European Union

Left must reshape the Remain movement

The headlines following from Saturday’s People’s Vote demo have, understandably, focused on its size. Organisers say 670,000 people took part. If true, that is bigger than the Trump demo this summer. It’s plausible that it was bigger that the anti-austerity March for the Alternative in 2011, at the height of the public-sector strikes. It’s possibly the largest since the anti-war demonstrations in 2003-4. Whatever the truth, it certainly dwarfed the overwhelming majority of protests that have taken place in recent years. Workers’ Liberty took part in the “left bloc” organised by Another Europe...

Brexiteers don't care about Ireland

“It’s entirely up to the EU if it wants to undermine the goodwill in Ireland embodied in the Good Friday Agreement by setting up a hard border. “The British and Irish governments do not want this. They have no need to create it. With a little more than irony, Brussels dominates Dublin and now wants to dominate Belfast. Its imposition of a hard border would be a new form of colonialism in itself.” Where do these extraordinary words come from? The Daily Mail? The Telegraph? Boris Johnson? Arlene Foster? No: one Doug Nicholls, writing in the Morning Star (October 10 2018). Mr Nicholls is not, it...

And why not a united Ireland?

The Border in Ireland has never made democratic sense. It was drawn to maximise the "little Orange empire" for the Protestant-Unionists of the north east in the 1921 partition of Ireland. It has been a running sore for almost a century. To this day, along almost all its length, the majority of the population on the Northern side of the Border is "Catholic", Irish-Irish rather than British-Irish in its identity. The Border makes no political or human sense now. For a long time there have been no border checks. Over 30,000 people cross the border each day to travel to work, and tens of thousands...

Europe for the whom?

An open letter to the Europe For the Many conference on 26-27 October from Greek socialist Theodora Polenta. Dear Comrades: I am looking forward to attending the event "Europe for the Many: a left strategy for transforming Europe" on 26-27 October. But I am concerned about the fact that the conference's top-billed speakers are the Portuguese prime minister and the Greek finance minister. Are the current 2018 Syriza-ANEL government and its financial minister part of our European socialist vision? Can they be our inspiration or our partners in pushing a radical Labour government forwards? No...

Leaflet for the 20 October 2018 "People's Vote" march, sponsored (so far) by Nottingham and Sheffield Left Against Brexit groups

This is a draft leaflet sponsored (so far) by the Nottingham and Sheffield Left Against Brexit groups, for the 20 October 2018 "March for a People's Vote" ( click here for details of the march , and click here for the bloc being organised for the march by Another Europe is Possible, 11am outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Piccadilly . Remain and Rebel An appeal to organise in the Labour movement against Brexit Across the country, Left Against Brexit groups have formed in recent months, for example in Nottingham... They are getting out on the streets with stalls and with door-to-door canvassing...

Brexit and the labour movement

We oppose Brexit. We oppose it in the name of the rights of the three million EU migrants currently in Britain, our workmates, our neighbours, our friends, our fellow trade-unionists. To defend their right to reunite their families. To sustain the right of others across Europe to come to work and live in Britain, and the right of British-born people to go to work and live in Europe. We want more open borders, less fences and barbed-wire and barriers between countries. The technologies and productive capacities of today indict the division of continents into walled-off nation-states. Socialists...

Labour movement can stop Brexit!

The Tory ex-Minister Steve Baker has claimed that as many as 80 MPs will revolt and seek to replace May with Boris Johnson if she tries to force through her Chequers plan — a complex system of co-operation with EU rules. The threat has created a new crisis in the Tory party and government. May and her allies know Labour MPs will oppose any such deal and that the they will need the backing of almost all Tories to win the vote The retaliatory threat of a “No Deal Brexit” is all that May can do to try and tame the Brexiteers in the Tory Party. Meanwhile, although the EU’s lead negotiator Michel...

60% chance of no-deal Brexit? We say “No Brexit”!

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary in charge of negotiating with the WTO, has said it is a 60% probability there the UK will leave the EU without a deal. According to the Sunday Times (4 August) Fox put the chances of a no deal departure at “60-40”, squarely blaming the “intransigence” of the European Commission. In response to increasing belligerence from hard-line Tory Brexiters on the one hand, and a Treasury report which said a “no deal Brexit” would cost the UK an extra £80 billion in borrowing, Theresa May said “no-deal” would not be the end of the world. The need for Labour to...

The left and Brexit: a debate

Join us on Friday 20 July for a debate between Michael Chessum of Another Europe is Possible and Grace Blakeley of the London Young Labour committee. This meeting is organised by left wing activists in South London, working with Another Europe is Possible. It follows the main London event of The Left Against Brexit, which will take place on 11 July . For full details on the nationwide tour see http://anothereurope.org/tour . As well as a space to exchange ideas, we hope that this meeting will provide a space for practical organising efforts on the issue of Brexit and the left. We'll also have...

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