Workers' Liberty

As the banker James Pierpoint Morgan said, everybody has two reasons for things they do: the good reason, and the real reason.

"Extremely disappointing". I guess that from TUC general secretary Brendan Barber that counts as militant talk. Anyway, it is the sum total of the unions' reaction to Tony Blair getting the European Union to agree to an opt-out for Britain from the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

By Sean Matgamna

There are two basic lines of possible working class policy in relation to the European Union.

The first advocates building on what the bourgeoisie has created and uniting the working class across the EU to fight the bourgeoisie for democratic and social reform and, in the course of doing that, building towards socialist transformation by working-class revolution on a European scale.

The accession of Eastern European countries to the EU is supposed to have helped bring up respect for human rights there to “modern” standards. Maybe not.

Summary notes on Europe for the international meeting of June 2005/ notes sommaires sur l'Europe, pour la réunion internationale du 18 juin 2005. (In English and French).

A survey of the attitudes to the EU and the draft European constitution of the two main link-ups of the European left, the Party of the European Left (Communist and ex-Communist parties) and the European Anti-Capitalist Left (which includes some revolutionary groups).

Draft motion on the 48 hour week and the British "opt-out", prepared for Cambridge Trades Council, June 2005.

The European Parliament has voted to scrap an opt-out from the rules limiting the working week in the EU to an average of 48 hours, but the ruling won’t come into force for another three years and it could still be blocked if the UK Government wins support in the Council of Ministers.

In the end, despite lobbying by the Polish government and others, the EU constitution signed by 25 member states on 29 October did not contain references to Europe’s “Judaeo-Christian roots” in its preamble. But the question whether the EU should in some senses be a club only for Christians rumbles on, including, strongly, in France.

By Joan Trevor

Last-minute preparations are being made for the 3rd European Social Forum, less than a month away. While it’s far from being the ESF we — or many others — would have wanted, it will still be an immensely significant and enjoyable event.

How did the European left fare in the June elections? Martin Thomas reports

The results

Two point six per cent in France, 5.8% in Italy, 8.1% in Denmark, 7% in the Netherlands, 5.2% in Scotland, 4.9% in Portugal... I do not know of any significant radical-left electoral efforts in the new EU member states of Eastern Europe, but in some west European states, at least, there were some scores for the radical left in June's Euro-elections better than those which parties to the left of the Communist and Socialist parties got in the 1970s.

By Cathy Nugent
On Friday 18 June Tony Blair signed up to the new EU constitution on behalf of the UK government. Short of great political upheavals this constitution will settle the relationships between the capitalist powers in an expanded European Union for a long time to come - it codifies and pushes forward a very great degree of integration.

By Bjarke Friborg

With victory for the social democrats and setback for the "eurosceptics" an established tradition in Denmark seems to have been broken. For the left wing it places the question of an anticapitalist answer to the European integration high on the agenda.

Contre les europhobes et contre les capitalistes européens !
Par Sean Matgamna.

By a CWU member

At the General Conference of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) (14 June) the European Working Time Directive will be discussed.

At present, different sections of the union have different policies on whether individual opt-outs should continue.

By Rhodri Evans

The threat from the far right in the 10 June Euro-elections may come as much from the UK Independence Party as from the British National Party.


The BNP hopes to win a Euro-seat in the north-west. But the UKIP has edged ahead of the Lib-Dems in one opinion poll. It is spending more on the Euro-elections than Labour and the Tories put together. It has the backing of multi-millionaire Paul Sykes, actress Joan Collins, freelance racist Robert Kilroy-Silk, and former Clinton campaign manager Dick Morris.

By Colin Foster

Thursday 10 June will be a big election day, but, unfortunately, one with a small socialist presence. Seventy-eight Euro-MPs will be elected, by proportional representation in each of 12 giant regions.

By promising a referendum on the proposed European Union constitution, Tony Blair has put himself at risk of a political defeat. Current opinion polls show 86% against the constitution.

"Let us for a moment grant that German militarism succeeds in carrying out the half-union of Europe... what then would be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all people under the roof of isolated national states?...

By Rhodri Evans

On 14 September Sweden voted 56% to 42% against joining the euro.

The Social Democratic government, the main opposition parties, and the major newspapers all favoured the euro. But the voters rebelled.

By Joan Trevor

Since the end of the Second World War capitalists have been groping-sometimes blindly-towards a united Europe, with institutions and activities to meet their needs.

Their concessions to making this Europe in the interests of its non-capitalist majority have been tiny and token: the European Parliament is next to powerless; the European Social Charter aims at leveling social provision, not out of the goodness of the capitalists' hearts but so that no one member state has an advantage over the others; the extension of worker participation in running businesses comes out of a co-option management model, not respect for the organised power of labour.

What should socialists do when faced with a choice between two options, neither of which are going to be beneficial to the working class? How should socialists vote in a Euro referendum?

Some socialists believe voting 'no' to the Euro is the only answer. They feel that if Britain joined the single currency, it would subject the working class here to the power of reactionary bureaucrats in Brussels. They also believe that the euro will bring cuts, and if it is brought in, it will mean a victory for the Blairites and their capitalist partners in crime. Because socialists are anti-capitalists, they say, we must logically oppose the capitalist euro. These socialists often also oppose the idea of the EU, viewing it as nothing more than a bureaucratic club for capitalists.

By Colin Foster

Capitalism in Europe is becoming euro-capitalism, like it or not. In general and in principle, we - the socialists, the labour movement, the working-class left - should "like" it.

Will Blair swap the pound for the euro?

By Colin Foster

Will Tony Blair use his boost from the relatively quick US/UK military victory in Iraq to make a dash for the euro? Or will Gordon Brown's caution hold him back?
Is it really true that euro entry would undercut the Health Service? Or is that scaremongering given that in the core of the eurozone welfare provision is generally better than in Britain?

In recent AWL meetings about the war, a number of comrades have suggested that maybe the underlying issue, what it's really about, is dollar versus euro. I'm not convinced, but I'm posting this (by Duncan Du Bois, from The Natal Witness), because it's the most spelled-out version of the argument I've come across so far.

Alan Turvey reports

To coincide with the European Union summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in mid-December, at which ten eastern and central European states were admitted to membership, thousands of mainly young people demonstrated in the bitter Scandinavian cold - in the main not against "the EU" or "Europe" as such, but against "the capitalist EU".

Kat Fletcher's speech moving the "active boycott" composite at the Socialist Alliance special conference on the euro, 12 October 2002.
What is the Euro? It is about the integration of capital. It is one face of capitalism's drive to break down national frontiers, to create wider markets, to build larger units of production. The capitalist class of Europe want it in order to maximise their profits. They want to lower the national barriers in Europe in their own way and in their own interest.
That is the euro. Plainly we can't support it. But does it follow that we should say no to the euro?

By Bruce Robinson
Who said?
(1) 'The Growth and Stability Pact is in its death throes'.
(2) ' The Growth and Stability Pact is stupid'.
(3) 'Chris Jones obviously hasn't been reading the financial press lately.'

From Solidarity 3/14, 11 October 2002
"We support in principle the single European currency. We are Europeans and internationalists", says Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil service union and the most prominent trade-unionist in the Socialist Alliance.

The "no to the euro" motion won at the Socialist Alliance euro-conference, on 12 October, by 202 votes to 108 with one abstention.


Our "active boycott" composite lost by 107 votes to 199 with two abstentions. A "no" motion from Hyman Frankel on explicitly nationalist grounds was defeated with only one vote in favour. Dave Landau's motion which recommended continuing the debate was lost by 75 to 213 with 4 abstentions.