20.06.2002

Debating the euro referendum

Few doubt that within the next couple of years Tony Blair's government intends to launch a carefully choreographed referendum campaign on the euro. Arguably Britain's most important constitutional question since entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 and the subsequent referendum in 1975. Opinion polls still show a slim majority for keeping the pound sterling over those favouring the euro. However, government advisers and spin doctors are confident that the gap will quickly close. Voters can be swayed. Meeting Gordon Brown's five celebrated economic criteria for entry into the euro zone will mark the opening shot of the official 'yes' campaign. That will happen once the political smoke signals are judged propitious. Meanwhile, as detailed in the Financial Times by Christopher Adams and Scheherazade Danenshkha, behind the scenes Brown is presiding over what is to be a "massive" report on the entry criteria (April 3 2002). Twenty elite treasury officials are hard at work in two teams. Their tome is to be published with much fanfare ahead of Brown's June 2003 deadline. Significantly the prime minister is to jointly supervise writing the vital sections - the introduction and conclusion. So how should revolutionary socialists and communists in the United Kingdom respond to the forthcoming referendum? One would like to think the answer to this question is obvious - unitedly. Sad to say, for the moment, that is not to be. Fragmentation, sectarianism, petty nationalism and opportunist conciliation with nationalism still exerts considerably more influence than the elementary principles of international socialism. Hence the Socialist Alliance in England is to decide its position some time in October while the Scottish Socialist Party is holding a special conference this Saturday, June 22, in Glasgow's Caledonian University - as to those comrades living in Wales and Northern Ireland, they are likewise to arrive at their own conclusions in isolation. It is as if there were to be four separate referendums on the euro in four separate countries rather than just one referendum in one country. Where Blair intends to launch a well orchestrated campaign under a single leadership, the forces of socialism hamper themselves with self-inflicted disunity and all the duplication of effort and the waste of resources that involves. Our case, outlined in the book For a Socialist Alliance party, that all revolutionary socialists and communists should unite on the basis of 'one state, one party', has never been clearer. The outcome of the SSP's Glasgow conference is not hard to guess. Factional discipline can only but ensure that the 'no' option wins. There is no scramble for delegates. The big three - International Socialist Movement, Socialist Worker Platform and Committee for a Workers' International - fixed their positions long ago. And bureaucratic centralism will operate - no public dissent is permitted. Nevertheless there can be no denying that the SSP is deeply divided. According to Scottish Socialist Voice, there are to be motions calling for the SSP to back a 'no' vote and for a boycott (June 14). These alternative positions are to be put by comrades Joe Eyre and Nick Rogers. The SSP has also invited two non-members to speak. John Foster of the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain is formally representing the Scottish Democracy Against the Euro campaign. He will strongly argue for a 'no' vote and maintaining the pound. The 'yes' case is to be put by the former Labour MEP, Henry McCubbin. Each of these comrades were given the chance in Scottish Socialist Voice to briefly explain their case. Comrade Eyre's argument begins with the standard left nationalist case against the European Union. The EU is "driven by the needs of big business" and the necessity of competing with the United States. The single market - the "free movement of goods, capital, people and services" - has allowed big business to "set up in areas with low wages or low taxation to maximise profits". He is right. Nonetheless the main concentrations of the capital remain in Germany, France, northern Italy and south-east England, not Portugal or Greece. But for comrade Eyre the euro can only make "a bad situation worse". Better the pound and the devil you know for him. The convergence criteria imposed on all member states to facilitate the adoption of the euro "have been disastrous for the working class and society generally". Nationalised industries - eg, telecoms, steel and railways - have been privatised and workforces decimated. Welfare benefits reduced and taxes on the rich cut. The euro, says comrade Eyre, allows unelected bankers from the European Central Bank to dictate not just interest rates, but levels of public borrowing and spending to every member state. There appears to be an iron law here. At least in the comrade's mind. The vital role of the class struggle in determining wages, conditions and welfare spending is more or less ignored. As is the success of the working class in Germany, Italy and France in upping real wages, cutting hours, and extending democratic rights. Working class unity in the EU political-economic space would surely produce much more far-reaching results. Eyre's main concern though is the nation. If "big national economies" - the comrade cites only Germany and France - are booming to the extent that there is a danger of inflation, the central bankers will "hike up interest rates to depress demand". This is bad news for smaller economies "like Portugal, Greece or Scotland" - they "could be thrown into recession by higher interest rates". Clearly the comrade half believes that Scotland is no longer an integral part of the "big national economy" of Britain, and is instead a weak independent capitalist state that must be defended against deadly rivals - best done by a 'no' vote on the euro. A short while ago the very model for a very leftwing 'no' campaign was Denmark. Thanks to a red-green-conservative grand coalition, the country rejected the euro in the June 2000 referendum - and then on November 20 2001 voted into power a rightwing government. The new government depends on parliamentary backing from the anti-immigration, anti-euro Peoples Party (Folkeparti) which made massive gains. For the first time since 1924, the social democrats find themselves no longer the largest political party. After the euro referendum the 'no' vote was celebrated as a triumph for the left. However, though the green and reformo-left in Denmark enthusiastically participated in the 'no' campaign, there was also the chauvinist right. Who proved to be the main beneficiary? The Red Green Alliance, which by its own admission "became in a certain sense, part of the government parliamentary majority" of the social democrats, lost votes and saw its parliamentary fraction reduced from five to four MPs (Scottish Socialist Voice November 30 2001). More to the point, the central issue during the general election was immigration, something that naturally flowed from the 'no' referendum campaign on the euro - essentially it was an isolationist campaign. Denmark has not swung to the left. Nor has it polarised. The centre has not collapsed. Like the world in general the trend registers to the right. We are not experiencing the "1930s in slow motion", as inanely still insisted upon by the SWP's Kevin Ovenden (Socialist Review June 2002). The period remains one of reaction - albeit a reaction under increasing attack from a left which is painfully, unevenly and fitfully renewing itself. Certainly the notion that defeat for Blair in a euro referendum would push Britain radically to the left lacks all credibility. Iain Duncan Smith and the Tories would be seen as victors. A Britain that had soundly rejected the euro and humiliated New Labour in the process would be ripe for a Tory general election win ... and - who knows? - perhaps even a "fundamental renegotiation of Britain's terms of EU membership", along with all the "entanglements of common foreign and security policy", and a reassertion of British sovereignty. In other words a withdrawal from the EU and an application for North American Free Trade Association membership, as crazily proposed by Margaret Thatcher in her recent book (see M Thatcher Statecraft London 2002 and K Marsden Towards a treaty of commerce London 2000). Not surprisingly comrade Eyre feels compelled to dress his kailyard nationalism in the garb of international socialism. Despite opposing the euro, the EU and hankering for a British (Scottish) withdrawal, the comrade claims to favour a global challenge to the system of capital and even a "socialist united states of Europe" (Scottish Socialist Voice June 14). There is, of course, no programmatic link joining the Scottish 'no' campaign with the supposed dawn of a socialist Europe. No relationship between premise and conclusion. Quite the reverse. John Foster stands for an unashamed British socialism and sees nothing wrong in defending the pound and sharing platforms with Tories, SNP fundamentalists and extreme rightwingers. National sovereignty is the totem. His Scottish Democracy Against the Euro is therefore committed to "winning the broadest possible campaign" against the threat of a single currency and a federal Europe. In essence this approach is shared by what remains of the old left reformists in the British trade union bureaucracy. And that necessarily means that comrade Eyre's putative labour movement 'no' campaign - if it is to based on trade unions - can only but be dragged to the right and towards politics that are completely antithetical to the interests of the working class. That is what happened to the 'no' campaign ran by the left in 1975. Tony Benn ended up speaking alongside Enoch Powell. Nick Rogers writes on behalf of a rather disparate range of forces. Besides supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Workers' Unity platform, those arguing for an active boycott campaign include the left nationalist Republican Communist Network, led by Alan Armstrong. Nevertheless comrade Rogers has made not the slightest concession to nationalism of any kind. Indeed his Scottish Socialist Voice article is informed by the spirit of international socialism (for a full version read Weekly Worker June 6). Comrade Rogers wants the SSP "to build links with socialists across Europe and to make the case for a socialist Europe." And to do that the twin "pitfalls of shadowing either of the mainstream campaigns" must be avoided. Even if it were successful, a 'no' campaign would neither scupper the euro nor the "bosses' Europe". As to the convergence criteria and the neoliberal European agenda, the comrade reminds his readers that, "Thatcher and Tony Blair between them have transformed Britain into a beacon for free marketeers and advocates of anti-trade union laws the world over." The idea that the tide of neoliberalism can be reversed in one country is illusory. Instead comrade Rogers calls for the forging of a pan-European socialist movement that can take the "first steps towards a socialist Europe and a socialist world". The SSP's campaign should "criticise" the many aspects of EU policy that are anti-working class and expose the "undemocratic nature of many of the EU's institutions". "We should," says the comrade, "develop policies with other European socialists that seek a more democratic and accountable Europe and make demands for European-wide measures that advance the interests of the working class" (Scottish Socialist Voice June 14). What of the SSP's 'yes' camp? It is undoubtedly the smallest factional grouping, though it does contain former MEP Hugh Kerr. His one-time colleague Henry McCubbin - still in the Labour Party - argues for a 'yes' vote "on balance". Comrade McCubbin refuses to believe that "we face economic Armageddon" by either staying out of the euro or going in. "Too often," he complains, "fanatics from one camp or the other drive the debate surrounding the euro to the detriment of rational argument." Showing his profound grasp of rational argument and rounded theory, the comrade defines money as "anything which is generally acceptable as a means of settling debts." Comrade McCubbin rightly favours larger economic and political spaces in general. Ergo it is better for socialists to opt for the euro as against the "small" currency run by Sir Eddie George. However, there must be a fight to put the euro under "democratic control". Then we can "stand up to the multinationals and the tax dodgers" and "challenge the Washington consensus" with its recipe of tax cuts, cuts in public expenditure, privatisation and deregulation, all of which New Labour subscribes to. Put another way, comrade McCubbin articulates Euro-reformist politics. Two popular fronts Evidently the lines of demarcation in the SSP reflect those in civil society in general. Every class, every establishment party in the United Kingdom, is bisected to one degree or another over the euro. And what is of particular note here is the fact that the dividing line does not run along the standard right-left axis. Instead an inner-looking nationalism couples the far right with the reformist left against the outer-looking British nationalism of the centre. Each camp is a kind of popular front - with in each case the working class confined to the subordinate pole. Hence the outer-looking camp, the Britain in Europe 'yes' campaign, is headed by a triumvirate - in the first place the prime minister, Tony Blair, of course; and, sitting on either side of him, Charles Kennedy and Kenneth Clarke. Ranged behind them and their party machines, or party factions, is a broad coalition of big business interests, pro-EU think tanks, liberal newspapers and top trade union officials from John Monks to Sir Ken Jackson. Besides Hugh Kerr and Henry McCubbin in Scotland, the far left of the 'yes' campaign exists in the form of London mayor Ken Livingstone and Red Pepper's John Palmer. They are though entirely marginal. The pro-euro camp promises that workers will be better off exploited by European capital. Dark warnings solemnly come forth claiming that job massacres - from Corus steel to Royal Mail - are due not to the innate workings of capital, but to an "overvalued" currency (pundits suggest that the pound will have to be devalued from €1.60 to €1.20 before entry into eurozone). When Britain embraces the euro everything will miraculously improve, runs the well rehearsed mantra. The 'no' campaign is surely going to be dominated by Iain Duncan Smith. There can be little doubt about that. Elected by the Tory rank and file on an explicit pledge to maintain the pound in perpetuity - not just for the lifetime of two parliaments, as his hapless predecessor, William Hague, said - Duncan Smith has got himself some strange allies. On either side of his main bloc of forces we find auxiliaries to the right and left. The least competitive sections of business and the Morning Star, Aims of Industry and the Green Party, weights and measures resisters and the fox-hunting landed aristocracy, foreign media magnets and the leftwing trade unions they love to hate, the United Kingdom Independence Party and Tony Benn, Socialist Labour Party Stalinites and the British National Party fascists. That is the camp Joe Eyre wants to SSP to join - albeit initially as a specifically Scottish and semi-detached "labour movement" campaign. Tommy Sheridan and Allan McCombes can then find themselves passionately denouncing the sinister threat posed to Scotland by the euro in an eerie echo of ennobled enemies such as Norman Lamont, Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit. During an actual referendum campaign the overriding message coming from this melange of traditional privilege, English-speaking money, petty nationalism and the plain dotty will though be quite straightforward: 'Keep the pound' and defend Britain. The idea that an SSP (or Socialist Alliance) 'no' campaign can distinguish itself in the public mind from the chauvinism and xenophobia that will flood from the Tory Party, the Murdoch media and the extreme right is untenable - especially when one considers that those such as John Foster, Arthur Scargill and Denis Skinner happily come out with formulations on the euro and the EU that hardly differ from Tory central office. What draws the reformist left together with the Tory right is the conviction that the nation-state is the subject of history. Alike post-imperial dreams of renewed glory and the national socialist utopia appear what they actually are in the context of the euro and a federal European Union - ridiculous. Revolutionary socialists and communists have to be quite clear. Both the 'no' and the 'yes' camps are reactionary. We oppose the 'no' camp not simply because to associate with it puts us in obnoxious company. There is another, much more important, reason. We positively favour a united Europe - even if that unity comes about under the conditions of capitalism. As long as it is arrived at democratically, it is a process that should be welcomed - and, through developing our own independent working class programme, critically engaged with. Of course, being for European unity does not commit us to support every measure that comes from the EU bureaucracy and the reactionary integrationists. Far from it. In this respect let us note that the SWP in the form of its antecedent, the International Socialists, once possessed a rather more sophisticated attitude towards European integration. In 1961, at the time of Britain's initial application to join, the first editorial of its journal to tackle the issue was actually favourable to the development. It was inevitable and could serve to intensify the class struggle. Furthermore a prediction was made: "cartel Europe will have laid ... the basis for a United States of Socialist Europe" (International Socialism autumn 1961). The majority line's foremost polemical gladiator on Europe at the time was a certain John Palmer (later of The Guardian, the EU and Red Pepper). Only in 1971 - ie, after Britain's third and successful application - did IS turn. Fronted by Chris Harman, the new line called for opposition to the Heath government's European strategy and a united front with the reformist left 'no' camp. Workers would be worse off and European integration could have no progressive content because capitalism no longer has any progressive content. Criticism duly came from Ian Burchall - yes, in those far off days public disagreement on pressing current issues was legitimate and not a violation of so-called 'democratic centralism'. He rounded upon comrade Harman's appeal not to stand aloof from working class opposition to European integration. "It is equally true," argued Burchall, "that, for example, hostility to foreign workers in Britain derives from class consciousness - concerns to defend employment and conditions ... We have to relate to these forms of distorted class consciousness; we certainly do not adapt to them" (International Socialism autumn 1971). Comrade Burchall appealed instead to the goal of a United Socialist States of Europe. It is true that the euro comes as part of an anti-working class package of restraints on public - ie, welfare - spending and curbing wage demands. A strong common currency is designed, by binding treaty, to enforce an external discipline upon member governments and encourage them not to buckle when under pressure from below. Borrowing levels are supposedly rigidly capped. Certainly the European Central Bank is already boasting quite openly that the introduction of the euro is directly responsible for recent falls in the size of pay increases in Europe. Therefore in our opinion the Socialist Alliance's 2001 general election manifesto is undoubtedly correct when it states that we "neither advocate the euro nor defend the pound" (People before profit p19). Hence, when it comes to the euro versus the pound sterling referendum, the CPGB says that the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales should refuse to take sides. And that goes for the SSP too. Revolutionary socialists and communists must constitute themselves a united third camp, the camp of independent working class politics. Tactically that means launching an active boycott campaign, through which our democratic slogans and socialist perspectives can be highlighted. Three of the Socialist Alliance's five principal supporting organisations - CPGB, Alliance for Workers' Liberty and Workers Power - have already come together around this approach. And naturally co-thinkers are being sought out, including in the SSP. Because of present-day factional weights we might well lose every conference vote. However, we are sure to win the argument. European capitalist unity is proceeding apace. Capitalist unity objectively demands a corresponding working class unity across Europe - and that must embody a programme for extreme democracy in the European Union. Only such a road holds out the realistic prospect of the United Socialist States of Europe that comrades like Joe Eyre say they wish to see. Blair's catch-22 Blair's referendum on the euro will, of course, be timed to get exactly the right result - for him. It will also come with a catch-22 proposition on the ballot paper. His closest advisors are carefully crafting the two options. Doubtless to vote 'yes' will be to vote against the interests of the working class. To vote 'no' will by the same measure be to vote against the interests of the working class. No third option can be countenanced, especially an option where we can put our mark in favour of a massive extension of democracy in Europe and a working class agenda. Put another way, the Blair government is planning to use the forthcoming referenda in a totally manipulative manner. Not surprisingly during their resistible rises Louis Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Charles de Gaulle did exactly the same - all used this very device to grant themselves overarching powers by popular acclaim. Framing the proposition is everything. So the forthcoming referendum will not be for or against Blair and New Labour - as the SWP likes to imagine - but one currency or another. Referendums need not always be like that, of course. Often referendums are forced upon an unwilling government by the sheer concentrated weight of popular opinion. This can find constitutional expression. Citizens in Switzerland can, for example, table their own referendum questions simply by securing a certain level of support - 300,000 signatures. The same principle of plebiscitory democracy applies in California. There is no such right for subjects in the United Kingdom, however. Her majesty's government exercises a monopoly over referendums and it uses them to get the result it wants. Eg, Wilson and the EEC in 1975, Blair and the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly in 1997, the Northern Ireland vote for the Good Friday deal in 1998. It would, of course, be stupid to insist that revolutionary socialists and communists should permanently renounce taking sides in a referendum framed from above. It all depends on concrete circumstances. Take the referendum in Ireland over abortion on March 6 2002. The ultra-reactionary right, the catholic hierarchy and the Fine Gael government combined to launch a referendum attack on the technical right to an abortion which was won for rape victims after a fierce fight. Their target was the principle of abortion itself. To have opted for a boycott in the name of free abortion on demand would have been facile posturing and a big mistake. Our forces were weak, disorganised, on the defensive and expectations were desperately low. Equally to have quietly gone along with those who were intent on merely retaining the completely unacceptable status quo - liberals, Sinn Féin, Labour, etc - would have been sheer opportunism. Voting 'no' - against a full-scale frontal assault on the principle of abortion by the massed forces of bigotry - should have gone hand in hand with energetically campaigning for what is needed. The welcome, albeit narrow, defeat for the Bertie Ahern government and the catholic theocrats could have been used as a launch pad to achieve a women's right to choose whether or not have an abortion - free from any interference from either church or state. Active boycott Our clash with Alan McCombes, the SSP's main thinker, over the boycott tactic five years ago is instructive. Comrade McCombes contemptuously dismissed any thought of launching boycotts of referendums as "completely ludicrous". He argued that under capitalism "all referenda - and for that matter, all elections - are rigged to one degree or another". "If the CPGB's attitude" was followed through to its "logical conclusion", they would advocate boycotting all elections, he said. A boycott would relegate us to the "status of complete irrelevance" and play into the hands of the Labour leadership and the Tories (A McCombes 'Referenda statement' Weekly Worker April 10 1997). More recently Alan Thornett of the International Socialist Group has argued against us in a similar fashion. An active boycott campaign is equated with an "abstention", which is by definition a passive stance, that would "leave the left wringing our hands on the sidelines, with nothing to say, while the Tories held forth" (Socialist Outlook February 2002). Joe Eyre and Gordon Morgan also dismiss an active boycott because it "would be seen as negative and evading our responsibilities to give direction". The comrades say we "would have no influence over events" and would "receive no coverage". How do you "distinguish" an active boycott from a "passive stay-at-home"? they innocently ask ('For a workers' campaign to vote 'no' to the euro'). Certainly all elections under capitalism are, yes, to one degree or another "rigged". But, as I have said, that hardly leads us to argue for boycotting every poll. Tactics cannot be based on the undeniable fact that establishment politicians cheat and constantly strive to deceive people. Tactics must be decided upon only after assessing class relations in the round and analysing the development of extra-parliamentary and parliamentary struggles. For example, in a referendum, what is the question? Why is the government asking? How purposeful and combative is the working class? Are the reactionaries on the rampage or retreating? Does a widespread popular hunger exist for more than is on offer? All such factors must be taken into account. As to boycotting all elections, practice speaks volumes here. The CPGB believes that it "obligatory" under today's political conditions to stand in parliamentary and local elections "because we want to use every avenue to propagate the ideas of communism" (J Conrad In the enemy camp London 1993, p7). Elections can be turned from a means to lull the masses and gain their submission into a weapon of the class struggle - and one of the sharpest at that. So minded, within the Socialist Alliance it was the communists who took the lead in boldly arguing for the biggest possible challenge in the June 2001 general election. Our most vociferous opponent was comrade Thornett's ISG. Fact. In the midst of a huge revolutionary storm communists and revolutionary socialists should be the first to go onto the offensive. We might well decide to boycott Westminster or other such Edinburgh or Cardiff elections, if the towns and cities of Britain were thronged with millions of protestors, if offices and factories were under occupation and the ruling class wanted to kill this off, in the first place by announcing elections in a month's time, when organising a popular insurrection is the order of the day. The same would certainly go for a referendum with a heavily loaded question - 'Do you favour the restoration of peace, stability and good governance?' or 'Do you favour national collapse, anarchy and mob rule'? If the working class were forming councils of action and establishing defence corps, countenancing participation in such a counterrevolutionary stunt would be to betray the cause of socialism. Under such welcome circumstances we would ruthlessly expose the many shortcomings and violations of democracy under the existing UK constitution. The absence of PR, the corrupting role of big money, the unelected second chamber, the royal prerogative in choosing the prime minister, etc. We would also demand that power be transferred from an unrepresentative parliament - House of Commons and House of Lords - and be handed to the new organs of power that were rising from below. Naturally though, any decision to call a boycott is a purely tactical one. There is no principle involved. What about the notion that an active boycott would "relegate" us to an "irrelevance" and allow New Labour and the Tories all the running? Would an active boycott "be seen as negative", "receive no coverage" and be indistinguishable from a "passive stay-at-home"? That such comrades as Alan McCombes, Alan Thornett, Joe Eyre and Gordon Morgan are forced to make such stupid arguments says everything about the weakness of his own tactics and programme. An active boycott is hardly the same thing as a passive abstention. The boycott tactic is a legitimate weapon in the armoury of socialism. As recently as this February-May, revolutionaries were calling for a boycott of the second round of the French presidential elections and the non-choice of Jacques Chirac on the one hand and Jean-Marie Le Pen on the other. This was the position of Lutte Ouvrière. On the central committee of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire the boycott position commanded 34 votes, as compared with 38 for the majority line of "voting against Le Pen": ie, voting for Chirac. Speaking from the platform at a CPGB meeting in ULU on February 26, a certain Alan Thornett expressed his support for a boycott too. The Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires, the LCR's youth section, did actually carry banners on demonstrations reading 'Unity against Le Pen and Chirac'. They distributed leaflets urging 'Neither super-liar nor super-fash. Down with the Fifth Republic. For a democratic alternative'. Correctly they called for the "annulment of the second round" (Weekly Worker May 2). What form did their boycott take? Countless mass demonstrations. One million took to the streets of Paris on May Day. With an authoritative lead provided by a united workers' party, who knows how far things would have gone? But the idea that the revolutionary left in France would "relegate" itself to an "irrelevance", "be seen as negative" and would "receive no coverage" beggars belief. The comrades might recall that the Bolsheviks too firmly distinguished between a "passive abstention" and an "active boycott", which implies, as Lenin explained, "increasing agitation tenfold" (VI Lenin CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, p182). The Bolsheviks were not boycottists in principle. Far from it. However, they did organise a spectacularly successful boycott of elections to the tsar's duma in 1905. The Bulygin duma was buried before it was born. Incidentally Trotsky - while he was a non-Bolshevik - supported that boycott. He savaged those who preferred to combat the autocracy simply through the ballot box. Liberation is not achieved by putting a cross on a piece of paper, but by taking to the streets and "through struggle" (I Deutscher The prophet armed Oxford 1979, p120). In that same militant spirit the CPGB says we should stand against the twin reactionary 'yes' and 'no' camps - not passively on the sidelines, but actively. Remember, we are not talking about boycotting a routine election in which we can field candidates, but a referendum whose question is already set. Communists are not interested in solving the government's dilemma over the euro and EU integration. Nor are we interested in siding with the Tories and giving them an unintended boost. Communists are interested in carving out a space for socialist politics, increasing the profile of the Socialist Alliance and the SSP and spreading the idea of working class unity throughout the whole European Union. That cannot be advanced either through a 'yes' or a 'no' campaign. There is no need to choose between two evils. Oppose the 'yes' alliance of pro-big business politicians, EU bureaucrats and bankers on the one hand. And on the other oppose the little Britain nationalists - left and right (and, even more risible little Scotland and little Welsh nationalists - left and right). Deliver a double blow. The energy we put in, our imagination and innovation, will obviously be a material factor. Success will certainly not be judged by upsetting the government and inadvertently giving a fillip to Duncan Smith's Tories. Rather our criterion of success will be the organisation we build on the ground, the extent our message is heard and layers of the working class are engaged. The Socialist Alliance and the SSP must increase its agitation "tenfold". Practical ideas are needed so as to stage the most militant campaign against the non-choice objective circumstances allow - from simple agitational posters to symbolic occupations of key sites in the City of London and Edinburgh; from local public debates to appearances on nationwide TV; from motions in trade union branches to political strikes; from door-to-door leafleting to mass demonstrations against the Europe of capital and for a social Europe. As Nice, Genoa, Brussels, Barcelona, Paris and above all Rome show - another Europe is possible. Jack Conrad