TONY BENN is introducing a parliamentary Bill proposing the creation of a Commonwealth of Europe. Part of the funetion of the Bill, he says, is to fight the idea that you are either for the EC and capitalist Europe being built through the Maastricht process, or otherwise you are anti-European. His Bill proposes a Commonwealth including all European states, WILL McMAHON talked to him about it. Socialist Outlook: Can you outline the main features of your Commonwealth of Europe Bill? Tony Benn: It is a Bill to replace the Treaty of Rome with what I call a Treaty of London, to extend the framework of European co-operation beyond the countries of the European Community to the whole of Europe, including all the Eastern European countries and former USSR.
The principles I put down here for the foundation of an association of the peoples of Europe- the Commonwealth - are not anything to do with the free It must be based on mutual respect, the fully self-governing status of member countries, working for co-operation, committed to uphold the Charter of the UN, believing that the different iden tities of member states must be preserved, resolving to work for spirit of tolerance and under standing.
I also include a Charter of Rights, but not the same as the Bill of Rights that the lawyers want. It has social and economic rights, the things that would require a very active political role.
The reason I've done it, is that this idea unat you re erner pro-or ana-europe 1s a complete illusion. The question is that sort of Europe we want.
What they're trying to do is to say that there's only one type of Europe that you have to be for or against. It's like saying if you're anti-Major you're anti-British, you're anti-monarchy you're antiBritish. It's not anti-British at all, it's a question of trying to offer pepple an altemative perspective.
The Labour leadership has completely May 30, 1992 No. 22 capitulated to the EC idea. What Smith says to himself is, if there's any sibility of a Labour government being elected, there'd be such a run on the pound that the economy would be destroyed before Labour got there. So if you're in the EC, then they would control our economy SO: Would you see your Ideas, as set down in the Bill, as a socialist altemative for Europe? TB: It isn't explicitly socialist. It would provide that if a state wanted to vote for a different system it could. But it would make it possible. It is an enabling bill for socialism, which "What the Common Market is about is the liberation of capital and the enslaving of labour. We have to have a programme for the control of capital and the liberation of labour - and that must be done on an international basis"
under the Treaty of Rome is impossible - it would be excluded by constitution, by the judges. What the Bill does is remove some of the obstacles for socialism rather than create it itself. But, of course, when you set out a Charter of Rights then you are beginning to set out the constitutional changes that contain a political objective. And these are socialist objectives. SO: But Isn't a socialist alternative Implicitin the BIll, for example in posing a guarantee of fall TB: There are some fairly radical proposals. But presented within the framework of you've got to have the power to do it. For example we could demand all these things in practice, but in theory we couldn't achieve them. It would be illegal to do it. SO: Your Bill is not going to get passed by at, what are you Intending to s ise It for? TB: Of course it won't get passed but these things can have an educational role. I've sent it round a little bit. I've been working on this for about ten years one way or another.
I think there are a lot of people who may be open to this alternative, look at the striking German workers for example. Ifas a result of the strikes they got subsidies to the industries they work in, the European Court would say that was illegal. I think there san audience for our sort of ideas. SO: How de you see events around the Maastricht Treaty evolving now? TB: I think that the Maastricht Treaty and those moves towards federalism are now a dead duck. I'm much less worried about it than I was. The Common Market was set up after the Western Europe NATO to defend capitalism in capitalism in Western Europe at the time of the Cold War. The Russian threat has disappeared.
But we are now seeing in Russia an attempt to apply capitalist forces having a catastrophic effect upon the standar of living of the Russian people. Yeltsin is a demogogue, a capitalist, a Thatcherite, even fascistic in what he's doing.
So people there, although quite properly they're not pref o the old system, must be thinking now It's producing a disintegration. If you remove a socialist perspective and analysis from the political scene, what happens is the vacuum left is filled by religious fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, anti-semitism, every sort of superstition and dangerous nonsense.
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