The Neverendum

The Supreme Court's verdict that the Scottish Parliament does not have the competency to legislate for a second independence referendum without the consent of the Westminster parliament was hardly surprising – least of all to the Scottish nationalists who tabled it in the first place.
    Three Tory Prime Ministers have turned down previous SNP calls for another referendum. Labour is equally opposed. Only last week, Labour’s Henry McLeish, who served as First Minister from 2000 to 2001, rejected calls for a referendum, telling Sky News: “This is not the time to be taking these big political and constitutional decisions, it is a time for making devolution work and for the independence campaign to be sidelined”.
    Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish government, says she’s now going use the next general election as a de facto referendum on independence and continue to push for Scottish independence. But this has been rejected by the Scottish Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties who all say they will not take part in any SNP plan to treat the election as a single-issue vote.
    The SNP won the lion’s share of Scotland’s seats in the House of Commons – 44 out of 59 – at the last general election in 2019. But their overall share of the vote was still only 45 per cent which clearly doesn’t give them a mandate for any unilateral declaration of independence. It was more or less the same for the Scottish devolved government elections last year. Though the Scottish parliament is elected by a mixed system of voting that includes a form of proportional representation the SNP and their Green allies still only took 49 per cent of the vote – though that did give them 70 seats out of a total of 129 in the Scottish parliament.
    The Scottish Parliament was set up by the Labour Government in 1999. It has played an increasing role in the developing Scotland and, under Labour leadership, it used some of its powers to pass modest reforms beneficial to the working class.
    Following the collapse of the Scottish Labour Party in the 2015 general election at the hands of the SNP the nationalists have been successful in deluding many people that they are a left‑wing party.
    The SNP claims to be a social-democratic party but it is essentially a bourgeois liberal platform that in recent years has embraced the NATO alliance. Its neo‑liberal economic policies and their failure to use tax raising powers already devolved to the Scottish parliament reflect the true nature of the SNP.
    Behind the traditional nationalist demand for independence is the call for an independent Scotland within the European Union that simply reflects the demands of a section of the Scottish bourgeoisie who believe their interests are better served through greater integration with Franco-German imperialism
    The degree of local autonomy won by the Scots is, in itself, no guarantee that the national traditions and culture of the Scottish people will be developed, nor will it automatically lead to the strengthening of working class power. But the creation of national institutions in Scotland has been a positive step.
    The New Communist Party has long recognised the rights of the Scottish nation to full national self‑determination. We support Scottish demands for the right to preserve and develop their culture and national identity. We support their right to possess and control all the physical and other resources present on their land and territorial waters. If there is another indy referendum we will, of course, say YES.

Trouble north of the border

The feud between the current and former leaders of the Scottish National Party has bitterly divided the Scottish nationalist community. Nicola Sturgeon has fended off the drive to force her to resign over what she, or her husband, did or did not do over the Salmond affair. But it the row clearly has damaged her credibility as First Minister of Scotland while leaving Alex Salmond politically wounded but not down and out.
    Salmond, who led the Scottish government from 2007 to 2014, has rallied his followers behind the banner of his new Alba Party which he hopes will propel him back into the Scottish parliament when the Holyrood elections take place in May.
    Meanwhile Scottish Labour sits on the side-lines unable to exploit the splits within the nationalist camp while having little to offer to the Scottish electorate apart from old Blairite clichés that Scottish workers turned their backs on years ago.
    The establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 led to a semi-autonomous “devolved” Labour- Lib Dem coalition government that used their powers to pass some modest reforms beneficial to the working class. But toeing the Blairite line meant they were easily undercut by the nationalists who won many Scottish workers over with a reform package that was tagged on to their long-standing demand for independence
    In 2011 the Scottish National Party secured a majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament. Following the collapse of the Scottish Labour Party in the 2015 general election the nationalists have been successful in deluding many people that they are a left‑wing party. But they’re not. Like the Liberals of the 19th century they will support some popular demands to win the workers’ vote. But they are an essentially a liberal bourgeois party. They campaign for independence because they believe that the Westminster parliament stands in the way of Scotland’s integration within the European Union – though that is out of their reach for the moment.
    Though the nationalists have also taken much of the Tory vote in Scotland there are clear divisions within the ranks of the Scottish bourgeoisie on the question of outright independence. Some believe it is unattainable and others that it is undesirable at a time of global capitalist crisis. Scottish banks relied on the Bank of England to bail them out in the 2008 slump and some fear that an independent Scotland would not be able to weather the storm when the next crash comes.            Nevertheless independence would free the Scottish working class from an increasingly oppressive and intrusive Westminster government.
     Independence, in itself, does nothing to preserve national traditions and culture or strengthen working class power. In the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, self-governing administrations comprised of local exploiters have presided over the virtual demise of all their heritage and culture while introducing labour laws and practices even worse than those implemented by the mainland Tories since 1979.
    But independence would open up the prospect of a genuinely left-wing Scottish Labour government. The organised workers of Scotland — the trade unions — would still have to fight for such reforms but they would be easier to win than trying to wring them from Westminster.
    The New Communist Party has long recognised the rights of the Scottish people to full national self‑determination. We support Scottish demands for the right to preserve and develop their culture and national identity. We support their right to possess and control all the physical and other resources present on their land and territorial waters.
    There can be no doubt that Scotland can hold its own as an independent state. If and when that question is again put to the Scottish electorate the New Communist Party will support a vote for independence.

The only vote that counts

All sorts of nonsense has been spouted by Remainer politicians claiming that there’s been a sea-change in opinion towards a second referendum with most people now wanting to remain inside the European Union (EU). Wishful thinking and peculiarly framed opinion polls that avoided asking the question that was put to voters during the 2016 referendum have been used to justify calls for second ‘people’s vote’ or, like the Liberal Democrats, simply to ignore the first one.

But a huge new survey shows that 50 per cent want to Leave the EU, with 42 per cent wanting to Remain. With 'don't knows' removed, 54 per cent would back Leave compared with 46 per cent in support of Remain. Some 26,000 people took part in the poll, organised by ComRes and Channel Five.

This was the biggest Brexit poll since the 2016 referendum and it confirms what we’ve been saying all along. But the only real poll that counts is the one that took place in June 2016. The Labour Remainers in parliament should remember this in future.

Postal workers vote for action

Royal Mail workers voted by an overwhelming 97 per cent on a 76 per cent turnout for industrial action over the Christmas period, which is by the busiest period of the year. Their move is in defence of terms and conditions that Management seems set to undermine seriously. Their union, the CWU, says Royal Mail is reneging on an agreement reached between Royal Mail and the union. Entitled {The Four Pillars}, agreement it covered pay rises, pensions, and a move to reduce working hours from 39 to 35 per week by 2022 depending on productivity improvements.

The CWU's general secretary, Dave Ward, has now urged Royal Mail to enter “serious negotiations” with the union. If they’re realistic and genuinely want a negotiated settlement before Christmas, Royal Mail’s management should start talking now.

Making America Great Again?

The imperialist politicians who are now shedding crocodile tears over the plight of the Kurds of northern Syria have no real concern for the Kurdish people. If they did, they would have supported the Kurdish struggle in Turkish Kurdistan – where most of the Kurds live. Instead, they simply sought to use them as pawns to foster regime change in Iraq and Syria.

The fate of the Syrian Kurds now depends on the Syrian army and the Russian peace-keepers – not NATO nor the Turks that for so long abetted Washington’s efforts to bring down Assad’s popular front government in Damascus.

Donald Trump was quite right to pull the troops out of northern Syria. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If he really wants to ‘make America great again’ he should pull them out of Europe, the Middle East and south Korea as well!

No to another EU vote!

 The campaign to reverse the decision of the 2016 referendum on the European Union (EU) is now zeroing in on Labour Party conference in Liverpool in September.

Historically, the purpose of EU referendums is simply to get the public to endorse what has already been agreed by those who called them in the first place. If that fails the results are immediately questioned to back demands for reruns. This has been the chosen method of the Eurocracy to reverse decisions they didn’t like for many years.

The Europhiles in all the parliamentary parties, who see the ruling class’ interests best served by working hand-in-glove with Franco-German imperialism, began preparing the ground for another vote immediately after they lost the referendum in 2016.

The fifth column within the Labour Party is now working to mobilise the Europhiles within the Corbyn camp to join them in a concerted effort to commit Labour to a second referendum on EU membership. They say this is not a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and they claim that the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign now reflects the overwhelming wish of the electorate.

The Blairite backbenchers, who have made repeated attempts to unseat the Labour leader, began bleating for a second vote immediately after the referendum result was declared. And whilst the Corbyn leadership is committed to honouring the 2016 decision to leave the EU there are many within his own camp ready to sell out to the Europhiles.

Last week Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, said that a second referendum was possible, declaring that “all options should be on the table”. John McDonnell, Corbyn’s number two, was disturbingly ambiguous when he told the BBC that: “It is not Labour party policy to have another referendum. We respect the past referendum, But we recognise that, when the government comes forward with its proposals – if it does, I’m worried we might be in a no deal situation – but when the government comes forward with its proposals, parliament will decide the next step. So we’re not taking any options off the table when that debate happens.”

The Europhiles can count on social-democrats of all persuasions who believe that “Another Europe is Possible” and peddle the nonsense spread by left social-democrats, and revisionist circles that still pose as communists in some parts of Europe, who argue that the EU can be reformed to serve the interests of working people. They can also rely on the support of the dinosaurs in the trade union movement who claim that the anti−working class ‘directives’ and ‘rulings’ can be reversed.

For years the Blairites and the majority of the leaders of our unions have elevated the EU as an instrument for social progress and economic advance whilst turning a blind eye the bitter experience of the millions of unemployed workers forced onto the breadline in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy by the austerity regime that Franco-German imperialism has imposed on the rest of Europe. They ignore the poverty that has forced millions of Poles and other workers from eastern Europe to seek work in Britain, France and Germany, and they say little about the anti-union legislation that is the backbone of the EU’s ‘Social Chapter’.

They say that the EU is becoming more representative through the authority of the European Parliament and establishment of regional autonomy. But the EU with its toothless parliament, ruritanian regional governments and farcical referendums that only count when the vote agrees with what has already been decided by the powers that be, hasn’t been reformed. Nor can it ever be under the Treaty of Rome. We voted to leave the EU in 2016. That’s what we must do.

Brexit – the view from the left

Review

By Ben Soton

Robert Griffiths (2018): The EU, Brexit and Class Politics. LEXIT: the Leave Campaign. £2.00

Communists have been the only political grouping in Britain consistently to oppose both the European Union (EU) and its forerunner, the European Economic Community (EEC).  The old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) as well as the New Communist Party took a principled stand against this neo-liberal, pro-capitalist entity from the start. The same can be said of the CPGB’s successor, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) of which the author of this pamphlet is General Secretary.

This is not the case with other political groupings. The far-right were actually the first to champion the idea; one of the first British politicians to champion post-war European integration was former fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley. The Tories, who initially favoured membership of the EEC, are now heavily divided on the issue whilst Labour contains many of the ‘Remainiacs’ demanding a second referendum. Although the Labour left once took a similar position to that of the Communist Party, now it seems largely to have swallowed the pro-EU line.

The Liberal Democrats have always been the most consistently fanatical supporters of European integration, whilst the Greens take a similar position and consider any attempt to leave the EU on a par with the abolition of clean air legislation.

In this pamphlet Robert Griffiths clearly lays out the reactionary, un-democratic nature of the EU. In a section entitled The Cold War Origins of the European Union, he cites Lenin’s opposition to a United States of Europe. Lenin stated that such an entity would only exist as an anti-socialist venture. Opposition to a United States of Europe was, incidentally, a major difference between Lenin and Stalin on the one hand, and Trotsky, who favoured the idea. For this reason, some Trotskyist groups oppose Brexit.

Robert Griffiths fails to mention that the expansion of the EU in the 1990s was only possible with the counter-revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which took place as a result of treachery by the clique around Mikhail Gorbachov. This may emanate from the CPB being, shall we say, a bit slow to recognise the reactionary nature of Gorbachov’s policies.

Griffiths goes into some detail about how the political fault lines have changed around the issue of EU membership. In the 1975 referendum on EEC membership the Tory Party was overwhelming in favour, as were the Labour right, the Liberals and big business; whilst Communists, the Labour left and the TUC were against, as were the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists. Things changed in the 1980s.

On the one hand the labour movement suffered a number of defeats and in 1988 the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, offered the carrot of the very short-lived Social Chapter. The end of the decade saw a wave of reaction resulting from the counter-revolutions in Eastern Europe. Then some viewed the EU with a degree of false hope. This is still the case with some trade unions such as Unite, the GMB and Unison campaigning to remain in the EU. However not all the unions swallow this line; both the RMT and the Bakers Union supported the Left Leave Campaign.

The author also demolishes this argument that the EU is some kind of panacea of workers rights. EU legislation has done nothing to reverse the anti-trade union laws introduced by the Thatcher government. He points out that legislation has been won as a result of class struggle, not given by some benevolent official either in London or Brussels.  For instance, the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act was introduced as a result of the strikes that took place that year. Meanwhile the overwhelming majority of European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings favour employers.

What is missing is an explanation for the split in the Tory Party. The British Conservative Party is probably one of the most successful reactionary organisations in the world. Its success is due to the dual role played by Toryism. On the one hand it exists to represent the economic interests of the British ruling class. At the same time, its success comes from being able to appeal to a much broader base than those who actually benefit from it; this has been done with appeals to God, Queen and Country, and at times racism. It has been able to create a political hegemony that has dominated British political life for over a century. Often these two functions diverge, hence the Tory party split.

Some Tories, such as Cameron, Osbourne and May, played the role representing the interests of big business; whilst those around Boris Johnson and Gove took up the cause of right-wing populism. Meanwhile, what of the Left?

There are still some in the Labour party who understand the reactionary nature of the EU.  Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time opponent of the EU, is to a certain extent a prisoner both of reactionaries with the Labour Party and of naïve elements of the left, in particular many in Momentum who regard the EU as progressive. Part of the success of Labour’s 2017 election campaign however, was the decision of Corbyn and McDonnell to honour the referendum result. This resulted in the almost total collapse of the UKIP vote. Demands for another referendum however, could see the revival of UKIP and the far-right.

Recent developments include the anti-Brexit demo on 23^rd June, referred to as the “Marks and Spencer March”. Thousands of well-heeled individuals took to the streets demanding a ‘People’s Vote’, perhaps not aware that we already had one in 2016 – called a referendum. At one point during the protest some of these spoilt malcontents were shouting “Where’s Jeremy Corbyn?”.

We have also seen the launch of the so-called ‘Left Against Brexit’ campaign, which claims that Brexit will make socialist policies harder to implement. I’m not sure what planet these people are on, but EU membership ties British and other members’ economies to an effective neo-liberal straight jacket.

Robert Griffiths’ pamphlet is, however, a useful tool for anyone wishing to counter right as well as left arguments in favour of the EU. The time for a Marxist understanding of the EU is now more important than ever. Meanwhile, the Remainiacs continue with ‘project fear’, claiming that this country will have no one to trade with after Brexit. One only has to look at the number of Fiat, Renault, Citroen, Volkswagen, Volvo or Audi cars on the road, all made in the EU. Surely a post-Brexit trade deal can’t be that difficult to negotiate?