WITH the Tory party split and divided, the ruling class in the UK – Cameron, big business and the bankers – are relying on the union leaders and the Labour Party right wing to deliver the working class vote in the EU referendum.
This will tip the balance and allow the bosses and bankers to ‘Remain’ at the centre of the EU and to take advantage of the international trade deals that are about to be signed that will allow them to privatise the NHS, with an international tribunal in place to prevent it ever being renationalised.
That this manoeuvre will see the Cameron leadership remain in power and continue with their massive austerity and other programmes, designed to return the working class and the middle class to the 19th century, is something that the trade union leaders are prepared to stomach.
Leading the pack of collaborators are the Unite leader McCluskey and the TUC leader O’Grady. No matter that the Cameron-led Tory Party is about to make the right to strike illegal! In fact, the union leaders reason that if they hand Cameron the victory in the June referendum, he will go easy on the worst features of the proposed anti-union legislation. Like all purveyors of opportunism, they will of course be disappointed. If Cameron wins, he will proceed to stamp on the trade unions!
Unite has just published a press statement of a speech that McCluskey made on Wednesday at the residence of the German ambassador. In it he stated that, ‘I’m a supporter of the European Union but when I vote for Britain to remain in the EU in June, I will not be voting for the status quo – let me be clear about that. I will not be voting for the EU which has sought to impose eye-watering austerity, at the expense of the ordinary citizen not the rich, but on Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere. I will not be voting for the EU which is seeking to stitch-up a pro-big business trade deal – TTIP – behind the backs of the people of Europe.
‘Above all, I will not be voting for David Cameron’s renegotiation package – a deal designed to protect the financial interests in the City of London which control the Conservative Party and to pander to anti-migrant and anti-welfare sentiment. It is disappointing to see how eager European governments were to accommodate him, in stark contrast to the reception given to premier Tsipras of Greece last year.’
However his supposed good intentions count for nothing. He will be voting for all these vicious attacks on the working class of the EU to continue! His treachery is completely exposed when he deals with the anti-trade union laws.
He said: ‘Since their election, the Tories have introduced one proposal after another to further weaken and undermine the trade unions, and to starve the Labour Party of its traditional source of funding. Now they need assistance from the movement they wish to destroy.
‘Tempting as it is to make the most of a situation like this, it falls to us in the labour movement to behave in a more statesmanlike way, and to look at the bigger issues.’ He is telling the UK’s six million trade unionists that there is a bigger picture than returning the trade unions and the British working class to the days of the Combination Acts and the conditions associated with that time! There is no bigger picture than that one!
We are living at a time when racism is running riot in the EU, when the Turkish dictatorship is being paid 6bn euros to traffic refugees back to Syria where they will be punished for their audacity in seeking to move to Europe by being put at the back of the queue for obtaining refugee status.
This same Turkish dictatorship is to be brought into the EU, despite its slaughter of thousands of Kurds and its amicable relations with IS terrorism. This is McCluskey’s ‘bigger picture’ that he wants his members to vote for! Trade union leaders who will not call on their members to vote ‘out’ on June 23 must be made to resign at once. The EU referendum must be used to put the Cameron government out, and to go forward to a workers government and to a Socialist United States of Europe!
