Tribune leader, 22 May 1992
As Tribune went
to press, it seemed that, despite the frantic efforts
of the Labour Whips, there would be a substantial backbench rebellion on Thursday
night against the Labour leadership's decision to abstain in the vote on the
Maastricht treaty, with some diehard pro-European MPs voting with the
Government in favour and a rather larger
group voting against.
The rebellion is a welcome sign that, for a little while
anyway, Labour MPs are not going to swallow everything the leadership gives
them. More importantly, it also shows that Labour's fragile pre-election
consensus on Europe is wholly inadequate as a basis for approaching the next
five years.
Labour's policy on the EC in the past couple of years has
been a fudge designed to keep everyone in the Parliamentary Labour Party
happy. On economic and monetary union, Labour agreed in principle to the
creation of a single European currency and a European central bank.
That
pleased the Euro-enthusiasts. But to keep the Euro-sceptics on board, these
commitments were hedged around with qualifications. The central bank would have
to be supervised by Ecofin, the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers of
the EC countries, and monetary union would be backed only when "real
economic convergence" had taken place.
On political union, the story was the same. Labour argued
for increased powers for the European Parliament (but not at the expense of
national parliaments) and an increased role for qualified majority voting in
the Council of Ministers. But it stood firmly against the creation of a
European defence community, arguing that NATO should continue to be the basis
for Britain's security. It also rejected the idea of a "European federal
super-state". "Widening" the EC to include the European Free
Trade Area countries and the ex-communist states of East-Central Europe was
given as much priority as ''deepening” the EC of the 12.
The fudge was enough to keep the peace in the party last
November, when only 16 backbenchers (an incoherent mixture of Campaign Group left-wingers
and right-wing Keynesian Atlanticists) rebelled against the government's
motion on Maastricht. Now, however, it looks threadbare. A new consensus on
Europe is needed.
That might seem a tall order. But there are signs that,
despite the appearance of for greater labour division on Europe than at any
time since the mid-seventies, there is the basis for a wider and more
substantive agreement within the party than ever before.
Put simply, the argument has shifted since the
mid-seventies. No one really believes now that Britain could or should get out
of the EC. Hardly anyone believes even that the pound should be taken out of
the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System. The days of a
medium-sized nation state being able to control its own destiny by means of
Keynesian demand management are accepted to be over.
Labour’s debate is not about whether there ought to be
management of the economy on a Europe-wide level but about what sort of
economic policies Europe should adopt and, most importantly, how the process
of Europe-wide economic policy-formation should be made democratically
accountable.
Of course, there are a multitude of different positions on
all these questions. But there is also much common ground. Everyone, regardless
of his or her attitude to Maastricht, agrees that economic and monetary union
must be matched with convergence of standards of social provision across the
EC.
Everyone, regardless of his or her views on devaluation of
sterling, also agrees that common European economic and monetary policies
should not only be about the establishment and maintenance of a stable
anti-inflationary framework but must also involve pursuit of growth and the
fullest possible employment throughout the EC. There is a general sense on all
sides that EC executive institutions, particularly the proposed European
Central Bank, must be made much more democratically accountable. There are
near-universal worries about over-centralisation of power.
What this points to is the feasibility of a Labour approach
to the EC that emphasises the importance of Europe-wide alternative economic
strategies and makes its central thrust the radical democratisation of all
Europe's institutions. That means arguing for massively increased powers for
the European Parliament, particularly over the central bank, and a
democratically accountable European executive, with a strong emphasis on
maximising decentralisation of decision-making.
In other words, there is in Labour’s current confusion the
germ of a coherent vision of a democratic federalist future for Europe. It
would be a tragedy if the leadership turned its back on such a vision because
it mistakenly thought that a new fudge would guarantee a quieter life.
