The 1975 Referendum on Europe. Volume 1: Reflections of the Participants, edited by Mark Baimbridge, paperback, 253 pages, ISBN 1-845400-34-8, Imprint Academic, 2007, £17.95; Volume 2: Current Analysis and Lessons for the Future, by Mark Baimbridge, Philip Whyman and Andrew Mullen; paperback, 222 pages, ISBN 1-845400-35-6, Imprint Academic, 2007, £17.95.
These extremely useful books examine the 1975 referendum and look at the EU's economic and political effects. They are not written in EU jargon, unlike most books on the EU, usually semi-official.
The first volume studies the early history of the EU, the referendum itself, and the Labour government's manipulation of public opinion in the referendum campaign – with reflections from sixteen participants in the Yes and No campaigns, and also copies of the two Yes pamphlets and the one No.
Various contributors point out that the EU is a machine for eliminating popular influences on policy, reversing all our democratic gains over the last two centuries. They show that the European Commission acts for, not against, capitalist "globalisation". They note that Thatcher forced through the 1986 Single Europe Act, which removed many vetoes and gave the EU powers over environment policy, letting the EU use the issue of climate change to add to its powers.
The second volume looks at the role and implications of referendums, and at the EU's effects on the Labour and Conservative parties, on the trade unions and on public opinion. The authors show how the trade unions are becoming incorporated into the EU capitalist state, and how the fraud of a 'social Europe' has not saved one British industry or job from destruction.
The authors argue that the alternative to the EU is "the pursuit of Britain's wider global interests". But the real alternative to the EU's embrace of global capitalism is not to embrace non-EU global capitalism, but to advance the British people's interests - not EU first, not world first, but Britain first.
The authors remind us that in November 2004, 77.9 per cent voted against the EU/Government scheme for an assembly for the North-East region. This was hugely significant, the first time a part of the British people rejected an EU policy.
Last December, Blair pledged to back the German government's effort to resurrect the Constitution, which would destroy our democracy, self-rule and sovereignty. The working class is increasingly anti-EU, and the ruling class is increasingly pro-EU – a growing conflict.
American methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, by Kristian Williams, paperback, 279 pages, ISBN 0-89608-753-0, South End Press, 2006, £9.16.
In this important book American journalist Kristian Williams shows how the US state has institutionalised torture. President Bush asserted in February 2002, "None of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world." As the Schlesinger Report concluded, this Presidential ruling allowed US forces to increase their use of illegal interrogation techniques.
So US police, military and prison guards routinely treat detainees brutally. The repulsive abuses at Abu Ghraib are typical, not aberrant. There have been more than 400 reports of abuse in US detention camps in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq, and a hundred inquiries have been launched. There were 13 officially acknowledged murders at detention camps between January 2002 and March 2005.
The US state, with Labour's connivance, has consistently used 'extraordinary rendition', kidnapping people and then transferring them to other states for torture. For example, the CIA illegally sent suspected al-Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Libi to Cairo for torture, where he apparently confessed that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members to make bombs. Bush then publicised this confession, as did Colin Powell to the UN, even though the Defense Intelligence Agency had already warned them that the confession was unreliable.
Williams details torture by the US military and the US police, by US allies overseas, and in US prisons, jails and detention facilities in the USA and abroad. The US state uses torture methods like stun guns, stun belts, pepper sprays, restraints, rape and the threat of rape, "supermax facilities" and solitary confinement. The US state promotes torture in its training programmes, for example in the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly called the School of the Americas.
Williams reveals the US state as a machine of coercion, of organised violence – represented by armed bodies of men, the police, armed services, prisons – designed to subjugate the will of others by force. Williams proves that "The product of torture is not truth, but terror. Its strategy is not that of objective investigation, but of political intimidation."
Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953, by Geoffrey Roberts, hardback, 468 pages, ISBN-10 0-300-11204-1, Yale University Press, 2006, £25.
STALIN'S WARS is a necessary corrective to myths about the Second World War and the Cold War. It shows how the Soviet Union played a key role in winning the World War, defeating more than 75% of Hitler's divisions. As President Roosevelt said, "The Russian armies are killing more Axis personnel and destroying more Axis material than all the other twenty-five United Nations put together."
Roberts concludes, "Stalin was a very effective and highly successful war leader ... [who] was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany." Churchill continually promised to help the Soviet war effort. For example, in August 1942, he told Stalin that by spring 1943 a million British and US troops would have opened a second front in Western Europe. But Churchill delayed the second front until June 1944.
Roberts argues, "Stalin worked hard to make the Grand Alliance a success and wanted to see it continue after the war." The postwar Attlee government, on the other hand, worked hard to break up the Alliance, being more concerned to save the Empire than to keep the peace. Stalin said the Labour government was more conservative than the Conservatives in their defence of the British ruling class's imperial interests.
In 1947, President Truman adopted Labour's hostility to the Soviet Union and peaceful coexistence and launched the Marshall Plan. "For Stalin the Marshall Plan was the breaking point in postwar relations with the United States." The Plan put Western European countries under US control, enabling the US state to interfere in their internal affairs. It led straight to the formation of the anti-Soviet Western bloc, which started the Cold War and split the world into two camps.
Stalin's policy of peaceful coexistence did not mean accepting whatever the imperialists did. Two years after US forces intervened in Korea, he said, "One must be firm when dealing with America ... It's been already two years. And the USA has still not subdued little Korea. ... They want to subjugate the whole world, yet they cannot subdue little Korea."
