The European parliament elections on Thursday will be a proxy for the second referendum that the Tories dare not call, and that Labour's leadership has steadfastly refused to campaign for. In any such actual referendum, socialists would obviously vote to Remain, to maintain the international unity and solidarity of the working-class, free from the constraints and restrictions that national borders place upon them. It is only rational, therefore, in these elections, to vote for those parties that most clearly argue for stopping Brexit, and have the best chance of winning, in each area. On the basis of the analysis conducted by Remain United that means voting Liberal throughout England, SNP in Scotland, and Plaid in Wales. It is necessary to mobilise the greatest possible vote for these parties, as the clearest vote against Brexit, and thereby to defeat the reactionary nationalism of Farage's Brexit company, and the Tories.
It is a tragedy that, in these elections, it is not possible to rally behind Labour as the vanguard of that fight against reactionary nationalism, but the reality is that, although 90% of Labour Party members, and about 75% of Labour voters, oppose Brexit, the party leadership has adopted the same kind of reactionary nationalist position as the Tories. There is barely a hair's breadth of difference between the policy that Theresa May has put forward in her Withdrawal Agreement, and the “Jobs First Brexit” fantasy that Labour has put forward, as its preferred Brexit option. That is why it was possible for Labour to sit in talks with our class enemy for six weeks trying to arrive at a form of words that would allow them to sell it to both Tory and Labour MP's, and activists. As Barry Gardiner honestly described it, it amounted to Labour “bailing-out the Tory government”. Labour's leadership has disgraced itself, by its actions, in similar ways to that of Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930's.
Its understandable that Labour members and supporters, especially those that had great enthusiasm following the election of Corbyn as party leader, should try to see the glass as half full rather than half empty, to try to put a positive spin on the disastrous course that Corbyn and the party leadership have adopted over the last three years. Its understandable that they might want to allow themselves to be persuaded that it was a clever strategy of “constructive ambiguity”, which is just another term for Blair-right triangulation. But, the fact is that what really lay behind that strategy was Corbyn's own history of supporting an ideology of economic nationalism that flows from the ideas of Stalinism, of the theory of building Socialism In One Country, that also lay behind the ideas put forward by the Stalinists and their fellow travellers in the Alternative Economic Strategy, developed in the 1970's and 1980's. What lies behind the disastrous strategy adopted by the party leadership, over the last three years, is the influence behind Corbyn of those same Stalinists.
That is made worse by the fact that, the so called far left, outside the Communist Party, itself collapsed into the same kind of economic nationalism in the 1970's. They combined it with a reactionary Sismondism that was manifest in designations of being “Anti-Capitalist”, and “Anti-Imperialist” rather than being pro-socialist. In opposing capitalism and imperialism, it forgot all about the idea that these things can be opposed from both a progressive and reactionary perspective, and settled instead for simply aligning with any forces, no matter how reactionary, how anti-working class they might be, so long as they identified themselves as being anti-capitalist, or anti-imperialist. They concentrated on tearing things down rather than building anything positive from them.
As Marx says about this form of petty-bourgeois socialism, in the Communist Manifesto, it aims at
“... cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.”
That reactionary trend within the Left, and particularly far left, in the 1970's, saw it line up with reactionaries such as Enoch Powell and the National Front, to push a reactionary Little Englander opposition to EEC membership. It saw at least sections of it line up, in support of the Alternative Economic Strategy, which demanded economic nationalist policies that put the blame for the failure of British capitalism on to foreigners, by backing reactionary nationalist demands for things such as import controls, and immigration controls. Alongside that it saw sections of that Left line up with assorted reactionary forces across the globe, be it Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Khomeiniites in Iran, or Provisional IRA in Ireland, simply on the basis of their professed “anti-imperialism”.
In the 1980's, many people on the Left believed that the self-styled Revolutionary Communist Party was actually a secret service created group of agent provocateurs, such were its untethered in theory, and unhinged in practice, politics and behaviour. It defended the murder of innocent civilians, including children, by the Provos, for example, in the Warrington bombings. The RCP over the years has gone through a number of metamorphoses, via “Living Marxism”, to its current manifestations as the Koch Brothers funded, Spiked Online, and the Institute of Ideas. The lazy, and decadent British bourgeois media repeatedly invites the representatives of these organisations, such as Claire Fox, Brendan O'Neill, and Ella Whelan on to TV and radio to spout their ridiculous views, despite the fact that they actually represent nothing and no one.
It is no surprise that the self proclaimed Leftist, Claire Fox, therefore, has found herself at the top of Farage's Brexit company slate for elections to the European Parliament. Yet, Fox to this day, refuses to condemn the Warrington bombings that killed innocent civilians, including three year old Johnathan Ball, and twelve year old Tim Parry, and which she and the RCP justified, at the time the bombings occurred. But, the lazy and decadent Tory media that invite these people on to their programmes, day after day, repeatedly fail to question them about their support for such actions. That we have these elements lining up with Farage, along with Stalinists such as Galloway is no surprise, because it flows from their putrid nationalist politics. It is the same politics that allowed Oswald Moseley to move seemlessly from the economic nationalism of the Mosely Memorandum, backed by Nye Bevan, to his establishment of the New Party, on the way to the British Union of Fascists.
It is necessary for all socialists, and progressive social-democrats to draw a line in the sand, demarcating ourselves from these reactionary nationalist forces that have combined once more in an unholy red-brown alliance on the question of Brexit. Its necessary to mobilise the greatest possible vote for the anti-Brexit parties on May 23rd, and to mobilise against the forces of reactionary nationalism.
Of course, it sticks in the craw to vote Liberal, or SNP or Plaid. This is still the same Liberal Party that was part of the Liberal-Tory coalition of 2010-2015 that implemented the crazy policy of austerity. But, remember that Labour's economic plans, under Alistair Darling, were not that much different in 2010, and remember that, up and down the country Blair-right Labour Councillors implemented those austerity measures at local level, rather than mobilising any kind of mass campaign against them. These are the same Blair-rights that followed on from Kinnock's Labour party of the 1980's, which undermined the Miners Strike, which attacked Labour Councils in Liverpool, Lambeth and elsewhere that actually did try to oppose the Tory cuts proposed by Thatcher. Its not that we consider Labour to have a great record itself, but the fact that it is the Workers Party, the party that workers look to, that comprise the majority of its membership, and that they are intimately tied to via the trades unions that leads us to give critical support to it, as Marxists.
Moreover, if the Brexit agenda of Corbyn were to be implemented the reality is, despite all of the fantasies of the Lexiters, it would mean that the Labour government itself would have to implement a series of attacks on workers. It would mean that capital would fly from the country, causing unemployment to rise, and tax revenues to drop sharply; it would mean the Pound would fall sharply causing inflation to rise, thereby slashing workers real wages; if a Corbyn government responded to such a situation with the same kinds of policies of economic nationalism that Trump is applying, and which are described in documents such as the Alternative Economic Strategy, it would mean again rising prices, as tariffs were implemented, and so on.
Its not surprising that seeing its support collapse, the Corbyn leadership is trying yet again to use the tactic of “constructive ambiguity”. Corbyn's appearance on the Andrew Marr show, on Sunday led to a flurry of speculation that Corbyn had committed more firmly to holding another referendum. But, the truth is he didn't. There is nothing clear in anything that Corbyn says; it is all hedged around by duplicity. There is no commitment to a second referendum under all circumstances; there is still a commitment to trying to arrive at some kind of Brexit fudge; there is no commitment to actually opposing Brexit should any further referendum be held. What is more, in his interview, Corbyn again made clear that he is committed to ending free movement. As someone said recently, following Brexit, a can of baked beans will have a greater right to free movement than will workers!
For centuries, it was only the rich, the landed aristocracy and their lackeys that had a right of free movement. Gradually, that right became available to freemen, whilst serfs remained tied to the land and the possessions of their masters. Even as late as the 19th century, in England, the law allowed any vagrant to be branded with an “S” on their forehead and turned into a slave. It took a valiant struggle of socialists and liberals to win the right of free movement, and to end the imprisonment of people in the narrow confines of their towns and villages. Without it, tens of thousands more Irish people would have died in the famines. In Britain too, workers set up Emigration Societies, so as to escape poor wages, and unemployment, in Britain, to move to the open space of America. Now, we find reactionaries again trying to deprive workers of that basic human right to free movement.
On Thursday, we need to mobilise the greatest possible vote to oppose Brexit, by voting Liberal in England, SNP in Scotland, and Plaid in Wales. But, that is not enough. We are being forced to channel our opposition to Brexit by voting for these parties, because the Labour leadership has given us no real alternative. Having voted to stop Brexit in the clearest terms, it is then necessary to turn our focus on to the Labour leadership itself. It is not up to the job, and is standing in our way. It is an obstacle to progress. It must be swept aside. But, the failure to push through democratic reforms over the last three years means that we are hamstrung. We still have old right-wing Labour MP's like John Mann, Kate Hoey and so on, as well as Blair-right MP's, and soft left MP's. They are supplemented by a similar layer of councillors, at local level. In addition, the party apparatus has been filled with a layer of Stalinoid apparatchiks. We need to push through a thorough democratisation and cleansing of the party. Not only do we need to deselect most MP's, but we also need to introduce far more democratic control and accountability of the party apparatus itself, including ending the right of the party leader to appoint a series of influential special advisers.
We need a recall party conference for the Summer to introduce a range of such democratic measures, and begin the process of deselections so that we can create a truly mass, democratic fighting organisation of the working-class, capable of taking the fight to the Tories and reactionaries. We need to change the party's policy on Brexit to demand a revocation of Article 50 and end to Brexit. We should begin to develop a European strategy with other European socialists for a struggle across Europe against right-wing populism on a radical, progressive social-democratic agenda, for industrial democracy, an end to austerity, and programme of infrastructure investment across the continent. We should speed up the process of European integration via the convocation of a series of Constituent Assemblies to draw up a new European Constitution. We should commit to building a United States of Europe, and for a Workers Government, on the way to building a United Socialist States of Europe.
But, that all starts on Thursday by voting in the greatest numbers to stop Brexit.
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