Tomorrow, the great Arthur Scargill - formerly of the National Union of Mineworkers, now President of the Socialist Labour Party - will be speaking in Birmingham about Brexit.
From the SLP Post Brexit Statement:
"The SLP has always recognised the EU as an engine of free-market globalised
capitalism. Membership of the EU has inflicted horrendous economic, social and political
damage to all working people trapped within it. As for Britain, 90% of our manufacturing
and key industries have been wiped out with our health, education and welfare provision
steadily wiped out. We see the damage everywhere around us in the need for food banks
and campaigns to protect homeless families and hundreds of individuals sleeping rough,
whilst high-cost sky-scrapers shoot up to house billionaires and blight our cities.
"The decision by the British people to 'come out' of the unelected and unaccountable bastion
of the European Union allows us to renew the fight to restore all the industries and services
privatised by Tory and Labour Governments to public ownership – but this time we must
campaign for true common and social ownership and control: in our badly damaged
National Health Service; our social services including care for our elderly and children; in our
education system; and we must demand the restoration of council housing, owned and
controlled by local authorities.
"The vote to leave the European Union is a challenge to Britain's trade union leaders to
reflect the views of their members on issues such the abolition of Trident and opposition to
nuclear power and fracking, alongside job protection, wages, zero-hours contracts, agency
working and privatisation. The Socialist Labour Party has consistently pointed out that EU
membership has eroded – not protected – workers' rights.
"European Union directives and European Court of Justice decisions have robbed us of hardwon
free collective bargaining, the right to strike, and attacked our pension rights. We must
now all join a fight to overturn these injustices – and Britain's trade unions must give a lead
in recovering the rights our forebears fought hard to achieve."
(Full Statement HERE)
The SMPBI joins with the SLP, CPB-ML, CPGB-ML and other Socialist organisations who understand that the EU is a Capitalists' playground, in calling for the Referendum result to be respected and implemented now!
We have a future outside the EU. We have no future in a stitched-up 'remain in all but name' so-called 'deal' approved by Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
In the spirit of Comradeship and Solidarity, we call on members who can get to the SLP meeting in Birmingham to show your support for the hero of the Miners' Strike, and defender of the Working Class. Details of the meeting can be found at the SLP website:
http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/events.html
Socialism is the past, Socialism is the future. It is an aberration that Socialism is not the present. We are here to correct this tragedy. We fight for a Free British Isles: a Socialist British Isles. Our vision is the British Isles of Social Justice: the British Isles of National Freedom. It is the British Isles freed from Capitalism, Liberalism & Trotskyism.
8 comments:
"European Union directives and European Court of Justice decisions have robbed us of hardwon free collective bargaining, the right to strike, and attacked our pension rights. We must now all join a fight to overturn these injustices – and Britain's trade unions must give a lead in recovering the rights our forebears fought hard to achieve."
How do myths like these become spread around until they are taken as hard facts? Just a tiny bit of research would at least serve to raise some important questions - if not to undermine these myths completely.
Example: Collective bargaining, works councils and mass strikes are still alive and well in Europe - unlike in ultra-Thatcherist U.K.
See: https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Countries/Germany/Collective-Bargaining
See also this video on works councils and multinational companies operating in the EU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLtOPtDpCc&feature=youtu.be
Overall, 60-80% percent of employees in the EU are covered by collective bargaining agreements, though the percentage varies considerably from country to country and can be much lower than this in some countries - as those in the UK well know!
Further information on collective bargaining from the European Observatory of Working Life:
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/industrial-relations-dictionary/collective-bargaining
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