Pm C к good"). Sections (and from time to tinie even a majority) of the working class then, as now - as they always will - have allied themselver with the ruling class, insofar as they have voted for their parties, or they haven't challenged their
It is also a salutory reminder to note that during the last len years when we are all sup posed to have become middle class, that the richest two per cent in this country still own 82 percent of all company shares and nearly three quarters of all land, Since 1979 the income of the richest one per cent has gone up by a stag. gering 346 per cent as a result of tax cuts, salary and interest rate rises. The poor, neadless to say, have got poorer. 9.4 million people in Britain have an income at or helow supplementary bobefit level. Their numbers increased by 55 per cent between 1979 and 1985 alone.
In many ways, given ten years of Tory rule und Labour's uscless opposition, it's actually surprising that people aren't more Thatcherite. Whilst the fact remains that since 1979 a majority of the working class have voted Con-
1992: a
battleground for
Europe's black
workers
Business 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. However, 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 an exercise in deregulation and free-market
The Single European Market will in any event seck to minimise workers' gains by imposing a downward pressure on wages and so. cial benefits, and exploiting massive: incqualities between workers in avert any collective retaliation.
The increased competition among bustnesses and industries operating in the EC will also mean a fur greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
The other significant development of such an integrated capitalist market must undoubtedly he the freer use and ahuse of the flexible, un skilled labour provided hy 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 comservative (and a majority of trade unionists have not voted Labour), polls and surveys of social attitudes consistently find that the values of Thatcherism are shared by even fewer people than the numbers who actually vote Conserva-
One of the latest surveys, conducted for a BBC television documentary on "Thatcher's children", showed that 62 per cent of people questioned thought that the ideal for themselves and their family would be 'a country in which public interests and a more managed economy are more important.' Only 30 per cent would prefer 'a country in which private interests and a free market conomy are mote important. Seven out of ten would pay more tax for better public services, with a four-to-one majority agreeing that "trade unions are essential to protect workers' interests"
So there are encouraging signa to be read in these results - but like much sociological material they only hold good until the nex! survey; and other, similar studies have shown certain shifts towards acceptance of more pany or the state.
The reality is that this extended playground for Europe's capitalists will also mean an extended battleground for Europe's workers. In Britain the Trade Union Congress received the president of the Europcan Commission, Jacques Delors, with much enthusiasm at its 1988 congress, while at the same time passing a resolution (which received much less media attention) stating that "the internal market represents a further concentration of economic and industrial power in the hands of multinational companies and a significant weakening of the ahility of memher states to intervene in their own economies".
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 fickible and carily 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 hetween the EC and its neo colonies - through the operation of a common immigra
Run Thatcherite cconomic concepts.
Nevertheless, attitodes do not even delermine voting behaviour, much less social class. Whatever shift in attitudes favourable to capital there has been, and whatever peripheral restructuring there has been of working class and individual relation to economy, it remains superficial and transitory. What matters is the underlying relationship to the economy - in production and in the pocket. The working clanx. is still there, waiting to be won, Which explains why there can be a Tory government and still a large working class - which, for the last three elections, has voted them in.
For favourable shifts in the economy and underlying basic sympathies to be translated into voles for Labour, it has to present a confident. socialist alternative. Labour, unfortunately. with the publication of its policy review shortly after Thatcher's tenth anniversary, when the Tories are at last looking vulnerable, shows no sign of coming up with one. Top Eurocrat Jacques Delors at the TUC tion policy at its borders.
Divisions between the 'skilled and "unskilled' working class will widen, with the former having interests protected and finding it it casier to cross boundaries in scarch of work.
Unskilled workers will be left behind in the lechmology drive and in the regional imbalances that will be created. This will hit black and women workers particularly hard.
The sechacks 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 class biased nature of the Europcan Community:
Controls on the black and migrant community in the EC, regardless of whether they have become EC' nationals or not, operate in ditferent forms and to different extents in each of the member states. Their fundamental ele-
The bosses ideal of the Single European Market is sweatshop conditions, exploiting low ment», however, remain the sanse -that in, a systemabe undermining of this community's civil, social and political rights, and therchy also its acuess to all forms of social provision, benefits und scrvices. This is best exemplified by the usc of Turkish guest-workers in West Germany and North African guestworkers in France. These countries: have been able to get away with denying this pool of workers any protection from the worst excessen of private profit-making, with the implicit collaboration of the trade UNLOOR.
In Ireland, Sinn Fein have idenrified the problem of emigration as inureasing, as Irish finns, unable to compete in size and orientation to international markets, lose out
As the informal service sector within Europe grows, and regional disparities worsen, the guest worker system will no doubt ap pear even more attractive to the ruling classes of the EC states. Not only will there workers be confined to the lowest paid jobs, and not only will governments be uble to shed their social responsibility for these workers, but thcy can then be easily deported when no longer needed.
The continuation and development of such a system will rely heavily on the propogation of racist. Clever use of this powerful tool server not just to damp down dissent from the working class in general, but also to enahle broader recruitment from sections of Eumpe'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 Greece and the Spanish state, or from colonised territories like the North of Ireland and the Basque region -are only a question of time.
It is unlikely that any of these workers will enjoy the frecdom of movement across internal borders so enthusiastically welcomed by sup porters of the Single European Act The exact nature of a common system of controls is currently under discussion.
However, one of the ways in which these ad ditional, more stringent controls will be cased in has already heen hinted at in a British Con servative Party briefing paper; 'Britain's fron tiers will remain closed to terrorists and drug traffickers. The completion of the Single Marker 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 saleguards against terronsis and criminals?.
The Brilish Govemment is clearly anxious to equate 'illegal immigration" with terrorism and drig trafficking. thereby deeming it accept able 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 'anti-terrorist" laws are already in force that enable such restricitons on free movement to be put into practice.
LL E = paid black workers with no trade union or other rights
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 organisations in France, West Germany and the Benelux countricshave already been orBanising against some of the contents of the Treaty of Schengen. This treaty lifts the frontiers between the abovo-mentioned states in 1990, and among its concerns is the need for these countires to introduce visa requirements, fines on transport companies, an alarm system to prevent the arrival of new groups of refugees, and an exchange of information on immigrants and asylum-scekers. Many of these initiatives were pioncered by Britain, and, as the organisations 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.
'Fortress Europe'
The issue of firm immigration laws falls into line with the general concept of a 'Fortress Eumpe' - a tem initially used to describe the exiemal protectionist trade policies envisaged in the setting up of European internal markets;
The main projeet of 1992 is, after all, an allempt to crcate a capitalist entity able to con pete with Japan and the USA: British industry appears unwilling to recognise that this will grow around the West German/French/Benelux axis already in existence, and will not benefit peripheral or less technologically developed areas such as Britain.
The campaign in Britain for the trade unions to take the issue ol immigration and deportation seriously has been a long one, but one with some degroe of success. The 1992 Single Europei Act will test the commitment of the trade unions to their black membors and their foresight in rocognising 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 aspects of the 1992 Act that are directed at further attacks on the most vulnerable sector of workers.
Heightening awareness in the trade unions and the black community provide the left with opportunities to campaign on radical demands. In the short term, concentrated pressure has to he brought to bear by the left across Europe on the Europcan Trades Union Congress, national trade union federations and the mass working class parties in the European parliament to win their support for a position of no police checks on nationality/immigration status, ineluding at wor places, or checks prior to claiming public funds or services.
There should he no escalation of immigra tion 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 bo highlighted in the election manifestos of the mass social democratic and communint parties.
Many groups are already rallying around demands for the right of asylum for refugees, (and the European Commissions's proposed directive on this has been promised since mid1988), but the need is to link this campaign to other problems facing the black working class as a whole.
The principle that cannot be bypassed here is that of support for the self-organisation 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 positive opportunity to show that the struggle for black workers' interests is not only compatible with the wider struggle of the working class, but an inseparable, and ulLimately fundamental, component of it - nationally, and even more so intemationally-
It is now high time that the left, including the far left, ceased to regard this as a peripheral issue, and recognised it as central to any socialist programme for Europe.
Anita Morris and Dan Carter
HarisAFL John SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 16 June 1989 Page 29