referendum in British history is presently scheduled to be held on June 5. The vote will be to decide whether Britain is to remain within the Common Market (EEC) on the renegotiated terms arranged by the Labour government. Both the Labour cabinet (by a 16-7 vote) and the Parliament (by a 396-170 vote) have recommended a Yes vote. The stakes involved in the referendum are of obiective importance. Popular rejection of the EEC would have grave consequences for capital. The British bourgeoisie needs the EEC to strengthen its market and to provide stimulation and capital for the rafionalization of British industry. But more than that, capital wants to begin to bring to bear a more centralized international array of forces against the immense organizational strength of the working class, and the maintenance of British membership in the EEC constitutes one of the factors that must be brought into play to break down the strength of the British working class. While the present condition of the EEC does not make that project credible in the short run, continued membership may allow the bourgeoisie some breathing space by providing market concessions and more readily available inFusions of capital. The working-class organizations, on the other hand, while deeply suspicious of any form of international organization, are not prepared for the requirements of a new, more international stage in the struggle against capital. The contradictory sentiment with20
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in the working class about the Common Market, the unanimous bourgeois commitment to maintaining
British membership, and the failure of the Labor left to mount a really serious and internationalist campaign against the EE make it look more likely that the result of the referendum will be a victory for the Yes position. That would undoubtedly represent a defeat for the working class. The bourgeoisie would have achieved its immediate goal without the workers' ufilizing the referendum as an opportunity to mount a political challenge.
But a vote for remaining in the EEC would have a specific meaning beyond simply underlining the political weakness of the workers movement. Although a defeat for the working class on the referendum would not have great immediate effects on the overall relationship of class forces in Britain
(precisely because the workers have up to now not linked up their basic trade-union struggles with the issue of the EEC in a direct and central way), a
Yes vote would give the bourgeoisie greater maneuvering room on the political front, and this would in turn have consequences for the ruling class's campaign to push the Labour government toward some form of more stringent incomes policy by strengthening the hand of the pro-Market right wing.
At present, it appears likely that continued membership in the EEC will be approved in the referendum. Two of the major reasons for this are the situation prevailing in the working class and, linked to
that, the sort of anti-EEC campaign being waged by the Labour left opponents of Market membership. Attitude of the working class Working-class sentiment on the question of British EEC membership is clearly divided. Figures from opinion polls indicate that some 48% of the population would vote for Britain to stay in the EEC and only 34% against. (Opinion Research Centre poll published in March.) Later polls indicate that the trend is toward greater support for the EEC. Even in Scotland, one of the strongest centers of opposition to the Common Market, polls show that 37% want Britain to stay in the EEC (compared with 34% in March and only 29% in February). Af the same time, the percentage of "don't knows" has risen From 23% to 27%. A poll of Labour supporters in Scotland indicates a sizable minority (29%) in favor of remaining in the EEC. Further south, the proportion of Labour voters who will cast Yes ballots is larger, While caution is indicated (because of the large number of undecided voters, the number of like ly abstentions, the fact that the campaign is still in its early stages, and the general unreliability of opinion polls), certain conclusions can nevertheless be drawn. Clearly, at this stage a significant section of the working class is not opposed to membership in the EEC. Moreover, the large number of "don't knows" demonstrates that there has not been a deep polarization of society on the issue. Part of the reason for the lack of polarization is the sort of campaign the left, particularly in the Labour party, has been waging. But the nature of the campaign and the attitudes of the masses of workers are mutually reinforcing. In addition, there are objective factors explaining why the response of the working class and its broad vanguard have been limited so far. The first factor is the development of the struggle to maintain living standards in face of rising unemployment and spiraling inflation. The rate of inflation is about 20%, while wage increases are running at just under 30%. The situation looks relatively calm in comparison with the peak periods of struggle around the last miners strike, forexample. (In reality, figures show that more working days were lost in strikes last year than in any other year except 1926 and 1972.) But the strikes have been relatively fragmented, a result of the remarkable fact that working-class living standards have risen even faster than inflation, in spite of the rise of unemployment. That is the price the bourgeoisie has had to pay for its lack of any effective political instrument with which to confront the unions.
But this situation has a paradoxical effect on the EEC issue. One of the major arguments of those who oppose the EEC has been that the higher prices prevailing in the Common Market (especially for food products), compared with the prices Britain would have to pay in trade outside the Market, would have drastic effects for workers. But with the rise of world food prices and with EEC subsidies to Britain for some items, for example sugar, that argument does not hold any longer: This fact, in combination with the workers' ability so far to maintain and even increase their living standards, has knocked the bottom out of the argument. that the EEC represents an attack on British pocketbooks. To take up the more long-term implications of the EEC on the workers' standard of living the left Labourites would have to wage a fight against the more general moves (of which EEC membership is but a part) toward strengthening the British capitalist class politically and organizationally. That would in turn pose the problem of a political strategy to strengthen the working class - and this is a problem the major organizations of the working class are unwilling or unable to take up. And there are other factors working in the same direction. The fragmented character of the working-class struggle during the present period has meant that the political issues involved in the EEC debate do not coincide with centralized national trade-union struggles against the bourgeoisie. The intermeshing of the struggles on the wages front and on the political issues involved in the EEC referendum could have produced a situation of deep class polarization. The working class would then have seen ruling class promotion of the EEC as but another aspect of the general attack on living standards to which the workers have already had to respond. The referendum would then have become a manifestation of the general class battle. Instead, the EEC has emerged as a "separate" political issue in its own right. This sort of "separation" of political issues from "economic" ones is a general historical feature of the British working-class movement, an aspect of the division between politics and trade unionism. But the historical legacy is exacerbated by the left Social Democracy, which is conducting its campaign against the EEC around themes that are defined as being "above" the class struggle (the defense of sovereignty, for example). Even though the actions of the trade-union leadership in opposing the orientation of the 1964-70 Labour government, and the current actions and statements of some elements in the left Social Democracy have begun to move away from this historical division, it is a division that is not very easily overcome. Even those sections of the working class that do see the EEC as a political debate regard it as something that must be carried on by those parties
21
BRITAIN that hold the traditional monopoly of "politics" in bourgeois society. And here again, the weakness of the arguments advanced by most of the opponents of the EEC create confusion at best; at worst, they reinforce the view that the EEC debate does not matter anyway. The result of all this is that the EEC referendum is not taking place under political conditions of the sort that characterized the referendum on divorce in Italy in May 1974: a strict lineup of the whole of society and its political parties and organizations in accordance with the position of these forces in the general class struggle. Campaign of the Labour left Clearly, the "militancy" of the campaign of the Labour lefts will be tempered by the prevailing moods of the working class and its bureaucracy. There would be little point, for instance, in the Labour left walking out of the government if the overwhelming majority of the working class was not in support of its position. However, an examination of the campaign the left Labourites have been waging illustrates the manner in which this campaign influences the attitudes prevailing in the working class, strengthening their most negative aspects. The main themes of the left Labour campaign have been insistence on the threat to national sovereignty allegedly represented by the "faceless bureaucracy" in Brussels (it should be noted in passing that there are more bureaucrats attached to the Ministry of Health in Britain than to the Brussels offices of the EEC) and an abstract and fraudulent "internationalism" that argues that the EEC is a "closed, inward-looking community." Apparently, the defense of national sovereignty goes hand in hand with true internationalism. The cornerstone of the campaign of the lefts is the defense of Parliament, which is presented in classic Social Democratic fashion as a body standing above the sordid, narrow outlook of business interests. And the role of the working class is said to be that of the most consistent defenders of the present "neutral" state. In addition, the Labour lefts have been unable to break the idea that the result of disengagement from the EEC would be a retreat into a "siege" economy, which would involve drastic measures to cut imports, total rationalization of the economy (with a big increase in unemployment), and an overall restructuring of the British economy. The absence of a credible alternative economic model counterposed to EEC membership is a result of the Social Democratic left's well-known ability to avoid the obvious: The only alternative both to the EEC and to a "siege" economy is to challenge the capitalist nature of the British economy and society. 22
But the logic of the campaign of the Labour lefts, in both form and content, rules out this approach. In form, the campaign has been compromised from the start. The Labour lefts (with some notable exceptions, like Wedgewood-Benn) have aligned themselves with the petty bourgeoisie and with reactionary forces, sharing public platforms with them and allowing these reactionaries to gain credibility among the working class. (Such operations are essential to the Bonapartist projects of Powell and his Followers.) For instance, Clive Jenkins, the leader of the Association of Scientific, Technical, and Managerial Staff (who is on the left of the trade-union bureaucracy) spoke in Folkstone on the same platform with Powell. In Bristol left MP Ron Thomas spoke from the same platform with MP Richard Body, an extreme rightist and member of the right-wing Tory Monday Club. It was only in February that the Get Britain Out Campaign considered excluding the Fascist National Front, after the Cooperative Society, a wholesale and retail organization linked to the Labour party and controlled in some areas by the Communist party, made a large donation. The IMG has led a partially successful campaign against class collaboration, supported by both left Labourites and the CP, particularly in Scotland. Nevertheless, the form of the Labour left campaign flows logically from the issues around which its campaign has been organized. The halfhearted character of the Labour left campaign is also reflected within the Labour party itself in the fight against the Labour right. Since the present government took office, the Labour left has backed down from any important fight with the right. During last winter's Labour party congress the left avoided the emerging confrontation over whether the Labour party conference was to control the conduct and policy of the party members in Parliament. Today, after a lot of noise, the left appears to be retreating again, this time on the issue that six months ago appeared to involve the threat of splitfing the party: the EEC. The National Executive Committee of the Labour party (the national leadership elected by the conference) passed a resolution against continued British membership in the Market but refused to mobilize the whole party machine behind the anti-EEC campaign. The Trade Union Congress will not hold a special conference to discuss the renegotiated terms of EEC membership, ostensibly on the grounds that some of the big unions might support the majority line of the Labour cabinet in favor of membership. When the renegotiated terms were put to a vote in Parliament, the results were more favorable to the left than had been expected (144 Labour MPs, a majority of those present, voted against their cabinet's recommendation). But during the debate in Parliament only Eric Heffer, minister of state for
industry under Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, spoke against the cabinet's line. The agreement that had been reached in the cabinet allowing a free vote in Parliament and freedom to publicly disagree with the government for those who oppose remaining in the EEC (not such a big concession when it is remembered that the majority of the Labour party, including the leadership, oppose membership) evidently does not fully extend to Parliament. Heffer is to be dismissed. Indeed, the right wing is on the offensive, despite their minority position. Jenkins, Home Secretary and leading pro-Marketeer in the cabinet, has been fighting against the free vote in Parliament on the grounds that the Labour party was required to vote against the EEC on the terms worked out by the Tory government that was in power when Britain first joined the Market. Finally, even in Scotland, the organization called Scottish Labour Against the Market, which was set up after the Scottish Labour party conference, and which at least partially breaks from the notion of a mulficlass campaign, has decided not to use the full machinery of the party and has rejected door-to-door canvassing. For the left Labourites, the key link into the working class is the trade-union bureaucracy. Decisive attitudes in the rank and file of the workers movement are more readily reflected in shifts in the bureaucracy's position that in shifts in the position of the Labour party apparatus. And the trade-union bureaucracy has likewise defaulted in the EEC campaign. While the two main unions (the Transport and General Workers Union and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers) can be expected to play a vigorous role in the coming Labour party conference, no independent move has been made to rally the trade unions as such against the EEC. Indeed, despite its unlikelihood, some bourgeois journals are hoping that the AUEW might be split down the middle at the Labour party conference or might even vote for the position of the cabinet. The April 13 Sunday Times wrote: "In spite of their reputation for militancy under Mr. Hugh Scanlon's leadership, the Engineers have kept a low profile on the Market question... . In these circumstances, a vote for the Market remains possible." According to trade-union sources, at the beginning of April the unions were prepared to spend a maximum of £10, 000 on the anti-EEC campaign. The bourgeois magazine The Economist claimed this decision was part of a plot to "portray themselves as underdogs. " This interpretation seems rather unlikely. A more likely one is that the bureaucracy is aware of the confusion in the working class on the EEC issue and has decided that a vigorous anti-EEC campaign could end up being too damaging to the bureaucracy's political control over the rank and file.
In sum, the tensions within the Labour party over the question of the EEC have not spilled over into the open warfare, wholesale cabinet resignations, and rank-and-file mobilizations that had been expected. Although the EEC campaign will likely be stormy, it is unlikely to develop into a real battering for the Labour leadership in the cabinet. The primary reason for this is the retreat of the Labour lefts. Ultimately, this specific retreat is based on the conjunctural and historical political weaknesses of the workers movement as a whole, which any brand of reformism currently developed cannot rectify, but only reinforce, and which is thrown into relief by broad political issues like the EEC. Possible consequences The defaults of the Labour lefts in the campaign against the EEC and the currently growing likelihood of a victory for the Yes vote in the referendum will have potentially important repercussions in the political arena. When the miners strike and the unbroken solidarity of the working class in face of the three-day week forced Heath to call the election that resulted in the failure of any party to win a majority in Parliament, the bourgeois political order was destabilized. The trade-union and organizational strength of the working class had spilled over into the bourgeois political arena, triggering a fundamental crisis. The social base of the Tory party was fractured; parliamentary government was rendered extremely difficult. Some of the basic problems resulting from that period have yet to be resolved by the bourgeoisie, nor is it possible to solve them in the immediate future. But a successful outcome for the bourgeoisie in the referendum would break down the partial paralysis of the bourgeoisie and grant it some room to take political initiatives again. The EEC campaign is thus a test of whether a working-class upsurge on all fronts is to be expected. The ruling class is using the opportunity to push the basic trade-union strength of the working class back into its "rightful" place - out of the political arena. If the bourgeoisie is successful in this campaign, it hopes to begin to prepare to isolate the militants of the working class on a whole series of political issues. This process can in no way substitute for the bourgeoisie's absolute need to move to a head-on confrontation with the organized working class, but it does offer the ruling class the possibility of taking some cautious steps toward partial recovery from its previous deFeats. The lessons of the EEC campaign so far show that when the issue is posed of what alternative society and economy can be counterposed to present-day British capitalism, the working class as a whole,
23
intervention of the IMG
BRITAIN however militant it might be, offers a confused response. The revolutionary left today is too fractured and sectarian to pool its resources and present a united series of proposals. In any case, the relationship of forces is such that the revolutionary left lacks the strength to pose that alternative within the mass movement in a credible way. The left Social Democracy is basing its campaign on the weakness and hesitancy of the leadership of the working class, which serves to intensify that weakness and The International Marxist Group (IMG), British section of the Fourth International, is intervening in the EEC campaign under the general slogan: For a United Socialist States of Europe! The main axis of the IMG campaign is to stress the principled grounds for opposing British membership in the EEC. Essentially, this means attempting to build the broadest front of all those in the working class who oppose remaining in the EEC - on the basis of no collaboration with bourgeois forces. Within that front, the IMG puts forward an internationalist, working-class response to the strengthening of the internafional organization of capital. In practice, this means participating in the initiatives taken by the left Social Democrats and putting forward an alternative political line within those initiatives. The IMG campaign can be divided into several parts: 1. Actions that challenge the collaborationist strategy of the campaign being conducted by the traditional organizations of the working class. A letter has been widely circulated projecting the socialist and working-class content the Labour party's campaign should have; it has been signed by some leading trade unionists and Labour party members. In several areas, Newcastle and Edinburgh for example, IMG comrades and supporters have raised within the local Trades Councils the issue of the type of campaign that should be waged and have successfully isolated those forces (particularly the Communist party) that want to conduct a multiclass campaign. Important victories against the line of the CP have been won in the National Union of Students (CP-led) in Edinburgh and Birmingham. 24 hesitancy. In the short run, the workers movement can use its trade-union militancy and organizational strength to impose an unfavorable relationship of forces on the ruling class. In the long run, however, the vacillations and retreats of the left Labourites, however crucial they believe it is to maintain Labour's electoral base in the working class, prepare a possible avenue for the defeat of the workers. In this way they also ensure their own defeat at the hands of the right wing. TIMGA MANCHEST CIMC 2. Actions stressing the internationalist focus the campaign must have. Ernest Mandel will be touring the major cities of the country, speaking along with a comrade of the Liga Comunista Internacionalista (Internationalist Communist League), sympathizing organization of the Fourth International in Portugal. During the tour Mandel will debate Ernie Roberts (secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers) and Evan Luard, Labour Member of Parliament from Oxford, 3. Actions that prepare the extension of the antiEEC fight to the struggle against the Labour leadership's introduction of forms of incomes policies and of cuts in social spending. A letter has been issued calling on Eric Heffer to speak at the Labour party youth rally against the EE scheduled for May 31. The letter serves as the basis for mobilizing opinion around the need for the Labour left to wage a fight that continues after the referendum - not only against the EEC but also against any attempt by the right to move toward adopting measures that attack the living standards of the workers.