06.05.2009

No2 EU-UK, yes to a European republic

Dave Craig says republican socialists and communists should vote for RMT candidates

The RMT-sponsored campaign in the European elections is a trade union response to a decade of New Labour’s policies and the failure of the socialist movement to form a workers’ party. The frustration of militant trade unionism is sharpened by the current crisis of capitalism, a breeding ground for the growth of the British National Party. There is now a working class, pro-trade union alternative in the June 4 election.

How should republican socialists and communists respond to these candidates? The Socialist Alliance has decided to support them. But it also decided to oppose the RMT political line on the European Union. Let us first consider two resolutions adopted by the SA.

The first says: “The development of the EU has brought greater integration, centralisation and movement of European capital and the freer movement of European labour. This has brought home to the European working classes the necessity for cooperation, coordination and unity across national borders through their trade unions, political campaigns and parties.

“The SA welcomes, supports and promotes the internationalisation of working class struggles across the EU. However, the political institutions of the EU and its constitution are not democratic and not accountable to the people of Europe. They are designed to serve the interests of capitalist business, especially the multinational corporations, and to keep workers divided and trade unions weakened.

“The SA stands for the replacement of the EU by a European republic, democracy from below founded on the sovereignty of the people. A new democratic constitution should include the right of nations to self-determination, full civil rights and liberties and the fundamental rights of working people.

“Given the crisis of capitalism, the transfer of political power from the present bureaucratic capitalist EU institutions to the people of Europe will make possible extensive economic and social change and a fundamental shift in the distribution of income and wealth.”

The second SA resolution reads: “The SA has identified the disunity of the socialist movement and absence of a mass working class party as one of the major weaknesses of the working class movement in England. The current crisis of capitalism transforms this weakness into a danger. Without a party the working class lacks the means of combating the increasing attacks on jobs, wages and conditions arising from the crisis. Without a party the working class has no alternative programme and no means of winning power.

“The SA has identified the problems of socialist unity and the workers’ party as our major priorities. The SA gave sympathetic consideration to the need for socialist candidates in the European elections, but concluded it was impractical. We therefore welcome the RMT initiative in promoting a slate of candidates in the European elections. We welcome the support given by the SP, CPB, AGS, ISG and a near majority of the Respect leadership.

“However, the SA recognises major flaws in the ‘No to EU, Yes to Democracy’ platform. We agree to intervene in the campaign around the slogan ‘No2EU-UK, Yes2European republic’. The aim of our intervention is to raise the issue of democracy to a higher level. The SA will promote democratic and internationalist arguments about the unity of the European working class whilst criticising the ideas of British nationalism.

“Working class, pro-trade union candidates are now standing against the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Ukip and the BNP. We therefore agree to call for a vote for these candidates, whilst openly criticising the No2EU Y2D platform.”

At first sight the SA view might seem contradictory. It proposes to vote for the RMT candidates, whilst criticising the RMT’s political line on the EU. But only sectarians believe you cannot vote for working class candidates if you have criticisms of their political line. There are times when you should and times when you should not. It is important to work out which is which.

Communists reject sectarian methods. In the Russian Revolution they made common cause with Kerensky against general Kornilov, whilst conducting a campaign against Kerensky. The June Euro election is hardly the Russian Revolution and Bob Crow is not Kerensky. Yet there is something to be learnt from that example about the united front method.

Voting question

In this case who to vote for is clear enough in the context of the class struggle. On one side there is the BNP and the three main capitalist parties: Tories, New Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Pitted against them is the RMT, in alliance with the Socialist Party, Alliance for Green Socialism and the Communist Party of Britain, and supported by the Socialist Alliance and at least a significant section of Respect.

It is not rocket science to conclude we should be in a united front with the RMT against the BNP and the capitalist parties. The Socialist Alliance has drawn this obvious conclusion. I would be surprised if the CPGB did not do the same. Of course, it is possible that the CPGB might box itself into a sectarian corner through excessive demagogy. But surely, when push comes to shove, common sense and class instinct will prevail. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about it. Voting for the RMT alliance candidates means we are supporting them.

The second reason to support the RMT alliance candidates is the party question. There is neither a real communist party nor a real workers’ party in England/UK. In the post-1945 period these parties were identified with the Stalinist CPGB and the Labour Party. In the 1990s the liquidation of the CPGB and the rise of New Labour has left the working class movement without parties. We have weakened and declining trade unions, along with a fragmented, multi-sect socialist movement.

The absence of a communist party and a workers’ party prevents the working class becoming a political class with its own independent politics and ideas. Because of the severe crisis of world capitalism this vacuum becomes more dangerous. As capitalist governments seek to defend their profit system against horrendous debts, they have begun new and deeper attacks on the working class.

In addition, the threats to the middle classes, the desperate plight of the poorest sections of society and the growth of the ‘reserve army’ of unemployed creates conditions for the growth of racist and fascist ideas. We only need to think about the 1930s to see the dangers. The absence of a working class party is the absence of the class itself in the political life of the country. The working class needs its own political voice putting forward political and economic answers to the crisis of democracy and capitalism.

Old communism

The Communist Party of Britain is an interesting case. It continues with some of the old politics drawn from the Stalinist past. As in the 1950s, it sees itself building the British Communist Party. The Labour Party remains a workers’ party as before. Therefore the CPB is not in favour of a new workers’ party and has not participated in any of the attempts, such as the Socialist Labour Party or SA, to create one. Its involvement with the RMT initiative indicates a possible change in direction.

The CPGB has a variation on this line. Like the CPB, the party continues to believe that Labour remains some kind of workers’ party. The old 1920 formula that Labour is a bourgeois workers’ party is still in place. The CPGB does not therefore call for a new workers’ party when there already is one. It limits itself in Britain to trying to rebuild a British Communist Party. The Campaign for a Marxist Party followed the CPGB line of opposing a workers’ party as a halfway house. The CMP is now defunct, having come to a sticky end.

Logically the CPGB should vote for RMT candidates, whilst opposing any attempt to develop the project towards a new workers’ party. This is a mistake. Communists do not confuse the case for a workers’ party with that for a communist party. They are different kinds of organisation. In present conditions only sectarians oppose one to the other. Genuine communists reject sectarianism and recognise we need to fight for both. Without the participation and leadership of communists, any new workers’ party will be ideologically weaker, less democratic and less militant. That helps New Labour and the capitalist class.

Fortunately the bankruptcy of multi-sect socialism has not gone unnoticed by the more militant sections of the workers’ movement. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a movement struggling to form a new workers’ party. This has found expression in a series of initiatives, the SLP, the Socialist Alliance (1999-2003 version), United Socialist Party, Respect and the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. None of these succeeded in creating a new workers’ party. Each was only able to gather a certain section or portion of the socialist movement.

The workers’ party question must be a prime issue for the socialist movement and much more important than an EU election campaign. The RMT-initiated Euro campaign is not a party, nor even the launch of one. Yet the political meaning of the campaign can only be properly understood as part of the movement for a new party. The involvement of the RMT in this movement has been a huge gain.

The RMT is a militant trade union excluded from the Labour Party. It needs a voice in parliament and a party supporting its political aims. The union played a central role in the launch of the Labour Party. New Labour has taken trade union politics back to the position it was in at the end of the 19th century, when trade union bureaucrats clung to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party. The RMT is standing out against that. Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, has publicly called for a new workers’ party. Now we go one step further in asking what policy should a workers’ party have on the EU?

European question

The EU question is a political issue about the presently forming EU-UK state. This political union has accumulated more power into the hands of the EU bureaucracy. But this is not simply about Brussels and the European Commission. It is equally about the UK and a partial merger or intermeshing of bureaucracies. In the UK this is more accurately described as the ‘EU-UK’ (or in France as the ‘EU-Fr’).

The EU-UK rules through a joint bureaucratic apparatus located in Brussels and Whitehall. Compared to 300 million people, the Brussels bureaucracy is small. But Euro-bureaucracy is much larger when we include Whitehall and the other national bureaucracies across Europe. This is capitalist bureaucracy accumulated in dense layers. It strangles popular initiative and supports profit and capital.

The EU-UK capitalist bureaucracy is a barrier to democracy, workers’ rights and social change. The British crown, the capitalist bureaucracy in the UK, is part and parcel of this set-up. Blaming anti-working class policies simply on structures ‘over there’ and not ‘our’ structures over here is fundamentally misleading. It panders to the illusions of British nationalism about the ‘superiority’ of all things British, including the clapped out ‘mother of parliaments’.

The alternative to the EU-UK bureaucracy is a European democracy - a republic ‘from below’. This is not a single issue, but the focal point for the sum total of democratic demands. Whilst other social strata may support democratic demands, the collective interests of the working class are bound up with democracy. This puts the working class in the central position in any democratic movement. The working class is the only class that can extend the struggle for a republic into the management of the workplace and economic democracy.

The demand for a European republic is a political demand - a focal point for the political unity of the European working class. The French, Polish, Italian, German and Spanish (etc) working class movements must be won to a common democratic programme. The present EU is founded on the absence of democracy and the preservation of all the old national constitutions. A European republic demands each working class oppose its own regime, whether constitutional monarchy or bureaucratic republic.

This demand is the opposite of the call for British withdrawal from the EU. A European republic implies the end of the crown and its special relationship with US imperialism as the so-called 51st state. This would weaken US imperialism, as the abolition of the Zionist state would weaken the US grip in the Middle East. Campaigning for a European republic is equivalent to saying ‘No2USA’.

No2EU campaign

The RMT European election campaign has done the socialist movement a big favour. It highlights the divisions on the left, which have prevented us forming a new workers’ party. The advanced section of the working class in England is divided over the EU. There is agreement that the EU bureaucracy, the treaties and rules by which it is regulated, serves the interests of big business. It is a bosses’ Europe. But there are strategic differences over how this should be fought.

Historical analogies from World War II might contrast the 1940 retreat from Dunkirk to fortress Britain and the 1944 landing of the Normandy beaches, the invasion of Europe and the defeat of the Nazis. Should the working class withdraw from the EU or should workers take over the EU? The socialist movement has a strategic divide between ‘Dunkirkist’ and ‘Normandist’ (or 1066 in reverse!).

In the 1970s the socialist movement was ‘Dunkirkist’. In 1974 the miners pushed the Heath government out of Downing Street. Tony Benn was in government and socialism was identified with Labourism, Soviet communism and the CPGB’s British road to socialism. Joining the Common Market was seen as a distraction or barrier to the British road. In 1975 the Common Market referendum decided on the issue of entry.

A ‘no’ victory could have strengthened the Bennite trajectory of British politics following the miners’ victory. The ‘yes’ campaign, supported by big business and led by Harold Wilson, was victorious. Wilson seized the opportunity to sack Benn and begin a counterattack on the working class, which led to the winter of discontent and the victory of Thatcher.

Today the political conditions are very different. The UK has been part of the EU for over 40 years. Germany has been reunited, the USSR abolished. The British working class movement suffered a major defeat in the 1984 miners’ strike. Thatcher, Blair and New Labour supported anti-union laws and the drive for privatisation. The EU now has 27 countries and working classes, including former eastern bloc states.

British road

Despite this the British road to socialism still holds sway on the left. The 1977 version says the Common Market “not only imposed serious limitations on the country’s sovereignty, but resulted in a big trade deficit with the market, higher prices, and further economic difficulties for Britain” (p12). Hence “withdrawal from the Common Market and an end to its economic and political restrictions would enable Britain to determine its economic strategy and develop its trade on a world scale” (p39).

The latest version of the British Road (1999) develops the same theme: “The EU’s fundamental treaties, institutions and charters proclaim the sovereignty of capital. They are fundamentally anti-socialist, favour privatisation and the unfettered movement of capital cannot be tinkered with” and must be rejected (p28).

Rejection does not mean overthrowing these laws by mass action or replacing them with the democratic power of the European people. The British road is still the road from Dunkirk to Dover: “There must be a clear commitment to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union” (p28). However, the BRS reassures those millions of workers whose jobs are enmeshed with the EU economy: “This is not a call for withdrawal from the European economy or international economic relations in general” (p28).

This suggests something has changed between 1977 and 1999. The UK economy has become more integrated and interconnected with the rest of the EU economy under the laws of the EU-UK semi-state. The links between workers movements across the EU have become stronger. The UK cannot withdraw from the European economy without massive economic dislocation and unemployment. Hence the 1999 BRS favours continued participation in the EU economy, but calls for “a different form of participation in these relations” (p28).

This “different form” is identified as “growing solidarity between workers of all European countries - particularly those employed by transnational corporations - in defence of workers’ rights, living standards, the welfare state and democracy” (p28).

European economic integration certainly demands more and growing solidarity between workers in the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and Ireland, etc. But the British road restricts greater European workers’ unity to trade unions and workplaces and not to the exercise of democratic political power across Europe.

Republican road

Of course, the EU is still run in the interests of big business. But a strategy must build, strengthen and deepen the political union between the workers. The answer to the bosses’ EU is to democratise it, not break it up. Breaking up Europe would increase national rivalries and competition between French, German and British capital, which in the past produced two major world wars in Europe. The British working class needs a new strategy - more Normandy than Dunkirk.

The ‘republican road to socialism’ is an alternative strategy, not only for the UK, but for the EU. Its roots are in the historical struggles for democratic republicanism, not only in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but across Europe. Republicanism, popular sovereignty or democracy ‘from below’ replaces bureaucratic rule from Whitehall and Brussels. The aim is not to build barriers between the workers of Europe, but break them down through the radical extension of democracy.

The British road easily becomes entangled with the symbols of Britishness. The crown, the pound, parliamentary sovereignty, the union jack, the Protestant church and national anthem (‘God save the queen’) are, of course, conservative symbols. The British road can easily become ‘British jobs for British workers’. This is why many socialists are uneasy about, if not fearful or hostile to, the No2EU campaign.

The republican road takes inspiration from a different ‘kingdom’ - the popular struggles from below, the Levellers, Tom Paine, the Chartists, Karl Marx, James Connolly and the suffragettes. This is an historical tradition fused with internationalism. It is an alternative to the British road which points in the direction of democracy, internationalism and socialism.

No2EU-UK

The politics of Ukip is No2EU and Yes2UK. It is a national demand for British withdrawal. It is nationalist or chauvinist when proclaiming the superiority of the UK. The slogan No2EU-UK is an alternative. It is not a call for withdrawal and does not fan the flames of national chauvinism. It says the problem is a bosses’ EU and a bosses’ UK.

The best we can say about the RMT slogan, ‘No to the EU’, is that it is ambiguous. It is not differentiated from Ukip. In so far as it ignores the UK, it leans to Ukip chauvinism. On the other hand, it is compatible with calling for scrapping the EU constitution and bureaucracy and replacing it with a thorough-going democratic republic from below. Ambiguity serves nobody except Ukip.

Yes2ER

The RMT’s second slogan, ‘Yes to democracy’, is right to identify the importance of democracy. Democratic demands and slogans are of immense significance. They can be a bridge to socialism.

The struggle for democracy provides socialism with the opportunity of reconnecting with the broader popular (or non-socialist) masses. Trade unions and many of their members do not embrace ‘socialism’ old or new. But union members can and do support more democracy. Many organised workers feel instinctive sympathy towards greater democracy. Democratic demands and slogans bring the possibility of a wider alliance between trade unionists and socialists.

‘Yes to democracy’ is ambiguous. It can be and often is a conservative slogan in the hands of bourgeois politicians. Equally it can be a revolutionary slogan, in so far as it is aimed at mobilising the masses to fight for greater democratic power. Hence republican socialists and communists do not simply call for ‘more democracy’, but use specifically republican slogans. This is a simple and widely understood way of making clear we do not stand for the status quo.

Neither the EU nor the UK is a democratic republic. Neither the people of Europe nor in the UK have political power. Neither does the British parliament nor the European parliament represent the sovereign power of the people.

There is no EU-UK constitution which gives full sovereignty and democratic rights and civil liberties to all UK or European citizens. The present system of Whitehall-Brussels bureaucracy and national governments preserves reactionary laws and guarantees the continuation of the existing multi-state bureaucracies.

‘Yes to democracy’ is not in itself wrong, but is dangerously ambiguous. Ukip can equally raise ‘Yes to democracy’ as a conservative slogan based on nostalgia for some mythical Great British democracy. Ukip promotes the idea that we have lost our ‘democracy’ to an EU conspiracy and it should now be restored.

But the UK has never been a real democracy. Power is concentrated in the hands of the crown, governing through an extensive bureaucratic network. Whilst parliament is not completely irrelevant, it is a decorative assembly to maintain the pretence of democracy. ‘Let’s restore the pretence’ is the very thing we do not need.

Conclusion

We now have a ‘temporary workers’ party’ formed ‘from above’ by an alliance of the RMT, the Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Party and Alliance for Green Socialism. It has the temporary support of the Socialist Alliance, the International Socialist Group and nearly half the Respect executive.

It is not a democratic membership-based organisation. Its democracy is only as good as the democracy inside its components. We must vote for these candidates despite our reservations.

The campaign highlights a very important point. Building a new workers’ party is strategic, programmatic and ideological. We keep avoiding this until every now and again we are confronted by it as we are today. If we are going to build a new workers’ party, our movement needs to reject the British road for a republican road to socialism.

The republican road is not only internationalist, but links to our own revolutionary democratic traditions - as it does, for example, to the Irish, French or Spanish workers’ movements. This is why the Socialist Alliance says ‘No2EU-UK’ and ‘Yes 2 a European republic’.