Vol. 80/No. 5 February 8, 2016
(front page)
Is it in workers’ interests for the UK to remain in the EU?
Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold the vote reflects how the pressure of the long and deepening capitalist economic crisis and growing discontent across class lines are fueling shifts and fissures in political parties here. This has been highlighted by the backing for the UK Independence Party, formed by splits from the Conservatives on issues of immigration and getting out of the EU; growth of the Scottish National Party; and the election of a left winger, Jeremy Corbyn, to lead the Labour Party.
Whatever the outcome, the U.K. rulers’ role in the world will continue to decline, as will the accelerating crisis of the EU itself and sharpening disunity between member states.
No prominent wing of the U.K.’s capitalists favor breaking from the EU. The 28-country union “is by far the UK’s largest trading partner,” the government’s most recent report on trade says, with 45 percent of exports and 53 percent of imports.
The EU regulates its 28-member nations with a raft of legislation and rules that have covered questions from “human rights” to working conditions to the curvature of imported bananas.
Many smaller capitalists in the U.K. have been enraged at the high costs imposed by the EU’s bureaucracy and regulations.
The U.K. is one of nine members that have not adopted the euro as a common currency, and it isn’t part of the Shengen area, where travel across borders has been officially passport free.
The EU’s founding treaty says it will evolve toward “an ever closer union.” But contradictions in the size and strength of the varied national states, exacerbated under the mounting capitalist crisis, have increased conflicts between nation states. Germany, the dominant country in the EU, has been the main beneficiary. The EU, whose origins lie in the “world order” imposed by Washington and its European allies after the second imperialist world war, is coming apart.
In recent months these divisions and conflicts have accelerated in reaction to the new wave of immigration of refugees fleeing war and devastation in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and northern Africa. Following the Islamic State terror attacks in Paris and New Year’s Eve anti-woman assaults in Cologne, Germany, and elsewhere, many by immigrants, European governments have reasserted their national sovereignty and reinforced their borders, in direct contradiction to EU rules.
Effects of the economic crisis on working people, growing immigration, and bureaucratic meddling by EU officials in Brussels have deepened the crisis both between U.K. political parties and inside them.
Under the pressure of recent elections, Prime Minister David Cameron committed to holding the referendum. He claims he is pushing EU leaders for a broad “new settlement,” a “reformed EU,” to better defend the interests of the United Kingdom. At the same time, he watered down his demands in order to increase the chance of agreement. His proposals include allowing the U.K. to opt out of the EU’s goal of “ever closer union,” acceptance that the euro is not the only currency of the EU, and powers for national parliaments — especially in London — to veto certain EU legislation.
Cameron calls for the right to deny social benefits for four years to EU workers who move to the U.K. — which has drawn sharp opposition from authorities in Poland and other countries that provide the bulk of EU immigrants to the country.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the U.K. in the EU. Berlin is concerned about a British withdrawal accelerating the centrifugal tendencies tearing away at the union. Washington, a strong advocate of British membership from the beginning, also favors continued U.K. membership.
The “Brexit” debate has exacerbated division within the Conservative Party. Some 100 Conservative Members of Parliament, nearly one-third, say they are leaning towards voting “no.” Cameron has released government members to campaign as they choose, but only after he secures a new deal with the EU.
To win the vote to stay in the EU, Cameron depends on support from Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the bulk of the trade union officialdom and the Scottish National Party. Corbyn and the union officialdom claim EU membership has protected workers’ rights and conditions in the U.K.
But this doesn’t square with the experiences of growing numbers of workers facing job cuts, zero-hours contracts, stagnant pay and worsening working conditions. As a result, workers are looking for a new road forward. Questioning EU membership is gaining a broader hearing.
One beneficiary of the discontent among workers and the middle classes is UKIP, a populist party that gained 13 percent of the general election vote. UKIP leader Nigel Farage says breaking with the EU is the only way to control the country’s borders. He says the U.K. has become a “groveling junior member of a German-dominated club.”
Workers around the country are considering what stance on the referendum will harm them less. “What have we gained from the EU?” Manchester meat factory worker Brian Oregio told the Militant. “It seems it’s just for business.”
“Unless I hear Britain will be better off out, then I’ll vote to stay,” said fellow worker Charles Kwalombota.
“I’m for Europe, but there’s too many rules and regulations, only some are good for workers,” added Tyrone Sullivan. “I think they need to restrain immigration too. At the moment I don’t know how I’ll vote.”
As the debate unfolds, the Communist League is running Jonathan Silberman for mayor of London.
“There is no class-neutral ‘thing’ called Europe. The EU is a bosses club,” Silberman tells workers as he campaigns at their doorsteps, political events and actions to back workers’ struggles. “It was established to strengthen the propertied rulers against their capitalist rivals, against working people, and to bolster imperialist interests against the oppressed peoples of the semicolonial world. We urge workers to vote for an end to the U.K.’s membership.
“Both the government-led ‘yes’ campaign and the ‘no’ campaign are nationalist and anti-worker,” he says. “They start from what’s in the interests of ‘Britain.’ Class-conscious workers start from what’s in the interests of working people.
“The challenge facing workers is not to look to the capitalist rulers for protection — be they inside or outside the EU,” says the Communist League candidate, “but to fight for independent political action and international working-class solidarity, to forge a labor party that can mobilize working people in a revolutionary struggle for a workers and farmers government.”
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