Against the far right: for a united Europe

Submitted by Anon on 17 June, 2004 - 6:52

By Rhodri Evans

The threat from the far right in the 10 June Euro-elections may come as much from the UK Independence Party as from the British National Party.

The BNP hopes to win a Euro-seat in the north-west. But the UKIP has edged ahead of the Lib-Dems in one opinion poll. It is spending more on the Euro-elections than Labour and the Tories put together. It has the backing of multi-millionaire Paul Sykes, actress Joan Collins, freelance racist Robert Kilroy-Silk, and former Clinton campaign manager Dick Morris.

The BNP is worried about the UKIP "splitting the patriotic, anti-European Union vote".

UKIP - like most far-right parties across Europe with large electoral success - presents itself more softly than the rabid BNP. It says it is not racist. It merely wants to protect British democracy from the bureaucracy and waste of the European Union.

Its immigration policy, however, starts with the axiom that "Britain is full". UKIP wants all asylum-seekers who arrive in Britain by way of a "safe" country to be instantly deported back there, irrespective of whether they have any chance of getting asylum in that "safe" country, can speak the language, or have any links there.

With UKIP as with many others, anti-European prejudice is the thin end of a wedge of rancid chauvinism.

The European Union is undemocratic. The answer is to unite workers across Europe to fight to make it more democratic, rather than to restore and raise the barriers between the countries of Europe.

If a capitalist Britain were to withdraw from the European Union, as UKIP urges, its economic decisions would still be shaped by world-market forces. Economic sovereignty for Britain, in today's multi-interconnected global economy, is a fantasy.

Unity across old borders - even the EU's botched and bureaucratic version of unity - is an advance that the labour movement should build on, rather than trying to retreat to the siege economies of days long gone by.

Sadly, in the name of squalid vote-catching, many left-wing activists will be pushing an anti-European policy in the June elections not very different from UKIP's.

The Respect coalition of the Socialist Workers Party and George Galloway emphasises opposition to the euro, to the draft EU constitution, and (as they put it) to "the Europe of big business and the multinational corporations which the European Union represents".

Since the European Union is somewhat less a free-fire zone for big business and the multinational corporations than post-Thatcher New Labour Britain - somewhat more restrained by social provision and legal rights for trade unions and workers - the "anti-capitalist" line here is an even more obvious fake than UKIP's "democratic" pitch.

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