I was a Labour activist for many years. But I have never voted Labour in
a European Election. Stephen Hughes and I have mutual friends, not only
through the Labour Party. Yet I cannot lend my vote to his advocacy of
an EU in which national institutions disappeared, leaving only European
and regional ones.
However, would I have to? With Labour promising an In/Out referendum, and by 2014 probably also the use of primary legislation unilaterally to repatriate powers after the manner long advocated on this site and elsewhere, how could Hughes and the many other MEPs of similar mind possibly be endorsed as Labour candidates, and why would they even want to be?
In my time, I have voted for the Socialist Labour Party, youthfully hoping that those who were Old Labour Left would at least contain the sectarian fringe. But the SLP’s roots are more in the collapse of the Communist Party of Great Britain than in any flight from New Labour. It is greatly bound up with the Stalin Society, “To defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him.”
I have voted for Respect, fronted as it was by a pro-life Catholic and firm opponent of Scottish separatism who was never a member of any Hard Left faction during his time as a Labour MP. But George Galloway made himself a ridiculous figure on Celebrity Big Brother, and in so doing cost Respect the chance of a small number of MPs holding the balance of power in the present hung Parliament. Respect has made no discernible effort to break out of, so as to break free from, the Trots, the Stalinists and the Islamists.
And I have voted for No2EU – Yes to Democracy, due to the presence of Peter Shore’s old agent, leaders of the Visteon and the Lindsey oil refinery workers, and the immediate past Leader of the Liberal Party, rather than of those more obviously associated with Bob Crow. Had it received one tenth of the coverage lavished on the BNP, then who knows what might have happened?
In my time, I have voted for the Socialist Labour Party, youthfully hoping that those who were Old Labour Left would at least contain the sectarian fringe. But the SLP’s roots are more in the collapse of the Communist Party of Great Britain than in any flight from New Labour. It is greatly bound up with the Stalin Society, “To defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him.”
I have voted for Respect, fronted as it was by a pro-life Catholic and firm opponent of Scottish separatism who was never a member of any Hard Left faction during his time as a Labour MP. But George Galloway made himself a ridiculous figure on Celebrity Big Brother, and in so doing cost Respect the chance of a small number of MPs holding the balance of power in the present hung Parliament. Respect has made no discernible effort to break out of, so as to break free from, the Trots, the Stalinists and the Islamists.
And I have voted for No2EU – Yes to Democracy, due to the presence of Peter Shore’s old agent, leaders of the Visteon and the Lindsey oil refinery workers, and the immediate past Leader of the Liberal Party, rather than of those more obviously associated with Bob Crow. Had it received one tenth of the coverage lavished on the BNP, then who knows what might have happened?
That media blackout was an enormous compliment to a full slate
of candidates in every mainland region, the first example in living
memory of support for a party other than Labour by any trade union as
such, and endorsed by at least one recently retired Labour MP with no
history in any other party, official or unofficial. The pre-election
edition of Question Time had to be heavily edited because a
member of the audience had dared to mention the unspeakable people who
pointed out that EU directives were forcing the privatisation of our
public services, that European Court rulings were oppressing trade
unions and encouraging social dumping, and that the EU was forcing
grossly iniquitous trade deals on developing countries.
Yet my politics are not those of the Socialist Party of England and Wales (previously the Militant Tendency), the Communist Party of Britain, Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity, the Alliance for Green Socialism, or Socialist Resistance. Any more than they were those of the Socialist Workers Party, the CPB again, or the Muslim Association of Britain. Any more than they were those of the CPGB and the Stalin Society.
My politics have their roots deep in those of the reviled Labour Movement that gave this country the Welfare State, municipal services, workers’ rights and full employment. Those roots are trade union, co-operative, Radical Liberal, Tory populist, Christian Socialist, and Social Catholic and Distributist, reaching back through Early Modernity and the Middle Ages to Classical Antiquity and the Bible. They are not so much anti-Marxist as simply non-Marxist, though contributing to a searing critique of that monstrous fallacy, as also of Jacobinism and Whiggery before that.
Yet my politics are not those of the Socialist Party of England and Wales (previously the Militant Tendency), the Communist Party of Britain, Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity, the Alliance for Green Socialism, or Socialist Resistance. Any more than they were those of the Socialist Workers Party, the CPB again, or the Muslim Association of Britain. Any more than they were those of the CPGB and the Stalin Society.
My politics have their roots deep in those of the reviled Labour Movement that gave this country the Welfare State, municipal services, workers’ rights and full employment. Those roots are trade union, co-operative, Radical Liberal, Tory populist, Christian Socialist, and Social Catholic and Distributist, reaching back through Early Modernity and the Middle Ages to Classical Antiquity and the Bible. They are not so much anti-Marxist as simply non-Marxist, though contributing to a searing critique of that monstrous fallacy, as also of Jacobinism and Whiggery before that.
My Euroscepticism, therefore, is not least because I object to being
subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists,
neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, people who believe the Provisional Army
Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and Dutch
ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates.
An entirely new slate of Labour candidates of this mind, exactly the people who wanted Ed Miliband rather than either Ed Balls or David Miliband as Leader, would be enough to persuade me to vote Labour at a European Election for the first time in my life. I would not be the only one: on that basis, those candidates would sweep the board.
No comments:
Post a Comment