Shiraz Socialist

Sorry to return to possibly the most boring issue(s) on the agenda these days – Europe, the Lisbon treaty and the campaign for a referendum. It seems that 80% of the British public want a referendum, but the same public is evenly divided as to whether the treaty should be approved or not. And when it comes to whether the EU is really an important issue at all, opinion polls suggest that most of us don’t think so.

I favour having a referendum on the Lisbon treaty for one reason, and one reason only: democracy. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both,  during the 2005 election promised a referendum on the (then) EU constitution; the Lisbon treaty is that constitution to all intents and purposes; the government’s refusal to honour its pledge on a referendum merely confirms the view of many (probably most) people, viz: that mainstream politicians are afraid of an open debate on Europe, and want to railroad the treaty through without a public debate.

However, I wouldn’t want to be seen dead with most of the people agitating for a referendum: a bunch of little-England fanatics, racists and liars who deny that their real objective is to get Britain out of the EU.

These nutters and reactionaries have been aided by New Labour’s craven cowardice: ever since Tony Blair sold his soul to Rupert Murdoch in 1995, New Labour has been weak on Europe, and at its worst, appeared to be pandering to the so-called “sceptics”. Blair’s performance in the run-up to the 1997 election (bleating about how he “loved the pound”), was nothing short of a disgrace.

Brown, who once seemed rather more pro-European than Blair, has long since sold out to scepticism, and so we again see no positive campaign from New Labour about the benefits of EU membership.

Instead, a bunch of anti-Europe fanatics, bores and tankie-Stalinists, have been handed the opportunity to take the initiative and parade themselves as the people who are in favour of democratic rights on this issue.

This is particularly regretable and retrogressive for the trade union movement: in 1988 EU President Jacques Delores addressed the TUC Congress and won them away from their hitherto anti-Europe position with a powerful speech extolling the virtues of a “social Europe” in which workers’ rights would be guaranteed in law, and working class rights would be levelled-up throughout Europe.; this was 1988, remember: the hight of Thatcherism…

No wonder that the hitherto anti-Europe trade union movement greeted Delores with raptourous applause and immediately reversed its position on Europe by 180 degrees. In reality, the TUC’s volte-face on Europe was motivated by desperation, naivety and wishful thinking.  The EU’s benefits to the working class of Britain (or anywhere else in Europe) have been very limited - the Working Time Directive, various pieces of anti-discrimination legislation, TUPE and the forthcoming agency workers’ legislation, being the main benefits. But, certainly, none of these very limited steps forward would have come about had New Labour been left to its own divices outside the EU, or able to ignore EU directives.

in recent years the anti-EU nutters have been making something of a comeback within the trade unions: this is mainly because rank-and-file union activity at branch and regional committee level has declined to such a degree that any bunch of weirdos can excercise inluence within the trade union movement; but it’s also the result of a stupid and futile division between those (like the AWL) who are ‘neutral’/'abstentionist’ on Europe, and pro-European socialists and trade unionists. We can no longer afford this luxury: the time has come to unite against the anti-European reactionaries, racists and dishonest (”we are pro-European”) posturing idiots.

N.B: Dave has a sensible post about this issue, with some excellent comments from the likes of John Palmer and yours truly…

And for those of you (and I know there are one or two), who require heavyweight authority on these matters, here’s Engels, writing to Marx in 1870 about German unification:

“Bismark, as in 1866, is at present doing a bit of our work for us, in his own way and without meaning to, but all the same he is doing it.”