1992: A battleground for Europe's Black
BY DECEMBER 31, 1992, the European Community is committed to a frontier-free internal market, in which border controls between the twelve member states are supposed to disappear. While the capitalists look forward to their "Fortress Europe", immigrant and migrant workers, refugees and Black workers can expect, as usual, the raw end of the deal. ANITA MORRIS & DAN CARTER
B USINESS communities across
Europe are currently gearing themselves up to take advantage of the vast profit-making possibilities of the Single European Market coming into effect in 1992. Certainly, when the 12 member governments first put their names to the Single European Act (SEA), their primary concern was to break down the last remaining barriers to bi-national and multinational capitalist enterprises within the borders of the European Community (EC).
How this is to be achieved is still under debate. While some EC leaders are keen to combine this single market with a single monetary policy, others — notably Britain's Margaret Thatcher — are more anxious to see this as exercise in deregulation and free-market principles.
Although it is difficult at this stage to predict which economic and financial policy is perceived to be best able to prop up capitalism's interests, some things are clear. The Single European Market will seek to minimize workers' gains by imposing a downward pressure on wages and social benefits and relying on massive inequalities between workers to avert any retaliation. There is already recognition by both businesses and trade unions that there is little to stop companies from pulling their factories out of countries with well-established workers' rights and relatively high wages to set up in countries or regions where this is less the case.
The increased competition among businesses and industries operating in the EC will also mean a far greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Hence, while some multinationals flourish, other weaker companies and industries no longer receiving national subsidies fall by the wayside, leaving behind them a trail of unemployment.
The other significant development of such an integrated capitalist market must undoubtedly be the freer use and abuse of the flexible, unskilled labour provided by migrant, immigrant and refugee workers and Black workers in general. These workers, with little protection and few rights, will form the central plank in the drive for minimum costs, either for the company or the state.
An extended playground for Europe's capitalists
Yet the majority of European trade-union federations and their umbrella body, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), have welcomed this "harmonization" across the EC, albeit with some caution. The CGT-FO, for example, one of the three major union federations in France, passed a resolution stating that fundamental workers' rights in the areas of social security, social protection and conditions of work cannot be called into question because of pressures of competition or the search for productivity.
WESTERN EUROPE workers
However, in general the trade-union leaderships see the Single European Act as opening the door to a European-wide adop tion of the best examples of employment rights, worker participation and social provision currently in practice in the EC. In addition, they see the protectionist policies being speculated about in this all-for-one, one-for-all European Community offering the possibility of more jobs within its boundaries. This is not to mention the general belief that an integrated Europe will mean a more prosperous Europe, one that will be able to deal with increased competition from Japan and the USA and establish new trading relations with the Soviet Union and the East European states on its own terms.
The reality is that this extended playground for Europe's capitalists will also mean an extended battleground for Europe's workers. Even the Trade Union Congress in Britain received the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, with much enthusiasm at its 1988 congress, while at the same time passing a resolution (which received much less media attention) 19 stating that "the internal market represents a
International Viewpoint #155 • January 23, 1989
WESTERN EUROPE further concentration of economic and industrial power in the hands of
* multinational companies and a
* significant weakening of the ability of member states to intervene in their own economies.
The unions have, however, correctly recognized that the radical economic changes proposed for 1992 will not materialize without some degree of political intervention. The problem is that rather than the
"Social Europe" envisaged, these interventions are likely to herald more, not less, repressive measures to deal with the working class.
Black communities first to suffer attacks
It is in this context that we must view the need, now more important than ever, for capitalist states to maintain a cheap, very flexible and easily expendable sector of the labour market — in the form of Europe's
Black, immigrant and migrant workforce.
Tied to this are the means by which a supply of such "marginal" labour is to be regulated — both within the EC through internal controls, as well as between the EC and its neo-colonies — through the operation of a common immigration policy at its borders. As usual this will involve to a large degree an intensification of racist propaganda, backed up by the repressive arm of the state.
The sometimes complex and sometimes less subtle interdependence of race and class oppression has always meant that Black communities in the imperialist West are the first to suffer the brunt of what are essentially attacks on the working class as a whole. The setbacks that Black workers in the EC are likely to experience if the present implications of 1992 go unchallenged highlight the agenda of worker exploitation inherently embodied in the Single European Act.
At the same time, the appeal to racist and imperialist fervour, which will become an increasingly prominent feature of the build-up to 1992, stems from the intrinsically classbiased nature of the
European
Community, its Commission, policies and structures.
Controls on the Black and migrant community in the EC, regardless of whether they have become
20 ferent tomas and to doperate intents
EC nationals or not, operate in difin each of the member states. Their fundamental elements, however, remain the same — that is, a systematic undermining of this community's civil, social and political rights, and thereby also its access to all forms of social provision, benefits and services. This is best exemplified by the use of Turkish guest-workers in West Germany and North African guest-workers in France. These countries have been able to get away with denying this pool of workers any protection from the worst excesses of private profit-making, with the implicit collaboration of the trade unions.
Guest-worker system will be extended
The Single European Market must surely mark a move towards the whole of the EC trying to "get away with it". As the informal service sector within Europe grows, and regional disparities worsen, the guestworker system will no doubt appear even more attractive to the ruling classes of the EC states. Not only will these workers be confined to the lowest paid jobs, and not only will governments be able to shed their social responsibility for these workers, but they can then be easily deported when no
The continuation and development of such a system will rely heavily on the propagation of racism. Clever use of this powerful tool serves not just to dampen down dissent from the working class in general, but also to enable broader recruitment from sections of Europe's Black population to the status of guest-worker. The subsequent attempts to erode the present rights of unskilled/marginal workers — either from poorer EC countries such as
1992
OPEN THE
FRONTIERS
10
Greece and the Spanish state, or from colonized territories like the North of Ireland and the Basque region — are only a ques-
It is unlikely that any of these workers will enjoy the freedom of movement across internal borders so enthusiastically welcomed by supporters of the SEA, for the very reason that this labour must be effectively controlled and monitored if its cost is to be minimized. In several European coun tries, for example, migrant and immigrant workers and refugees are required to carry identity cards — a measure which a country like Britain has not resorted to simply because it has been able to keep a tighter reign on immigration at its ports of entry. The
1992 Act and completion of the Channel
Tunnel has seen British Home Office representatives desperately seeking ideas and cooperation from their European neighbours for an integrated approach to such controls - hence the establishment of the
Trevi Group, made up of ministers of justice and the interior from EC states.
"Anti-terrorist" laws restrict free movement
The exact nature of such a common sys tem of controls is still being discussed.
However, one of the ways in which these additional, more stringent controls will be eased in has already been hinted at in a
British Conservative Party briefing paper:
"Britain's frontiers will remain closed to terrorists and drug-traffickers. The completion of the Single Market does not require the abolition of security and immigration controls at frontiers and ports of entry...it supports moves to make frontier formalities quicker and easier for travellers without compromising safeguards against terrorists and criminals."
The British government is clearly anxious to equate "illegal immigration" with terrorism and drug- trafficking, thereby deeming it acceptable to use the same degree of force in dealing with these matters.
In fact, in some cases, such as for workers from the North of Ireland and the Basque country, terrorist" laws are already in force that enable such restrictions on free movement to be put into practice.
Of course, an internal controls system will only work effectively if control of immigration into the EC is correspondingly hard-line. Here
Britain leads the way. Refugee and human rights organizations in
France, West Germany and the
Benelux countries have already been organizing against some of the contents of the Treaty of Schengen.
This treaty lifts the frontiers between the above-mentioned states in 1990, and among its concerns is the need for these countries to introduce visa requirements, fines on
January 23, 1989 • #155 International Viewpoint transport companies, an alarm system to prevent the arrival of new groups of refugees, and an exchange of information on immigrants and asylum-seekers. Many of these initiatives were pioneered by Britain, and, as the organizations point out, the Schengen agreement will serve as a blueprint for the restrictive measures to be adopted by the EC as a whole in 1992.
The issue of firm immigration laws falls into line with the general concept of a "Fortress Europe" — a term initially used to describe the external protectionist trade policies envisaged in the setting up of European internal markets. On closer examination, it would appear that rather than hurting its main competitors, Walker points out in The Guardian, "if any single country is really poised to do well out of the new Europe of 1992, it looks like being Japan", and that "an outbreak of global protectionism would hit Europe
In fact, the restructuring of the EC market is, in many ways, a response to the crises of declining growth in output of even the strongest economies in the EC - something which, not surprisingly, is rarely acknowledged. To the contrary, right-wing and reformist parties alike propagandize that the "rationalization" offered by the SEA will put an end to the need for austerity measures in the future.
Similarly, alongside the important arguments that immigration controls serve as the foundation and practice of state racism, it is also the case that it is not necessarily in the interests of all member states or ruling classes to block the migration of workers into the EC. Their common interest is to use the "cover" of a "Fortress Europe" to ensure that these workers are unauthorized and "illegal", and that they can exist in the EC without any rights or protection against
1992 will be a test for the trade unions
The campaign in Britain for the trade unions to take the issue of immigration and deportation seriously has been a long one, but one with some degree of success. (However, neo-fascists too can claim to have increased their popularity as National Front MEP Jean-Marie Le Pen has done with his slogan: "Send the immigrants home and save France 100 billion francs"). The 1992 SEA will test the commitment of the trade unions to their Black members and their foresight in recognizing the dire consequences of capitulation to racism for the viability of the trade-union movement itself.
The left and the labour movement in the EC have an important part to play in bringing to the fore those implicit aspects of the 1992 Act that are directed at further attacks on the most vulnerable sector of workers, thereby creating a downward pressure on all social harmonization measures. This is in direct contrast to the "harmonization up to the best available standards" so optimistically cited by many of the unions supporting the SEA. Weakness of positions in the labour movement
The European Commission's extremely lukewarm response to the "Social Europe" proposals made by the ETUC is set to burst labour's bubble. Many unions have already been pressing for such demands as "protection of employees' interests in mergers and
, and a "campaign for opportunities for workers made redundant as a result of any industrial restructuring that accompanies the 1992 market" (part of a motion passed at the 1988 British TUC congress), so acknowledging the less-than-positive side of the SEA. However, almost nothing has been said about such issues as rights of entry into the EC, rights of residence, equal access to public funds and employment opportunities, rights of asylum, or a minimum statutory wage linked to a maximum number of hours in a working week. Nor have the unions given an indication of understanding the need to explicitly defend basic civil and democratic rights in the face of 1992's hidden agenda.
Heightening awareness in the trade unions and the Black community, and the coming European elections in June 1989, provide the left with opportunities to campaign on radical demands. In the short term, concentrated pressure has to be brought to bear by the left across Europe on the ETUC, national trade-union federations and the mass reformist parties in the European parliament to win their support for a position of "no police checks on nationality/immigration status, including at workplaces, or checks prior to claiming public funds or services". There should be "no escalation of immigration controls on ports of entry into the EC", and "no deportations". In addition, such provisions as equal pay for work of equal value and statutory protection for the low-paid must be highlighted in the 1989 election manifestos of the mass social-democratic and commu-
Alongside these demands are those that correctly project the campaign against the SEA as a campaign for civil and democratic rights in the EC. Whatever the level of support currently being given to the Act, the workers' parties and trade unions must be pushed into committing themselves uncompromisingly to the right of all those resident in the EC to stand for, and vote, in national and local elections, and to free association for political or other purposes. The principle that cannot be bypassed here is that of support for the self-organization of Black and migrant workers, including Black women workers, both inside and outside of existing trade union and party structures. The campaign against the 1992 Single European Market provides a posi-
WESTERN EUROPE tive opportunity to show vividly that the struggle for the furtherance of Black * workers' with the struggle for power of the working class, but an inseparable, and ultimately fundamental, component of it — nationally, and even more so internationally.
Overall, such a campaign to highlight the dangers of the SEA means that the left in Europe must step up its campaign of opposition to the EC even as it presently functions, rather than retreating to an abstentionist position as many on the left have done. Obviously, this must involve a clear and forward-looking exposition of the left's alternative for a "harmonized" Europe. Such a campaign has to be actively built if the rank-and-file of Europe's workers are to be mobilized against the bourgeois vision of Europe currently being painted by a great many of their leaders. The left's orientation towards common initiatives across Europe thus has to be defined in terms of the structures that will bring about a strengthened, united working class across both Eastern and Western Europe, based on cooperation on the full range of economic, social and democratic questions.
### Internationalist perspective needed
This is not, however, the direction in which the 1992 project is going. Instead, the plan is to advance capital and weaken the autonomy of member states. The consequence for the working class is that even partial political gains won through parliament will become that much more difficult to achieve and defend, the reformist parties using the excuse of the legal constraints imposed by Brussels to tow the capitalists' line.
An internationalist, anti-imperialist perspective for Europe is grounded in demanding an end to all immigration restrictions for European member states, based on equal rights of residence and political asylum for all.
Intrinsically linked to this is the declaration that the economic, social and political rights of Black workers, currently comprising the most impoverished sector of workers in Europe, has to be staunchly defended against racist and fascist attack.
It is now high time that the left, including the far left, no longer regard this as a peripheral issue, but one that is central to a revolutionary socialist programme for 21 Europe. *