The leader of Labour's contingent in the European Parliament
talks to Paul Anderson
“I find it slightly strange that Jack Cunningham is
responsible both for Outer Mongolia and for Europe," says Glyn Ford, the
leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party. "It's not his fault.
But it really is a different ball game. With Europe we're talking about
day-to-day legislation. With Outer Mongolia you have a crisis every ten or 20
years."
Ford, at 42 one of the most senior Labour politicians of
his generation, is deadly serious about the importance of Europe to Labour. He
hopes that the party's first-ever European conference in Brighton this weekend
will get MPs and activists to stop thinking about the European Community as a
"foreign policy" question. For Ford, as for a majority of his fellow
MEPs, Europe is a central domestic issue - and the future of the EC is still
something that too many in the Labour Party have either not thought about
sufficiently or, worse, have approached as if nothing had happened to the
Common Market since Britain joined in 1973.
An MEP for Greater Manchester East since 1984, he has been
leader of Labour's MEPs since just after the 1989 European elections, which saw
the party take 40 per cent of the vote and 45 of Britain's 78 seats in the
European Parliament. He is an unashamed Euro-enthusiast who describes the creation
of a democratically accountable federal executive for Europe as "the
direction in which things are going and the direction in which we should be going".
Mindful, perhaps, of Labour's official hostility to what John Smith calls a
"European super-state", he adds diplomatically that he does not see a
federal Europe happening in his lifetime.
Unsurprisingly, he has little time for those Labour voices
arguing that his Westminster colleagues should do all in their power to prevent ratification of the
Maastricht treaty by voting against the governments
Maastricht Bill at Third Reading, although he backed the decision to vote
against this week's Maastricht "paving motion".
He is in favour, he says, of ending the government's
opt-outs on the social chapter and the single currency and is worried that the
Tories are intent on watering down the provisions in the Maastricht treaty
dealing with powers for the regions. But Maastricht "is the best we can
get at the moment".
"Maastricht will allow us to move forward on economic
and monetary, environmental and social issues," he wrote recently in
Tribune. "Without it we will have a lopsided single market rather than a
community, where the needs of business are paramount and the needs of citizens
come a very poor second."
The core of Ford's case is simple: business is already
operating at a European level and, if the Left is going to have a hope of
keeping capital under control, it must create institutions at the same level.
"What is done in a single member state does not control the multinational
companies," he says. "We need economic and monetary union and
political union, with elected politicians - that is the European Parliament -
having a much stronger say."
He dismisses the argument advanced by much of the Left that
the conditions for economic and monetary union laid down by Maastricht are
essentially deflationary. "The Treaty of Rome was written in the language
of Keynesianism," he says. "Maastricht is written in the language of
monetarism. But that's not actually a terribly important issue. The real
problem in Europe is the balance of political forces -and the way to solve the
problem is to get more socialists elected. We are in opposition in six out the
12 member states, in coalition in four and in power in two. The reality is that
we don't have the majority of voters on our side."
Instead of laying into Maastricht, says Ford, the left
should be engaging with the reluctance of Europe's current governments to
pursue co-ordinated economic policies to pull Europe out of recession.
"What we should be arguing for is a pan-European reflation programme. If
we win that argument, we have the capability, within Maastricht, to implement
those programmes. Maastricht in itself doesn't stop a Labour government from
doing anything."
Of course, no one knows whether Maastricht will survive the
Danish no vote in June's referendum - the reason Labour gave for voting against
the Government in this week's debate. Ford reckons that the Danes will find a
way to ratify the treaty but the worst case could still just about happen:
"a small inner core making a multilateral agreement, steaming ahead on
economic and monetary union" and forgetting all the social and
environmental aspects of the Maastricht deal.
+++
He is confident that Labour will not treat this week's
paving motion vote as a precedent for swinging against Maastricht. Last month's
Labour conference gave an overwhelming endorsement to the pro-Europe position
that has been developed in the past five years, he says. "There's been a
massive change of mood," he goes on, quoting the very existence of this
weekend's conference as evidence.
It is difficult to disagree with this sentiment. While, five
years ago, Labour's Euro-enthusiasts cloaked their enthusiasm with criticism of
the EC, today it is the Euro-sceptics who feel that they have to camouflage their
opinions by asserting defensively that they are "pro-European
but..."
Even in the past six months there has been noticeable
movement towards acceptance of Europe as Labour's future, perhaps most
significantly in John Smith's ready endorsement of plans to set up a European
Socialist Party, largely to ensure better socialist co-ordination in the
European Parliament. Neil Kinnock had always blocked any such thing, Next week,
a meeting of EC socialist parties in The Hague is almost certain to back the
Euro-party, of which the EPLP will become the British section.
It will, of course, be a long time before most Labour Party
members see themselves as members of a British section of a European party. In
the meantime Labour has some serious business to do. The next national
elections that Labour faces are the 1994 European Parliament elections. As
things stand, Ford is optimistic that the party can do well in them, even
better than in 1989. "We're in the position where we could conceivably
gain seats," he says. "There are three seats which we lost by less
than 3,000."
Before the polls in 18 months there is another, possibly
more lucrative, challenge. Last month, after having his draft definition of
"subsidiarity" rejected by EC governments, the president of the
European Commission, Jacques Delors, offered £140,000 to anyone who could come
up with a definition of the idea on one side of paper. Ford reckons that the
prize would be easy money.
"I don't understand why Delors was so desperately
looking for a definition," he says. "In the Maastricht treaty there's
a definition of subsidiarity which is that things should be done at (he
appropriate level. That's perfectly logical. You do not empty dustbins at
European level. Equally, you do not make foreign policy in the parish council.
There are not insuperable problems in the US about what should be decided
locally and what should be decided. Why should there be in Europe?"
With Labour sacking headquarters staff and the trade unions
broke, maybe Ford and his colleagues should enter Delors's competition.
