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		Letter to the Editor New Europe - Thursday 20th January 2005 Dear Sir, I was very disappointed by your coverage (Jan 16 - 21) of the Constitution vote in the Strasbourg parliament on January 12th, your dismissive take on the protests, and your total failure to mention the outrageous strong-arm tactics used against protesters. Your headline read "Parliament hails EU Constitution". A fairer headline might have been "Death of democracy: dissidents silenced by Gestapo tactics". Your first line referred to "a staggering majority". But everyone expected the EU parliament, stuffed with unrepresentative euro-luvvies, to vote yes. The real story was that as many as 137 voted NO. In the last 1999/2004 parliament, we would have been lucky to see much more than half that figure. You didn't mention it, but a majority of MEPs from Britain, from Poland and from the Czech Republic voted NO. Most worrying of all was your failure to mention, at all, the gratuitous violence offered to MEPs, and their staff, who sought to balance the overwhelming weight of propaganda and celebration from the YES side. One young lady assistant, Nikki Sinclaire, was punched, wrestled to the ground by four burly security guards, and dragged along the floor. Tearful and shaken, she said "It was like the Gestapo". I myself had to struggle with two guards to hang on to my NO banner as they tried to take it away, and I was only saved by the timely arrival of TV cameras. All this disgraceful behaviour was filmed by the world's media and widely broadcast. It cannot be denied. After demonstrations in the exercise yard in the round tower, security cheerfully re-admitted YES campaigners into the building, but tried to block the assistants of myself and my colleagues who were wearing "NO" T-shirts. The whole experience -- the use of the parliament building and public money to promote one side of a contentious debate, the total failure to respect public opinion, the shocking violence against protesters including parliamentarians -- shows that "European democracy" is a farce. But there is just one silver lining. These events make it even less likely that the ratification process will have a clear run in members states, especially in those states whose MEPs voted NO, and were assaulted for their pains. Yours faithfully, Roger Helmer MEP