Goldsmith had become increasingly concerned throughout the 1980s about the nature of the
European Economic Community (EEC), and harboured a deepening suspicion that at its core lay a desire for the domination of the European continent by Germany, a suspicion which was for him confirmed further when in 1992, via the passage of the
Maastricht Treaty, the EEC re-titled itself as the
European Union, with dramatically centralising governmental powers being enacted over its constituent member nations. In March 1993 Goldsmith gave a televised lecture publicly declaring opposition to the European Union, which was transmitted across the United Kingdom on
Channel 4 Television as part of its
Opinions political commentary series, the text of which was published in
The Times the following day under the title
Creating a Superstate is the way to destroy Europe. In the mid-1990s he financially supported a
Eurosceptic think tank entitled the
European Foundation. In 1994 he published
The Trap, a book detailing his broader political philosophical thoughts, giving a critique of the dominance of
neoliberalism in the governments of the
First World. In its text he criticised their ideological dogmatic pursuance of
free trade, and the facilitation of the American "
melting pot" societal model being copied by the rest of the First World's governments through mass foreign migration, driven by a pursuance of short-term economic advantage, which he posited was fatally flawed in societal concept and brought with it great societal dangers. As an economic alternative he espoused a restoration of
classical liberalism, and a return to
mercantilism. He also advocated the prevention by governmental action of mass migrations by populations from poorer areas of the globe into the First World driven by economic motivation, which he foresaw as an inevitability of escalating
Third World population demographics and First World governmental neoliberal and
socialist ideologies. In 1994 he was
elected in France as a
Member of the European Parliament, representing the ''
Majorité pour l'autre Europe'' party, and subsequently became the leader of the eurosceptic
Europe of Nations group within the European Parliament.
Referendum Party In the early 1990s, with the removal of
Margaret Thatcher from the United Kingdom's Prime Ministerial office by the
Tories, and their enactment into law of the
Maastricht Treaty, Goldsmith, who up until that time had retained close links with the Conservative Party, came to the conclusion that it was no longer a serious political vehicle to oppose the
European Union's advancing power, and that opposition would have to be created within the party political system beyond its current order of the
Conservative,
Labour and
Liberal Democrats parties, all of which supported the United Kingdom's incorporation into the European Union. In consequence, in 1994 Goldsmith founded and financed the
Referendum Party in the United Kingdom, modelled upon the ''Majorité pour l'autre Europe'', with the objective of seeking a
referendum for its national withdrawal from the European Union, which would go on to stand candidates in the country's general election of 1997. As the mid-1990s progressed Goldsmith involved himself in British politics, appearing with increasing regularity in the political press, and in domestic political televised debates, raising opposition to the nature of the European Union and what he perceived was
mainstream media culpability in playing down its supranational ambitions, and pouring scorn on a
Westminster parliamentary political order that he stated had failed the nation and was now wilfully betraying its governmental sovereignty. During the 1997 electoral campaign Goldsmith had mailed to approximately five million homes a
VHS video cassette film to allow him to address the electorate free from the editorial control of the nation's mainstream media, having previously rejected the idea of by-passing the United Kingdom's legal restrictions on the broadcast of political information by the means of an
offshore radio station named "Referendum Radio".
1997 United Kingdom general election At the
1997 general election, Goldsmith stood as a candidate for the Referendum Party in the London constituency of
Putney, against the former
Conservative minister
David Mellor, MP, in an electoral contest in which Goldsmith polled 3.5% of the vote. The declaration of the Putney result, which was televised and nationally broadcast live on the night of 1 May 1997, saw a charged atmosphere at the count, with a rowdy crowd in attendance of anti-European Union activists from the Referendum Party, and the recently inaugurated
UK Independence Party (which would itself receive only a couple of hundred votes in Putney that night). An acrimonious confrontation between Mellor (who had lost his seat to the Labour Party candidate) and Goldsmith developed on stage after Mellor, in what was to be his valedictory address from politics, personally insulted Goldsmith's candidacy. During the speech, part of the crowd, Goldsmith and some of the other candidates began a gleefully defiant collective repetitive shouting chant of "Out!" in response, in celebration of the perceived substantive damage having been done to a prominent member of the Westminster Parliamentary political order of which they had become so contemptuous. Goldsmith's electoral performance at Putney had been reasonably insubstantial, in a British electoral culture in which it is notoriously difficult for new political parties or maverick politicians to establish themselves. He was also terminally ill during the election, a fact which he had kept secret beyond his closest personal circle, and which had limited his ability to campaign. When interviewed by the BBC's
Michael Buerk during the count prior to the result being announced, he described his chances as being "extremely low" – the 1,518 votes that his candidacy had garnered had not in itself defeated the incumbent Mellor, who had lost by 2,976 votes; moreover it amounted to less than 5% of the total votes cast, this being insufficient for Goldsmith to retain the candidate's financial deposit of £500, a part of the 20 million pounds that he had reportedly poured into the Referendum Party in its brief existence. Mellor had correctly predicted at the count that the Referendum Party was "dead in the water", and indeed the party did disappear with Goldsmith's death two months after the election. However, many of the Referendum Party's activists and voters would go on to join and support the Referendum Movement, a non-party successor campaign against EU single currency membership, which, in 1998, was renamed the
Democracy Movement. Sir James Goldsmith's political legacy, in securing the promise of a referendum on euro membership and through successor campaigns, would almost 20 years later see the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union in a
referendum on the issue. ==Death==