DAVID CAMERON returned from the European Summit in Brussels in February with a deal he claimed would ensure Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. He speedily announced a date for the referendum on 23 June. The wording of the referendum is: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”
It contains no reference to Cameron’s terms. Indeed both sides in the campaign, led by opposed factions within his own party, already knew exactly which side they were on before the deal. These “gains” change nothing fundamental about the EU or Britain’s position within it.
What he did win was utterly reactionary, such as limiting in-work benefits and payments to dependents for EU migrants. This despite a whole series of well-evidenced reports that prove that far from being the victim of “welfare tourism”, or our building workers languishing on the dole because of Polish rivals, Britain desperately needs labour: workers to sustain the NHS or build the social housing we need.
Why the referendum?
The referendum is simply an attempt to free Cameron and Osborne from the pressure of the Europhobes in their own party and the threat of UKIP. Though the Tory Party is the party of British finance capital, to win elections it requires the support of millions of socially conservative and reactionary middle class voters and non-class conscious workers.
But the Tories’ social base is far from content with the doings of Cameron and Co. over the past five years. Unable to identify the root cause of their discontent or face a fight with those really responsible – i.e. the bosses who have become hugely wealthy during the crisis – they turn on refugees and migrants, or the “undeserving” poor, those in receipt of benefits, as though they were responsible for stagnant salaries and wages, for declining pensions and “too high” taxes.
The tabloids, in the hands of a tiny clique of billionaires, the Murdochs, Rothermeres and Desmonds, pump out a daily dose of chauvinism, racism and Europhobia to fuel their anger. Thanks to countless stories about “hordes” of asylum seekers and the threat of Muslim terrorists, the referendum campaign will be a carnival of reaction based on lies and gross misrepresentation.
European superstate
Whatever the right-wing Europhobes claim, power still resides with the EU member states – or more precisely Germany, France and Britain. This explains the EU’s unequal and undemocratic nature.
Despite the Euro and the European Central Bank, despite a common market, despite the European Courts of Justice and Human Rights and a range of European social initiatives and policies, the EU is not a federal state like the USA. Elections to the European parliament have little, if any direct effect on the policies of the European Commission (the EU bureaucracy) and the European Council of Ministers, the heads of the national governments.
So what do Britain’s bosses want? In a word they want Europe à la carte.
Back in June 2015, when he launched his campaign, Cameron defined Britain’s aims: “We will put the Common Market back at the heart of our membership, get off the treadmill to ever-closer union, address the issue of migration to Britain from the rest of the EU and protect Britain’s place in the single market for the long term.”
And in large measure Britain already has what Cameron cynically calls “the best of both worlds”. It has multiple opt-outs, e.g. from the Schengen open borders agreement, from the European Social Charter insofar as it might affect UK labour rights.
Along with its non-membership of the Euro, Britain can play as little or as great a part in the EU as the billionaires in the City of London wish. For the time being, Germany and France go along with this because they have bigger fish to fry in holding the EU together.
What all this means is quite simple: yes to an open market for British financial services and investment; no to the free movement of labour (except poaching the skilled labour Britain’s bosses cannot be bothered to train or educate); no to a fiscal union that might mean more progressive taxation or allocation of resources from the richer to the poorer parts of Europe.
So yes, the EU is a bosses’ club, but Britain is a bosses’ club too. We cannot cut ourselves off from this capitalist domination by rebuilding national frontiers and custom posts, or by excluding European workers from coming to Britain. Our main enemy is already within the gates and our main allies across the Channel. We should not cut ourselves off from them.
But why vote positively to stay in the EU? Not as an endorsement of the EU as it is today. Nor because of any belief that it can be peacefully and gradually reformed into a “Social Europe” as most trade unions and left parties argue.
The social benefits of the EU are marginal. But so too are the barriers it presents to serious social or democratic reform in Britain. Such barriers already exist within British law and the government institutions. In or out, the working class will have to fight hard to defend every gain and achieve every reform.
Why vote Yes
We should vote against Brexit because it is a backward step from the development of modern capitalism – the means of production and labour power – to a smaller, fragmented, more isolated capitalism.
For four decades capitalism’s productive forces have been developing within a trans-European framework. To sever or restrict these links will worsen the coming crisis. But most of all, it will further fragment the working class.
The answer is not to remain content with the EU as it is. The best response to the Europhobia of the No campaigns is to present the goal of a transformed, revolutionised Europe with borders open to the world. A Europe whose banks and industries do not exploit the Middle East and Africa but help them to develop, so that no one has to risk their lives in the Mediterranean because of war, famine or chronic poverty.
Whoever wins the referendum, the attacks on welfare, on services, on the working class throughout Europe will continue. Despite all previous pledges of democratic reform, “transparency” and “social inclusion”, in fact there will be further attacks on democratic rights. To fight this we need not just the vague “ever closer union amongst the peoples of Europe” pledged in the Treaty of Rome in 1957. We need an ever closer union of the working class of Europe.
No national sovereignty, borders or currency would stand up to the power of the international capitalist class. Only the unity of the workers of Europe can do that. The ultimate goal of this unity should be the replacement of the capitalist European Union with the Socialist United States of Europe.
