Paul Anderson examines the
tensions underlying Labour's apparent unity on European policy
Giles Radice, the Labour MP for
Durham North, describes Labour's change of policy on Europe as "perhaps
the most profound and important in its post-war history"; the Sunday Times
quotes with approval a Tory backbencher calling it "the most spectacular
conversion since St Paul saw the light".
Indeed, party policy is emphatically
not what it was in the early eighties. Then Labour called for British
withdrawal from the European Community. Now it is in favour in principle of
economic and monetary union (EMU) and European political union (EPU). It has
spent much of the past year berating the Government for its lukewarm attitude
in the Intergovernmental Conferences on EMU and EPU in the run-up to next
month's summit in Maastricht. The Labour message today is that Britain under
the Tories lags behind the other 11 EC countries on the single European
currency, the European central bank, the Social Charter, greater powers for the
European Parliament, qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers and
expansion of the EC.
As Neil Kinnock, Labour’s leader,
put it this week: “It is essential that we are central to the process in the
Community in order to serve the vital national interests of the United Kingdom
in a future which is inextricably linked with that of the rest of Europe."
It would be wrong, however, to
exaggerate the extent of the transformation. Labour's position falls a long
way short of endorsing a federal Europe. Indeed, it shows all the signs of
being a compromise between Euro-enthusiasts and Euro-sceptics in the party
leadership. It is skilfully constructed to allow everyone in the Parliamentary
Labour Party but a handful of out-and-out federalists and diehard anti-Marketeers
to interpret it as an endorsement of his or her own position - and it is quite
feasible that Labour's unity behind it will hold until the general election.
But it is a compromise nonetheless.
The commitment to a European
central bank is qualified by a call for an enhanced role for Ecofin, the
Council of Economic and Finance Ministers. If Labour had its way, Ecofin would
set the external exchange rate of the new single currency. According to the
Shadow Chancellor, John Smith, this week, this means that interest rates would
be determined in the medium term by "a dialogue between Ecofin and the
central bank".
The formulation is vague (although
probably not vague enough to be acceptable to several EC countries, notably
Germany, that want the central bank to be fully independent). But it is
adequate to secure support not just from the PLP's growing band of Euro-enthusiasts
but also from those MPs, many of them centre-left former anti-Marketeers, who
are worried that a central bank will be politically unaccountable and
inevitably fiscally conservative.
Similarly, the agreement in
principle to a single currency is hedged around with the proviso that
"real economic convergence" takes place beforehand. Again, the phrase
is indeterminate enough for those who want EMU in any event but just enough to
placate the large number of PLP doubters who believe that, in its current state
(and at the pound's current valuation), the British economy simply cannot cope
with EMU.
On political union, the story is
much the same. Labour's endorsement of greater powers for the European
Parliament and qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers on social
and environment policy is supported as a small step forward by
Euro-enthusiasts; most Euro-sceptics are satisfied by its rejection of a "European
federal super-state" and insistence that the EC be expanded as well as
deepened.
In the same vein, Labour's firm
stance against a European defence community pleases both the majority of the
Atlanticist Right, which is concerned not to undermine NATO, and the
tendentially (but these days not overtly) nuclear-pacifist Left, which does not
want the creation of a West European nuclear super-power.
It is a measure of the success of
the compromise on Europe that only 16 anti-Market Labour MPs refused to back
the Labour leadership's amendment to the Government's motion on Maastricht in
the Commons last Thursday. A mix of hard-left Campaign Group members and
Atlanticist Keynesian right-wingers, they do not constitute a coherent group.
Most would agree with the assertion
of Peter Shore, the veteran right-wing Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney,
that "we shall find ourselves handcuffed and chained under economic and
monetary union. No instruments of policy will be left for us to use". Most
would also accept his argument that British democratic self-government is
under threat. But the Campaign Group anti-Marketeers – now close to becoming a
minority even in the Campaign Group – are repelled by what they see as the
anti-Market Labour right's nationalist rhetoric, its assumption that common
European foreign policies are wrong because they would downgrade Britain’s
alliance with the United States, and its willingness to work with Tory
right-wingers for a referendum on EMU. The Labour anti-Marketeers are unlikely
to be able to put up much of a fight in the next few months.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that
party peace on Europe will be maintained much beyond the election, whether
Labour wins or loses, if indeed .it lasts that long. Already, politicians at
every level of the party express worries, mostly off the record, about the
ambiguities of the current policy.
By no means all of them are Eurosceptics.
Although Mr Kinnock is scathing about federalism ("No one serious is
arguing for it," he told a press conference this week) there are plenty of
Labour MPs, from Ken Livingstone and Harry Barnes on the hard left, through
several senior shadow cabinet figures on the centre-left, to the traditional right-wing
Euro-enthusiasts, who are now prepared more or less explicitly to advocate
federalism, in some cases even expressing support for a European defence
community.
If the government manages to
steal Labour's pro-Europe clothes by finding a way to sign the EPU and EMU
treaties at Maastricht, there will be significant pressure for Labour to stop
hedging its bets and adopt an even more pro-EC position before the general election.
But there will also be countervailing:
pressure from Eurosceptics, who, although diminished in number, remain a
significant force even in the Shadow Cabinet. Gerald Kaufman, Bryan Gould,
Margaret Beckett and Michael Meacher are discernibly cooler towards the EC than
many of their colleagues, and will do what they can to resist embracing Europe
any more enthusiastically either before or, more probably, after Britain goes
to the polls.
There is little doubt that Labour
is less divided on Europe than the Tories – but it is by no means as united as
first impressions suggest. Even if the current compromise holds until the
election, which is by no means certain, the party can look forward to some
hard-fought battles over European policy in the next couple of years,
particularly if it is in office.
