The reactionary nature of the anti-EU campaign exposed

November 9, 2011 at 9:56 pm (Europe, Jim D, Marxism, stalinism)

I know that denouncing anti-EU Stalinists is like shooting fish in a barrel, and probably about as intersting to most readers. Nevertheless, I just had to reply to this letter from John Boyd of the ‘Campaign Against Euro-Federalism’ to the Stalinist Morning Star (I don’t yet know whether they’ll publish my reply); here’s Boyd’s letter:

“Clarity and the significance of internationalism are missing in Steve McGiffen’s article (Here’s looking at EU, kid, M Star October 26) and response (We must unite, not them, M Star November 3) to Dave Hawkins’s letter (McGiffen’s narrow-minded view of EU is disappointing, M Star October 31).

“We live in an era of the EU and near world domination of transnational capital. The nation state is the only mechanism which history has evolved for imposing social control on private capital.

“The most important political task for democrats and the labour movement is to join in an international campaign in defence of the nation state.

“An amorphous borderless system where workers band together against “bosses” is not internationalism.

Internationalism includes solidarity with the peoples of Greece now defending their nation state against the EU, European Central Bank, IMF and International Institution of Financiers.

“To label some who oppose the EU as “vermin” and say the left should not work with them is an insult and unhelpful to say the least. More, it is a cover to table impractical objectives to reform the EU like pan-European workers rights.

“Anti-trade union rulings of the EU Court of Justice have been laid on top of anti-trade union laws in Britain. This and the free movement of capital and labour within the EU are evidence enough to show that all EU institutions take the side of transnational capital.

“The broad campaign to oppose the EU is weakened by the absence of large sections of the labour movement. Further, there needs to be a full understanding that if the labour movement and left do not join in this opposition then the far-right will take charge. Anti-EU activists and organisations have made clear that racists or fascists will not be tolerated even though they mouth opposition to the EU.

“ A century ago James Connolly in Ireland stated that class war includes the struggle for national independence and democracy and includes others from a different class. Britain now faces the same struggle.

“John Boyd

“Secretary, Campaign against Euro-federalism.”

My reply:

Dear Comrades,

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John Boyd of the Campaign against Euro-Federalism (Labour must defend the nation state against EU, M Star November 7) reveals the essentially reactionary nature of the anti-EU movement in all its myriad forms, both left and right.

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I was astonished to read Mr Boyd’s objection (as “insulting”!) to the description of anti-EU Tories as “vermin”. Presumably Nye Bevan’s famous descriptlon of these people doesn’t apply so long as they oppose the EU? But Mr Boyd then goes on to provide the explanation: he sees no objection to the left working with the most right wing section of the Tory Party as part of a cross-class, nationalist, anti-EU alliance.

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But Mr Boyd goes further, and objects in principle to campaigning for “pan-European workers rights”!

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Rarely has the thoroughly anti-working class and backward nature of anti-EU campaigning been so shamelessly flaunted by a supposedly “left” leader of the little-England brigade. Underlying it all, of course, is Mr Boyd’s ahistoric commitment to the nation state  as “the only mechanism which history has evolved for imposing social control on national capital.” Oh yes? Does Mr Boyd seriously believe that a nationalist campiagn that succeeeded in pulling the UK out of the EU would be in any way a step towards curbing the worst excesses of capitalism – let alone a move towards socialism? To ask the question is to answer it: such an outcome would be a step in the wrong direction, towards isolationism, nationalism and xenophobia.

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The national question has always been a difficult one for socialists, but our starting point must surely be that of Marx (in the Communist Manifesto): “National differences and antagonisms between peoples are vanishing gradually from day to day, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.”

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In solidarity

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Jim Denham

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We’ll see whether they’ll publish it.