Defending ‘British interests’ is no way to oppose EU
Penny Cole takes a critical look at the NO2EU campaign that is contesting next week’s European elections
The Rail & Maritime Union (RMT), under its general secretary Bob Crow, is one of the few unions to have consistently opposed New Labour and campaigned against job losses and attacks on conditions since the financial and economic meltdown.
Currently, the union is engaged in a series of disputes with the privatised rail companies which are trying to cut jobs and conditions as a result of falling passenger numbers caused by the economic crisis. The union has taken the lead in organising low-paid and migrant cleaning workers.
The RMT became the first major union to sever its links with New Labour and no longer supports the party financially. Now the union has thrown its weight and resources behind an organisation called NO2EU-Yes to Democracy. This was set up to contest next month’s European elections and will cease to exist the day after.
NO2EU is standing candidates in every seat for the European Parliament elections to be held on June 4. The Communist Party of Britain, which publishes the Morning Star, and the Socialist Party are also part of the NO2EU project. The former Labour MP Alice Mahon has declared her support for the electoral pact, having recently resigned from the party.
The elections take place in the midst of the greatest economic crisis to hit Europe in the post-war period and it is increasingly clear that it is European workers who will pay the price. By 2010, unemployment across the European Union will be its highest since the depression of the 1930s and is expected to reach 10.9%.
Worst hit will be countries where construction has been a significant employer in recent years, notably Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Spain. Unemployment in Spain is forecast to exceed 20% by 2010. From 2010, the value of wages is expected to fall sharply, and public spending on both services and infrastructure will be cut, as government revenues collapse.
The European Union is essentially a capitalist trading bloc that advances member states’ interests within the globalised economy. EU representatives sit on bodies like the World Trade Organisation, for example, and negotiates on behalf of the major economies such as Germany, Britain and France and the global corporations that operate within their borders.
It is taking measures to force governments to keep deficits below 3%, even where this means cuts in crucial services and public sector jobs. Currently facing measures under these regulations are France, Ireland, Greece, Latvia, Spain, Poland, Malta, Romania and Lithuania.
So this is a time when an organised, alternative, anti-capitalist European vision could win tremendous support from workers across Europe. But unfortunately the NO2EU campaign does not offer that. Whilst quite correctly damning the EU as undemocratic and unaccountable, it puts up as an alternative so-called “British interests”.
To counterpose “British” interests with those of the EU is in essence offering one country’s capitalism over another and is nationalist rather than internationalist in its outlook. The very term “British interests” implies that we live in a classless democracy, where all British people share the same interests. This, of course, is nonsense and is especially so at a time of economic crisis when all the sacrifices are being made on one side of the class divide.
NO2EU calls for the “repatriation of democratic powers” to EU member states, presumably because they will use them in the interest of workers. But the greatest attacks on workers’ rights have come from so-called “independent, democratic states”.
Britain has the most draconian anti-union laws in Europe – and they did not come from the EU but from the Thatcher government, and are kept in place by New Labour. British governments led the way in forcing through neo-liberal economic policies within the EU, often in opposition to French and German governments, for example. The railways were privatised not by EU edict but by the Tories. And the political, human and social rights of people in Britain are most under attack from the authoritarian New Labour government and its surveillance society.
NO2EU’s manifesto says that standing up for workers’ rights means opposing “the social dumping of exploited foreign workers in Britain” and that the free movement of labour within the EU has been used “to attack trade union collective bargaining, the right to strike and workers’ pay and conditions”.
Quite apart from the fact that no socialist should use the disgusting phrase “social dumping”, the reality is that the attack on wages and conditions is a result of capitalist globalisation of which the EU is a crucial mechanism. Manufacturing jobs were moved out of Britain to Asia (not to the EU generally) in pursuit of greater profits and the jobs that have remained are subject to more intense exploitation.
NO2EU must explain how ending the free movement of labour, which entitles workers within most EU countries to work in other states, will improve British workers’ access to jobs. An estimated 1.5m British people are working in other EU countries. If they were barred from working on the Continent, they would be back in the labour market here in the UK.
Being against “social dumping” and for “British interests” crucially opens the door for a nationalist approach to jobs as unemployment grows. NO2EU claims that the strikes at the Lindsey oil refinery earlier this year, when the slogan “British Jobs for British Workers” was taken up by large groups of workers, was provoked by EU rulings and work practices which are aimed at driving down wages and conditions. That may be so, but in essence, the strikes were about giving priority to local labour and the settlement led to a tranche of jobs destined for Italian and Portuguese workers being offered to “British” workers instead. A similar dispute in Wales earlier this month led to Polish workers being replaced by “Welsh” workers. It is a slippery slope indeed.
Some fear that the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP) will win a significant number of seats in the European Parliament. A number of committed anti-racists and anti-fascists in the trade unions and Labour Party believe this means it is vital to oppose the BNP in the forthcoming European elections. NO2EU rightly warns against a rise in support for the BNP and this is a key reason for its decision to stand candidates.
But the danger is that the left nationalism of NO2EU is not enough to distinguish the organisation sufficiently from the far-right nationalism of the BNP. And when it comes to anti-capitalist propaganda, the populist BNP may even have the edge on NO2EU. In fact, NO2EU’s section on “The economic crisis and the EU” does not use the term capitalism once!
Yet it is the crisis of capitalism together with the reactionary and racist anti-working class policies of New Labour, that could drive some backward sections in society into the arms of the BNP at the polls. The issues about domestic political responsibility for any growth the BNP may yet enjoy are not addressed in NO2EU’s manifesto, which concentrates its fire on the EU and thus lets New Labour off the hook.
To try and counter the BNP with a different brand of nationalism, suggests a belief that only some version of nationalism can ever appeal to workers – that they can never rise above it. This is the standpoint of Robert Griffiths, leader of the Communist Party (Morning Star, 8 April 2009), whose party adopted a deeply chauvinist policy in relation to the “British Jobs for British Workers” strikes.
Griffiths claims that “for all the popular anger aimed at the bankers and Establishment politicians, very few people in Britain today are committed to the serious struggle and strategy required to achieve fundamental change”. He accuses opponents of NO2EU of “ultra-leftism” and then he lets the cat out of the bag claiming that “a reinvigorated popular movement around left and progressive demands would ... at least give the Labour Party the opportunity to respond positively to a more positive mood.” So in the end, the purpose of refusing to reject status quo politics and the generally despised parliamentary cesspool of MPs on the take, is to keep workers tied to the wretched Labour Party.
But the polls, blogs, comments, letters in the media and street voices are all telling us that people’s hatred for bankrupt institutions is verging on the revolutionary in its intensity. Surely this is the time to put forward coherent proposals for fundamental change and fight to convince people to bring it about? But for Griffiths that is just “shouting from the sidelines”. He clearly has forgotten none of his Stalinist political miseducation! Pinning your hopes (and spending a great deal of money) on European Parliamentary elections as a way of opposing racism is, in the end, a futile attempt to channel workers’ political energies back into the parliamentary sphere.
It is tragic that one of the few unions fighting New Labour is wasting precious and scarce labour movement resources – £345,000 in deposits alone are required to contest every seat – on this dead-end campaign. The money could have been used to promote an inspiring, truly democratic alternative – a federation of European states based on common ownership of the means of production, to replace the corporate-led EU. In other words, a socialist Europe in place of a capitalist Europe.
And instead of trying to win seats in a useless European Parliament which has no powers whatsoever – with no intention of taking up the seats even if you win – we could fight for new institutions in which we would be proud to represent workers’ interests.
NO2EU accuses the EU of “turning human beings into commodities to be shunted around Europe while local workers are excluded from being able to provide for their families”. But it is not the political structures of the EU that commodifies labour. This is a central aspect of the capitalist economic system itself.
As long as workers do not own or control the production of goods, they can only sell the one commodity they have at their disposal – their labour power. And they must sell it wherever they can, or starve. This fact represents the essential unity of interests of the international working class.
Organising around the People’s Charter for Democracy put forward by A World to Win and the People’s Charter sponsored by the RMT which puts forward alternative economic policies, we should focus resources on fighting for truly democratic local, regional, national and Europe-wide bodies.
These would wrest power away from the capitalist class in every country, and instead give workers ownership and control of production, finance and working conditions. In this way we can begin to take decisions that point to a sustainable future based on co-operation and co-ownership in place of competition and profit.
28 May 2009
