a constitution for international capitalism
WORKERS, SEPT 2004 ISSUE
Will the British working class survive as an independent, sovereign and democratic nation? We are the nation. We have no other nation, and though we may often choose not to exercise our powers, the proposed EU constitution is the biggest threat to them since the Second World War. Yet the TUC, out of cowardly refusal to struggle and betrayal of its working class root, embraces it.
The constitution would remove the power of independent nation states and make the European Union the overriding legal and political power. It is not just another step on the road towards a centralised EU state: it would completely change the EU. Talk of a "two-tier" union is misleading — the pre-Civil War USA was a two-tier state, and look what happened there next.
The constitution would end our economic independence. The European Union would decide which countries would have which industries, and would stop us working as an independent economy. For example, under the constitution it could impose its rules on energy to create an EU oil reserve, allowing it to ration our oil throughout Europe.
End of democracy
The constitution would end our democracy, because the EU is intrinsically undemocratic, since it opposes all national, popular and democratic interests. Too many of its members are still damaged by their embrace of fascism in the 1930s — Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Greece and France. Its ruling body, the Commission, is inherently undemocratic — how many of us chose Peter Mandelson to be a commissioner? Talk of the EU's "democratic deficit" misleadingly implies that it could make good the deficit.
The constitution is no ordinary treaty, an agreement between sovereign governments. It is a set of rules for a new "Single Legal Personality", with unprecedented powers. In every area, we would only be allowed to make decisions where the EU chose not to. The EU is constantly "tidying up" the constitution: in the most recent versions, our "opt-outs" from the euro and on border controls have mysteriously vanished. We have already lost habeas corpus, due to the common EU "anti-terrorist" laws.
Labour's "red lines" on criminal and civil law harmonisation, and on social security, have gone. Under the constitution, the EU takes the power of extradition over British citizens.
The constitution would give the European Council new powers to change the Treaty without recourse to national governments — the so-called passerelle or escalator clause in Article I-24.4 — so the EU could end remaining national vetoes and override Labour's other red lines. National parliaments, far from having a "greater role", could only register concerns about EU proposals: the "emergency brake" merely imposes a brief delay before enforcing laws that we could not veto.
The unelected commission would be the only source of law. The commissioners, dominated by the chief executive officers of multinational corporations through the European Round Table of Industrialists, would run the EU in the EU's interests, refusing to accept any national interests.
The EU would be even more difficult to influence than Westminster. Indeed, no national political party is allowed any meaningful influence. So we can expect no employment or trade union laws meeting our aspirations. Indeed, EU employment laws have not prevented the unemployment of 20 million European workers.
The constitution does not include key trade union demands for the right to work, the right to take secondary industrial action, the application of employment rights from day one in all workplaces, or the rights to employment, housing, free education and free health care. Britain's National Health Service free at the point of need is not compatible with the EU model, as Brussels has repeatedly said.
Foreign policy
The EU has already started creating a new European External Action Service (diplomatic corps), even before anyone has ratified the constitution, and Article I-27 creates a new Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Article I-15 creates a single EU foreign, security and military policy, overriding the policies of individual countries: "1. The Union's competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence. 2. Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the acts adopted by the Union in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union's interests or likely to impair its effectiveness."
The EU is creating a single European army "to deal with trouble spots in and around Europe and in the rest of the world", as the constitution says, an open avowal that EU foreign policy would be aggressive. Yet Blair wrote in The Times, "There is no such concept called a European army." (13 October 2003). All member states will have to provide military resources to the EU and increase their military spending. This single EU army would raise the tensions between the three large trading blocs over access to dwindling mineral resources and oil and gas pipelines, and between the EU and the countries of Asia and Africa.
Workers, on the other hand, want peaceful and cooperative relations with all our neighbours and with all the countries of the world, based on mutual respect for national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs.
The EU's regional policies would also have a huge impact, by breaking Britain down into weak, mutually hostile regions that would be unable to stand up to the EU. If the EU and its Labour and Liberal-Democrat allies forced regional assemblies on us, they could force the Constitution and the euro on us too. They know that they cannot convince us to vote for either, so they are trying to get them through by the back door by imposing an unnecessary and unwanted tier of regional government.
We have already forced Labour to back down on two of these three regional elections, in Yorkshire and Humberside, and the North West (see News, p4). The Chair of Yes4Yorkshire, Lord Haskins, told the Yorkshire Post in July that the referendum was "unwinnable". Yet Nick Raynsford, the Minister for Local and Regional Government, sees "overwhelming support for a referendum".
Similarly, last year Labour got just 3,947 out of seven million people to back the proposed referendum for a regional assembly in the North West. John Prescott described this as "significant and widespread interest"! Now only the North East is to be the unwilling guinea pig for this monstrous experiment, on 4 November.
Referendum
The vast majority of us want a referendum on the EU Constitution so that we can vote against it, and we won a great victory by forcing Labour to concede a referendum. But nevertheless, Labour is planning a bill to ratify it.
In Holland, a referendum on the Constitution is to be held at the end of this year. In France too, the people have forced the government to call a referendum, for late 2005. Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Poland and Luxembourg are also committed to holding referenda.
Whenever the referendum comes, to keep our national sovereignty, independence and democracy, we must vote down the EU Constitution.