https://themilitant.com/2018/12/22/uk-out-of-eu-is-best-terrain-for-workers-struggles-there/
UK out of EU is best terrain for workers’ struggles there
By Ögmundur Jónsson
Vol. 83/No. 1
January 7, 2019
School cleaners, cooks, home-care workers, other local council workers
in Glasgow, Scotland, on strike Oct. 23. The working-class struggle for
emancipation in the U.K. can only be fought and won inside the
capitalist nation-state there. U.K. workers and their allies in the
countryside need to fight to establish a workers and farmers government.
Militant/Anne Howie
School cleaners, cooks, home-care workers, other local council workers
in Glasgow, Scotland, on strike Oct. 23. The working-class struggle for
emancipation in the U.K. can only be fought and won inside the
capitalist nation-state there. U.K. workers and their allies in the
countryside need to fight to establish a workers and farmers government.
MANCHESTER, England — The failed attempts by Prime Minister Theresa
May’s Conservative government in the U.K. to strike a “withdrawal deal”
with the European Union that can pass in the House of Commons has led to
sharpening divisions and a deepening political crisis here.
Facing certain defeat, May cancelled a Dec. 11 vote on a 585-page “deal”
with the remaining EU member states. That agreement would have kept the
U.K. in the protectionist bloc for as long as possible, without any vote
on its decisions. After she axed the vote, May then faced a “vote of
confidence” by Conservative Members of Parliament, which she won by 200
votes to 117 — but only after promising that she would step down from
leading the party before the 2022 general election.
May scuttled back to Brussels to ask for tweaks to the agreement, which
might placate enough of her opponents to pass it, but she came back
empty-handed.
May came into office following the resignation of her predecessor, David
Cameron, who called a June 2016 referendum on withdrawal from the EU,
hoping it would be soundly defeated. But a majority voted for the U.K.
to get out, reflecting the anger of millions of workers who used the
vote to protest against years of attacks on living standards, lack of
jobs, seemingly endless wars and contempt by Westminster politicians and
EU bureaucrats alike.
“If you’re from an ordinary working-class family,” May said, then “life
is much harder than many people in Westminster realize.” While England
as a whole voted to leave, as did Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
voted to remain.
Since then, she has defied the vote, instead seeking to reach a deal
with the capitalist rulers that run the EU that would combine formally
withdrawing with in fact staying in. With the deal dead in the water,
there is now a flurry of moves and countermoves among politicians of all
parties, including warring factions within her cabinet.
Those who from the start sought to overturn the majority vote — like
former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair — have stepped up their campaign
for a second referendum, demagogically dubbed a “People’s Vote.” Some
members of May’s own Conservative Party are backing the proposal.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, has resisted calls within his
party to back another referendum, hoping the Conservatives will take the
blame for what millions would see as a slap in the face for their vote
to get out. Corbyn has also rebuffed calls by smaller opposition parties
to propose a parliamentary vote to bring down the government. His stance
is based on hopes of cobbling together a majority of both frustrated
pro-Brexit and pro-EU voters to put him in as prime minister.
What course for the working class?
“The weakness, heterogeneity, and loss of nerve and self-confidence in
the British ruling class” is a consequence of the breakup of its
colonial empire, disproportionate economic decline compared to its
competitors, and the uneven development of the regions and countries
that make up the not-so United Kingdom, Socialist Workers Party National
Secretary Jack Barnes said in a 1993 talk printed in Capitalism’s World
Disorder. Twenty-five years later, that assessment rings truer than ever.
Workers look on the hesitancy and infighting in the ruling class with
growing disgust. When Communist League members campaign knocking on
doors in working-class areas to introduce the party and discuss
politics, workers say things like, “They want us to vote over and over
until we vote the way they want,” or, “Oh, just get on with it, get
out!” Others are concerned about the effects on their jobs and lives if
warnings from the Bank of England and other ruling-class figures that
there will be price rises, shortages and a recession in case of a
“no-deal Brexit” — propaganda widely described here as Project Fear.
“It’s difficult to follow and I don’t think they know what they’re
doing,” food factory worker Lauryna Verbickaite told this reporter and
fellow Communist League member Anne Howie on her doorstep in
Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester. “They said there would be more money
for public services like health care, but that’s not happening.”
“Capitalist politicians try to confuse us,” I responded. “They all talk
about the national interest, but they’re not talking about working people.”
“The EU is a bosses’ club,” Howie said. “Its purpose is to squeeze
profits out of working people in the EU, to benefit the rulers in the
stronger countries in Europe at the expense of the weaker ones, and to
compete with their rivals around the world.”
“Getting completely out of the EU would put workers here in a better
position to fight for our own interests,” I added, “in solidarity with
fellow workers in Europe, like the yellow vests in France. Our main
enemy is the capitalist rulers here at home. The answer is to chart a
course to take political power out of their hands, which has to be done
right here.”
EU coming apart at the seams
“It’s a profound mistake for Europe to pull the British economy out of
Europe’s single market, which is the biggest commercial market in the
world, and pull British politics out of the political union, which is
the most powerful political union in the world,” Tony Blair had said,
arguing for a second referendum. The European project, so staunchly
defended by Blair, was never just about trade. The utopian aim of
political integration has always been at the heart of it.
The idea of one big European state, better able to compete with
Washington and other capitalist rivals, is a pipe dream. The EU is
tearing apart at the seams. The capitalist powers that dominate the EU —
the German rulers, and to a lesser degree the French — are not
interested in making concessions to London. Their aim is to make an
example of the U.K., worried that with the first breakaway, the whole
thing will come unstuck.
Take Italy, with the fourth largest economy in Europe where working
people have faced years of stagnation, with no recovery in sight. The
government is saddled with a debt that’s 1.3 times the annual output. An
“anti-establishment” coalition of the 5-Star Movement and the League
came to power this year in an election reflecting the same kind of
disgust with the capitalist rulers’ disdain for working people as did
the get-out vote in Britain.
When the new government adopted a budget with a 2.4 percent deficit,
partly to fund new welfare payments, the EU threatened Rome with
sanctions. The rulers in Berlin and Paris fear that the U.K. getting out
would inspire similar moves in Rome.
No matter what happens, there’s no end in sight for the capitalist
crisis, and there will be more struggles like the yellow vest “people
from nowhere” in France, as workers and farmers look for ways to fight
for our interests.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •‘Yellow vest’ protests force gov’t concessions
•New Year’s greetings to our readers behind bars!
•Join SWP in taking books, ‘Militant’ to workers doors
•‘We are human beings, not robots!’ Amazon workers protest conditions
•Turkish rulers threaten to attack Kurds seeking autonomy in Syria
•Rail bosses push crew cuts, longer trains, risk lives in drive for profit
Feature Articles •‘What does Cuba teach? That revolution is possible’
Also In This Issue •Hungary protests oppose law letting bosses force
overtime
•Workers donate ‘blood money’ bribes to build SWP
•Celebrate Nan Bailey’s five decades building SWP
•UK out of EU is best terrain for workers’ struggles there
•Join fight against prison censorship of ‘Militant’!
On the Picket Line •Mental health clinicians strike across California
•United flight attendants protest crew size cuts, grueling schedules
•Oakland teachers rally for smaller class sizes, higher wages
•Walmart worker hits bosses’ abuses over intercom
Books of the Month •Workers take political power or face ‘Iron Heel’ of
capitalist rule
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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