On the eve of a referendum …
Several friends have told me that they are voting Remain in the EU referendum – but with a heavy heart.
I’m voting Remain too, in spite of France tear-gassing protesting workers who are resisting their government’s, and the EU’s, plans to ditch their rights (Jeremy, don’t imagine the EU is on your side here) and tear-gassing (again by France) of refugees in Calais (ditto, Jeremy) and its refusal to allow aid through to Calais. I’m voting Remain because I don’t want Johnsonism and Goveism to have the whip hand in government and I also want to save Jeremy from the Blairites and the assorted Gawd-knows-whatites waiting to get rid of him if there’s a No vote. It’s not the right time to vote Leave.
If we get a Labour government committed to rolling back NHS privatisation, rejecting TTIP, bringing the rail network and the energy companies into public ownership, restoring the trade union rights that have been eroded since Thatcher and getting rid, amongst other noxious things, of zero-hour contracts, that would be several major steps forward. A Corbyn-led government could do that, and it could reaffirm the principles of the Refugee Convention rather than bolster the profits of the tear-gas manufacturers. The EU would certainly oppose such a Labour programme, since much of it would break EU rules, laws and protocols. Then we could oppose the EU, and then, if change proves impossible, vote to leave – and defend policies worth defending.
Will any of that happen?
Don’t know.
But if we vote Leave now, we are playing into the hands of the Right, including the very nasty Right.
Defending workers’ rights against the EU
A major part, perhaps the major part, of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument for remaining in the EU is that we will be able to defend workers’ rights across Europe if we stay in. We enjoy many of them, his argument runs, thanks to the EU and we can defend and maintain them more effectively from inside the club than from outside.
Whether we enjoy them “thanks to the EU” is debatable. But one thing is not. The French Socialist Party (SP) government is busy attacking workers’ rights in France like there’s no tomorrow. And the unions, through strikes and demonstrations, and protest meetings, are opposing the changes. According to today’s Observer, the argument
“boils down to whether it should be as easy in France for employers to sack workers, cut their pay and arbitrarily change their working conditions as it is in post-Thatcher, post-BHS Britain.”
A protest meeting of the Left took place today. One of the participants spoke of the “docility” and “treachery” of SP Members of Parliament and called President Hollande’s government “a government of the right”.
But what was interesting in terms of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument was the claim by Danielle Simmonet from the Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left). She argued that the proposed law was not just a proposal by the French government. It was concocted by the government, the bosses – and the European Union. The proposed law is a “demand” of Brussels, she said, and a “deal” made with the European Union institutions themselves. So how to break this deal? Danielle is clear: “To fight the [proposed] law we need a general rebellion … we need to [be] an insubordinate people.”
So, if we remain, it looks as if our rights will not be protected by the EU. Instead we will have the EU institutions themselves to contend with. Jeremy Corbyn paints too rosy a picture of workers’ rights in the EU. Judging by the current events in France, maintaining and defending them if we vote Remain will take just as much effort and commitment as defending them against Boris Johnson and Michael Gove: it won’t just be a matter of sending Hilary Benn in to the Council of Ministers. We will, beyond that (and perhaps instead of that), have to become “an insubordinate people”.
We can, of course, do that – In or Out.
Here’s the Libération article: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/06/12/loi-travail-valls-on-organise-ton-pot-de-depart-dans-la-rue_1458935
And the Observer article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/04/observer-france-labour-unrest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Referendum blues 2
Further to my last blog: I mentioned Peter Prescott saying that all EU member states would have to ratify TTIP before it came into force. And I notice that Jeremy Corbyn has pledged that Labour would resist it in parliament and a Labour government would veto it in the EU .
But I am even less sure now that a veto is possible. According to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), “After the negotiations, the EU member states may not have a veto on the proposed trade agreement with the US (TTIP/TAFTA). “You can read the details here: https://blog.ffii.org/eu-member-states-may-not-have-a-veto-on-ttip-tafta/
But so far I’ve seen nothing to support Owen Jones’s claim that we have anything like an “exemption”.
Referendum blues, and the dangers of wishful thinking
On Question Time last night, Owen Jones raised the question of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and its threat to the NHS remaining in public ownership. He claimed that the UK now has an exemption from TTIP when it comes to the NHS. He said the following:
“Because people protested and campaigned here and all over Europe we not only got an exemption for the NHS (forced upon this government against their will) but because people protested and campaigned all over Europe TTIP lies in ruins. Don’t let anyone say we can’t change the European Union.”
I don’t think we’ve got an exemption and I don’t think TTIP lies in ruins. The latest information I can find after a quick search is from the Daily Mirror and The Guardian of 19 May, where a No. 10 spokesperson is quoted as saying that the government would accept the Commons amendment to the Queen’s speech (put by Peter Lilley (Tory) and Paula Sherriff (Labour), and supported, I think, by the SNP), which proposed that the Commons should
“respectfully regret that a Bill to protect the National Health Service from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was not included in the Gracious Speech.”
I understand from this that getting an exemption would involve an Act of Parliament, so I don’t see how Owen Jones can say we’ve got an exemption now. I’d have thought it would mean some more jiggery-pokery at EU Central too.
At my Constituency Labour Party meeting last month, when I asked a question about whether TTIP was a threat to the public ownership of the NHS, Peter Prescott (arguing for a Remain vote), agreed that it was – but claimed that TTIP would have to be agreed to by all 28 members of the EU and that therefore we would have a say at that stage, and that he couldn’t see France, either, agreeing to this aspect of TTIP under a Socialist Party government. He didn’t mention an exemption. (He didn’t mention, either, that President Hollande is apparently the most unpopular president of France since records began, so who knows whether there will be a Socialist Party government of France when TTIP gets to that stage?)
I’m not clear what “accepting the amendment” means anyway, particularly as the said No. 10 spokesperson seemed a bit dismissive of it: “As we’ve said all along,” he said, “there is no threat to the NHS from TTIP. So if this amendment is selected, we’ll accept it.” So, as I said, I don’t believe we’ve got an exemption and Owen Jones’s claim is, at best, wishful thinking.
I could vote either way in the referendum: there are lots of reasons why I’d like to see us out of this club. I hate what the EU and the European Bank did to Greece (they boasted they’d given Tspiras “a mental waterboarding”), I find the claim that the EU will make it easier to defend workers’ rights (also cited by Jones) more than questionable in the week after the French “socialist” government tear-gassed workers protesting against its proposed laws, which are set to tear up their rights, I hate the EU agreement with Turkey to send Syrians (who are the most vulnerable ones) back to Syria. (This means that every time EU bureaucrats or politicians take a breath they are breaking the Refugee Convention.)
But I’m thinking of voting Remain. Part of that has always been because of the racist arguments of a substantial part of the Leave campaign. But (and this is not unconnected with that reason) a successful Leave vote would also likely result in Boris Johnson and Michael Gove running the government, even more enthusiastic in “punishing the poor”, as Ken Loach described the Tories last week, than even Cameron and Osborne. There is no worse prospect, we don’t need it and we don’t deserve it. So I’m inclining at the moment (and this isn’t set in stone) to adopt Paul Mason’s approach: Get out, but not yet. The time to leave would be when a Labour government is prevented by the EU from implementing its programme (e.g. defending the NHS, bringing back the rail network into public ownership) and then, when it becomes obvious we can’t change the EU, calls another referendum. Then we could leave, heads held high, Corbyn intact.
And that’s another thing: on 23 June, a Leave vote would probably mean, not only the rise of Johnson and Gove, but the end of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour MPs would call for a new leadership election before you could say “plot”, and he would be gone.
And then I would retire from politics!
No distinction between goose and gander
Giles Fraser (hero of the Occupy movement at St Paul’s Cathedral for resigning as Dean rather than be party to a police operation against the protesters), argues in an article in The Guardian today, that ISIS’s slaughter of whole minority communities in Iraq and Syria should be recognised as genocide so that, perhaps, one day some of them will be held accountable to the International Court. I agree. Fraser suggests that the Tories are forcing their MPs to vote against recognition of genocide because Turkey is being friendly, helping us to solve the refugee crisis by deporting Syrians back to Syria. For Turkey is sensitive to any talk of genocide – it’s too close to home, too much part of its history – and Cameron doesn’t want to offend his new best friend. We should, says Fraser, be braver than that.
But let’s not talk only about ISIS. With the news today of still more people drowned in the Mediterranean, it is clear that the EU states are failing in their duty to protect refugees, contrary to the Refugee Convention. They should have to answer for that. And shouldn’t EU states themselves be dragged to the International Court for the agreement which allows Turkey to send Syrians packing back to where they will be killed? I’m not an expert in tricky legalistic language, but that kind of sounds like collaborating in genocide to me, as does our conniving with Turkey in its slaughter of the Kurds. Shouldn’t we be done for all of it? Or change our ways? And if we don’t, let’s not pretend to be surprised if ISIS continues to gain ground. After all, we created them and we sustain them.
Conventional wisdom
The Refugee Convention was once a text that all its signatories were supposed to take seriously. States were asked to sign it, ratify it and act on it. Now, in the shadow of the ongoing refugee crisis, the responsibilities and obligations signed up to by those states are being set aside in favour of an incomprehensible, unnecessary tit-for-tat deal with Turkey so that this human-rights-abusing, press-freedom-denying state can slip into the EU with all that inconvenient stuff ignored.
The Refugee Convention is far from perfect. With a bit of deft manoeuvring its founding principles can be (and have often been) sidestepped. But it was created for good, historical reasons and it’s still (just about) with us. Today The Guardian calls it “a hallowed text created in the aftermath of the Holocaust”.[1] This makes it sound religious, “more honoured in the breach than in the observance” maybe, with perhaps a suggestion that it might be out of date too, although The Guardian should know that the Holocaust can never be just another past event, the memory of it should follow us, haunt us, from generation to generation. But the Convention is neither just a hallowed text nor out of date. It is, however, inconvenient to many states and it won’t be long before the cry will go up (again) that it should be repealed and be done with. In fact, instead, it should be strengthened. It will certainly be needed in the foreseeable future, at least until we manage to learn to build a future other than one of perpetual war.
In 2009 I wrote a bit about the history of the Refugee Convention. You can find it here in Chapter 1 of Dealt with on their Merits? (pp 7-20):
https://www.academia.edu/3981192/Treatment_of_asylum_seekers
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/eu-deal-turkey-migrants-refugees-q-and-a
“Do you really want to hurt me …?” – Trump says Yes
Desperate – but with one more card to play?
A friend of mine in Miami was wondering this week, in the wake of Trump’s apparent victory, when we would hear that the GOP itself is dropping out of the race! Last night it almost sounded like they were planning to do that, judging by Mitt Romney’s comments! In our parallel European world, a friend of mine on Twitter, quoting the comedian Mark Steel, was wishing the other day that there was some way the EU No campaigners and the Yes campaigners could both lose! We are all getting increasingly desperate.
And there’s more to feed our desperation: according to today’s Guardian, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, “who was supervising [help!] the test-firing of newly developed multiple rocket launchers, said North Korea’s situation had become so perilous that it should have the option of launching a ‘pre-emptive attack’”. Oh, good. We have Kim’s finger on North Korea’s button and we may soon have Trump’s finger on America’s button. Imagine – people thought the Cuban missile crisis was dangerous! Come back Kennedy and Khrushchev, all (no, not quite) is forgiven!
Still, hold on – there’s still Jeremy!
EU 2: You will be voting against migrants whichever way you vote
How to vote in the referendum if you support a humane response to the current migration crisis? Many in the No camp sound like they just want to “secure our borders” and keep the migrants out. But if we want a humane response what do we do?
In 2014, when rickety boats filled with people fleeing war and persecution began to sink, dragging their passengers to the bottom of the Mediterranean, or their bodies got washed up on the nearest shore, there were some who shouted, “Close the borders”. The Tory-led coalition (really the Tories dragging the pathetic so-called Liberal Democrats behind them) said, in effect, “Let them drown” and withdrew its support for the Italian-led rescue operations. Under pressure after this common Tory gut reaction Cameron said they would take in a tiny number of refugees – but not from the Mediterranean. They would take them from the refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere. Because, you see, people contemplating a journey across the Mediterranean had to learn a lesson: “Don’t set out in the first place.” So when, predictably, the drowning continued, presumably the Tories thought, “Don’t come whining to us – it’s your own fault.” By April 2015 there were fifteen times more deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean that year than in the whole of 2014.
More recently, during the crisis in Calais, in the camp called “the Jungle”, Cameron seems to have been forced (through actual or threatened legal action in the courts) to concede that at least some children there, with family in the UK, have the right to come here. But he’s done bugger all about it and most of them are still in Calais.
It’s arguable that if we vote to leave the EU we will be turning our backs on desperate people and putting their fate in the hands of a politician (whether Cameron or Boris Johnson) who would let migrants drown, let them rot in the garbage of Calais or send them packing back to where they came from.
So what would we be doing if we voted to stay in the EU? Other EU states seemed at first to be different. Germany took large numbers of refugees and there was talk of sharing responsibility across the EU states. But many were reluctant from the start, they couldn’t agree how this might be done and they began to squabble amongst themselves. So there was deadlock and some of them began to close their borders – those borders which, under the Schengen Convention, were the pride and joy of the EU, open borders within the Union. Another cry went up: “Schengen is finished.”
For those who don’t like the EU because they don’t like foreigners this is good news. For them the EU is finished, and good riddance. For those who hoped that the EU would provide a humanitarian solution it is bad news. So how to vote? Jeremy Corbyn is still optimistic as, on behalf of the Labour Party, he argues to vote Yes to the EU:
“‘There has to be an agreement all across Europe that [the EU states] all take a proportion of [the refugees],’ he said. ‘The problem is that the degree of inward-looking politics that’s going on has meant that Greece is making a huge effort, Italy is making a huge effort and Germany is making a huge effort. Every other country is putting barbed wire entanglements along their borders to keep desperate people out … Surely in the 21st century the least we can do is reach out and try to help these people in some way; by the political solution in Syria; by the support for what the Greek government is trying to do and take a proportion all across Europe.’”[1]
That, presumably, would be the policy if there was a Labour government. But yesterday the French began to bulldoze the people in Calais out of their makeshift homes. The French had originally said that the process of moving people would be done by gentle persuasion over many weeks, not with force or violence, not with bulldozers. The French Minister of the Interior spelt this out only last week: the government’s plan, he said, was not “to carry out a brutal evacuation of the camp by using bulldozers, this is not how we operate.” But yesterday the bulldozers appeared and the destruction began.
On Channel 4 News last night Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador to the UK: “Why did you say ‘no bulldozers’ and then use them?”
Bermann: I think we are using bulldozers to clear the camp, not to force all these migrants to go.
Guru-Murthy: But you said you wouldn’t.
Bermann: Well, our ministers said we wouldn’t force people to go, but at the same time what I cannot understand is – well, your reporter said it was filthy, stinking conditions. So how could you consider it better to live in these squalid conditions than to be relocated in accommodations [sic] where you have water, heating, electricity?
Guru-Murthy: But you don’t have enough space. There are thousands living there and there aren’t enough spaces in the shipping containers. They’re not flats, are they, they’re shipping containers, where you’re suggesting they go and live in?
Bermann: They are temporary accommodations, that’s true, but some of them will be relocated in other camps in France.
Guru-Murthy: Can you guarantee every one of them a comfortable roof over their heads?
Bermann: They will be relocated, but conditions will be far much better [sic] than it was in the Jungle.[2]
At the end of all this ducking and diving, there was no answer to the question, “Why use bulldozers when you said ‘no bulldozers’?” But then Sylvie is a diplomat.
So referendum voters who want a humanitarian solution to the migration crisis aren’t going to get one, in or out of the EU. The Tories will close the UK’s borders either way; the EU states will do the same; and France, our nearest neighbour, will bring out the bulldozers at the drop of a hat despite its much-vaunted pride in being the home of human rights.
How to vote? With some difficulty.
[1] The Guardian, 29 February 2016.
[2] Channel 4 News, 29 February 2016.
EU 1: Thinking aloud about some of the questions: workers’ rights
I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote in the EU referendum. If I vote to leave I will be joining a ramshackle bunch of characters including Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and George Galloway. Shouting with them from the sidelines, as Andrew Raunsley points out in today’s Observer (see link (1) below), are Marine le Pen and Vladimir Putin. And if the No camp wins we might even end up with Boris Johnson as prime minister.
All that is nearly enough to send me into the Yes camp!
But I’m also horrified by the supporters of continued membership who, one way or another, have got us where we are today. Raunsley’s list includes
“the chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary, most of the rest of the cabinet, the great majority of senior figures from the opposition parties, the bulk of big business and the trade unions, the governor of the Bank of England, the president of the United States and the leader of every European country that anyone might conceivably have heard of.”
That’s almost enough to send me into the No camp!
However, it’s not about lists of clowns, bankers, politicians, or other Very Important People. It is, as Tony Benn always insisted, about “the issues”. Take, for instance, the question of workers’ rights. Would it be better for workers’ rights if we stayed in or if we left?
Let me suggest one argument for staying in. Many unions are saying that workers’ rights will be better protected if we stay in. But I notice the biggest French union, the CGT, says that the latest “reforms” of the Code du Travail announced by the French government will take France back to the 19th century (see link (2) below). And this in a France firmly entrenched in the EU. This game of “reforms” is the game all governments want to play, and no country’s workers are safe, and this suggests that there are no automatic guarantees of workers’ rights in the EU and that whether we’re in or out we’ll have to defend the rights we fought for. M. Martinez is calling on French trade unionists to do that now in France. So the argument for staying in to protect workers’ rights doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong one.
Unless, of course, we add M. Martinez’s element of workers taking action to defend their rights. Then, if we stayed in, it would be easier to join them and any others across the EU doing the same. Wouldn’t Brexit leave British workers weaker against Cameron, and other workers in Europe weaker against their own governments? I think solidarity is better than isolation. And perhaps solidarity across the EU could change it to the advantage of workers beyond the wildest dreams that Cameron has of changing it to the advantage of his rich, arrogant, corporate buddies.
That’s my first thought, anyway. More to come as the campaigning goes on.
(1) Andrew Raunsley’s article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/eu-refendum-tory-party-uk-at-stake
(2) Article in Libération: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/02/19/martinez-le-nouveau-code-du-travail-un-retour-au-xixe-siecle_1434633
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