For the first time this year, Dorset for Europe was offered the opportunity to run a stall at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival. Along with the stall comes the invitation to deliver a short speech to explain why we’re there and what we hope to achieve. This prompted me to gush forth an anguished tirade, wholly unsuitable as an address to trade unionists, but something I have a sense will chime with many other kindred spirits. And there are many, many of us.
In 1975, I returned to England from my year as an assistant d’Anglais just outside Paris. This formed part of my French degree, a subject I’d chosen largely because of my love of France and all things French. Nevertheless, returning just in time for the referendum on whether to remain in the European Communities, I voted to leave. At the polling station I wore a Leeds United scarf, having just seen the Leeds v Bayern Munich European Cup final at the Parc des Princes. The returning officer said: “You can’t vote for Leeds United here, you know,” to which I replied “No, but you can vote against dodgy European refereeing!” My choice to leave was heavily influenced by Tony Benn and the idea that the Common Market was a ‘capitalist club’.
In 2016, I voted Remain and am now a member of Dorset for Europe, a community group campaigning to maintain the closest possible links with the European Union (EU), with a view to re-joining when politically feasible. So, what changed? Was I wrong back in 1975? Was it never a capitalist club, or did the EU cease to be a capitalist club at some point? If not, have I switched sides and joined the ranks of the capitalists, as in the old adage ‘anyone who is not a liberal at 20 years of age has no heart, while anyone who is still a liberal at 40 has no head’?
The answer is ‘no’ on all counts. Of course, the EU is, amongst other things, a capitalist club because it’s a trading bloc and, as for me, I’m as earnest in my desire for greater equality and for democratic constraints on power as I ever was. What has happened is that the UK left the EU largely to enable greater inequality, to reduce the constraints on those with economic power and to erode the rights of powerless individuals. In relative terms and ironically, the EU has become a protector and a guarantor, not just of individual rights, but of liberal democracy itself – and that’s why it’s been viciously demonised by anarcho-capitalists, oligarchs and plutocrats who want to tilt the balance of power and wealth even more steeply in their favour. In a world where the workers are being deliberately divided by the political right, specifically to further disempower and exploit them, the EU can be seen as an upholder of human rights, consumer standards, environmental protection and climate awareness.
If your reservations about Europe are based on free movement being used for cheap labour, taking jobs and damping down wages, we’re now seeing that the same thing is happening but with immigration from further afield. (I mean, you do know, don’t you, that the Blair government chose (perhaps short-sightedly) not to impose limits on free movement when the EU expanded to include a number of former Soviet-bloc state. (Incidentally, both France and Germany exercised the option to control the numbers.) Now there is nearly full employment, yet everywhere we see staff and skill shortages. The UK needs healthy, young, tax-paying immigrants to fill the vacancies, bolster the economy and, effectively, support our ageing population.
If you want to blame someone for wages being damped down, look back in anger at Thatcherism, at the battle of Orgreave, look at the successive measures taken to weaken the unions, look at zero hours contracts, look at grasping employers – but please, please don’t fall for the anti-immigration subterfuges of the political right, playing on people’s dog-in-the-manger tendency towards bigotry. That’s what captured the red wall seats. That’s what gave us Brexit and the fertile ground for Farage and his politics of hate and division. And, if this new government fails to revive the economy outside the EU single market, it’s what could lead to the nightmare scenario of Farage, the grifter, as the disunited Kingdom’s next prime minister.
There’s plenty of evidence that the political right will tend to be better funded than the left, more powerful, with greater command of the popular narrative via control of mainstream media and automated input to social media, and that’s why the centre-left has to kiss the rings of the oligarchs and plutocrats if they’re to be allowed a semblance of power. If you’re impatient with this reality, be careful what you wish for; ask yourself whence will come your power to change it. Will the power of your moral rectitude sway the populace? The power of reason? The ardour of your desire for fairness? None of that cuts the mustard, I’m afraid, at least while the prevailing narrative is that of the rich.
I’m a member of the Green party. I want radical policies to take back our public services, to tackle tax evasion, to limit CEO salaries, and to promote green technology. But I acknowledge that, short of revolution, with political power achieved via the ballot box, I’m only going to get the smallest part of what I want. What’s more, to achieve that iota of power, you have to make a pact with the devil, you have to placate him. My greatest hope is that, the devilish Tories and diabolical tabloids having summoned the demons of racism and bigotry, this new Labour government will have the guts to face them down, to re-educate voters about the need for immigration. I hope too, that it will aim for a rapprochement with the EU; perhaps slowly at first, perhaps following a full Inquiry into Brexit and the enormous deception it entailed.
My question is this: how do you undo all the anti-EU propaganda nonsense about bent bananas, about loss of sovereignty, about an undemocratic EU being detrimental to the interests of UK citizens? How do you inform the gullible, when the bulk of information disseminated and consumed is under the control of the rich, the very people who wanted to leave the EU when there was a threat to the anonymity of their offshore tax evasion? How do you counter the barrage of misinformation that ceaselessly promotes neoliberal economics and demonises the merest hint of socialism? Press barons and a BBC captured by Conservatives, in shaping public perception, control the very levers of democracy. The reason Viscount Rothermere, Rupert Murdoch, Fred Barclay and Lord Lebedev own newspapers is precisely so they can persuade their readers to vote directly against their own interests, Brexit being the number one case in point. How do you combat that enormous level of soft power, which translates into real, hard and, ultimately, brutal power?
All this, of course, was much too long for an address in the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Marquee. I saw sense and whittled it all down to something much more appropriate:
Good morning. We’re Dorset for Europe, part of the wider UK European Movement. We campaign to maintain the closest possible links with Europe, with a view to re-joining the EU when politically possible. We’re here this weekend to join you in celebrating the unions’ success in defending workers’ rights for over 150 years. We believe that another Union, the European Union, plays a vital role as a bulwark against corporate power in defending workers, protecting consumers and vouchsafing human rights – amongst many other benefits. We would like to hear your thoughts and feelings, as trade unionists, on whether we should re-establish closer relations with the EU and, if so, how. We’re listening! Come and talk to us.
