We must break up the EEC
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-09-03Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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THE LATEST moves of the EEC to block subsidies to the British steel industry exposes the extent to which the McGregor rationalisation schemes are subject to the dictates of the Eurocrats at Brussels.
McGregor hopes that this hurdle will provide an opportunity to force into the open the price-fixing. dumping and subsidising methods of other memptis of the Common Market especially Benelux france. but this disguise the fact success of his plans?..: dependent upon polt! sions made by the lu Commission, an body whose last Presdent was Roy Jenkins.
All of the closures und pay-offs, as at Corby and Shotton, were made in the name of rationalisation to "save" the industry and workers are now to be told that these "sacrifices' are to be set at nought because of the refusal of the institutions of the EEC to allow the final package. What hopes can there be for a left Labour government, a foreseeable outcome of British politics in the nest few years, wishing to extend further subsidies to steel and Time and again they would confront the veto of he Commission and reactionary, unrepresentative European institutions.
Imagine how much more hostile these institutions would be to further measurof nationalisation es embarked on by such a government. Any expansion of the productive forces within the framework of the cbC, through improvements in productivity, can only be at the expense of the working class. There is no validity in the concept that somehow the Market is a progressive formation analogous to the Zollverein (customs union| wich preceded and paved the way ior the creation of a united Germany in the mid-nineteenth century.
The BEC is not a creation of capitalism in its youthful vigour but of the system in its senility. It is essentially a political formation which will not brook any 'socialistic" measures by a left Labour Government.
The rebuilding of British industry by a government truly representative of the interests of workers can only come about in conflict with the EEC. The stauggle for socialism is therefore inseparable from the break-up of the Common Market, to which end British withdrawal will be a decisive step forward.
IAN MACALMAN, Glasgow.