The EEC vote is a defeat for the working class. A 'No' vote would have threatened the economic strategy of the ruling class. The EEC-a central instrument of world imperialism-would have been weakened. The Labour Party right wing would have suffered a stinging defeat, and could only have redressed the situation by splitting from the Labour Party and joining up with the Tories and Liberals to make sure that Parliament did not implement the results of the referendum. Such open sabotage of the vote would have done more to break down reformist illusions in the working class than 50 years of socialist propaganda.
The 'yes' vote has strengthened the hand of both the ruling class and the Labour Party right wing. Not only has capitalism got a vote in favour of one of its key economic policies, but Wilson has shown that on some issues he can go over the heads of the labour movement to cajole sections of the working class into line. Obviously he will now be tempted to try similar tactics on matters like incomes policy and unemployment. Wilson now feels in a much stronger position to deal with the left wing of the unions and the Labour Party.
However it is a battle which has been lost, not a war. Although an alliance of Wilson and the ruling class managed to get a two to one national vote against the decisions of every major body in the labour movement, the campaign for a 'No' vote was fought on the most unfavourable terrain. The right wing always had a strong card to play. If Britain had come out of the EEC and remained under the domination of capitalism, the whole economy would have been thrown into a most convulsive and shattering crisis. The real choice was stark and clear - either the struggle for a socialist Britain with the aim of building a United Socialist States of Europe, or hanging on to the coat-tails of world imperialism by staying in Europe.
There is no doubt that in the short term both the British and the European working class get a few crumbs by staying in Europe, compared to any capitalist alternative outside. This is a point that the right wing drove home throughout the campaign. The 'left' had no answer, because it had no socialist alternative to Wilson's pro-capitalist policies.
•IMPERIALIST• In the long term the economic differences for the working class of being in or out of Europe are minimal. The *choice' is about two million unemployed or one and three three quarter million unemployed. Even the tiny short-term gains that could be made would be bought at the expense of the colonial peoples, the workers' states, and the strengthening of a ruling class which is going to make even more savage attacks on working class living standards in the next economic downturn.
The miserable short-term benefits that do exist have been got at the expence of the workers, who have to accept a smaller slice of the declining economic cake. In the 1920s Trotsky explained that the loans and investments of the US imperialists helped to subsidise the bankrupt economies of Western capitalism. The grateful social democrats grabbed at these loans, seeing them as an alternative to fighting their own capitalist class. Now the same parties of social democracy - particularly their right-wing leaderships - are most enthusiastic supporters of the EEC. Because their own ruling classes are too weak to toss them the odd crumbs, they pray that the EEC will provide the occasional morsel with which to buy off the working class.
The right-wing social democrats are tied hand and foot to the capitalist system. Yesterday they looked purely to the capitalist 'nation state to bail them out. Now they hope that a politically and economically integrated capitalist Europe will do the trick. Reformism is looking for a new base for its collaborationist politics. It thinks that the EEC provides that. Of course a real socialist campaign waged by the left would have destroyed the influence of the right. Instead the bankruptcy of the Labour and trade union lefts' allowed Jenkins and company to seize the initiative.
As long as the political leaders of the workers' movement remain wedded to capitalist solutions and have not won the forces of the broad workers' movement to socialist policies, then of course people will want to stay in the Common Market. This is why the pro-Marketeers won the economic arguments and why the Communist Party's arguments about "national sovereignty" fell on deaf ears. Many workers were deeply suspicious about the phoney statistics being peddled by the pro-EEC forces. But the siege economy offered by the the Labour 'left' rightly seemed to them a most unattractive proposition, and no alternative to the crisis which the right wing were predicting if they voted "No'.
Two conditions could have led to a majority voting 'No' If the EEC had been on the point of disintegration - which was clearly not the case - then there would have been a No' majority as no-one could have expected any gains from a wreck. The second - and the most politically important one - would have been a situation where the mass of the working class was breaking from reformist solutions. As the the Labour left could not - and would not - fight on an anti-capitalist platform, a 'Yes' vote became virtually a foregone conclusion.
The deterioration in the economic situation, and the reformism of the Labour left, explains why a majority has formism of the labour left, explains why a majority has been built up in favour of staying in the Market. Three years ago British capitalism appeared to offer as many crumbs - or even more - than the EEC. A vote then woula almost certainly have been in favour of withdrawal. Now the British economy is declining at an alarming rate. Hardly anyone believes that British capitalism can go it alone. Arguments about 'national sovereignty' appear increasingly archaic and unreal. They were in fact the kiss of death to the anti-EEC campaign. 3000 rintr IMG The attachment of certain privileged layers of the working class to the imperialist state reflects the fact that the working class has received material benefits from the imperialist policies of its own ruling class. Now that these ofd little Englanders see that these benefits can only be gained if their ruling class is linked to a more powerful imperialist structure they are prepared to become "Europeans'. The call for a 'Yes' vote represented the new pull of imperialist pressures.
Ironically, the conditions which helped to account for a "Yes' victory also account for the limited dimensions of the working class defeat. Under the present economic and social conditions - and the bankrupt leadership of the labour movement - a massive working class 'No' vote was ruled out.
A majority of workers voting No' would have meant that the working class had taken a gigantic leap forward in its political consciousness.
It could have only done that in rebellion against its leaders and by understanding that its own interests were different from those of the capitalist class. At the same time the working class has not abandoned its struggle to defend jobs and living standards. Probably most railworkers voted "Yes' But that will not stop many of the same railworkers voting "No' to Wilson's social contract and in favour of strike action in the next weeks.
Wilson has won this battle. However, the victory of the right wing cannot be really consolidated if the working class continues to fight rising unemployment, falling living standards and cuts in social expenditure.
The result of the referendum does not mean that the EEC is finished as an issue in British politics. For a time the debate will die down. But the EEC is a key link in the relation between the classes in Britain and also between the classes on a world scale. The vote of 5 June will not put an end to the class struggle. This is why it is so dangerous and incredibly stupid of the Labour 'lefts' to declare they 'accept the result of the referendum.' •NOT THE END• A hard-headed capitalist politician like Powell has no such illusions. He compared the referendum to Chamber lain's Munich Agreement, which would have got a mighty endorsement in 1938 if submitted to a referendum. A year later an even bigger majority would have rejected the Munich Agreement out of hand.
At the present time a majority of the working class is in favour of or indifferent to the EEC, and no significant section of the ruling class opposes it. However as the world economic situation gets worse, and as the EEC threatens to disintegrate, a strong movement can rapidly swell up within the working class demanding withdrawal from the EEC. By abjectly giving into the demands of the right wing that they accept the result of the referendum, and meekly agreeing to work within the framework of the Common Market, the Labour 'lefts' fail to prepare the working class for the future struggles to come.
Instead of the agreement by the TUC and the Labour "lefts' to participate in the institutions of the EEC, they should be declaring openly that this result is a farce, given all the capitalist propaganda in favour of the Market and the sabotage of the workers' movement from within by traitors such as Wilson. This does not mean lightmindedly declaring SAYE NOW that the referendum result can simply be ignored, but it does mean maintaining an attitude of complete hostility to the Market, refusing to co-operate with or participate in any of its institutions, and seeking to reverse the referendum at the earliest possible moment.
If the working class movement does not clearly maintain a position of complete opposition to the EEC, the campaign 1 against the Market will in future fall into the hands of the Powellites and other extreme rightists who this time round were pushed well to the sidelines. On this, as on every issue, the Labour left shows that it cannot defend the interests of the working class against even the most extreme reactionaty forces of capitalist society For the moment the issue of the EEC passes from the centre of the political stage. But this particular struggle is very far from over.
THE EDITOR
red weekly 12 june 1975 czechoslovakia,
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