The British left’s ‘great debate’ on Europe, by Andrew Mullen, Foreword by Tony Benn, hardback, 352 pages, ISBN 978-0-8264-9366-8, Continuum, 2007, £75. Reviewed below by William Podmore. Dr Andrew Mullen, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Northumbria University, has written an excellent and scholarly study of the British left’s debates about Europe. As Tony Benn writes in his Foreword, “This is by far the best book about the many long debates that have taken place on the left about Britain’s relations with Europe from the end of the Second World War until the present time … Its greatest merit lies in the fact that it has been meticulously and comprehensively researched. It provides an accurate historical account of all the debates that have taken place ...” Part 1 presents a brief history of the European project and discusses the global context of the EU’s development. Part 2 consists of 13 chapters follow the debates about Europe from 1945 to 2005: each looks at what the state was doing and then at the policies of the Labour Party, the TUC, the big trade unions and the wider British left. Part 3 sums up with thoughts on Europe past, present and future. As John Monks admitted, “People were misled about going into the EU initially. Britain’s leaders, from Harold Macmillan onwards, were never frank about what it entails and about the loss of sovereignty. They all said it’s just an economic thing; well it wasn’t, it was much bigger.” In 1990 the TUC said, “the objectives of EMU should be to promote sustainable development, full employment, and economic and social cohesion as well as price stability.” So the TUC denied EMU’s real aims, in favour of what it wished they ‘should be’ - classic idealism. All too often, unions took refuge in motions offering ‘conditional support’ for the EU, akin to “if prayer brings peace, then let us pray.” This again is idealism. The pro-EU argument made most often at TUCs in the 1990s was that the Social Chapter would benefit workers – an argument we don’t hear much nowadays. Others argued that Economic and Monetary Union, EU Directives, its Social Dialogue process and its Works Councils, would all benefit workers; and that EU membership would increase wages, employment, living standards, investment, the growth rate, benefits and exports. As Dr Mullen writes, after 1990, “certain sections of the wider British left … embraced defeatism and the mantra that ‘there is no alternative’.” He reminds us that in 1991 the Labour Party Conference claimed that EMU would disarm currency speculators. In 1993, Labour, under John Smith, could have brought down the Conservative government if it had voted for a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. Instead, Labour voted with the government and opposed a referendum, saving the Treaty and the government. Since 1988, the Scottish National Party has backed the policy of ‘independence in Europe’, which is like backing a policy of ‘peace in war’. The Scottish Socialist Party said, “We promote an alternative vision of a united, socialist Europe.” Other groups called for a workers’ Europe, a people’s Europe, a Europe of the Regions, for a reformed, democratic, socialist, social, progressive, federal Europe. All made their wishes a basis for policy, as if attaching a nice adjective to the EU made it nice. Even when groups like the SWP say they oppose the EU, they still damn everybody else who opposes the EU as nationalist chauvinists. In 2004 the TUC Executive Committee claimed that the EU Constitution would lead to full employment and would protect public services. A 1998 Unison conference motion had more realistically forecast that the euro would increase unemployment by 10 million. ******************************** http://imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/0...-and-the-left/
