No to the EU

The Tories are now fighting on two fronts — one to shore up their support against a resurgent Labour party and the second against the Eurosceptics inside and outside of their own ranks. UKIP, along with a growing number of Tory back-benchers, want a referendum on the EU before the next election, and not the one in 2017 that will never take place if Labour forms the next government. And that’s a problem for the movement in itself.

Labour, together with the rest of social-democracy in Europe and the rag-bag of revisionist parties within the European Left Party that still claim to be communist, are steadfast supporters of the European Union and all its institutions. They claim that a united Europe has benefited working people and that it will do so in the future. What they fail to point out is one single benefit that the European Union and all its previous incarnations have produced for workers.

In fact the EU is a European Chamber of Commerce writ large aiming to build a super-state with super powers for the industrialists, cartels and banks to intensify the exploitation and oppression of the millions of workers within its frontiers.

The establishment of the European communist initiative earlier in the month is an important first step towards raising the communist answer to the crisis in a co-ordinated and united way right across the continent. It draws a clear line of distinction between the genuine Marxist-Leninist forces in Europe and those charlatans who still pose as communists in France, Italy and other parts of the Union.

The European Union is neither genuinely federal nor democratic and every stage of European integration has been financed by working people through higher indirect taxes, lost jobs and lost benefits. The European Union cannot be reformed. It must be dissolved and the Treaty of Rome, which established the Common Market in the first place, and all addenda repealed.