The first MP to nominate Jeremy Corbyn, the great man, Kelvin Hopkins writes:
A feeble and erroneous argument for supporting the EU – one which is
repeatedly used by both government and opposition leaders – is that leaving the
EU would damage employment in Britain.
This is simply not true.
A campaign by Britain in Europe entitled “Out of Europe, Out
of Work” claimed that Britain would lose millions of jobs if it left the EU.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, however, described the
campaign as absurd, finding that British withdrawal would have no long-term
impact on employment.
In the words of its Director, Dr Martin Weale, the campaign was “pure Goebbels” and “a wilful distortion of the
facts”.
The European Union is about economics, neoliberal economics,
monetarist market capitalism – economics that do not work.
It is inherently deflationist.
That is to say, it is built on constraining economic demand and driving up
unemployment.
It is an economics that has failed in the past, is failing again
and which has rolled back the successful economic arrangements that worked so
well, so brilliantly indeed, in the immediate post-war decades.
This same economics is being inflicted on Britain – cuts and
austerity.
Living standards have fallen, wages reduced as a proportion of total
economic output (GDP) and in real terms, and inequality and poverty
increasing.
In the rest of the EU however, things are worse, especially
in the eurozone.
The EU is not at its core about employment rights, nor even
is it about human rights.
The EU has accepted employment rights to give
the illusion that it is on the side of workers and trade unions – at least
slightly – and to try to keep trade unions passive.
The millions of unemployed in Spain, Greece and increasingly
elsewhere have seen no benefit from alleged worker and trade union rights.
In
the cases of the Viking Line and Laval, workers tried to contest
their employers replacing them with lower-paid workers from another EU country.
But the European Court of Justice found in favour of employers rather than
workers.
Across the whole of the EU, the plight of working people is getting
worse.
Due to the legacy of neoliberal economic policies, unemployment even in Britain is now at least four times higher than
it was in the successful postwar decades.
And if
unemployment in Britain were to be at the same level as in Spain, there would
be over seven million on the dole rather than two million.
But
the simple counter argument is that Labour could and should commit to
re-establishing rights taken away by the Tories and the Coalition.
Affiliated unions could and should simply commit
the party to a package of progressive legislation to re-establish trade union
and worker rights immediately after the next election.
Another of the great shibboleths of the EU is "free
movement", and especially free movement of labour.
This is simply a means
of driving down wages in pursuit of profit. It is a component of
laissez-faire capitalist ideology designed to weaken worker bargaining power.
Freedom for European citizens to visit each other’s countries
for holidays and take pleasure in doing so is admirable.
Enforcing free
movement of labour is quite something else.
Work permits for workers from
overseas to fill skills gaps, even if temporary, would be appropriate.
But in
that case, it is surely fair and reasonable to have the same rules for EU
citizens as for Commonwealth citizens.
Ireland should of course retain its
historic access to the UK.
The EU is both antidemocratic and anti-socialist. What will
in the end destroy it is the fact it is failing economically.
Restoring
national currencies, and letting those currencies adjust to appropriate
parities, will be the first crucial step in the process of restoring democracy.
It's time to permit national parliaments do what is necessary to rebuild
their economies, serve the interests of their people and thus all the
peoples of Europe.
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