The European Union celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2007. What is there to celebrate for the British people?
Nothing. The past 50 years have seen an acceleration of EU economic initiatives and directives, aided and abetted since Britain joined by both Tory and Labour governments, to undermine our industrial base and to attack the working class and their trade unions.
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He smirked, he signed. But they never dared put the Constitution to a referendum in Britain.
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Political union remains the central drive. The EU's March 2007 50th anniversary bash conveniently occurred during the German presidency and was held, of all places, in Berlin, presided over by the German Chancellor, Merkel. The resulting Berlin Declaration couldn't be signed by the 27 heads of state because of disagreements by some member states (one talked about "Orwellian eurospeak") and was initialled instead by Merkel, Barroso for the European Commission and Pöttering for the European Parliament. The Declaration makes clear Merkel's intentions to salvage the rejected Constitution.
Merkel said, "The founding fathers of Europe knew that in the long run the economic and the political could not be kept separate." She talked about the need for an EU president and foreign minister, a drastic reduction in the policy areas on which member states will have a veto, and a common European army.
Merkel's dream of an overarching European state mirrors one fought over in 1939-45. Consider the Italian fascist model then – don't destroy the organisations which might oppose you, just incorporate them into the state machine and get them to do your work for you.
The treacherous parts being played in Britain by the TUC, which cheers on policies such as the free movement of labour, and by the European TUC, now led by ex-TUC general secretary John Monks, serve this goal. When Mussolini was in power we understood that the fight to maintain independent nations was an essential defence against fascism. Do we still understand this?
The intention is to get these central elements of the rejected Constitution agreed by not calling it a constitution and claiming there is therefore no need for referendums. They know that the longer they wait the more anti-EU the member states' populations become.
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YOUNG PEOPLE ON THE SCRAPHEAP
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The government justifies migration on the basis that we have a shortage of labour. Yet a report issued in April this year by the London School of Economics and the Prince's Trust identified 1.2 million "Neets" – young people not in education, employment or training – more than double that in Germany or France and still growing. In 2005 18% of 16- to 24-year-olds were classed as Neets, a group likely to get involved in crime and suffer from poor physical and mental health. The trend is upwards – now at least one in five of Britain's young people are living on benefits with no prospects.
Critically, "Neets" are at child-bearing age – and children born into families where nobody works are highly likely to do badly at school, live in poor housing, and have physical and mental health problems. British workers are paying a price for this: youth unemployment costs £90 million a week. But the cost to Britain and its future as our young people are thrown on the scrap heap is appalling.
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50 years of attack on the working class
Workers in Britain are increasingly seen as expendable. It has always been important for governments and employers to cut away at the base of our capacity to organise. What they couldn't have hoped for is the extent to which our organisations, the unions, have rushed, lemming-like, into the arms of the EU.
The corruption has been practical as well as ideological. The EU continues to provide a lucrative haven for the has-beens and never-has-beens, witness Mandelson, Monks, the Kinnocks et al.
The destruction of coal, steel, shipbuilding, textiles, fishing, agriculture, engineering in Britain are direct products of the EU industrial zoning strategy. Britain is to have no manufacture as such, and our agriculture is to be reduced to parkland and tourism.
Britain pressed for and was first to implement EU directives for privatisation – telecommunications, gas, water, electricity, transport – all the infrastructure needed to support an independent manufacturing nation. Now the destruction of British manufacturing in the name of the free market is to be followed up by the forcing open of the social economy to private capital. There are huge profits being made and more to come with the privatising of health and education, social services and justice – witness the sharks circling in the form of the big private education and health companies. This is EU policy in practice – a welfare state is seen as anti-competitive.
Britain's EU membership
The EU attack on the working class is seen at its fiercest here, in Britain, led by a Labour government and connived at by a labour movement whose members turn a blind eye. Those Labour MPs or party members who declare themselves shocked by government policy or call it "misguided" miss the point. The policy is deliberate, and derives from European directives, many of which originated here in Thatcherism.
That Britain was first to implement fully the directive on movement of labour and allowed migrants from new accession states open access to jobs here was no accident. The resulting huge influx of eastern European labour, both legal and black market, has driven down wages for semi- and unskilled jobs and led to a rise in unemployment, as well as a rise in property prices and rents in cities – especially London. This is seen by ministers and the TUC as a benefit which has led to a "buoyant economy".
Buoyant for whom? The outcome is a widening gap between the highest and lowest earners, a rise in child poverty, housing in cities becoming unaffordable, and a growth in "Neets" – young people not in education, employment or training (see box).
The government presents itself as taking a tougher stand on immigration for refugees and asylum seekers, provoking much wringing of hands among the left, yet the real situation goes unmentioned – that the vast majority of migrants are legal, from EU member countries, and that the British government threw open the doors as soon as it could. That was a deliberate act, to drive down wages and weaken class organisation.
New regulations affecting the English-speaking Commonwealth teachers who prop up schools in many of our big cities, especially London, mean they can no longer work if they have not studied to gain British Qualified Teacher Status. But any teacher who has gained a teaching qualification in an EU member state now counts as having British QTS, regardless of the fact that many European qualifications are much less rigorous, and that they often speak poor English.
Trade unions
Analyse the eurospeak now being used by Merkel, Blair, Brown and the rest. For "social cohesion" read unregulated movement of labour, a roving, rootless and unorganised group of migrants. For "economic cohesion" read the euro, and taxation and spending determined by the commissioners in Brussels. For "territorial cohesion" read the melting of national and local boundaries to be governed from the EU centre.
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On the march in Denmark against EU attacks on collective bargaining
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This new European empire abhors any talk of society or collective rights – these are seen as oppressive to the individual. Merkel's Berlin speech was a paean to the individual: "When we count on the power of freedom, we are counting on the individual. The individual is paramount. His dignity is inviolable". What she means is that individual "rights" will be set, legally, against collective rights fought for and won by people acting together. The aim is disintegration in society coupled with rule from Brussels.
To realise Merkel's vision of 21st century capitalism, the European Commission is calling for an all-out assault on trade union rights in a Green Paper called "Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century". This proposed legislation, welcomed by Blair and the TUC, clamours for "flexible working practices". Employment protection is a drag on the labour market, it asserts, and is an obstacle to the free market in services (where businesses bothered by unions can simply bring in unorganised cheaper workers from another member state). This is all proposed in the name of "individual rights" – rights designed to effectively outlaw strikes or any kind of real collective bargaining.
They're watching us...
The attacks on civil liberties in Britain multiply almost by the day: ID cards, national databases of personal information, dispersal orders, the privatising of the Probation Service, the relentless increase in the numbers of people sent to prison, attempts to control the judiciary, weakening of the legal aid system, increases in police powers, stringent controls over the right to demonstrate, new extradition arrangements for British citizens, coupled with the monitoring of our movements through CCTV cameras and travel systems such as Oyster cards in London and congestion charges are an integral part of the move to a corporate state. All the information being gathered about us is to be shared among all 27 member states. It is no accident that the Home Office has been split along the lines of the European model. We are being prepared for an EU-wide police and justice system.
Panic over climate change – "we're all doomed!" – is leading to EU environmental targets which are excuses to cut services and increase taxes. We are told individual acts of sacrifice are the answer, when in fact government could act if it chose. Why not nationalise water and create a national water grid? Why not regu-late house building on flood plains? Why not ban the concreting over of gardens and development of open land which at present soak up and save the rain? Because the EU doesn't allow it. In the name of recycling councils are stopping rubbish collection. We are to be taxed just for moving around our country on privatised toll roads. And remember it was Thatcher who agreed to end the national veto over EU environmental policy.
"Global problems require global solutions" – this mantra is utterly false, and only encourages an attitude of helplessness. In fact, it is only as nations that we can hope to deal with problems. The solutions are in our hands.
No future unless we leave
A poll released to coincide with the 'celebrations' showed that half of the people in countries which gave up their currencies hate the euro. In a UN survey of the quality of life in Europe the top scorers were dominated by non-EU nations, with independent Norway and Iceland coming first and second.
The EU's ludicrous 50th birthday party fed Berliners on pastries nominated by member states – Britain sent Eccles cakes and hot cross buns. As the delegates wined and dined to the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, demonstrators outside burned down the "Europe Information" caravan. The spectre at the EU capitalist feast is the European working classes. The future of their countries is in their hands. For us in Britain, there will be no future unless we leave the EU.
Separatism and war
Disintegration and break-up with ever more centralised control is the EU model. Moves to separate Scotland from Britain are an integral part of this strategy, served by the likes of the SNP's Alex Salmond, who prattles about joining the euro and adopting a different time zone from the rest of Britain. Imagine crossing the border into Scotland, while stopping to change currency and altering your watch!
This would be a prize indeed for Brussels – the first real possibility in the Eurozone for a member country to split. Already government refers to "the nations and regions" when they mean Britain. Almost half the 27 EU nations have populations smaller than Scotland's 5 million, say proponents of separatism, so why not? Salmond casts envious eyes at the EU money it could pull in – looking across the water to Ireland.
Fools on the left see Scottish independence as a way of escaping from British government policies. But those policies emanate from the EU (policies which in turn were largely written by successive British governments). So-called "independence" would actually mean Thatcherism from Brussels.
The idea that there could be referendum in one part of a country to determine whether it should secede assumes that the secession has already taken place. Who would be first to recognise Scottish independence? Remember how Germany's premature recognition of Croatia fanned the flames in Yugoslavia.
Anybody who doubts the EU's aggressive intentions should think again. The EU represents the interests of rampant capitalism, and capitalism inevitably leads to war. Merkel and Blair are pushing the EU to support US interventionism in Cuba. Merkel's Berlin speech contained threatening references to Belarus and Zimbabwe, two countries that have in common that they remain obstinately independent of western capitalism. From the end of this year, the EU will impose Economic Partnership Agreements on trading partner countries desperate for development. These agreements will require those countries to drop barriers to EU imports, forcing open their markets. Already, EU imperialism requires large-scale privatisation of national services such as water and power as a condition of bilateral trade.
Blair's government pursues separatist policies – many of the worst government initiatives in education and health apply only in England. England is the test bed. Notice how London is now referred to, by government and Livingstone its Mayor, as a "world city", never using the term "capital". The concept of Britain as a separate country with its own capital is being quietly dropped.
Out of the EU!
It must never be forgotten that the concept of a United Europe was a dream of fascists from the 1920s-1940s – Franco, Mussolini, Moseley, Hitler. It had one purpose: to stop the working class of Europe from seizing power like in the Soviet Union. The EU's creation in 1957 was the coming together of the crippled regimes of western Europe, funded by US imperialism to oppose socialism. That is why the British trade unions were so clear in resisting European integrationists – led then by Edward Heath and the Tories.
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WHAT CAN WE DO?
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Resurrect and re-affirm opposition to the EU in our trade unions.
Resist in the workplace any attempt to lower professional standards or health and safety requirements.
Promote opposition to the EU in all social and civil organisations of society as the EU attacks them all.
Fan the flames of opposition across nations now constituted as the EU. They should become myriad fronts of resistance.
Support those nations threatened by the EU for resisting their dictat: Russia, Belarus, Cuba, China.
Assert that Britain can solve its problems, and discuss how this could be done.
Argue and fight for workers' nationalism for an independent, sovereign, non-aligned Britain – for the destruction of the EU.
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The EU wants total free movement of capital, trade and labour. These three freedoms are fatal blows to any nation, working class, or people wishing to assert their independence. From these three freedoms already flows one EU foreign policy, one EU army, one EU judiciary, one EU legislation, one EU state – with all the hallmarks of a police state.
Opposition to the EU is mounting across Europe. It starts with countries like Britain who have resisted being drawn into the Euro. It starts with those countries that rejected the Constitution. The language of modernisation, liberalisation, freedom, democracy and "social model" is the language of distortion and bastardising of meaning: it is the language of capitalist counter-revolution.
The only possible future for our country lies outside the European empire. Out of the EU!