[Julidarity with workers in Eastern Europe is an…]

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Julidarity with workers in Eastern Europe is an essential part of the ings and maintaining a base in and a knowledge of this area and its problems. It also means a strict accountability to the labour movement here.

Let's face it. The Common Market was formed as a free trade area to give the multinationals a field day at our expense. They can move their :apital and plant from area to =e= cose down factories. * ge: other firms taking ::: 0: looser EEC -253 :=:: :=s and EEC wingers, shortsightedly, had failed to fight for delegacies to the Euroselection, or if delegated had to turn up. go away or to want to throu up import controis to ionserve British cartels Justry is self-deteating.

The only way is to make the links with European workers. to fight in solidarity against the multi-nationals who are taking us all for a ride. That may sound like pie as one can see along race lines. Then our own Pat Fox in Coventry was reported as having said, "If they don't want the work, we'll do it here at Ryton."

This is where a socialist Euro-MP could have intervened. Delegations from each factory would speak at labour *cement meetings in each teaR lee question of racism meetings 2:2 immigrant comDaRE Cares. Each see mui know the thinkThe winer. solidarity 1L fight for a united Europe bring the new cars over the border. Ford Cologne produce a small car for the American market at the moment - that will go by the board. So Ford Cologne have spare capacity - why not build a new foundry there and close Ford Dagenham's foundry? The plan is for maximum profit for Ford while the jobs and lives of workers are dispensable.

We can only fight this properly on a multi-national scale - otherwise we get picked off one against another.

A socialist Euro-MP could play an invaluable extra-parliamentary role here.

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Peace demonstration in West Germany. another issue on which socialist Euro-MPs could help build solidarity •• City of SKILLS and OPPORTUNITIES Only international workers' unity can stop the ebbs and flows of multinational capitalism devastating whole communities capitalsm together To those who talk of import or other controls on the multi-nationals, I would answer this. Such is the size and the cost of capitalist development, it cannot be done within national boundaries any more.

¡ Already the European Industrial Commissioner Viscount Etienne Davignon (no socialist he!) is organising intervention,, planning and cartels in industry on a European scale, to restrict free trade, to protect European industry from outside competition.

• Cruise missiles That is how far things have gone, that is how deep the international capitalist crisis is. We socialists have a lot of ground to make up!

We are all aware of the arrival of American Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe. This week we hear of opposing Russian missiles moving into East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

This constant nuclear escalation is frightening the hell out of us all, particularly with that self-styled Flash Gordon in the White House and our peculiarly British strutters and poseurs in the House of Commons. In Midlands Central, of course, we would get the full force of any nuclear attack - there would be no survivors.

World War 3

At the same time Coventry stands in the world as symbolic of the terrible destruction of World War 2. It has been chosen for that reason by CND nationally as a focus for a national demonstration in early June to intervene in the Euro-elections.

I myself was born during the Blitz and can, I think, speak for a post-war generation which views the prospect of a World War 3 with horror. It is a natural feeling amongst ordinary people which impels them to international solidarity.

My friend Eric Harrison went on a demonstration in Bonn last Easter. He told me when he unfurled the Coventry CND banner, he had German people young and old coming over to shake his hand, their eyes full of tears.

Peace A Euro-MP for this area would be in a good position to build links based on the growing peace movements in Europe - West and *Last, based on a genuine fear of nuclear war and a genuine desire for united action to get rid of nuclear weapons once and for all One thing we must do in this campaign and afterwards is to break the "culture of silence" which surrounds this question. On campaigning on the issue of Civil Defence for the West Midlands County Council 1 have found that most people believe that there will be a World War 3 but they cannot see what they can do about it. By making the links in Europe, by developing self-confidence in our solidarity we can change this fatalism.

This is not an act of faith or idealism, comrades, this is an act of absolute necessity.

A socialist Euro-MP would have to speak out on international affairs, since a World War is more likely to spring trom 1 a war in Central America or the Middle East than from a stand-up fight in Europe.

Some may say that this is foreign affairs and far away from the economics of the Common Market and of the Euro parliament. But this is not the case.

EEC imperialism

The Foreign Ministers of the ten EEC countries meet regularly, the ambassadors of the ten meet regularly in every country in the world and in the United Nations to try to forge a common EEC foreign policy - ignoring of course, meanwhile, the European parliament. After all, foreign policy has a lot to do with foreign trade. Business is business wherever it takes place. The 1979 Lome conference has brought 63 Third World countries under the Common Market umbrella.

This is latter-day imperialism, an attempt to carve up influence in the world - not between Britain and France as in the old days but between Europe as a whole, the USA and Japan.

This is the world we live in, comrades, things are moving very fast and as I said earlier, we socialists have a lot of ground to make up.

The Common Market has nothing to do with internationalism or even common humanity - it is merely a convenience for capitalists.

What we must want is a United Socialist States of Europe.

To this end a socialist Euro-MP for Midlands Central should fight for the interests of the working class of this area - this must mean links and solidarity with the working class in Europe and the rest of the world. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

AFTER the Great Crash of 1929, the world in general and Europe in particular split apart into rival trading blocs, based on colonial or semi-colonial empires.

The inter-imperialist rivalries led to World War 2.

Intra-European trade (trade between one European country and another] did not recover to its 1913 level until 1950.

After World War 2 the 'superimperialism' of the US provided an umbrella under which West European capitalism was remodelled.

In connection with the Marshall Plan of US aid, the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation [fore-runner of the OECD] was set up in 1948.

As the US/UK/French control over West German coal and steel was ended, the European Coal and Steel Commission was proposed and eventually set up in April 1951. Ihe UK refused to join: the members of the ECSC were the same countries as became the original six members of the BEC, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg. The ECSC was to create a 'common market' in coal and steel.

This came at the beginning of rapid growth. Steel production in the BEC Six grew by 114% between 1952 and 1967.

The EEC was set up by the Treaty of Rome in March 1957.

The UK, Denmark and S. Ireland joined in 1972/3, to create the EEC Nine. Greece joined in 1980/1, making an EEC of ten countries.

1962: Common Agricultural Policy begun.

1968: Abolition of internal tariffs and creation of customs union completed. Free movement of labour established.

Agriculture

1968: Mansholt plan for drastie rationalisation of agriculture in the EEC.

1969: EEC sets aim of economic and monetary union.

1971: Common Fisheries Policy begun. vita_ism 1978: European Monetary System set up: a system of tying EEC currencies to each other. Meant to be a first step to a common monetary system. Not a great success. UK has not joined.

1979: European Parliament elected for the first time. It has practically no powers. Theoretically it can sack the EEC Commission by a two-thirds vote.

Today the EEC is by far the biggest single bloc in world trade. In 1973 the DEC countries accounted for 39% of all world trade. The percentage has decreased since then, mainly because OPEC accounts for a much bigger share of world trade since the oil price rises: but still the EEC accounts for 34% of all world trade.

Trade within the EEC has grown faster than trade between the EEC and the rest of the world. In 1953, intra-EEC 6 trade accounted for only 5% of all world trade. By 1973, intraten EEC 9 trade was 21% world trade.

Every EEC country shows an increase in the proportion of its trade that is with other EEC countries. In 1957, the biggest EEC countries had 20-odd% of their trade with other EC countries; by the 1970s, around 50%.

Possibly the capitalist group which has gained most from the development of the EEC has been the US multinationals.

In 1959 only 16% of the stock of US foreign direct investments was in Europe. By 1968 it was 30%.

However, as the EEC has developed it has become a powerful challenger to the dominance of the US in the capitalist world.

Logically, the sharpened inter-imperialist competition of the 1970s and 1980s should face the EEC with the options of either flying apart or complete integration. In fact tendencies in both directions have been visible, but the outcome so far has not been dramatic change but slow, faltering movement towards integration.

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d he ana theirs COVENERY

freundejugeno Putschland S

JOHN HARRIS toget