Mr S J Hurrell's outburst against Tony Blair (Letters, October 24) cannot be allowed to pass without comment.

If any party has sold out on the issue of Europe it is his beloved Mrs Thatcher and the Tories.

When Edward Heath became Prime Minister in 1970, he promised a General Election or referendum before joining the Common Market.

But when he signed the European Communities Act in 1973, we got neither.

If was left to Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1975 to give us a referendum on our future membership of the Common Market. We voted two to one to stay in.

It is also important to remember it was John Major's Government which forced the Maastricht Treaty through parliament in 1991-2, which took the European Union into entirely new waters.

There were repeated calls for a referendum but they were swept aside by the PM and the Foreign Secretary.

Now the Tories have the audacity to pose as the defenders of our independence as they attempt to beat the Government with the stick of the Euro-constitution.

Their claims ring hollow because it was that party which first took us into the Common Market and then committed us to a federalist future.

-John Hodgson, Peacehaven