02.05.1996

Europe amendment

There seems to have been some confusion also over the European policy document discussions. At the March 2 meeting there were four different positions put. At a reconvened meeting in Barnsley there were still three different positions, so Scargill suggested that all these positions be put to conference. However the steering committee subsequently agreed the original document.

Comrade John Pearson in Manchester was advised to submit his alternative as an amendment, which he duly did. He was then told that it could not be an amendment and so it should be re-submitted as an alternative resolution but by then the deadline had passed for submissions. Therefore the document printed below and signed by a number of comrades in Manchester has not been presented to conference.

The comrades have been advised by the steering committee to attempt to have all the documents referred back, in which case the incoming NEC would redraft the Europe document taking into consideration the alternative (printed below) submitted by the Manchester comrades.

Helen Ellis

1. As a socialist and internationalist party the SLP will pursue a working class agenda on all matters relating to the European Union. Whilst recognising that the EU is a capitalist club, we will be guided by the understanding that the more the process of economic and monetary union develops then the more identical will become the immediate practical issues facing the working class of the EU nations, thus the greater will become the opportunities for cross-border working class solidarity and coordinated action. That working class unity shall be a prime objective in European policy.

2. The SLP will adopt a position of neutrality on British membership of the EU (we will not be drawn into expressing preferences for one form of capitalist organisation over another). We are for the destruction of capitalism and its replacement by international socialism.

3. Similarly with respect to the Maastricht Treaty, the SLP will not take sides in the arguments over whether or not capitalist nation states should retain the ability to run large deficit budgets and to manipulate currency exchange rates and interest rates. The working class agenda we will propose will be for massive improvements in public services funded by increased corporate taxation, a heavily progressive income tax and other methods of ‘soaking the rich’. We have no interest in the use of financial manipulation by capitalist nation states to gain temporary competitive advantage over other states. The SLP’s agenda will be for the ending of capitalist competition and the establishment of international workers’ planning and control of production and exchange.