Vol. 80/No. 23      June 13, 2016

 
(front page)

Debate on UK vote highlights EU rivalries,
workers anger

 
LONDON — Growing competition between capitalist countries worldwide is tearing at the fabric of the European Union. The EU is a protectionist trading bloc and would-be political union whose member countries have rival national ruling classes with different and often opposing interests.

Economic stagnation and sharpening competition, as well as the refugee crisis and its roots in the Middle East conflicts, are at the center of divisions within the EU today. A June 23 referendum on whether to continue the United Kingdom’s EU membership is marked by these tensions and by the growing discontent of millions of working people.

The “Remain” campaign, headed by the Conservative Party government, is supported by the dominant sections of the capitalist class for whom the economic benefits of EU membership appear overwhelming, especially given their precarious prospects for profitable production and trade. Industrial output in the U.K. is in recession and labor productivity lags behind its competitors.

The capitalist magnates point out that the EU is the biggest trading area in the world. Through membership, British companies can sell goods across the continent paying fewer tariffs, and the U.K. serves as a platform for companies from the United States and elsewhere seeking to trade within the EU. As a result, the U.K. now has one of the highest levels of foreign direct investment in the world. EU membership, the bosses argue, offsets Britain’s decline as a world power, allowing London to “punch above its weight.”

London has already secured an opt-out from the “ever closer union” in the EU’s founding charter, and from a number of other EU regulations, and the British rulers have maintained their own currency, the pound, instead of joining the EU’s eurozone. The government-led Remain campaign argues this means the U.K. has the best of both worlds.

The Remain campaign has the backing of the Labour Party, Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats, as well as most of the trade union officialdom, the Confederation of British Industry, Washington, the main EU governments and international financial institutions.

Workers face growing social crisis

Despite this lineup of bourgeois political forces and the pro-capitalist union officialdom, the outcome of the vote hangs in the balance.

Millions of workers will vote to leave, frustrated with years of declining living standards and growing social crisis, angered by the bloated EU bureaucracy and distrustful of the traditional parties of government. This distrust is reinforced by events such as U.S. President Barack Obama’s April visit to Britain, during which he declared that if London leaves the EU, the “U.K. is going to be in the back of the queue” on trade deals with Washington.

The “Brexit” debate is driving a political crisis within the Conservative Party. Nearly 40 percent of Tory members of Parliament have declared support for the “Leave” campaign. Some are calling for the resignation of the party leader, Prime Minister David Cameron, whatever the outcome of the referendum.

The other major party campaigning for a British exit is the populist UK Independence Party, which argues that London needs to defend “British sovereignty,” including imposing greater restrictions on immigration from other European countries. They say further expansion of the EU will lead to increased immigration, especially from Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to take advantage of the surge of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Mideast and North Africa to press Ankara’s long-held objective of EU membership. For more than two decades, member governments across the continent have found one excuse after another to block entry of the EU’s first “non-European” member. In return for visa free travel into the EU for Turkish citizens, the Turkish government is now taking measures to slow down Europe-bound refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

Remain and Leave campaigners have traded exaggerated threats of the dangers of their opponents’ stand. Cameron claims that leaving the EU will result in imminent economic crisis and war. Fellow Tory MP Boris Johnson argues that the EU “is an attempt to do … by different methods” what Napoleon and Hitler had attempted, to “recreate the dream of the Roman Empire.”

But support for leaving has little to do with these arguments. “I’ll be voting leave,” Kevin Gallagher, a factory worker from Dagenham in East London, told the Militant. “The money that is spent on the EU should be spent on things we need like hospitals. Whatever the outcome of the vote the government will still be going after workers rights,” he added. Other workers told this reporter they would vote to stay in, despite disliking the EU, because they are uncertain what a British exit would mean for living standards.

The referendum debate is sharpening factional tension within the Labour Party. The party’s recently elected London mayor Sadiq Khan has joined with Cameron to campaign for Remain. While party leader Jeremy Corbyn has demurred sharing a platform with the Conservative leader, he argues that EU regulations protect workers and are the road to “a real social Europe.”

Leaving would lead to a “bonfire of rights,” says Corbyn. This rings hollow in light of the assault on workers underway in France today led by the Socialist Party government of Francois Hollande (see article on page 4).

Similar developments are fueling political crisis across the continent. The two dominant capitalist powers, the rulers in Germany and France, push for greater European political integration as they squeeze weaker countries such as Greece, with devastating consequences for working people and much of the middle classes. Meanwhile from Germany to France to Italy to Austria, anti-EU parties and movements are growing. Attitudes to the EU differ between and within the traditional capitalist and bourgeois labor parties.

Despite “stimulus” measures, growth remains sluggish across the eurozone. While unemployment averages over 10 percent, there are vast regional differences. Germany’s official unemployment rate is 4.5 percent; Greece’s stands at a quarter of the population.

Whatever the outcome of the UK referendum, further fracturing pressures will dominate the EU.
 
 
Related articles:
Communist League: Vote Leave, oppose UK imperialism
 
 
 
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