Free vote insisted upon by Wilson in the 1975 first ever UK wide referendum, the constitutional precedent of abandoning collective cabinet responsibility. The referendum was only held because with the free vote in the House of Commons Wilson got it through because of Conservative votes. The vote by the electorate went the way it did was because of repetition of the same lies told in 1973 coupled with scare stories of "doom'n'gloom" that the country would be ruined if we left the EEC that was a lie then as it was a lie when similar predictions were made earlier this year in the run up to the 2016 Referendum.