So what did the man so foolishly described by Nye Bevan as "a desiccated calculating machine" say in what all the commentators agreed was an utterly stunning 105-minute address? His approach was intensely emotional and deeply patriotic. Joining the EEC "does mean the end of Britain as an independent European State", he warned. "It means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say ‘Let it end', but my goodness it is a decision which demands a little care and thought."

He warned against the creeping federalism inherent in majority voting, which would inevitably embrace more and more areas. He warned that it would put an end to an independent British foreign policy and the right to implement our own economic policies. He talked (rightly) of the damage our accession would do to our Commonwealth partners. It was obvious to the delegates that he felt this country's natural home was as the head of the Commonwealth and closely allied to the US.

Then came another pleasingly populist outburst from that quintessential Wykehamist. The EEC idea that governments (today he might have said Brussels bureaucrats) know best and should take crucial decisions was "an odious piece of of hypocritical, supercilious, arrogant rubbish". The people should have the final say. It was an argument—and choice of words—which Nigel Farage or Norman Tebbit would have been proud of.

The historian Brian Brivati wrote a fine biography of Gaitskell. He accepts that the speech "as a political performance, was his finest hour", though he dismisses the contents as "an almost entirely antediluvian vision, based on the shakiest grasp of economic and political reality".

Brivati was, in my view, right about the "performance" and wrong, wrong, wrong about the content. The Brighton speech stands up amazingly well after more than 50 years. Read it for yourself if and when you get to vote in David Cameron's promised referendum. And mourn our lost Prime Minister.