PartyIt shoold obselve a certain silence or get out?"
Openly pro-EEC group inside our Party are now confidest Wison, Callaghan and company no intention of taking Britain of Europe, What they want to do is muzzle all opposition so that. the Cabinet can work out a formula for selling the EEC to the elector rupt the conspiracy of silence which the Labour leadership has carefully built up and encourage anti-EEC MPs, particularly those in the Government, to come out openly against Britain staying in the Common MarkThe pro-Europeans are well aware that Britain has no chance of securing agreement on the eight points demanded by the Brightside resolution, carried at the 1974 Labour Party Conference by 3,007,000 votes to 2,849,000. They are frigitened that Benn will organise enough trade union and Labour Party support to disrupt their plans, The Manifesto Group dreads a majority of the constituency parties and the big unions like the TGWU and the AUEW campaigning openly for a no vote on the BBC.
The leaders of the Labour Party, ranging from Wilson to Jenkins and Shirley Williams, are all clear on the need for British capitalism to stay in Europe. They understand that the diseased and ailing capitalist economy of Britain has no chance of survival unleas it can be shored up by joining with the capitalist economies of Western Europe, But Bena's opposition to the EEC is based on the pathetic plea that continued membership would mean the end of Britain as a completely self governing nation and the end of our democtatically elected Parliament as the supreme law-making body in the Linited Kingdom.' Howing to chauvinIsm raises the horrifying spectre of Britain losing its national soversignty.
The right wing more ruthless and logical in their adherence lo the interests of British capitalism. ute for staying in the Common Market. Benn, and the other left social democrats, with a Canute-like abstinacy, nostalgically revere the utINDUSTRY MINISTER BENN'S ATTACK ON THE EEC IN A LETTER to his constituents has infuriated the pro-Europeans inside the Labour Dr. Dickson Mabon, chairman of the right-wing "Manifesto Group, ac cused Benn of 'straying from Govertment policy". Eric Moonman, the sht-wing Labour Ml for Basildon, said: "The time has come when peopBritain resting on a "mixed economy, How this "independent" Britain, which remains capitalist-because that is what a mixed economy means-can stay immune from the crisis which is now eating away at the entire capitalist system, Mr. Benn never explains.
APPEALS Draped in the red, white, and blue of a so-called sovereign Britain, Benn appeas to all the instincts which bind the British workers to their own ruling class. A sovereign and 'independent Britain rested upon the old supremacy of British capitalism. The cconomic 'viabile ty', the gradual change and the "national ideal were only possible because of British capitalism's domination of the world markets and its rapacious plunder of its colonial terntones.
The wealth of British capitalism enabled it to meet the threat of the class struggle by granting reforins and hy integrating the Labour and trade union leaders into the social system. Blinded by the wealth and power and seeming omnipotence of capitalism, the leaders of the labour movement became infected by the virus of chauvinism and mes merised by the capitalist parliament. The Labour Party leaders have always believed that Britain is something special. The MacDonalds, the Lansburys, the Attlees and the Wil sons always defended the ideas of "gradual" change claiming that reas onableness and an innate sense of fair play were an essential part of the British temperament.
Benn has his political roots in those traditions, traditions which are rooted in the now departed sup Tomacy of British imperialism, It is with a genuine cry from the heart that he bemoans that in the BEC Britain will hecome the province ofa West European State and says that this would undermine Brit ain's parliamentary democracy.
He fails to realise that it is the crisis of capitalism which is undermining che craditional institutions of bourgeois rule, simply because he cannot conceive of politics except in the terms of parliamentary collaborBenn is wrong. The pro-marketeers want to go into Europe to find a new role for British imperialism. If they are not able to keep Britain in the EEC then the crisis will become even more intense striking a reverberating blow at all the political and social institutions through which the capitalists rule, weakening even more Mr. Benn's revered parliament.
UNDERMINE tect 'stability" and parliament either. Whether Britain is in the BEC or not. the capitalist crisis will begin to undermine all the institutions of bourg cois democracy. We must defend all the democratic rights and organisations of the working class within capitalism, but to base a policy on defending the rotting institutions of capitalist rule is absurd. If the working class is to impose its own solutlons, which it can only effectively do by establishing its own forms of rule based on workers democracy, then it has to replace, not preserve pariament, The opposition of Benn and his cohorts to the EEC is reactionary, dangerous, and utopian. It fans the flames of nationalisen and encourages the most dangerous sentiments within the working class.
Other forces are also opposed to Britain staying in Europe. The National Front, Enoch Powell and sections of the Tory Party are against Britain being in the EEC. Like Benn they sound the tucsin, warning of our loss of "national independence' and are opposed to foreigners running Britain's affairs'.
group of Tories represent most reactionary and dangerous forces. Above all they are characterised by their deep and unremitting hostiLity to the working class. Racism is a strong and potent weapon in their poisonous armoury. By playing the nationalist card and by appealing to chauvinism, Hean opens the door to the extreme right wing, who are only too pleased to drape the Linion Jack around their anti-working class attitudes.
alism helps to legitimise the racist propapanda of the extreme right and helps it to pet a base within the working class. But staying in the EEC won't proof world competition.
Powell, the NF and this motley work.
The Labour leil by using nation the political menagerie at the last big anti-EBC demonstration. where the Labour left and the Communist Party trooped behind the Union Jack, ac companied by right-wing Tories and the fascist National Front.
During the big debates on German rearmament in 1954, the left and the Communist Party opposed bpe. it on the chauvinistic grounds that Germany had waged war twice ag. ainst Britain and was therelore not to be trusted, The Labour right wing and Herbert Morrison in particular. scathingly denounced the left for its lack of internationalism and with withering verbal sullies painted the "left' opposition es chauvinistic.
The Labour leadership will use the same arguments against Benn and Foot, hypocritically claiming Nation, that mombership of the EEC is a step towards building some European socialist common wealth.
Equally dangerous is Benn's behef that the choice is capitalist Europe or independent Britain. The supremacy and independence of capitalist Britain are gone forever, Ta capitalist Britain stays out of Europe it will simply head for the broker's yard. becoming wracked by crisis, shattered by insolvency and rendered impotent in the face The Lahour right wing recosnise this, hence cheir determination to stay in the EFC and their Tury at Bean who threaten's British capitalism's only life-line. They know that the alternative to the Common Market is an all-out fight with capitalism. But they are not IONS in business to challenge capitalism.
Their concern is how to make it Unless the working class movement preszuts its own solutions to the crisis and fights the right of the emplaying class to solve their probJoms at the expense of the workers it cannot present a real alternative to the EEC. What is needed now is a strong working class movement that can begin the fight fora socialist Britain, linking that fight with the struple for the Socialist United States of Europe. Socialists must oppose the EBC because it is a key Benn and the CP are leading the working Class along the shoddy path of nationalism a path that leads right into the arms of the ruling class, They ignore the interests of the European working class and thereby divide the British labour movement from its real allies in Far With their grotesque defence of parliament they help to bolster the illusion that ail would be well if Bri tain was only run by putriots and devotees of Brilain's sovereignty and there is no better qualified candid ate for that task than Enoch Powell himself!
To fight against the plans of the ruling class, the workers movemen: must break from nationalism and re ject the parliamentary road. Benn and the CP have no socialist altern ative to the realpolitic" of the proEuropeans and their solutions can only lead to defeat and demonilis If the labour movement is to fight for withdrawal from the EEC it must insist that there can be to joint action with the NF, the Powellites and the Tories and their organisations. The anti-EBC forces in Britain must seek allies within the European working class not amongst the racists and anti-working class groups of the British Of course, any attempls by the right-wing Cabinet leaders to suppress Labour Ministers opposing their manoeuvres to keep Britain in the EEC must be resisted by the trade union and labour movement. But that defence has to be made in the context of opposing the openly pro-capitalist policies of Labour's right wing. In no way should it bo an endone mont of Hea's reactionary positThe fight to weaken and break up the EEC cannot be left to the Labour "lefts and their friends in the CP In every arco trade unionists, mil Itants and local members of the Lib our Party must come together to dis cuss how to campaign on the referendum. A hroad working class opposition to the EEC must be built, but that opposition must insist that there can be no platform for fascists, Pow ell and other capitalist forces.
The light for breaking all links with the extreme right and turning the anti-EEC campaing into a genuine anti-capitalist movement is a key