Workers’ LibertyReason in revolt

Published with Solidarity 409Vol 3 No 54 June 2016

By Paul HamptonThe revolutionary left once had reputablepolitics towards Europe, an inheritancefrom Trotsky that was not finally dis-pensed with until the early 1970s. Thestory of how the British revolutionary leftwent from an independent working classstance to accommodation with chauvin-ism and Stalinist “socialist-in-one-coun-try” deserves to be better known.Throughout the twenty five years be-

tween the beginnings of European bour-geois union in 1950 and the UK referendumof 1975, there were umpteen vicissitudesacross the left. The one constant was the out-right opposition to European integrationfrom the Stalinists, organised domesticallyin the Communist Party of Great Britain(CPGB). The specific crystallisation of op-positionism that swallowed most of the rev-olutionary left took hold in the summer of1971. Almost all the “left” arguments de-

ployed today stem from these two sources.The Schuman Plan for a European Coal

and Steel Community (ECSC) and thePleven Plan for a European Defence Com-munity (EDC) were launched in 1950. Al-though the EDC was rejected, steps towardsbourgeois economic and political integra-tion made progress. On 25 March 1957 theTreaty of Rome was signed by the govern-ments of West Germany, France, Italy, theNetherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, cre-ating the European Economic Community(EEC), known as the Common Market, fore-runner of today’s EU. British governmentsin the 1950s stayed out of these develop-ments, largely on the grounds of trade withthe Commonwealth states that had previ-ously been colonies and part of the BritishEmpire.On 10 August 1961, the Tory government

applied to join the EEC. In a speech toLabour Party conference in October 1962,Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell claimed that

Britain’s participation in the EEC wouldmean “the end of Britain as an independentEuropean state, the end of a thousand yearsof history”. Britain’s application was vetoedby French president Charles De Gaulle inJanuary 1963. The Labour government(1964-70) headed by Harold Wilson appliedfor membership and was denied again byDe Gaulle in November 1967. De Gaullewould resign the French presidency in April1969.When the Tories unexpected won the gen-

eral election in June 1970, prime ministerEdward Heath took up the issue of EECmembership once more. In June 1971 theHeath government published a white paperadvocating membership. On 1 January 1973the UK joined the EEC. To steer his coursethrough labour movement objections, Wil-son promised a referendum on EEC mem-bership. When he became prime minister inOctober 1974, he agreed to hold the referen-dum, which took place on 6 June 1975. Just

over 67% of voters supported the Labourgovernment’s campaign to stay in the EEC,despite opposition from most trade unions,the CPGB and most of the revolutionary left.Under pressure from wider bourgeois

politics, and from the Labour left, the Com-munist Party and forces in the unions, therevolutionary left flipped over to oppositionto the EEC, mostly in the summer of 1971.Most would-be Marxists opposed entry in1973 and campaigned to get out in 1975.They were criminally wrong, concedingground to the nationalists and Stalinists – ef-fectively cutting their own throats.The EEC debate played a key role in

the unravelling of the revolutionary leftas a serious Marxist force in the Britishlabour movement. Reviewing the argu-ments of the main protagonists from theearlier period will help to orientate thehealthy elements of the revolutionary leftafter the referendum on UK membershipof the EU.

Europe: the Stalinistroots of the “left-exit” myth

The hostile attitude towards Europeanunity on the ostensibly revolutionary leftderived ultimately from the poisoned wellof Stalinism.Internationally, the USSR under Stalin em-

braced the nationalistic “socialism in onecountry” doctrine in the mid-1920s, as it side-lined the perspective of international socialistrevolution and workers’ democracy. After thebureaucratic ruling class had established it-self as the sole master of the surplus productby 1928 and expelled the Trotskyist opposi-tion, Russian foreign policy dictated visceralopposition both to bourgeois efforts to unifyEurope (whether by consent or by force) andhostility to pan-European labour movementunity.This was well summed up on the cusp of

World War Two in April 1940, when the Stal-inist Comintern issued a May Day manifesto.It stated: “Under the flag of ‘Federated Eu-rope’ and ‘A new organisation of the world’,the imperialists are preparing to dismemberbig states and annex small countries, still fur-ther to intensify colonial oppression and toenslave the peoples of Europe.” (Jane Degras,The Communist International 1919-1943, Vol-ume III).Months earlier, the Stalinist functionary

Georgi Dimitrov recorded noted in his pri-vate journal: “On 7 November 1939 Stalinsaid: The slogan of ‘the United States of Eu-rope’ was mistaken. Lenin caught himself intime and struck that slogan” (The Diary ofGeorgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949).This attitude persisted even as Russian for-

eign policy turned from the defeat of NaziGermany towards the shape of post-war Eu-rope. Moscow wanted to re-establish weakstates so Russia would be the single domi-nating power on the continent. A memoran-dum by the Stalinist functionaries Maiskyand Litvinov in January 1944 argued that “itis not in the interests of the USSR, at least inthe first period after the war, to foster the cre-ation of various kinds of federations — aDanubian, Balkan, Central-European, Scan-dinavian, etc.” (Vladislav Zubok, ‘The SovietUnion and European Integration from Stalinto Gorbachev’, Journal of European IntegrationHistory, 1996).It was Stalin’s opposition to the US’s Mar-

shall Plan from June 1947 that fully crys-tallised Russian hostility to Europeanintegration. The USSR set out to persecuteand “purge” any trace of the all-Europeanidea, calling it a “manifestation of bourgeoiscosmopolitism”, as well as to denounce WestEuropean integrationists as “lackeys of UScolonialism”. Soviet Cold-War propagandadenounced West European integration as im-perialistic, reactionary, doomed to failure,and a harbinger of the final crisis of capital-ism (Wolfgang Mueller, ‘The Soviet Unionand Early West European Integration, 1947-1957: From the Brussels Treaty to the ECSCand the EEC’, Journal of European IntegrationHistory, 2009).Three common elements — “US control

over Western Europe”, “remilitarisation ofWest Germany” and “preparation of a newwar” — remained the leitmotivs of the Stal-inist assessment of the early integrationprocess. The birth of the Council of Europe in1949 was greeted by Pravda as “an auxiliarytool of the aggressive North Atlantic Pact”[i.e. NATO] and its pan-European agenda re-garded as “demagogy”. The true aim of theCouncil of Europe was “camouflaging theimperialist colonisation of Western Europeby the United States and the destruction ofnational sovereignty among independent Eu-ropean states in order to implement theirplans of global domination”.

The Schuman and Pleven plans (1950)were perceived by the Soviet Foreign min-istry as ploys to legalise, “under the cloak of‘European integration’, the creation of a US-controlled military force and arsenal in Eu-rope”. In 1951, the planned coal and steelcommunity was denounced as a “hyper-mo-nopolistic association”, created by US mo-nopolies in order to “revive the militaryindustry of West Germany, to exploit theeconomies of the participating countries forcarrying out their aggressive plans for a thirdWorld War, and to create an economic basisfor the aggressive North Atlantic Bloc inWestern Europe under American hegemony”(Mueller, 2009).This attitude, laid down under Stalin’s

tutelage, persisted after his death. The Russ-ian assessment of the founding of the EEC in1957 regarded the Treaty of Rome as a “tem-porary” alliance being used to temper thecompetition between capitalist states thathad come under pressure as a consequenceof the successes of socialism and the inde-pendence movements in the Third World. Inview of “massive contradictions” between,on the one hand, “revisionist” West Germanyand “protectionist” France, and, on the other,between the EEC, Britain, and the UnitedStates, the USSR government predicted thefailure of the Economic Community.The USSR juxtaposed the Comecon bloc of

Stalinist states as the alternative to the EEC.Pravda (11 March 1957) denounced the Com-mon Market as a “ploy of US leading circlesfor deepening the division of Europe andGermany and for subjecting Western Europeto the rule of West German monopolies andmilitarists”. On 13 March 1957 the CPSU Pre-sidium approved a note to all EEC memberstates condemning the Rome Treaties as a“threat” to all-European cooperation andpeace (Mueller, 2009).The overarching aim of Russian policy to-

wards West European integration was tohamper the process or obstruct it altogether,through propagandistic demonisation anddiplomatic pressure. As well as the consider-able apparatus of the Russian state itself, theStalinists also had at their disposal large andoften mass western European Communistparties able to articulate this hostility towardsbourgeois political and economic integration.From the early 1950s these Communist par-ties pumped out propaganda with the tropesoriginating in Moscow. European integrationwas:• Imperialist – designed to strengthen US

control over Western Europe• Preparation for an aggressive war against

the Soviet Union• An instrument of capital• Designed to curtail national sovereigntyAlthough under the impact of EEC mem-

bership, some leaders of the two largest West-ern European parties, the Partito ComunistaItaliano (PCI) and Parti Communiste Français(PCF) began to soften their approach in the1960s, these influences were barely dis-cernible in Britain. The CPGB for its part putout a steady stream of propaganda opposingthe EEC, every time the issue became promi-nent nationally.The party published a series of pamphlets:

The Alternative to the Common Market (1961)by Dave Bowman; Say “No” to the CommonMarket (1962) by Ted Ainley; Common Market:The Truth (1962); The Common Market: WhyBritain Should Not Join (1969) by John Gollan;Common Market: The Tory White Paper Exposed(1971) by Ron Bellamy; Common Market: ForAnd Against (1971); The Common Market Fraud(1975) by Gerry Pocock and Out of the Com-mon Market (1975). Other organisations influ-enced by the CPGB, such as the Trade Unionsagainst the Common Market, the BritishPeace Committee and the Labour ResearchDepartment, also published prolifically.Ted Ainley’s pamphlet Say “No” to the Com-

mon Market (1962) sets out the Stalinist casein simple but well contrived terms. It is alsoof interest because it was published at the be-ginning of the UK government’s efforts tojoin, but at a time when many of the tradeunion militants had yet to come down on theside of chauvinism and the revolutionary leftlargely retained its internationalist position.He argued that “the people of Britain” shouldreject membership of the Common Marketfor the following reasons:1. It would have a disastrous effect on our

wage prospects and living standards by mak-ing British workers compete with lower paidcontinental workers both in the home andoverseas markets.2. It would undermine British independ-

ence. The British Government and Parlia-ment would be bound by political andmilitary decisions made by a European ma-jority.3. It would hit hard at Britain’s trade with

its biggest and oldest markets in the Com-monwealth.4. British agriculture would have to adapt

itself to Common Market methods…5. The Common Market has refused to ac-

cept full employment as one of its objectives.6. Common Market rules would hamper a

British Government in dealing with the bal-ance of payments crises to which the econ-omy is particularly prone.7. The British Government and Parliament

would be compelled to accept the decisionsof the Common Market bodies as to how oursocial services should be “harmonised” withthose of the continent. (Ainley, 1962)The first reason was explicitly chauvinist

and hostile to migrant workers, while the sec-ond defended spurious British independenceon nationalist grounds. The third champi-oned post-Empire imperialism, while the re-maining reasons repeat objections by themost backward bourgeois defenders of theBritish state. The whole narrative used thepronoun “our” to mean British people, notworkers — either in Britain or across Europe.The chauvinism is most pronounced throughits anti-Germanism, arguing that because“the Germany of Adenauer and Krupp” wasat the centre of the Common Market, thescheme looked “very much like an attempton the part of the German ruling class toachieve by subtlety what both the Kaiser andHitler failed to achieve by their two worldwars — German domination of Europe” (ibid1962: 7).However elsewhere in the text, Ainley

spelt out the deeper reasons for the CPGB’shostility, namely: the opposition of the USSR.The aim of the Common Market was “tobring about political unification of the mem-ber states”. This political union aimed tostrengthen “the hold of the monopolists, tofrustrate the advance of Socialism in Europeand to consolidate the military power of theso-called Western Alliance against the Social-ist countries”.The US government was interested in

Britain joining the Common Market becauseit aimed to lead “a solid bloc of capitaliststates throughout the world in its war oncommunism, to prevent the rise of socialismanywhere and provide an even more prof-itable field for the investment of Americandollars”. To the CPGB, the Common Marketwas “the political counterpart of NATO”. The“socialism” the Stalinists were taking aboutwas the USSR and its bloc. They recognisedthat it was not enough to say “No” to theCommon Market; an alternative had to be of-fered. And Ainley spelt out that the alterna-tive was “the socialist countries, the newlyindependent nations and the old Domin-ions”. In particular, the “socialist countrieswill, for many years to come, want the prod-ucts of British industries, if the political bar-riers to trade are lifted, in exchange for theirown products” (ibid, 1962).Ainley also articulated an argument,

slightly circular given the prominence of theCPGB in the unions, which would be usedagain and again when the crunch came in theearly 1970s — namely the attitude of otherson the left. He noted that “many prominentLabour men and women trade union leadersare strongly opposed to Britain’s entry intothe Market; but the top right-wing leaders,though they continue to say they have notmade up their minds, are clearly looking foran excuse to come out in favour and dragoonthe Labour movement behind them”.The CPGB set itself the task in 1962 that

it would largely fulfil a decade later, for“every trade union” to “record its opposi-tion to Britain’s entry into the CommonMarket”. They recognised that “the resultof such action would be rejection of theTory proposal by both the TUC and LabourParty conferences” (ibid, 1962).

THE STALINIST ROOTS OF THE “LEFT-EXIT” MYTH More online at www.workersliberty.org2

How the Stalinists shaped the debate on Europe

Signing of the Treaty of Rome (1957)

The attitude of the revolutionary left inBritain towards Europe before 1970 wasalmost unanimously internationalist, alegacy of Trotsky’s consistent support fora United States of Europe. The revolution-ary left began the post-war period mostlyunited within the Revolutionary Commu-nist Party, formed in 1944. It was part ofthe orthodox Fourth International, led byErnest Mandel and took much of its poli-tics from that source.By the early 1950s the RCP had split into

three main constituents that would dominatefor the next two generations. The Club, ledby Gerry Healy, would become the SocialistLabour League (SLL) and later the Workers’Revolutionary Party (WRP); it would be thebiggest force until the mid-70s, but shatterand collapse in 1985. A group that would be-come the Revolutionary Socialist League andlater Militant, led by Ted Grant, was the fore-runner of today’s Socialist Party and SocialistAppeal. The Socialist Review group, later theInternational Socialists (IS) and after that theSocialist Workers’ Party (SWP), was led byTony Cliff. Whatever their differences overcapitalism, Stalinism, imperialism, theLabour Party and other secondary matters,over Europe their stance was much the sameand largely coherent. It was not until 1971that they lurched towards chauvinism.Much of the left in Britain was influenced

by the politics of the Fourth International, asreconstituted after World War Two and led

by Ernest Mandel. Often writing under thepseudonym “Ernest Germain”, Mandel for-mulated the dominant political line on Eu-rope. During 1950 Mandel wrote a column inthe American SWP paper The Militant, enti-tled ‘European Notebook’. These articleswere mostly straight reportage and wererather thin on analysis. Mandel noted that“authoritative spokesmen of the Europeancapitalist class” had “started publishing arti-cles expressing an equal distaste toward theUSSR and the USA” (‘European Capitalistsand the American Empire’, The Militant, 26June 1950: 2). He rejected the prominent no-tion of “neutrality” as the “passive with-drawal from world politics” Instead he putforward the almost Third Camp formulation:“To this conservative idea of neutrality, basedon the status quo and class collaboration, theFourth International counterposes the revo-lutionary idea of working class politics inde-pendent from Wall Street and the Kremlin”(‘The Demand for “Neutrality” in Europe’,The Militant, 3 July 1950).This rejection of both Washington and

Moscow appeared to extend to the WesternEuropean working class movement. Mandelnoted that European workers had “given theStalinist peace campaign a much cooler re-sponse” (‘The Stalinist “Peace” Campaign inEurope’, The Militant, 10 July 1950). At thesame time European Trotskyists had the taskof “struggling against the deceit andhypocrisy of the Social Democratic pro-

American propaganda” (‘The EuropeanWorking Class and America’, The Militant, 17July 1950: 2).The most specific article on early European

integration was entitled, ‘Our Alternative tothe Schuman Plan’ (The Militant, 24 July1950). Mandel noted that in the wider Euro-pean labour movement there had been “noreal working class answer to the SchumanPlan, defending the common interests of theEuropean workers against the conspiracy ofthe European industrialists”. The SchumanPlan, he said, was “based on a ‘cartel’ of Eu-ropean industry under capitalist ownershipand capitalist management”. To this he coun-terposed, “the central slogan of all EuropeanFourth Internationalists — the SocialistUnited States of Europe”. This was the pro-gramme of “collective ownership and work-ing class management of Europeanindustry”.Mandel’s stance was adequate, if some-

what abstract. He did not oppose bourgeoisEuropean integration in principle, but criti-cised the form it took with the Schuman Plan.Mandel understood that both the major im-perialist powers of the USA and the USSRhad their own designs for Europe, but ratherthan embrace a bourgeois “third force” helooked to a united European working class,fighting around demands for public owner-ship and workers’ control, to find a way out.This was a core position that would persistinto the 1960s.Mandel’s most significant analysis of Eu-

ropean integration up to that point, ‘Crisis inthe Common Market’, was published in theAmerican SWP’s theoretical journal Interna-tional Socialist Review, Spring 1963. He con-ceived of bourgeois economic integration aspart of a plan by the European bourgeoisiesto form their own bloc, opposed to both theUSSR and the USA. Mandel argued that theUS government had initially supported Eu-ropean integration through the Marshall Plan“for political and military purposes: to createa counter-weight to the power of the SovietUnion and the other workers’ states on theEuropean continent”.Responding to the creation of the EEC in

1957, “Washington’s reply to the purely eco-nomic challenge to American imperialismposed by the Common Market consists in ad-vocating the dilution, as quickly as possible,of the Common Market into an ‘AtlanticZone of free exchange’, embracing the UnitedStates and Canada, in addition to WesternEurope. Britain’s application for entry intothe Common Market, followed by Denmark,Norway, Portugal and perhaps Austria andSwitzerland “would have been the first stepin the realisation of this American plan”(Mandel 1963). Although in retrospect thisclaim looks dubious – although perhaps thereis an insight into the current TTIP discussion— he was clear that the working class had nointerest in supporting either camp.Mandel wrote: “For revolutionary Marx-

ists, this, conflict is a typical inter-imperialistcompetitive struggle in which the workingclass has no reason for supporting one sideagainst the other. To the policies of both sides,they must counterpose the struggle for a So-cialist United States of Europe, for a reallyunified Europe which could effectively sur-mount the antagonisms bred by capitalistcompetition; that could only be a Europewhich has abolished both capitalist propertyand the bourgeois state…It would be pure suicide for the working

class to solidarise itself, either with its ownbourgeoisie or with that of the opposingcamp. Its only effective reply can be to affirmits basic class solidarity: “Workers of all Eu-ropean countries unite against the Europe ofthe monopolies, whether it raises the slogansof the Europe of ‘fatherlands,’ the ‘open’ Eu-rope, or the European ‘community’.” Thisshould be the line of action for the working

class movement of Europe.” (‘Crisis in theCommon Market’, 1963)Mandel recognised that the European

working class could not “limit itself to astrictly defensive posture before Europeanbig business” and that it should “counterposeits plans for a socialist Europe to the imperi-alist plans”. However he soiled this stance bysuggesting that “the Soviet Union and theother workers’ states would be able to play avery positive role in this respect”. He pro-posed that they “convoke a congress of all theunions and parties of Western Europe” and“could place at its disposal the experience,technical personnel and offices of their plan-ning commissions, charge them with draftingthe outline of a plan for the economic, socialand cultural development of a Europe uni-fied on a socialist basis”. Puffing up the “bril-liant perspectives of such a plan”, he omittedthe fact that such an arrangement underUSSR control would have been the death ofthe European working class movement as anindependent force. It was indicative of howthe mistaken analysis of Stalinism wouldbegin to infect the stance towards Europe.In June 1965, Mandel’s “United Secretariat

of the Fourth International” held its 8thWorld Congress. The conference debated aresolution on ‘The Evolution of Capitalism inWestern Europe’, later published in Interna-tional Socialist Review, Spring 1966. The as-sessment was consistent with Mandel’s 1963position, suggesting that although Europeanintegration was unfinished and may collapseinto protectionism, it could also lead to a“strengthened European executive and a Eu-ropean currency”, which would “constitute adecisive stage in reaching the point of no re-turn for the Common Market”.The Fourth International resolved to strug-

gle “against the imperialist and capitalist fu-sion that is being effected in the present stageboth inside and outside the Common Mar-ket” by agitating for “a united front of all thetrade-union organisations within the Com-mon Market without excluding anyone” andfighting for “the convocation of a big Euro-pean Congress of Labour”. As against a cap-italist United States, which could be born inpart of Europe, it is necessary to stress prop-aganda favouring a socialist United States ofEurope. Significantly, although the resolutiondid call for “withdrawal from NATO andfrom all imperialist military pacts”, it did notcall for withdrawal from the EEC.Mandel’s last substantial contribution to

the European integration debate was hisbook, Europe versus America, written in 1968and published in English by New Left Booksin 1970. While much of the book consisted ofrehashed economic statistics on trade, themost interesting passages concern the impactof possible future integration on the fight forsocialism. Although this is speculative, it isalso revealing, suggesting an internationalist,permanent revolutionary perspective that ishighly relevant to today’s conditions.Mandel argued that strategically, with the

formation of the EEC and the stage it hadreached — namely that it was not a super-state — there was “no reason why the work-ing class should abandon the classic politicalgoal it has sought for so long, the seizure ofpower nationally, for the chimerical seizureof power in all member states of the Com-munity at once, or, even more utopian, for the‘socialisation’ of Europe by the votes of a Eu-ropean parliament elected by universal suf-frage”. A successful socialist revolution inone member state “could not live cheek injowl with a capitalist economy in the rest ofthe EEC”. But equally “the conquest of powerby the proletariat of one state would fan theflames of revolution in neighbouring states”.Mandel speculated that “once the interpene-tration of capital between the members of theSix leads to their actual economic integration,or to a European Community with more

3@workerslibertyWorkers’ Liberty

The revolutionary leftbefore 1970

Ernest Mandel

member states, once the supranational insti-tutions evolve an adequately powerful formof state power”, then “the chances of the pro-letariat taking power at a national level willprobably be insurmountably blocked” (Man-del, 1970).In the circumstances of 1970, Mandel was

clear about the orientation of the labourmovement across Europe. He argued that“the reader should not deduce from all thisthat it is in the interests of the Europeanworking class to put a brake on the interpen-etration of European capital on the groundsthat the gradual disappearance of the possi-bility of political power being conquered bythe working class on a national level”. In thefirst place, “it would anyway be utopian toattempt to prevent economic changes whichthemselves correspond to a given develop-ment of the forces of production; the work-ing class, after all, was never intended toprop up small-scale capitalism or to preventcapital concentration”. In the second place,“the historical role of the labour movementin late capitalism and in highly industrialisedcountries can never consist in allowing itselfto be reduced to the status of auxiliary to oneor other interest group of the bourgeoisie –either in support of the international inter-penetration of capital or to uphold the bour-geois forces clinging to the nation state”. Therole of the labour movement is “to place itsown socialist aims on the agenda. The alter-native to the interpenetration of Europeancapital must be a united socialist Europe, nota return to bourgeois economic nationalism”.In short, “the only successful defence of theworking class confronted by growing inter-nationalisation of capital is to resort to itsown action and organisation” (Mandel,1970).This was the right starting point to orien-

tate the workers’ movement across Europe,not only in Britain. It had no truck with thenationalist chauvinism of the Stalinists andthe reformists in the British labour move-ment. It did not turn the labour movementinto the tail of one or other faction of thebourgeoisie. This was mostly independentworking class politics in answer to the bour-geois camps.

MilitantThe attitude taken by Militant was a palereflection of Mandel.Until 1965, the RSL led by Grant was a sec-

tion of the USFI and on Europe its positionwas a bland version of the same politics. TedGrant published a position piece, ‘CommonMarket — No answer to the problems:Labour must press for United Socialist Statesof Europe’, in Militant, No. 22, December1966-January 1967.Grant pointed out that when the EEC was

raised by the Conservatives in the early 1960sto promote the interests of the giant monop-olies, “Wilson and the other Labour leadersoffered vehement opposition”. The Labourleadership pointed out that it would “raisethe cost of living enormously, crush the agri-cultural industry and lead to a lowering ofthe standards of living of the working class”.In short, “they opposed it from a ‘nationalist’and ‘commonwealth’ point of view”.Grant wrongly dismissed Britain’s

prospects of joining the EEC and speculatederroneously that the Common Marketshowed “signs of disintegrating at any severeeconomic difficulties”. However he did graspthe essential stance for the British labourmovement in the situation. He wrote: “for theworking class neither entry nor non-entrywould solve their problems or lead to an in-creased standard of living.” The first task forthe British workers “would be to achieve asocialist Britain and then launch an appeal tothe workers of Europe and the world” (‘Com-

mon Market — No answer to the prob-lems...’).Six months later Grant returned to the is-

sues. He condemned the arguments of theanti-marketeers in the labour movement,which he said “have had no more substancethan those of the pro-marketeers them-selves”. They had “adopted a narrow nation-alistic outlook, appealing against the loss ofBritish ‘sovereignty’”. He also captured theessence of an independent approach when hewrote: “Neither entry nor non-entry cansolve the problems of British capitalism. Nei-ther nationalism nor pseudo-Europeanism isa solution in the interests of the workingclass” (‘Common Market — impasse ofBritish imperialism’, Militant, No. 27, June1967).Grant correctly paraphrased Trotsky, argu-

ing that the EEC represented “the groping at-tempts to expand beyond the frontiers ofEuropean and world trade are expressions ofthe outmoded character of the nation stateand of private ownership of the means ofproducing wealth”. However added his ownpeculiar reformist twist, arguing for takingover the top 380 monopolies through an ‘En-abling Act’ in the Westminster parliamentwith the mobilisation of the trade unions.This underplayed the likely resistance fromthe bourgeois state, whether on a national orinternational level.

Socialist Labour LeagueIf Militant provided a pale shadow of Man-del’s arguments, then the Socialist LabourLeague (SLL), for all its windy rhetoric,provided a mostly abstract, arid reprint.The Healy organisation had split from the

orthodox Fourth International, along withthe American SWP and French OCI, in 1953.However it retained most of the premises ofthe Mandelite version, despite shrill denun-ciations of Mandel himself. The AmericanSWP would reunite with Mandel’s organisa-tion in 1963 and the OCI depart the rumpFourth International in the late 1960s, leavingthe SLL to its own brand of unthinking con-formity.Tom Kemp wrote a basic position piece,

‘Socialism and the European Common Mar-ket’, published in The Newsletter, 24 June1961. He argued that it was “scarcely neces-sary for the labour movement to get involvedin a detailed and necessarily inconclusive dis-cussion about the pros and cons of the Com-mon Market”, which could not “inspire therank and file or build its strength”. Consis-tent socialists “should be unequivocally infavour of breaking down national barriers,not under the auspices of the trusts seekingto exploit labour power more methodicallyand play one section off against another moresuccessfully, but by working for a workers’government which alone can do the job in agenuinely internationalist way”. In short,“taking sides for or against the Tories joiningthe Common Market means arguing aboutjust how Europe’s workers should be ex-ploited. Instead, the working class movementmust unite around a programme for the so-cialist planning of European industry”.A similar line was taken by the SLL until at

least 1967. For example Geoff Pilling, writingas Peter Jeffries in higher education studentmagazine Marxist, argued that capitalists allover Europe faced “the threat of a united andpowerful working class”. The Europeanlabour movement, in unity with the power-ful British working class movement, was “theforce which instils fear into the Europeanbourgeoisie”. For socialists the main task was“to turn to this force”. He argued “We havenothing to gain from a futile debate about themerits or demerits of entry. Merits and ad-vantages for whom? These are questionswhich the capitalist class can decide, as they

conceive of their best interests in their strug-gle against the working class” (‘British Capi-tal and the Common Market’, Marxist, 5, 2,1967: 26-27).

International Socialists (IS)The other revolutionary left group influ-enced by Trotskyism during the 1960s wasthe International Socialists, led by TonyCliff. It would have its own debates on Europe,

often openly in the pages of its magazine In-ternational Socialism. The majority held itselfbroadly within the same internationalist ar-guments as the rest of the Trotskyist left.In 1961, an editorial entitled ‘Britain and

Europe’ adopted a critical approach to theEEC, but one at pains to distance itself fromopposition on the grounds of nationalism orreformism. In fact the magazine was cau-tiously optimistic about European integra-tion. The editorial stated: “If, in the long run,Europeanisation hastens this process, as itsurely will, cartel Europe will have laid, assurely, the basis for the United States of So-cialist Europe. For revolutionary socialists inBritain there is no greater aim. We should bethe first to clasp hands across La Manche”. Itadded: “For us the move to Europe extendsthe scope of class struggle in which we are di-rectly involved; it worsens its conditions forthe present. But it makes ultimate victorymore secure” (‘Britain and Europe’, Interna-tional Socialism, No.6, Autumn 1961: 3).The first visible sign of dissent came from

John Fairhead in a subsequent issue of themagazine. He denounced the majority posi-tion as the manifestation of Kautsky’s ultra-imperialism, which Lenin had polemicisedagainst during World War One. He also ar-gued that “if the struggle against the Euro-pean Common Market is waged only byTribune and the Communist Party within theworking-class movement, the most backwardchauvinist trends will receive encourage-ment”. Instead, he argued for the chimera ofan “internationalist” campaign again the EEC(‘Polemic: The Common Market’, Interna-tional Socialism, No.7, Winter 1961).The next issue responded with the right in-

ternationalist argument: to push throughbourgeois economic and political integrationby seeking to unite workers across borders.The editorial stated: “Only a sustained cam-paign carried out throughout the labourmovement by socialists will increase con-sciousness sufficiently for the initiative to betaken in exposing ‘Europeanist’ capitalism, inestablishing direct links with Europeanworkers for coordinated action and in build-ing a Socialist Europe”. In short, “what busi-ness is doing now, the leaders of the labourmovement should be doing for the Europeanworking-class” (‘Labour and the CommonMarket’, International Socialism, No.8, Spring1962). By the end of the year, the magazinepublished a letter of dissent from Peter Sedg-wick arguing for opposition to Britain’s entryto the Common Market and another fromJohn Fairhead resigning over the matter (‘Let-ter to Readers’, International Socialism, No.11,Winter 1962). The response — rightly — wasto open the journal to debate.The best contribution was written by John

Palmer, who argued that “In or out of theCommon Market, the problems facing theBritish Labour movement are likely to bevery much the same. Indeed the point is thatthe issues facing us are more similar to thosefacing European and American workers thanat any time in the past 40 years”. Instead ofopposition he argued for a common pro-gramme of trade union demands across Eu-rope (‘The Common Market’, InternationalSocialism, No.12, Spring 1963).Around the same time, IS member Alasdair

MacIntyre published a short piece called‘Going into Europe’, in the anti-communist

magazine Encounter. It was most recentlyreprinted in a collection of his articles editedby Blackledge and Davidson (2008). MacIn-tyre denounced the Labour Party stance as“the party of the English-speaking Empire”,and that “Socialism in One Country” was “asad slogan for a Gaitskell to inherit from aStalin”. He criticised “those socialists who areagainst Franco-German capitalism, but some-how prefer British capitalism” and said hedetested “the anti-German chauvinism of theanti-Common Marketeers”. Although the“last intention of the founders of the Com-mon Market” was “to pave the way for aUnited Socialist States of Europe”, MacIntyresaid he was for taking them by the hand as apreliminary to taking them by the throat.(‘Going into Europe’, Encounter 22, 2, Febru-ary 1963).Ian Birchall wrote a detailed, critical as-

sessment of the debate at the end of 1966. Henoted that “in the period 1961-62, when theentry of Britain into the European CommonMarket was last on the agenda, this journaladopted a position of neither ‘for’ nor‘against’”, a position denounced by social de-mocrats of both a chauvinist and “interna-tionalist” bias. He argued that there was “stilla long way to go before we can speak of aworking-class strategy for Europe”. The twomain questions that had to be answeredwere: “first, what sort of demands can bemade on a European scale and, second, howcan workers’ organisations achieve a greaterdegree of co-ordination and unity?” He ob-served that some European trade unions hadargued for such an approach since the 1950s,raised the issue of migrant workers and crit-icised the approach of the Communist Par-ties. In the circumstances, he suggesting “aunited Left in the present situation cannot bea revolutionary Left; but a non-revolutionaryunited left serves only to obscure the issues”(‘The Common Market and the WorkingClass: An Introduction’, International Social-ism, No.27, Winter 1966-67).When Wilson once more proposed British

membership of the EEC, dissent within ISwas once more visible. An editorial onceagain denounced on the one hand the“phoney internationalist chorus” of businessand on the other the chauvinist, Stalinist“left”, who presented “a common illusoryBritish road to socialism, or, more accurately,the road to British state capitalism” (EditorialBoard Majority, ‘Europe’, International Social-ism, No.28, Spring 1967). The minorityaround Sedgwick argued that “opposition tothe Common Market (which in this countryimplies opposition to British entry) remainsthe only possible stance for socialists” (Edi-torial Board Minority, ‘A Note of Dissent’, In-ternational Socialism, No.28, Spring 1967).As late as the beginning of 1971, Ian Bir-

chall could write that “the Common Markethas probably caused more confusion in theBritish Labour movement than any otherquestion. For the most part, the discussionnow is little more advanced than it was tenyears ago”. The argument still centredaround the wrong question — whether weshould be for or against British entry. The realquestion, that of a revolutionary strategy, wasstill largely neglected. Reviewing a numberof books including Mandel’s Europe versusAmerica, Birchall argued that “strategy can-not precede analysis” and “as yet we have noadequate analysis of what the Common Mar-ket is, of how the social, political and eco-nomic factors interact on each other”.He mocked Mandel for unfurling “the

old banner of the ‘United Socialist Statesof Europe’”, observing that while Britishentry to the Common Market was not in-evitable, “none of the alternatives haveanything better to offer the working class”(‘The Common Market’, International So-cialism, No.46, February-March 1971).

THE STALINIST ROOTS OF THE “LEFT-EXIT” MYTH More online at www.workersliberty.org4

5@workerslibertyWorkers’ Liberty

The SLL had the doubtful honour of pio-neering the stampede of the so-calledrevolutionary left towards the camp of thechauvinists. In an orgy of general high-pitched denunciation of Labour, in 1967, itdenounced EEC entry by way of denounc-ing the Labour Government’s attempt tojoin.Yet at the beginning of 1971, most of the

revolutionary left still had a rudimentary po-litical economy of the EEC and basically ad-equate internationalist orientation. Despitethe nuances and contradictions, this was astance shared across the revolutionary left onthe back of longstanding assessment and po-litical theory. But soon this left came to aban-don that position and accommodate tochauvinism.Before 1971 almost the entire revolutionary

left held an abstentionist position on theCommon Market: in or out, it was about cap-italist integration and not a matter for work-ers to choose a side to support. Although thisleft several key questions begging, it at leasthad the virtue of maintaining a consistent in-ternationalist position, having no truck withchauvinism and championing cross-Europeworker solidarity in the face of bourgeois in-tegration. Why in the space of a year did somuch of the left flip over into a hardened op-position to the EEC, one that saw this left addits voice to the chorus of Labour lefts, Toryrightists and far-right fascists calling forBritain to remain outside of the CommonMarket?The simple explanation is that the revolu-

tionary collapsed into the “common sense”that began to dominate the labour movementand the wider public. Within the labourmovement there was a growing nationalist-chauvinist response, fuelled by Stalinist so-cialism-in-one-country which began to gripmany of the best industrial militants. In thepolitical context of the time, where an un-popular Labour government promoted EECmembership just as it promoted efforts tocurb the power of trade unions; followed bya Tory government elected in 1970 commit-ted to the same agenda of Common Marketmembership and the Industrial Relations Act,the labour movement lurched towards oppo-sition and the revolutionary left simply ca-pitulated to the dominant mood aroundthem.The wider context of British politics helps

to explain why the revolutionary left accom-modated itself to this option. At the time theTreaty of Rome was signed, around two-thirds (64%) of the British population was infavour of efforts towards West Europeanunity, with 12% opposed and almost a quar-ter (24%) undecided. At the time of theBritish government’s first application to join,nearly half (47%) was in favour of West Eu-ropean unity, with the rest evenly split be-tween those opposed and those undecided.Gallup polls asking specifically about EECmembership throughout 1965, 1966 and theearly part of 1967 found a clear majority(ranging from 43% to 71%) in favour of entry.However, in the late 1960s, public supportbegan to decline and by November 1970 itstood at 16%, with 66% against (AndyMullen, The British Left’s ‘Great Debate’ on Eu-rope, 2005).When the Tories unexpectedly got back

into government after the general election on18 June 1970, they immediately set about con-tinuing the Wilson government’s efforts. TheTory manifesto for that election was morecautious about Europe than Labour’s, com-mitting solely “to negotiate, no more, noless”. In May 1971 Heath met with the French

President Pompidou, who signalled that theveto would be lifted and that a third applica-tion would be successful. But Heath had abigger problem, to win a parliamentary ma-jority. Although the Tories had a majority of30 MPs, some fifteen led by Enoch Powellwould vote against Europe whatever the cir-cumstances. With only six Liberals, Heathwould need the support of the Labour Party.But Labour was also divided over Europe.

After fleeting opposition to entry in 1961,Labour had switched to conditional supportin 1962, allowing Wilson to seek entry in gov-ernment. However within the labour move-ment, alongside the disappointment with theLabour government and with its unexpecteddefeat in 1970, the tide was turning againstentry.In January 1971, Labour MP John Silkin put

down an early day motion on behalf of thesoft-left Tribune newspaper, stating that theTories’ entry terms were not in the nationalinterest. This motion obtained the support of103 Labour MPs (Mullen 2005). In May 1971,James Callaghan, pitching for the leadershipof the Labour Party, made a speech in Man-chester attacking the Tories’ approach to Eu-rope. He said it would mean a completerupture of British identity and that monetaryunion would lead to unemployment. He alsoresponded to Pompidou’s comment thatFrench was the language of Europe (not Eng-lish), by stating: “Non, merci beaucoup”.Callaghan caught the mood: in July 1971Labour’s special conference debated entry,with opinion mostly against. In August theLabour NEC pushed for opposition to theTory terms of entry and the October 1971Labour conference voted for opposition toTory plans.If the mood among Labour MPs was

plainly changing, then it was in the unionsthat the most significant shift was occurring.In the late 1940s and early 50s, the TUC Con-gress supported demands for a united Eu-rope, backing both the Schuman plan and theEDC. After the first application to join theEEC in 1962, its position was “wait and see”.However in 1971 Congress voted for opposi-tion to Britain’s entry to the Common Market

on Conservative terms, in 1972 for oppositionto entry in principle and in 1973 oppositionto membership plus support for a boycott ofEU institutions (Mullen, 2005).The TGWU was Britain’s biggest union in

1971 with around two million members. In1961 its biennial delegate conference voted tooppose the Treaty of Rome. During the 1960sit was opposed to Britain’s entry withoutsafeguards, a position it moved from 1967within the Labour Party and the TUC. Theelection of Jack Jones as general secretary in1969 hardened this position of opposition.The TGWU unsuccessfully promoted its pol-icy at the 1970 Labour Conference, one of theclosest votes in Labour Party history. Its 1971biennial delegate conference carried a motiondeclaring that the Tories’ entry terms wereeconomically and politically damaging.The AUEW engineers’ union was Britain’s

second biggest union, around one millionmembers in 1970. Until 1968, the union sup-ported Labour’s applications for entry. Theelection of Hugh Scanlon as President sawthe union become more sceptical towards theEEC. At the 1970 Labour Conference, theAUEW voted to support the TGWU-spon-sored resolution that was opposed to entry.Similarly, the NUM, another of the largestunions with around half a million members,voted at its 1971 conference for the with-drawal of Britain’s application on the basisthat it posed a threat to living standards andnational sovereignty (Mullen, 2005).A key catalyst for transmitting opposition

to the EU through the major unions were themilitants and union bureaucrats associatedwith the Communist Party. Around the timeof Britain’s first application for membership,the CPGB had 34,000 members and 265workplace branches. It organised a cross-union rank and file organisation, the LiaisonCommittee for the Defence of the TradeUnions, which in 1969 could organise a con-ference of 1,700 delegates from many of themost militant workplaces across the UK. Itcould get over 100 members as delegates tothe annual TUC Congress. It was representedby half a dozen members and as many sym-pathisers on the executive of the TGWU, with

substantial representation at the highest lev-els of the AUEW and NUM, with membersamong prominent general secretaries such asKen Gill (John McIlroy, Notes on the Commu-nist Party and Industrial Politics, 1999).The shift of the unions towards opposition

to British entry — propelled by the tradeunion bureaucracy and backed by the CPGB— was the backdrop against which the revo-lutionary left’s lurch in the summer of 1971took place.The revolutionary left on the cusp of the

1970s was significantly larger than it hadbeen since the mid-1920s, when the CPGBwas a real revolutionary force with around10,000 members. In 1964 the SLL had an esti-mated 500 members, IS around 200 membersand Militant about 40 members. After 1968 allgroups grew, and so by the time of theseCommon Market debates the SLL hadaround 2,000, IS a similar number, the IMGaround 400 and Militant maybe 250 members(John McIlroy, ‘Always Outnumbered, AlwaysOutgunned’: the Trotskyists and the TradeUnions, 1999).The lurch in 1971 was almost simultaneous

across the biggest groups on the revolution-ary left. The SLL had already made its switchearlier, but the IMG, Militant and IS wouldfollow suit rapidly by the end of 1971. Theyfell in behind the reformist and Stalinist left,who espoused narrow British nationalism.Most of the revolutionary left bent under itspressure and the fear of isolation from theworkers influenced by the nationalist left.They used slogans like “the Socialist UnitedStates of Europe” as a deodorant to cover thenationalist smell. This would carry on rightthrough the referendum in 1975 and re-mained frozen comatose in most cases to thisday.

Socialist Labour LeagueThe SLL pioneered the left’s shift to op-posing EEC entry some years before therest, denouncing the Labour govern-ment’s attempt to join the Common Mar-ket from 1967.In the June 1970 general election, it made

“No to the European Common Market! Forthe Socialist United States of Europe!” one ofits key slogans. Other literature argued thatnot to vote Labour was “to betray not onlythe British workers but the European work-ers and the entire struggle against the Com-mon Market and for the Socialist UnitedStates of Europe” (Fourth International, 1970-71). This arid mangling of the issues reflectedthe growing political insanity of the SLL,which would fully flower as it became theWRP in 1973.The SLL claimed that the European Com-

mon Market was “a counter-revolutionarycoalition aimed at the working class and in-tended to create conditions in which Euro-pean capitalism can find a basis for survivalin conflict with the United States and Japan”.Revolutionary socialists should oppose “thesinister ‘new order’ represented by the Euro-pean Common Market, which constitutes themain counter-revolutionary strategy of Euro-pean capital against the working class, aim-ing to destroy its conquests” (‘Manifestofrom the 4th Congress of the ICFI, Fourth In-ternational, Summer 1972).The SLL dressed its apocalyptic scenario-

mongering in the perspective of the UnitedSocialist States of Europe. In 1973, it wouldreprint Lenin’s conjunctural article from 1915and a Trotsky article from 1929, claiming that“any ‘unity’ proposed by the capitalist gov-ernments would be a fraud, a desperate actby the weakest capitalist systems of Europe

How the left fell in behind the Stalinists in 1971

A shift in the unions — towards hostility to the EEC — was key. The election of formerCommunist Party member Hugh Scanlon as President of the engineers’ union, AUEW, was part ofthat shift.

to protect themselves from the rigours ofAmerican competition and an alliance of thebig monopolies against the working class”. In chauvinist anti-German terms, they

claimed “such a ‘unity’ came to pass with theThird Reich. Now the capitalist nations of Eu-rope are embarked on yet another attempt tofind a concorde” (Fourth International, Spring1973). It would continue to fantasise aboutCommon Market plans for dictatorship intothe 1975 referendum, as it became more andmore out of touch with reality.

MilitantThe Militant made the most rapid publicconversion to the anti-EEC campaign.Militant supporter Ray Apps (Brighton

Kemptown) spoke at the Labour Party’s Spe-cial Conference on the Common Market on17 July 1971, calling for the rejection of theEEC and in favour of a United Socialist Statesof Europe. It was also Militant supporter DonHughes (Liverpool Walton) who moved aresolution calling for a Socialist United Statesof Europe, which was lost on a card vote, atLabour Party conference, 4 October 1971.Their arguments were derived from a Mil-

itant special pamphlet by Ted Grant, ‘Social-ist answer to the EEC’, first published in 1971and reprinted in 1975. The pamphlet is re-markable because the political economy isscarcely any different from the argumentsGrant made in the 1960s, when supporting anabstentionist position. The Common Market,he said, was “a glorified customs union”, al-though the formation of the EEC was “in-tended to be a political, diplomatic andeconomic counterweight to the crushing pre-ponderance in all these fields of Americanimperialism”. The British ruling class’s sup-port for entry was explained by the changingpattern of trade, away from the Common-wealth and towards Europe.Grant argued that the attitude towards the

EEC of the Labour movement “must be gov-erned by the same class principles as their at-titude towards all the so-called‘international”‘ institutions. Nature of EEC isthe issue—not the terms of entry”. But he de-duced from this a third camp conclusion: “Asagainst the blind alley of negative pro or anti-Marketism, there must be placed the class in-ternationalism of the working class. Theworkers of Britain have interests in commonwith the workers of the Common Market andof all countries. Their interests are opposedto the capitalist class of all countries includ-ing Britain.”The only substantial reason offered by

Grant against entry was tailism: get behindthe Labour and trade union ‘left’ against theright wing. He wrote that it was “significant”that “the overwhelming majority of the sup-porter of entry in the Parliamentary LabourParty and the unions belong to the rightwing”. By contrast, “the attitude of the leftwing of the movement is more in tune withthe deep felt hatred and misgivings of theworkers towards the Tory government”. Theactive rank and file of the Labour and tradeunion movement especially felt “a naturalclass mistrust of the government of big busi-ness”. This rationalisation, jumping on thebandwagon behind the rest of the ‘left’, wasa miserable capitulation to the dominant, na-tionalist and reformist consciousness of theBritish labour movement at the time.

International Marxist GroupThe IMG made the most dramatic shift.This was the group of the closest sup-porters in Britain of Ernest Mandel; it grewto some size in the 1970s, before splittinginto three fragments (all much diminishedsince then) in 1985.In November 1970, some of its members

had attended a “Conference for a Red Eu-

rope”, organised by the Fourth Internationalin Brussels. Just weeks before it began tochange its position, its members had at-tended a demonstration organised in Paris bythe Fourth International on 15/16 May 1971to commemorate the one hundredth an-niversary of the Paris Commune. Reportsfrom this mobilisation had no hint of thechange to come.The volte-face was announced on the cover

of the IMG’s paper Red Mole, 1 June 1971,under the heading ‘The Common Market:Capitalist Solution to Capitalist Problem: For-ward to a Red Europe’ and by an article in-side by Ben Joseph, ‘British Capitalism andEurope’. Joseph made four key arguments,somewhat elliptically and with a fair amountof hedging his bets, as to why the revolu-tionary left should oppose Britain’s entry tothe EEC, which he said was “radically op-posed to the immediate material and theclass interests of the labour movement”.First, Joseph argued that entry was in the

urgent interests of the British ruling class:“The British ruling class is in a hurry: as far asit is concerned entry in the Common Marketis a make or break business.” In grandioseterms he stated that “the specific features ofthe present stage of inter-imperialist compe-tition leave British capital no choice but toseek a solution in the EEC if it hopes to re-main as an independent competitor in worldcapitalism”.Second, Joseph stated that “the EEC is a

capitalist solution to capitalist problems”. Itwas “a response to the intensification of theconcentration and centralisation of capitalunder the rapid capitalist expansion since1945, and the increased level of capitalist pen-etration of US capital in Europe”. These wereabstract truisms were not sufficient to deter-mine the tactical line on British entry.The most crucial argument received only

one line in Joseph’s article, and a negativeone at that. He stated that the alignmentwithin the labour movement put most of theright-wing Labour politicians in favour: “Thepro-Common Market MPs include the mostpowerful right wing members of the shadowcabinet led by Jenkins, Crosland and Healey.”The implication – for this was not spelt out –was that the rest of the left were against andtherefore the role of revolutionaries was to gowith them. This would become a familiartrope.Joseph warned of the dangers of national-

istic flagwaving with its talk of the interestsof the country, and of “economism” i.e. mak-ing opposition solely about the cost of living.However he then appeared to define the roleof the revolutionaries as entering the nation-alist movement in order to compete with thenationalists for working class support and todivert the anger into progressive channels. He wrote: “If the only alternative posed

against the EEC is the purely nationalist so-lution offered by the labour left national prej-udices could be reinforced rather thanweakened. A struggle to democratise the or-ganised labour movement in the spirit of so-cialist internationalism must in the end be theanswer to equipping the working class tocombat the supernational corporations.”Exactly how a small group of revolutionar-

ies could affect such a transformation wasnever spelt out, largely because such an op-eration was impossible and without prece-dent.Joseph’s first article is notable for its equiv-

ocation. Having nudged towards oppositionhe drew back almost immediately, statingthat “we neither support the bankrupt pettybourgeois who fear entry – that would be autopian protest against the nature of capitalitself – nor do we back the big bourgeoisie inthe entry attempts”. The job of revolutionar-ies was to fight “to raise the consciousness ofthe working class by advancing positions

based on its independent interests”. He wenton to outline a range of laudable practicalproposals for building international workingclass cooperation, including an “internationalcongress of workers’ delegates” to work outa strategy. Of course the revolutionarieswould still have to attend such a gatheringwith a line to argue. And this was the prob-lem: Joseph had made the breach – and worsewas to follow.The IMG returned to the issue in the after-

math of Labour’s special conference in July1971. The Red Mole (August 1971) containedan editorial, ‘Labour and the Common Mar-ket’ and a further article by Ben Joseph,‘Labour and the Common Market’. It alsocontained an article by Ernest Mandel,‘Britain Enters the Common Market’ thatbarely registered as opposition to Britishentry. The editorial warned against chauvin-ism and the “capitalist internationalism” ofthe Labour right-wing. However its key mes-sage was to welcome the ferment of discus-sion on entry to the Common Market amongworkers. The IMG argued that revolutionar-ies could “insert” two arguments into thesediscussions: “for working class unity againstcapitalist unity; and for the strategy of a redEurope against the capitalist EEC”.This was a mealy-mouthed way of reiter-

ating the general and unassailable truth thatthe EEC like every other dominant institutionon modern society was capitalist, whichcould in itself could not determine the line totake on British entry. More perniciously, it im-plied that in the face of a strong capitalistclass push for entry, the only stance for work-ing class “unity” had to be opposition. Ofcourse this would be unity of kind, but aunity of British workers against other Euro-pean workers — in other words arounddreadful politics and for a reactionary cause.Joseph’s article was another master class in

the art of political confusion. He denouncedthe Labour Party conference as a “fiasco” andits outcome (a strong feeling of opposition toBritish entry, but no vote on it) was “far froma being a victory for the ‘anti-Common Mar-ket’ forces”, but “a defeat for the workingclass”. It was undoubtedly a defeat of theworking class in both Britain and across Eu-rope, for it signalled that wide sections of thelabour movement would oppose entry onTory terms and many on principle in thename of little-Englander chauvinism.But Joseph gave succour to these argu-

ments. The EEC was about “building a WestEuropean superpower both to match thechallenge of US and Japanese imperialism onthe one hand, and on the other to present aunited capitalist front to the workers’ statesof Eastern Europe”. From the point of viewof European capitalists British entry wouldstrengthen this project. Domestically, “entryinto the EEC emerges as the centrepiece ofTory strategy”. The conclusion about opposi-tion to British entry was left hanging. It wasassumed, with qualified support, but not ex-plicitly and convincingly stated.There was little further coverage in the Red

Mole in the following period, as first theLabour NEC, then the TUC and finally theLabour conference voted for opposition toentry. Soon after Heath would garner a ma-jority for entry in the House of Commonswith significant Labour support. For a yearthe IMG barely spoke of the issue in its paper,with entry more or less a fait accompli.A front page article entitled ‘Labour, Eu-

rope and the Class Struggle’, (Red Mole, 2 Oc-tober 1972) lamented that throughout theprevious year “the main political preoccupa-tion of the Labour left was the reactionaryand chauvinist campaign against Britishentry to the Common Market”. Instead ofseeking ways to develop an autonomous po-litical mobilisation of the working class,“much energy and rhetoric was expended on

rallying to the defence of the sovereignty ofthe British bourgeois state”. Now Britain’sentry was more or less an accomplished fact,“the campaign to take Britain out of the EEClooks as if it will continue along the samelines to distract and divert the Labour leftand the Communist Party from the real is-sues of the class struggle. Such a campaignwould be deeply reactionary – reactionary inthe most literal sense of the term. A return tocapitalism in one country has no advantagesfor the working class. The real alternative tocapitalist unity in the EEC is the struggle fora Red Europe”. It concluded that if entryweakened the traditional political instru-ments of class rule then “this will be an un-mitigated advantage in the task of creating anindependent working class politics – inde-pendent, that is to say, of bourgeois politics,above all of bourgeois politics in their parlia-mentarist and chauvinist guise”.This third campist stance was reinforced by

an article by Andrew Jenkins, ‘Labour Partyin Perspective’, in the next issue of the paper(18 October 1972). It denounced Gaitskell adecade earlier for playing “the lowest com-mon denominator of Labourism – national-ism”. The ‘populist’ ideology and patrioticranting of many of the Labour leaders suchas Foot, Jay and Shore brought them close toEnoch Powell. Jenkins argued that while thecentral debate was clearly whether or not towithdraw from the EEC, “it was equally clearthat this is not the central issue for the work-ing class”. Socialists “must be opposed to thecapitalist Common Market, but this can onlybe answered by a socialist Europe and not bythe twilight fantasies of chauvinism”.The IMG appears to have been stung by ar-

guments on the left from those such as Work-ers’ Fight (a forerunner of the AWL) for anabstentionist position, and from Marxist in-tellectuals such as Tom Nairn who favouredBritish entry as an antidote to chauvinism.Quintin Hoare reviewed Nairn’s essay, ‘TheLeft against Europe’, published in New LeftReview in September-October 1972 (and lateras a book). In Red Mole, (11 December 1972),Hoare accepts Nairn’s critique of chauvinismbut denounces his support for British entryto the EEC as a reversion to the determinismof Second International Marxism. This was apoor response. It was a virtue of the Marxismof pre-1914 that it sought understand the ten-dencies of capitalism and how these im-proved the terrain for the fight for socialism.Where the SPD and other erred was to col-lapse behind one or other ruling bourgeoisfaction. The revolutionary left committed acomparable error by opposing entry, implic-itly backing the most reactionary sections ofthe British bourgeoisie against its more far-sighted sections.

International SocialistsThe most theatrical if belated volte-faceover the EEC was the lurch taken by theInternational Socialists (IS).It voted overwhelmingly at its 1970 con-

ference against a proposal to oppose Com-mon Market entry. At Easter 1971 apoorly-worded motion putting the same po-sition was again overwhelmingly carried. ByJune 1971, IS leaders began to adapt to thedominant mood among the vocal militants inthe labour movement hostile to the CommonMarket. Tony Cliff and Chris Harman wroteTheses on the Common Market to sway the ISNational Committee to reverse the Easterconference decision.In a strict reading, the Theses did not chal-

lenge the abstentionist position in principle,but only made a tactical proposal to vote withthe left in some circumstances. Cliff and Har-man wrote: “Our aim in union conferencesand the like should be… making clear bothour opposition to the Common Market, andour separation from the confused chauvinism

THE STALINIST ROOTS OF THE “LEFT-EXIT” MYTH More online at www.workersliberty.org6

The revolutionary left grew significantlybetween its volte-face over the CommonMarket in 1971, Britain’s accession to theEEC on 1 January 1972, and the Labourgovernment’s referendum on membershipon 6 June 1975.However this growth was not accompa-

nied by greater political clarity, but rathercharacterised by chasing after legitimacy onthe industrial front. This accommodation wasdisastrous for the internationalist conscious-ness among working class militants in Britainand ultimately for the fate of the revolution-ary left itself.

International Marxist GroupThe IMG had leapt early though tentativelyin 1971, only to move back toward ab-stentionism in 1972 when Britain’s entrywas a fait accompli.Its self-doubt did not last. When the EEC

referendum was announced at the beginningof 1975, the IMG’s paper Red Weekly devoteditself to opposing entry. The front-page article(‘”No” to the Capitalists’ Common Market’,30 January 1975) stated that staying in theCommon Market was “a life-and-death ques-tion for Britain’s capitalists” and for that rea-son “the working class should be opposed tothe Common Market”. The EEC was “a cap-italist institution, designed to strengthen thepower of the ruling classes of the differentcountries within it”. The opposition was un-equivocal: “No to the capitalists’ CommonMarket — on any terms.” The article ac-cepted that British capitalism would be“worse off” out of the EEC. However thepoint was “there is no solution to the prob-lems of the working class under capitalism”.A double-paged article in the same issue by

Mick Gosling and Steve Kennedy, ‘A MostUncommon Market’ (30 January 1975) boiledthe reason for advocating a Britain out posi-tion in the forthcoming referendum to a curi-ous sort of lesser evilism: “anything whichweakens it [the Common Market] tilts the re-lation of class forces in favour of the workingclass on both an international and nationallevel”. They promised that in any campaignagainst the EEC that involved common ac-tivity with the Labour left and CP, theywould “struggle against all such nationalistand chauvinist positions”.Gosling and Kennedy explained why the

IMG could not support an abstentionist po-sition. Firstly, they argued that “the EEC isnot simply a weapon of European capitalistsagainst their American counterparts; it isabove all an institution of imperialism on a

world scale”. Why this meant outright oppo-sition to the EEC was never articulated. Themost important objection was that “the fightfor a United Socialist States of Europe in theabstract leaves any campaign against theCommon Market in the hands of the chau-vinists”. In an explicit re-run of the pointmade in 1971, the IMG argued that “the job ofrevolutionaries is to intervene to transformthe actual struggle against British member-ship into a fight against the EEC itself, and inthis way lay the basis for a real campaign fora United Socialist States of Europe”. This wasfantasy: the United Socialist States of Europewas not on the referendum ballot paper, norwas it explained how a “No” vote might gal-vanise the struggle for it among British work-ers, never mind the wider force of workersacross Europe.Gosling and Kennedy dismissed concerns

about chauvinism, claiming that “the factthat the extreme right has much to gain froma campaign against British membership ofthe EEC is no reason for revolutionaries toabstain on the issue”. The rest of the piecewas pure puff about building a united frontof workers’ organisations against the EEC,calling a Congress of European Labour to de-cide an alternative to the Common Marketand, with an added spice of poison, taking upthe call by Tribune “for increased trade withCOMECON (the ‘Soviet bloc’ trading organ-isation)”.These arguments were repeated in the

months leading to the vote in June 1975.James Duckworth argued in ‘How not toFight the EEC’, (Red Weekly, 30 January 1975)that “the collapse of the Common Marketwould considerably weaken world imperial-ism, and it is on this basis alone that social-ists campaign for Britain’s withdrawal”.A rather tragic intervention came from

Ernest Mandel, whose political economy hadlargely spoken against opposition to the EEC.In an article ‘Against the Europe of theBosses! Towards a Socialist Europe!’ (RedWeekly No.102, 22 May 1975: 6), he repeatedthe general points about capitalist concentra-tion, the trend towards international inter-penetration of capital on a European scaleand inter-imperialist rivalry. But instead ofdrawing from these assessments the logic ofan abstentionist or “Yes” vote, Mandel toedthe line with bandwagonist and tailist argu-ments.Mandel argued that the basic question was

“not ‘what are the long term economic trendsof development of capitalism if it survives’,but ‘what are the trends of the class struggle

today in Britain and in Europe and how, bybasing ourselves on these trends of the classstruggle, can we intervene in the CommonMarket debate and referendum in such a wayas to help and further struggles to overthrowcapitalism”’. In a classic case of adapting tothe milieu, he argued “all the big organisa-tions of the employing class in Britain andEurope ask you to vote ‘Yes’ in this referen-dum… [and] practically without exceptionpractically all the militant sectors of theBritish working class are against Britain stay-ing inside the Common Market, and expressin however confused and wrong a way aclass opposition to this capitalist outfit”. Headded that if “the ‘No’ were to win, it wouldbe a political disaster for the bourgeoisie”.Much of the reporting in Red Weekly ex-

posed the reactionary nature of the “GetBritain Out Campaign”. Red Weekly reportedthat at Folkstone, Clive Jenkins of ASTMSunion shared a platform with Tory racistEnoch Powell. At Bristol, the speakers in-cluded both Tribunite MP Ron Thomas andfar right Monday Club Tory MP RichardBody. As for the audiences, “they have gen-erally consisted of Communist Party mem-bers, Tory backwoodsmen, National Frontsupporters, and the odd, rather bewilderedtrade unionist” (‘Croydon Co-op membersfight for socialist campaign’, 20 February1975).A photo caption the following month

stated that “rank-and-file pressure may haveforced Broad Left member of the AUEW ex-ecutive Bob Wright to back down from ap-pearing on the same platform with EnochPowell, but that did not stop him from ap-pearing alongside such enemies of the work-ing class movement as businessman JamesTowler and Monday Club MP Richard Bodyat a Get Britain Out Campaign (GBOC) rallyin Manchester last Sunday” (Red Weekly, 6March 1975).Andrew Jenkins explained that the joint

chair of the Get Britain Out Campaign wasRichard Body, while a full time worker forthis campaign was Peter Clarke, previouslypersonal secretary to Powell. The vice-chairof the GBOC was Sir Ian MacTaggart, a mem-ber of the rightist Society for Individual Free-dom. The Anti-Common Market League(ACML) and the Common Market Safe-guards Campaign had fused, bringing to-gether figures like Tory MP Neil Marten andLabour MP Douglas Jay (‘Fascists have a fieldday’, Red Weekly No.94, 27 March 1975: 2).Another photo the following month showedbanners on a workers’ demonstration pro-claiming “British textiles IN; Foreign textilesOUT; Bolton District Weavers” and “Cut Im-ports to Save Textile Industry. Bolton DistrictWeavers” (Red WeeklyNo.95, 3 April 1975: 3).

Yet the IMG did not change course duringthe referendum campaign. Its final paper be-fore the vote was headlined: ‘No to theBosses’ Europe. No to Wilson’s Tory Policies’(Red Weekly, 29 May 1975). The front page ad-vertised an anti-EEC demonstration on Sat-urday 31 May 1975, assembling at Hyde ParkCorner. The demo was called by the Militant-led Labour Party Young Socialists, withspeakers including Labour MPs Joan Lesterand Eddie Loyden from Merseyside, as wellas Militant editor Peter Taaffe.A double-paged spread inside set out the

IMG’s case for supporting British withdrawalfrom the EEC. The article, ‘The EEC Referen-dum: 1. Why “No”’ (29 May 1975) expresseda number of key reasons: first, the CommonMarket represented “an attempt by the capi-talist class to solve their political and eco-nomic problems at the expense of theworking class”; second, the aim of the EECwas “to try to create a supernational Euro-pean state in order to swing the balance offorces in favour of capitalism”. Third, alongwith NATO, the Common Market was “anintegral part of imperialism’s military andpolitical alliance against the workers’ states”;fourth, it strengthened the capitalist class ineach of the EEC countries against its ownworking class; and fifth a ‘No’ vote in the ref-erendum was “just one of the practical andconcrete steps necessary to oppose a centralstrategy for survival of the capitalist class”.However the critical reason was given in

another article, ‘The EEC Referendum: 2.What are the Labour leaders up to?’ (29 May1975). It stated: “Every single important bodyin the labour movement is on record againstthe EEC.” In short, because the bulk of theLabour and trade union bureaucracy, as wellas a visible section of the industrial militants,who had never been offered a principled al-ternative, appeared to back withdrawal, theIMG believed it should go along with them.Although the IMG criticised the ‘left’ for itsnationalism, it nevertheless agreed to tail thebureaucracy, to support its conclusions andto provide a ‘Marxiant’ rationalisation.The IMG failed to reassess and was unre-

pentant in the face the two-to-one yes vote inJune 1975. The editorial of the first Red Weeklyafter the vote, ‘Common Market “debate —Not over yet’ (12 June 1975) stated that theEEC vote was “a defeat for the workingclass”, even though it accepted that “a ma-jority of the working class is in favour or in-different to the EEC”. Its logic was that “a‘No’ vote would have threatened the eco-nomic strategy of the ruling class” and theEEC was “a central instrument of world im-perialism”. It wished Britain had come out ofthe EEC because “the whole economy wouldhave been thrown into a most convulsive and

7@workerslibertyWorkers’ Liberty

of the Tribunites, CP etc. However, if we aredefeated on such a stand, we should thenvote with the Tribune-Stalinists in oppositionto entry.” A substantial minority of the Na-tional Committee opposed the Theses, butthey were accepted.The slide towards plain-and-simple anti-

EECism began almost immediately. DuncanHallas, the IS national secretary began mak-ing propaganda in Socialist Worker (229)against the group’s traditional abstentionistposition, caricaturing it as remaining neutralin the class struggle. He argued for “No to theCommon Market” on the grounds that itwould be a defeat for the Tories, the party ofbig business. The position was challenged byWorkers’ Fight, (the Trotskyist tendencywithin IS): Sean Matgamna and Phil Semppublished a document, IS and the CommonMarket (24 July 1971), which set out the cri-tique in depth (Permanent Revolution No.3,1975).Chris Harman provided the detailed ratio-

nalisation in a long article, ‘The Common

Market’, International Socialism (Autumn1971). He offered three reasons for opposi-tion:“1. Entry is being used, alongside other

measures, to hit at working class living stan-dards and conditions… 2. Entry is aimed torationalise and strengthen capitalism. It is anattempt to solve certain of capitalism’s prob-lems by capitalist methods… 3. The rational-isation of capitalism [is] no longerprogressive in any sense, it also speeds up thedevelopment of intrinsically destructiveforces…”Politically, this was exceptionally weak. In

or out of the EEC, working class living stan-dards were under attack. Capitalist rational-isation had gone on since the dawn ofcapitalism, but revolutionaries had not re-jected technological change, or defendedsmall business against capitalist concentra-tion. A further claim that the EEC was “re-ally” about a military alliance was tenuous atbest.In fact Harman fell back on the negative ar-

gument. He wrote: “The defeat of the Torygovernment, in the present context of grow-ing working class opposition to its policies,would give a new confidence and militancyto workers”. He added that “revolutionariesin the labour movement have to make it ab-solutely clear that they do not abstain on sucha question. We are for the defeat of the To-ries…”Allied to the negative “defeat the Tories”

was the prelude to the real justification: adap-tation to the milieu. Harman argued that“those trade unionists who oppose govern-ment policies on the Industrial Relations Bill,productivity deals, etc., also tend to be op-posed to the Market”. Underlying this align-ment was that “many rank-and-file militantsinstinctively distrust the government’s entrypolicy. They feel that it will be used toweaken their position”.Opposition also involved traditional IS loy-

alists. Nagliatti, Foot, Higgins, Pritchard, Ed-wards, and Carlsson. all prominent ISleaders, wrote a document, ‘The Common

Market and the IS Group’. Loyalist Ian Bir-chall challenged Harman’s position in a “Re-joinder” published in the same issue ofInternational Socialism. He restated IS’s tradi-tional position, unpicking Harman’s ratio-nalisation. Birchall identified the real reason,responding acidly: “We have to relate to theseforms of distorted class consciousness; wecertainly do not adapt to them.”Within IS, the “Trotskyist Tendency”

(Workers’ Fight, forerunner of the AWL) chal-lenged the leadership, demanding a specialconference. This required support from one-fifth of the IS branches to get a recall confer-ence — 23 branches. Although the minoritygot sufficient support, there was still no con-ference. The IS national committee put an ar-bitrary deadline beyond which branchescould not declare for the recall conference. The IS executive committee admitted to

22 branches, but denied receiving notifi-cation for the final one. Instead, the Trot-skyist Tendency was expelled (“defused”)in December 1971.

1975 and all that

THE STALINIST ROOTS OF THE “LEFT-EXIT” MYTH More online at www.workersliberty.org8

shattering crisis”.The IMG accepted that in the short term,

“both the British and European working classget a few crumbs by staying in Europe, com-pared to any capitalist alternative outside”. Itrecognised that “hardly anyone” believedthat British capitalism could go it alone: “Ar-guments about ‘national sovereignty’ ap-pears increasingly archaic and unreal. Theywere in fact the kiss of death to the anti-EECcampaign.” It therefore explained the resultby recourse to the old cod “Leninist” argu-ment, namely that “the attachment of certainprivileged layers of the working class to theimperialist state reflects the fact that theworking class has received material benefitsfrom the imperialist policies of its own rulingclass”. The IMG never bothered to explainhow support for “No” would help breakthese “privileged” workers from the hold ofimperialism.Far from advocating participation in the in-

stitutions of the EEC, the IMG’s solution wasthe working class movement was to maintain“an attitude of complete hostility to the Mar-ket, refusing to cooperate with or participatein any of its institutions, and seeking to re-verse the referendum at the earliest possiblemoment”. This was necessary, otherwise “thecampaign against the Market will in futurefall into the hands of the Powellites and otherextreme rightists who this time round werepushed well to the sidelines”. This was arecipe for further capitulation to nationalismand a further weakening of internationalismwithin the British labour movement.

MilitantMilitant carried the same plodding atti-tude into the 1975 referendum.Grant, noted in ‘Capitalist Common Mar-

ket — No! For a Socialist United States of Eu-rope’, (Militant special, May 1975) that “allenemies of the Labour movement and theworking class are vociferously and hysteri-cally striving to ensure a ‘Yes’ vote”. By con-trast, “the instinctive rejection of the capitalistCommon Market by all the basic forces of theLabour movement was an enormous stepforward”. He wrote “the overwhelming ma-jority of the active rank and file of the tradeunions, Co-ops, and Constituency LabourParties are against for class reasons. Most ofthe shop stewards, the activists in the tradeunion branches and ward Labour Parties aredecisively against. They distrust a policy en-dorsed by the bosses and their stooges”.Grant went through the motions of con-

demning the chauvinism of the Labour andtrade union “left”, while promising “we donot align ourselves with the ‘anti-foreign’ranters like Powell and Frere-Smith”. How-ever for all the puff about an independentworking class campaign, the most prominentevent was a demonstration on 31 May 1975,which involved “2,000 working class inter-nationalists who marched through the centreof London last Saturday calling for an ongo-ing campaign to build a socialist Europe”(Militant, 6 June 1975). Speakers at the Trafal-gar Square rally demonstration included Mil-itant supporter Nick Bradley, who sat onLabour’s National Executive as the represen-tative of the Young Socialists and Militant ed-itor Peter Taaffe.Despite the two-to-one majority in favour

of staying in the EEC, Militant did not re-assess. In its history, the Rise of Militant (1995),Taaffe plays up its warnings about chauvin-ism but still justifies the approach.

International SocialistsBy the time of the referendum in 1975, theInternational Socialists had grown sub-stantially, probably doubling its member-ship since the nationalist turn over theCommon Market in 1971.It had not reassessed on the EEC after two

years of entry and in January 1975, the IS na-tional committee unanimously decided “tocampaign for a NO vote around the slogansNo to the Common Market, No to nationalchauvinism, Yes to the United Socialist Statesof Europe” (Chris Harman, Socialist Worker, 1March 1975).The line and the arguments for it were a

pale repetition of those first aired in 1971.Hallas, the editor of International Socialismmagazine, stated in the ‘Notes of the Month’for February 1975 that the group’s stance wasdetermined by the alignment of forces: “FOR:virtually the whole of big business, the Toryparty, the right and centre of the LabourParty, the trade union right wing and thewhole ‘establishment’ network; AGAINST:The Labour lefts, the CP, the trade union leftsand some of the centre plus the ‘populist’right (including the NF) and a smallish num-ber of Tory dissidents and, probably, the var-ious nationalists”.Hallas argued that “essentially, in the ref-

erendum campaign all those with an ‘estab-lishment’ outlook and perspective will belined up against all the ‘dissident’ trends in-cluding the far right”. However, “the heartand muscle of the anti camp will be the leftof the labour movement”. Just as in the Ger-man re-armament debate (1954), “a mud-dled, opportunistic and semi-nationalist leftwill find itself aligned with out and out chau-vinists and racists against the main politicalforces of British capitalism”.After garnishing the poison with apple-pie

slogans in favour of the Socialist United Stateof Europe, socialist internationalism andworking class unity (presumably in Britain,rather than across Europe), and salutarywarnings against British chauvinism and‘popular fronts’ with Tories, Powellites orFascists, Hallas finished with a flourish. TheCommon Market referendum, he wrote, “is apossible source of a ‘Bevanite’ type of left-wing movement led by left-reformist MPsand their trade union allies”. Out of a reac-tionary movement might come progress –hence revolutionaries had to be there to jumpon the bandwagon. It would not take long for

Socialist Worker (1 February 1975) to lamentthat the no campaign had meant in practice:“unions forking out money to pay for meet-ings for an open racist like Powell, and leftwingers giving the National Front and otherextreme right wing groups an air of re-spectability by working with them”.Still the IS leadership stuck with the line

Chris Harman argued in Socialist Worker (1March 1975) that for IS to abstain “would beto line up with the extreme right wing withinthe working class movement”. This wouldapparently “play into the hands of the Com-munist Party leaders, who would be able pre-tend that their own disgusting chauvinismand alliances with Powell were the only al-ternative to the Jenkinsites and the Market”.Exactly how the far smaller IS would distin-guish itself from the CPGB when it agreedwith its essential political conclusion wasnever explained. Instead Socialist Worker, (8March 1975) lapsed back on negativism: “ANO vote, that is to say a defeat for big busi-ness, Tory, Liberal, and right wing Labourcoalition on than in last year’s elections. Thearena for our internationalist message is in-side the NO camp. That is this issue is in ourinterest. We are part of the left. We can nomore abstain in this confrontation where thevast majority of class-conscious workers are.That is where we belong”.This line was repeated in another Notes of

the Month, ‘The Common Market’, Interna-tional Socialism (April 1975). The anti-EECcamp consisted “very largely of the Labourleft and the trade union left and centre. Its op-position is based on muddled nationalisticand reformist arguments, although only theCommunist Party has descended to thecruder forms of nationalist demagogy”.The place of socialists was, “of course,

firmly and unequivocally in the NO camp,alongside the great majority of class-con-scious workers. But, equally, it is the duty ofsocialists to argue the internationalist casewithin that camp”. The rest of the coveragerehashed the political economy of recent Eu-ropean capitalism and even found a place ofsome figures on migrant workers. None of it

was remotely adequate to repair the damagecaused by abandoning an independent work-ing class perspective.

ConclusionsThe basic Marxist assessment of capital-ist European integration, based aroundcapitalist concentration, the interpenetra-tion of capital and its states, pointed to-wards at least a position of not opposingthe process but building working class in-ternational solidarity out of it.This meant at least abstention in any vote;

it might have meant critical support for it, de-pending on the precise forms. This classicTrotskyist position, consistent with the atti-tudes and traditions of revolutionary Marx-ism over decades, was coherently held bymost of the British revolutionary left until thelate 1960s or early 1970s.Instead, the bulk of the revolutionary left

at the time collapsed politically into the “No”camp, dominated by Labour reformists andStalinists, behind which stood the reactionarysections of the British bourgeoisie. Tailism be-hind these forces, garnished with abstractand irrelevant fig-leaves such as “SocialistUnited States of Europe” was tagged onto the“No” message. This was welded togetherwith a negativist “defeat the Tories/busi-ness/Labour government” position equating“getting out of the EEC” with the interests ofthe (British) working class. It was a collapseinto chauvinism, disregarding relations withother European workers in the name of ap-parently giving British capital a bloody nose.Workers’ Fight — a forerunner of the AWL

— fought this at the time and has fought itsince. In the forthcoming referendum the rev-olutionary left could be a voice of sanity, ral-lying the labour movement to oppose theTory backwoods, while fighting for democ-racy and social welfare across Europe.But to play this role, it needs to learn

from the past, understand the mistakesand chart a course consistent with thehistoric and material interests of theworking class across Europe and theglobe.

Mainstream “In” campaign in 1975 and in 2016