20.03.1997

Europe march for jobs

The Unemployed Workers Charter will be supporting the coordinated all-European marches for jobs, which converge in Amsterdam in June 1997. The march has the support of a number of trade union and unemployed organisations across the continent. In this country, the main source of active support is from a number of individuals in various unemployed and trade union centres, some associated with Socialist Outlook.

The National Unemployed Centres Combine and its associated organisations are actively opposing this march for their own sectarian reasons. A report in the February issue of Socialist Outlook tells us that “while claiming to support the European marches initiative, [the NUCC] have effectively declared war on the British marches in witch hunting terms, in favour of their roadshow”.

The UWC has had friction with the NUCC in the past. In the late 1980s, it actually tried to sabotage the UWC’s march from Manchester to the TUC conference in Blackpool. It even went as far as contacting trade union organisations and unemployed centres that had agreed to put up the marchers, pressurising them to cancel - even as our march was en route.

Although its leading personnel now seem to have changed, its sectarian abuse of others in the movement continues. Its attacks on the marches are prompted by the TUC’s line on Europe, which in turn is framed by Labour’s pro-Europe stance. The TUC has apparently gone as far as to put out a circular to affiliates telling them to have nothing to do with the marches in this country.

There has been some controversy surrounding the “form” the European marches should take in Britain.

Writing in the Morning Star of March 11, Linda Turberville lets the cat out of the bag as to why the National Unemployed Centres Combine opposes the event in this country. She initially states - inanely - that “the time was not right” in Britain. She contrasts the level of support that the 1981 Liverpool to London Peoples March for Jobs was able to achieve and the likely levels of active backing the Euromarch will get.

She lists the trades councils, union branches, regional unions and “last, but not least, ... the TUC general council”, who backed the 1981 event, but fails to mention that the TUC is actively opposing the 1997 march.

Turberville suggests however that in the context of a general election, “the labour movement ... would be putting all their energies into working for a Labour victory”. Any initiative at this time would be seen as at best a “diversion” and “at worst, opposition”.

In the March I5 issue of the paper, Glenn Voris - the secretary of the Euromarches in Britain - exposes the real reason for Turberville’s coy opposition to the event. “The TUC is pro-Maastricht and pro-single currency and convergence criteria”. In fact, the stance of the march is not explicitly anti-Europe (it merely states that the price of a single Europe should not be “at our expense”). Yet such is the extent of TUC prostration before Labour, it cannot even risk embarrassment to a Blairite party which stands full square for an anti-worker, bosses’ EU.

The marches in Britain and Europe deserve the full support of the workers’ movement, and any disruptive moves against them by the TUC general council or its various arms should be rejected with contempt.

The UWC will be sponsoring a marcher and may - depending on other work - send a person on one of the legs of the march. Contact the UWC on the address below for petition forms and other campaign materials.

Alec Long