[The substance of 'national liberation' could only be…]

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The substance of 'national liberation' could only be import controls A national liberation struggle to liberate "colonial Britain' is in fact only the positive presentation of the anti-EEC crusade, ideologically packaged in the inapproprate garb of the terms and imares of Third World struggles (many of which took place against Britain!).

Its positive substance could only be import and exchange controls, plus renegotiated relationships with the EEC -which would remain Britain's main trading partner. This "national liberation' is a chimera, Britain. either.

The focus on British independence must therefore have primarily a demagogic content, even granted that Benn is speakng with complete integrity and sincerity.

the, historic basis for the national independence of Britain and the countries of Europe has long ago vanished. Economically they cannot exist within their own boundaries, each its own market. In a way Benn understands this:

"These global corporations - in oil, engineering, and minerals - have long since outgrown nation states....

thIs aluatio. produced two worke wars, and between the wars produced massively destructive tariff and quota wars which prepared the way for real war.

66 years ago, in response to this situation and in the middle of the First World War, revolutionaries like Leon Trotsky at least on a European level.

The dangerous logic of nationalism The slogan of British independence. is organically right wing -irrespective of what Tony Benn wants or means to do with it. It we rouse up a nationalist crusade, we cannot satisfy it on any level: not as wir socialists, and not as reformers of British capitalism.

We will fail and disappoint nationalists. including (and especialiy, even those Wilull wenave tonced whom we have roused in the need ot British independence. What then? The pol- need fo itical 'process' won't end. A national liberproper place in the hands of the National Front and racists like Enoch Powell.

The struggie for national liberation for Britain is an old idea in the British labour movement. It has been the stock in trade of the CP since the late '40s. It originated in a cynical decision by Stalin to sow divisions among his enemies by fomenting anti-Americanism among the weaker imperialisms (though it was also, oi course, i continuation of the Popular Fronts of the mid-'30s). That this corrupted the labour movement was a bonus from Stalin's point of view. It had the advantage of being a stages theory for the advanced capitalist countries, by way of which communist and socialist workers might be persuaded to agree that socialism was not immediately on the agenda.

First national liberation, then socialism, was and is the message: and thus the Stalinists applied the old Menshevik stages 40p plus postage from Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane London N8.