  We investigate the effects arising out of the $E1 - E2$ interference in the
Coulomb dissociation of $^8$B at beam energies below and around 50 MeV/nucleon.
The theory has been formulated within a first order semiclassical scheme of
Coulomb excitation, in which both the ground state and the continuum state wave
functions of $^8$B enter as inputs. We find that the magnitude of the
interference could be large in some cases. However, there are some specific
observables which are free from the effects of the $E1 - E2$ interference,
which is independent of the models used to describe the structure of $^8$B.
This will be useful for the analysis of the breakup data in relation to the
extraction of the astrophysical factor $S_{17}(0)$.
