Campaign for an Independent Britain
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The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB) is a cross-party Eurosceptic campaign group which calls for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
The CIB has its roots partly in the Safeguard Britain Campaign (founded in 1976), which became the Anti-Common Market League (ACML) in 1983. In 1989 the ACML pooled its campaigning resources with several other eurosceptic groups including the trade union-based Campaign Against Euro Federalism (CAEF) to create the Campaign for an Independent Britain. It now claims up to 3,400 individual members.
The various groups which formed CIB remain in existence, continue to publish their own newsletters (which are archived on the CIB website) and have guaranteed seats on the CIB's management committee. In some cases they have their own websites. The different groups came from various ideological perspectives and the CIB is proud of its all-party status. Its management committee has traditionally included members of all three major parties in the United Kingdom.
Sir Richard Body, a former Conservative MP is president of the group. Sir Teddy Taylor MP, is a vice-president. The group's Chair is the Labour peer Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Lord Shore (formerly the Labour minister Peter Shore) helped run the CIB for many years until his death.
Russell White, leader of the radical right Populist Party, which once contested a council seat in Greenwich, is its London South East organiser, and plans to set up anti-EU meetups London Anti-EU meetup in 2005.
The CIB collaborates with the Labour Euro-Safeguards Campaign (LESC) in the "production of bulletins aimed at those in the Labour movement who are concerned about the effects of moves towards a federal Europe."
The former Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, and Bernard Jenkin, a former member of the Shadow Cabinet, have both addressed the CIB.
