were not just repeats of elite cues. The imagery of 'wine lakes' and 'butter mountains' first appeared in the British press during the late 1970s and persisted throughout the 1980s. Yet the MO responses show citizens also drawing upon their own personal experiences in the shops when formulating their judgements of membership of the common market. Crucial here was the wider context of economic recession facing Britain in the early 1980s. Earlier studies of public opinion towards Europe often focused explicitly on the material interests and economic wellbeing of citizens. 107 At the aggregate level, measures of national economic performance were clearly linked to shifts in support for European integration. Evidence was also found of both egocentric concerns about personal finances and sociotropic concerns about the national economy shaping attitudes towards European integration. 108 There is also clearly an overlap here between the popular grievances shared by MO panellists and the key arguments advanced by the anti-common market campaign, which focused on rising prices during the 1975 referendum. 109 The responses to MO suggests these arguments were kept alive and endured in popular wisdom about Europe.

Unnecessary regulations
The personal experiences of consumers also lay behind a third category of grievance that MO panellists shared with one another as respondents frequently complained about regulations governing food products. Such regulations were perceived as the petty red tape of meddling, expensive bureaucrats obsessed with standards and homogeneity to the detriment of heterogeneity and choice. A professional from the East of England explained: 'One objection which comes up again and again is the legislation about what sort of potatoes we can grow in our fields. People get very heated about King Edwards etc.'. 110 A man from a village in Warwickshire complained: 'the paper mountain grows even faster than the butter, sugar and cereal mountains. Petty restrictions on the size, quality, sale of sundry commodities verge on the ridiculous, and cause trouble out of all proportion to their exporters overall'. 111 This 30-year-old administrator from the East of England suggested 'the most ridiculous example of Common Market Legislation I can think of is the ruling they brought out regarding the sizing of apples'. Whilst this panellist from the North West explained: 'the general feeling was that the availability and quality of apples before joining the Common Market was far superior to our present day situation'. 112 A farmer from Kent identified the negative effects of the legislation on his own livelihood: 'We as a family consider being a member of the Common Market is a bad thing. We live in the Weald of Kent, a farming area. When it first was broached, the farm where I worked was dreading it. The apple sizes were governed by the market, so a good percentage of the crop was thrown away on the dump as being too small'. 113 Other respondents reported the negative effects of these new food regulations on the local economy. This 44-year-old woman from the South West had heard 'rumours that two local farmers have been put out of business by EEC regulations concerning the size of apples that can be sold', whilst a 36-year-old shop worker, also from Kent, explained: 'I will not buy French apples. We go without if that's all that's in the shops. We have a very good green grocers in Maidstone that has many local grown crops throughout the year, but even then, the prices are forced up by imports'. 114 Golden delicious apples were a recurring character in this storyline panellists shared with one another about unnecessary regulation. A shop-worker from the East of England wrote: 'I can say from experience that, for instance, French Golden delicious apples come into this country at a very reasonable price . . . but flavour wise very poor. Now English apples are quite often graded by hand, but cannot compete in price, but-excellent flavour'. 115 A retired Welshman wrote: 'I am most in favour of banning Golden Delicious apples in favour of our own varieties; last year the French promised to hold them back until our own were finished, but this year they are back on the market in competition with our own. They are neither golden nor delicious in my estimation'. 116 Another retired woman explained the local effects of the regulations: 'In East Anglia we have already lost acres and acres of orchards to those awful Golden Delicious'. 117 This woman from London explained: 'Membership of the CM in most people's minds was a disaster . . . one bone of contention with myself is the Golden Delicious apples from France. For one thing there is absolutely no flavour in them, and the French know this, because they do not eat apples raw as we do and use the G.D. Apples for cooking'. 118 This panellist confessed: 'If I did allow myself to be emotionally motivated, I'd ban golden delicious apples. Not because they're always in the news, but because I love apples, eat one almost every day, and G. D. apples are lousy'. 119 This idea of apples being in the news was repeated by another panellist, who explained: 'The disappearance of many obscure varieties of English apple has been blamed on the EEC-dumping of French Golden Delicious on us'. Yet they also went on to critique this narrative and suggested it was actually the result of 'a campaign by The Sunday Times colour magazine to fan interest in domestic apple varieties including drawings of dozens of different English apples. Could one really buy more than a small fraction of them in our shops before we joined the EEC?'. 120 These last two responses nicely illustrate how popular wisdom surrounding Europe drew from both media discourse and the personal resource of experiential knowledge. Anti-French sentiment clearly drew on negative media stereotypes, but also highlights an underlying scepticism in popular attitudes towards mutual cooperation and interdependence behind the more substantive grievance that membership was disadvantageous.

Exorbitant bureaucracy
The grievance about unnecessary regulation, characterised by the presence of unpleasant golden delicious apples in local shops, connected to a final storyline about the Common Market being unnecessary, extravagant, and wasteful. Some panellists were keen to stress they supported the Common Market in theory but complained about 'red-tape' and unnecessary regulation. This 58-year-old woman suggested: 'Being so big, I think it is likely to be unwieldy and overpowered by red-tape. I read recently that there are about 250 commissions, committees, and advisory bodies in the EEC costing at least £40 million a year'. 121 Another panellist supported membership but complained: 'I feel that it is top heavy with administration and red tape. I read somewhere 75% of income goes on administration . . . There does not seem to be the free flow of jobs, goods and people I thought the forming of the EEC would bring'. 122 This 25-year-old man suggested the Common Market needed to be rationalised and rethought, before asking: 'What did happen to the ill-fated euro dollar/pound? Another piece of misconceived red tape that would probably only create more problems than it was worth!'. 123 The perception that the EEC was dominated by red-tape and bureaucracy contributed to the idea that it was unnecessary. This 27-year-old woman from London explained: 'The only time I seem to hear comments about the Common Market is when an odd news item crops up about yet another awkward EEC regulation which seems totally bureaucratic and simply to "bring us in line" with other members . . . the regulations always seem to highlight an area of possible controversy which nobody would have noticed. The bureaucrats seem to want to bring us in line by emphasising our differences before we notice them'. 124 Another panellist from Cheshire explained further: A lot to do with the EEC seems absurd. For instance, those committees who spend endless hours in Brussels trying to work out international specifications for products or commoditiesso that a packet of jelly-babies (say) bought in Milan will be identical in taste, size, contents etc. to a packet bought in Manchester or Manheim . . . how pathetic to spend time and money devising a system of Eurosize detergent powder when there is so much else wrong with Europe and the world. The Common Market seems bogged down in bureaucracy and paper . . . I feel it is awfully well intentioned but just slightly off the rails. 125 Some shared characters that featured in this storyline were the 'gravy train' of 'self-serving bureaucrats' who travelled at great expense between the EEC's multiple centres of government. A 40-year-old woman from the West Midlands explained they voted against joining the Common Market in 1975 because of 'the cost of running the parliament and the other bureaucratic departments. At the time, I didn't realise that the main centre would in fact be in three places . . . indeed some of the values of scandalous expenditure seem so incredible they are probably true'. 126 A 53-year-old woman from the South West shared a similar concern: 'As one who has to budget carefully, I am appalled at the extravagance of funding three different headquarters because they can't even agree on a central establishment'. 127 A retired woman living in Chelmsford reported: 'The "gravy train" news always provokes my husband into tirades, especially if the journalist of the day goes on about the bureaucracy and the masses of paperwork that is filling up in vaults in Brussels and the millions of pounds it's costing'. 128 A woman from Kensington explained: In general, I'm still rather wafflingly in favour of the C.M., if only because I feel there ought to be more strength in unity. Though, so far, we just seem to have endless scrapes and rows and nonsense things like butter mountains and wine lakes. One thing I do dislike, though, is the massive bureaucracy of it all. It's like the United Nations -the massive complexes of buildings at New York in one case, Brussels in the other: the thousands of 'jobs for the boys', all the bureaucrats earning real salaries, turning out tons of paper printed in civil servant gobbledygook. So much money spent -so many slums still being lived in, so many schools and teachers and hospitals and nurses still needed. So many business lunches and dinners, each costing more than thousands of people can earn in a week -or a month. 129 Not only was the EEC unnecessary, but it was also associated with corruption and elitism. 'The name should be "con-man" market . . . I think we were joined to Europe purely as a means of benefiting the few and not to benefit the majority of people in this country . . . so a few people somewhere can have a few more yachts. The whole set up stinks', wrote one 73-year-old man. 130 Another panellist complained: 'As for Euro MPs, one is seemingly always hearing about misappropriations of expenses etc. and non-appearance at the appropriate Euro parliament sessions!'. 131 This 23-year-old woman expressed a similar attitude, explaining they voted in the European elections of 1979 'despite my view that the European Parliament being a mere talking shop with few real powers was largely a waste of time, and especially money'. 132 Finally, this 30-year-old panellist reflected: 'I feel that the Common Market is little more than a club which to date has been run for the benefit of Germany and France, and is a restrictive club at that'. 133 This story about exorbitant bureaucracy mirrors the findings in Hewstone's 1983 study and likely originated from media coverage of the Common Market. Hewstone suggested bureaucracy itself was a term that represented 'all that is commonly deplored in the day-to-day experience of organisations' in conventional wisdom, and quoted The Observer: 'To be sure, the European Commission is a strange creature. It reminds one of a huge hamster cage where creatures of various size and importance spin round in wheels which give enormous traction but no forward movement '. 134 In this section, we have identified two main storylines Mass Observation panellists shared with each other when given the opportunity to write about their thoughts on Europe in their own terms. The first storyline focused on the absurdity and injustice of the CAP and was populated by the categories of butter mountains and wine lakes taken from media discourse, and rising prices panellists personally experienced as consumers. The CAP was perceived to allow farmers to carry on their inefficient production, resulting in surpluses either stored or sold outside of the Common Market to keep prices inside the Common Market artificially high. The result was higher prices for British consumers. Whilst stories about the CAP originated largely from media coverage, stories about rising prices originated from both media coverage and consumer experiences. The second storyline painted the Common Market as an expensive and unnecessary institution that undermined Britain's economic interests. Petty regulations, golden delicious apples, red tape, and exorbitant bureaucracy were the main characters populating this second storyline. Again, these categories were derived from what panellists encountered in the news media, but also what they found when they went to the greengrocer or supermarket. These examples of conventional wisdom were shared by a range of people from different regional, social, and economic backgrounds, and underpinned popular attitudes to Europe in the early 1980s. These storylines arguably formed a broader folk theory that could be described as a soft, utilitarian form of Euroscepticism, which painted the EEC as imperfect, mismanaged, and in need of reform.

Conclusion
Existing studies of Euroscepticism in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s have tended to emphasise two prominent events: the 1975 referendum and Thatcher's 1988 Bruges speech. In this article, we have focused on the relatively neglected period between these two events, which has often been characterised as a quiet period when the issue of Europe had been 'put to bed' by the referendum and a 'permissive consensus' reigned, reflecting a public largely indifferent to or mildy supportive of the EEC. In addition, we have focused beyond the usual suspects of Thatcher, the Murdoch press, UKIP and its predecessors, and other elite agents, and also beyond the public opinion polls generally relied on by studies more focused on popular perspectives. We have brought new evidence in the form of previously overlooked responses to Mass Observation's special directive of 1982. Respondents were encouraged to write about the EEC in their own voices and to articulate the content and origins of their opinions in a way rarely afforded by the closed questions of public opinion polls, which often limited their interest to what might be termed the 'hard Euroscepticism issue' of support for EEC membership.
The literature on Euroscepticism suggests that negative attitudes to Europe became much more prevalent after Maastricht (1992), and much more political-cultural too (focused on sovereignty and identity, as opposed to more economic-utilitarian concerns). 135 This does not quite fit with what we find in the 1982 responses. These responses indicate Euroscepticism already had a relatively strong grip on British political culture in 1982, which fits with opinion polling from the time. Citizens had plenty of reasons to be sceptical of the EEC, including the butter mountains resulting from the CAP, the accompanying higher prices in the shops, the paper mountains stemming from petty regulations, and the self-interested, expensive bureaucrats who were perceived to benefit from all of this. These four main grievances MO panellists shared with one another during this period were largely economic-utilitarian in character, which makes sense given the economic recession Britain faced in the early 1980s. They also highlight the legacy of the main arguments left behind by the anti-common market campaign in 1975, which continued to circulate in popular wisdom. However, people also appeared to think about the Common Market in political-cultural terms, regularly expressing feelings about being European, or negative sentiments towards other nations-the French in particular. This suggests Euroscepticism was political-cultural too-driven by identity and feelings-and more so than is commonly recognised for the period prior to Maastricht and enlargement.
The categories and storylines we identify-the butter mountains or the bureaucratic inefficiency of the EEC-populated a wider folk theory that positioned the Common Market as imperfect, mismanaged, unfair, and disadvantageous to Britain's economic interests. Indeed, the Mass Observation responses appear to provide evidence of a folk theory circulating in British society during the 1980s that suggested the Common Market was in desperate need of reform. Common Market institutions were routinely characterised as unnecessary and inefficient, and fundamentally disadvantageous to British consumers and the national economy. This folk theory guided common sense understandings and popular attitudes towards Europe during this period. Crucially, we find citizens sharing a workable language of Euroscepticism six years before Margaret Thatcher gave her famous Bruges speech that has been credited with legitimising Euroscepticism in British political culture. 136 Our findings parallel larger and more representative surveys of public opinion towards European integration from this period. 137 Inglehart reviewed public opinion between 1970 and 1984 and concluded: 'What is perceived is a process of endless bureaucratic infighting: the European spirit seems to have died sometime in the 1960s. The European movement no longer captures the imagination of the politically involved and most educated stratum to the extent it once did'. 138 Hewstone's own social-psychological study found widespread negativity among British university students, with no consensus on the merits of membership and widespread dissatisfaction with the CAP and excessive bureaucracy, which was accompanied by anti-French sentiment. 139 The evidence presented in this article also fits with Copeland and Copsey's conclusion there was no 'tipping point' for the growth of Euroscepticism in the UK. 140 However, the extent to which the cultural resources identified were shared by a wide range of panellists also raises questions about the idea that Euroscepticism was solely the domain of a vocal, nationalist minority within society, who promoted their agenda against an indifferent, cost-benefit motivated rational majority. 141 Clearly, the Eurosceptic media and politicians played a key role in building pressure for a second referendum in 2016. The advantage of using Mass Observation, however, is we see how 'ordinary people' played an active role in developing and sharing these Eurosceptic discourses-discourses that were based on material circumstances and the everyday experiences of consumers formed during a period of economic recession and widening inequality, and not only elite cues. The evidence from Mass Observation indicates there was a receptive audience waiting for Thatcher's Bruges speech by the late 1980s. A soft Eurosceptic folk theory was circulating in British society. The EEC was widely viewed as flawed and in need of reform. Over the next three decades, this audience and their folk theory would be worked on by Eurosceptic elites. Some would become impatient and increasingly cynical regarding the lack of reform in the EEC and later the EU. By the 2016 referendum, the soft Euroscepticism of many, evident in the early 1980s, had been worked up into something harder: a folk theory of the EU as flawed, incapable of reform, and deserving of Brexit.

Data availability statement
The paper draws on responses to the Mass Observation Directives: SxMOA2/1/7: EEC Special: Tenth Anniversary of British Entry Into Europe. These responses are available to view at the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton BN1 9BP, or see www.massobs.org.uk.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).