Permanent Revolution: no socialist should support No2EU!

On 7 May the “NO2EU: Yes to democracy” campaign announced its candidates, and its intention to stand in all constituencies in the 4 June European elections. Stuart King looks at the politics of the campaign...

The driving forces behind NO2EU are the rail union RMT, whose Executive voted £45,000 for the campaign, and the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and its paper the Morning Star. Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary heads the list in London, while Rob Griffiths CPB General Secretary tops the list in Wales. Surprisingly NO2EU has also drawn in sections of the far left – the Socialist Party/Campaign for a New Workers Party, Socialist Resistance, Solidarity in Scotland, as well as individual members of Respect and the remnants of the Socialist Alliance.

Surprising because the NO2EU campaign has a platform based on the old Stalinist CP programme of anti-EU nationalism, reformism and protectionism. While some of its demands are positive, the call for rejection of the neo-liberal Lisbon Treaty and EU directives re-inforcing privatisation policies, the overall thrust of the campaign is based on anti-EU, little-Englandism.

Defending British capitalism

The campaign never mentions the word “socialism” and for good reason – there is nothing socialist about it. It follows the old CP line of trying to build an alliance with “progressive” sections of British capitalism, in this case supporting “good” national industrial capital against “bad” European and international finance capital.

Thus NO2EU wants to “defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain”; it wants, it says, to “revitalise the economy, Britain must return to creating a wealth based (economy?) especially in manufacturing, hi-tech and trade across the world”. This means “massive investment and where appropriate protection of home industries” (see No2EU website).

In the context of capitalism, protectionism means exporting unemployment to other countries, supporting “our industries” against foreign competitors and stoking up economic nationalism. The NO2EU campaign comes dangerously close to extending this economic nationalism to campaigning against foreign workers. It attacks the EU “for promoting the social dumping of exploited foreign workers” and seems to oppose the free movement of labour across Europe (se its “worker rights” section).

A Socialist campaign would not be calling for support for capitalist British industry but for taking it over. With the bosses laying off workers left right and centre we fight for their expropriation, and to place industry and finance under the control of the workers – socialists want to abolish the scourge of unemployment and produce for social need not profit. Far from blaming foreign workers for undermining conditions, we should be uniting with them to smash the EU directives that undermine trade union rights throughout Europe. The enemy is international capitalism – there are no national solutions to this crisis

Not so for the NO2EU campaign. It declares that “Nation states … and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks.” Really? Socialists always argued it was the working class that had do this, but for the CPB, and apparently the RMT leadership, it appears the British Parliament with a progressive majority can do it for us.

A reformist programme

The campaign puts forward a reformist programme to fight the crisis – a programme to be carried out within the confines of capitalism. NO2EU wants “democratic control of the major banks, including the Bank of England, and full public ownership and democratic accountability of railways, postal services, NHS, and the energy industry.”

Such calls for nationalisation of parts of the economy is a capitalistic measure, not a socialist one – which is why the Economist argued for the nationalisation of Northern Rock and why Gordon Brown’s government can happily take public control over the failing banks in the interests of capitalism – they nationalise them at our expense and then pass them back to the capitalists at a later date. Democratic accountability means little in this context – in the case of the CPB it means accountable to a “progressive” Parliament. Indeed this programme is not even as radical as the old, Labour-left demand for the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy – it leaves out key sectors like pharmaceuticals, road freight, car and aircraft manufacture, engineering etc, etc.

Anti-EU not anti-capitalist

The whole thrust of the NO2EU campaign is anti-European not anti-capitalist. For example, much is said about the anti-democratic nature of the EU, yet not a single demand is put forward to change it. Why not call for a European constituent assembly to introduce a new EU constitution, a fully democratic and socialist one? Why not call on workers to struggle for a different type of European Union? The answer is simple – because this is an anti-EU campaign that logically should call for leaving the EU but hasn’t got the guts to say so. So it just regurgitates the little-Englander criticisms.

NO2EU even tries to bring the anti-war movement into the campaign against the EU, having a whole section on “EU militarisation”. Yes we should oppose the EU rapid reaction force but the NO2EU campaign makes no mention of NATO or the need to smash it. It is not the EU that is conducting a war in Afghanistan and trying to extend it to Pakistan; it is the NATO alliance. It wasn’t the EU that took military action in Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, but NATO. It wasn’t the EU that invaded Iraq, but Britain and the USA as independent states. Yet the NO2EU campaign chooses to concentrate its fire on the EU as though it is the major force for war in the current period.

Democracy for them but not for us

The NO2EU campaign makes much of the undemocratic nature of the EU institutions, yet ironically they are far more democratic than the NO2EU campaign. The ordinary RMT members had no say in agreeing to this campaign: all the organising meetings were by “invitation only”, the platform of the campaign was drawn up by a cabal of unelected leaders, and there have been no conferences with resolutions where supporters could have influenced the campaign. It makes the Labour Party look positively democratic by comparison!

As a result the NO2EU campaign has ignored the opportunity to build itself on the real struggles going on against new Labour and the capitalist crisis. The Lindsey struggle raised the fight not only against the EU posted workers directive but against the anti-trade union laws – something completely ignored by NO2EU. The Visteon struggle against redundancies and pension fraud, shows how workers' occupations, seizing the bosses property, is a vital tactic in struggle. Both struggles demonstrated the paralysis of the trade union leaders and why we need to organise a rank and file movement of trade unionists that can act independently. Parents' occupations of schools in Glasgow, Lewisham, Greenwich, and student occupations throughout the country over Gaza and Israeli oppression, showed a militancy that could and should be built on.

None of this is reflected in the NO2EU campaign and its platform. It is an electoral campaign in the midst of a serious economic and political crisis that prefers to concentrate on anti-EU bashing. And it does it from a narrow nationalistic and reformist perspective. It is shameful that sections of the far-left are supporting this campaign.

No internationalist or socialist should “lend their vote” to this campaign even for a moment.

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