HAS become monplace to argue that there are three strategic demands which must feature Labour's election manifesto (2) the alternative economic strategy and (3) withdrawing from the common market.
These demands — so long sought and fought over should not be in question. They represent Labour's response to militarism, monetarism and the dominance of the EEC by market forces and multinational capital. They represent the case for disarmament, economic development and the restoration of economic democracy in the sense of regaining autonomy. for people and parliament in key aspects of European and international affairs.
Nonetheless, one of the problems which the Labour Party mobilising mass support policies for peace, jobs freedom is avoiding the impression - not due entirely to the Tory press - that our strategy amounts La position of being monetarism, anti-Market and antibomb. We risk giving the false impression that three policies are isolationist in a world of increasing tension.
It is crucial that we take advantage of progress which has been made in the last two or three years for joint policies against nuclear weapons: and for the transformation of the economic crisis mobilised and supported by the main parties of the European Left.
European Nuclear Disarmament The campaign for disarmament must be one of the lynch pins of a socialist foreign policy. The deployment since the 1960's of an inSocialist Action comin GM COOKSON nuclear also bloc Soviet tional sumer expectations nor carry the debt of failing modernisation in Eastern countries such as Poland.
Union itself imports modern technology through the circuits Western multinational companies.
European Economic Cooperation Such double standards from the West trading and lending • to a regime allegedly bent on world domination -must be challenged by a socialist policy Europe wide. Just European nuclear free zone would not be real unless it included both West and East Europe, so European econcomic cooperation will not be genuine unless it does the same.
Economic monetary among some of the Western European countries is unachievable on the supranagrounds favoured federalists. But economic monetary cooperation between and West Europe is an imperative that cannot be ignored if we wish to underpin peace with prosperity, matching increased security through a nuclear free zone with increased security of income and welfare for European countries.
By such criteria the so-called European Economic Community or EEC IS nothing of the kind. From a failed Defence Community posed in 1954, and a European Political Community proposed a year later, the EEC has achieved a cartel for coal and steel, little more than OECD on trade liberalisation, • no enforcable policies against multinational companies. Its common agricultural policy swallows four fifths of its budget to the benefit of the large scale wheat and milk farmers in the north and against small scale Mediterranean producers.
In fact the CAP is a reverse regional policy, while the Regional Fund and Social Funds Community together represent less than a tenth of the EEC budget. This is less than one per cent of Community GDP, and less than a tenth of the Regional Fund changes hands between countries. Put differently, only about 1/100th of one ceni Community GDP redistributed between member states. There has been much talk of the need for a Marshall Aid programme for the lower income EEC countries. But Marshall Aid amounted to some 4 per cent of US GDP over the four years 1948 to 1952. Even a ten fold increase in the regional and social funds would not Mitterand, France The of register a similar effect, while the funds are shrinking share of the EEC budget. Such realities more than a quarter century after the signing of the Rome Treaty couraging more realistic analysis of the costs and benefits of EEC membership by socialists in not only Britain and Denmark, and Portugal.
as East projoint Frame. sweeen - not increasing as a orthodoxies.
nationalism but also in Greece, Spain behalf can join such countries in their counter offensive against monetarism, backing their ideological challenge to capitalist This is crucial for a socialist foreign policy. It is the positive politics of interrather than negative posture of 'leaving Europe'.
Out of Crisis So how can Labour gain the mobilisation for economic recovery with Euro pean parties of the Left while also leav. ing the EEC? Can we not only defend the case for the Alternative Economic Strategy but also extend it through joint action with the new governments of the European Left?
We now have the essentials of such a new joint strategy by which we can leave the Common Market but join with trade unionists, political parties and governments in a wider Europe In Paris in January 1983 the Prime Ministers of Finland, Sweden, Austria Greece, Spain and France declared that President Mitterand of France on thei would take a manifesto demands for transformation of the economic crisis to the Williamsburg economic summit in May.
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