50,000 demonstrators, over twice the number expected by the organisers, joined the demonstration, called by the European TUC, at the European Union’s so-called Jobs summit in Luxembourg Thursday 20 November.
The European Marches mobilised a delegation of several thousand onto the demonstration, including a bus-load organised by the campaign in Britain.
The demonstrators were protesting about the 18 million unemployed in Europe and calling on EU Heads of State to take action to reduce it.
The Luxembourg "jobs summit" was called by the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference last June under pressure from the mass demonstration of unemployed people organised at the culmination of the European marches.
Huge turn-out
The big trade union contingents on the Luxembourg demonstration came from France (including, from the non-ETUC affiliated CGT) Belgium, Germany and Italy. The biggest were from France and Belgium, which were huge.
Charter aircraft also flew in from Greece and Spain. It gave the demonstration a truly international character – similar in that sense to the Amsterdam demonstration, although that had far more young people and this was trade union delegations.
Although the ETUC had called on all its affiliates to mobilise there appears to have been no response from their Scandinavian, Dutch or British organisations.
The demonstration was formally supported by the British TUC, but it failed to mobilise anyone onto it, and the Euromarch delegation was the only representation detectable from Britain. This after the TUC had refused to support the European marches on the basis that they were not supported by the ETUC!
The demonstration was the first of its kind ever called by the ETUC, and was clearly a response to the Amsterdam demonstration in June. It had previously called for coordinated action in various countries – but had never called on all its affiliates to organise for the same demonstration on the same day in the same place and at the same time.
Like the Euromarch itself, and the cross borders demonstrations to defend Belgian Renault workers early this year, the demonstration was a sign of the times. A new level of international solidarity is needed to meet an attack on the working class which is itself Europe wide.
The Luxembourg demonstration was colourful and up-beat and demonstrators chanted militant slogans in several languages accompanied by the continuous detonation of firecrackers.
The Euromarch delegation took part on the basis of calling for the 35 hour week, and held its own meeting at the end of the demonstration on the same theme.
Flexibility
Tony Blair attended the summit, of course, and claimed, with some validity, that the summit leaders were moving towards New Labour’s positions of "employability" and "flexibility" as the solution to mass long-term unemployment and social exclusion.
In fact Blair has made it clear that he intends to use the British presidency of the EU, which is the first six months of next year, vigorously to push for the extension of British levels labour market flexibility to the rest of the EU.
This, he has made clear , will be a feature of the Cardiff Summit next June, where he will push the idea of establishing "flexibility criteria" which can be followed through in an organised way.
Counter-summit
This makes the organisation of an international demonstration and a counter-summit at Cardiff even more important.
It may well be not only the last major international meeting of EU heads of state before the introduction of the single currency in January 1999, but the start of an organised campaign to extend Thatcherite employment conditions to the rest of the EU.
As far as the ETUC is concerned we can only hope that the success of its first truly international demonstration will ensure that it is not the last.