without participating in monetary (without applying the Maastricht criteria and the stability pact, and without being present in the ECB).
The contradiction between the institutional deepening of the EU and its enlargement is a false problem, artificially puffed up by the tactical needs of countries playing the game of the balance of power and by superficial journalists.
In reality, there is substantial agreement between the trio (and others like Italy) on this perspective. Even if this agreement is shot through with contradictions, these are secondary.
What obscures these basic dynamics is the difficulty the British government has in joining the monetary union. Blair has to make rhetorical concessions to public opinion. But Blair (and big British and foreign capital) is in favour of membership.
The European army under construction 1s an initiative by Britain (with France), on the basis of their common engagement in the Balkans and their common irritation with the US. If this question is resolved, the other problem, that of the political management of the ECB, could be tackled.
The EU and its vanguard - the three key imperialist countries have the perspective of creating a political leadership 1n tune with their European, indeed global ambitions. It is impossible to over-stress the threat that this carries for democracy and for the gains of the working class.
A different burone is needed: social, democratic, egalitarian, and generous.
For that it is necessary to do everything possible stop this machine. There is only one way: the mobilisation of the labour movement and progressive pubiic ODINIO around one idea:
• Stop right there!
• Break down the closed doors of an omnipotent European Council!
• The right to speak and make decisions must lie with the peoples of Europe!
They must determine through public debate, through a decision of their elected representatives, the fundamental bases on which they wish to live together: from the Pole to Gibraltar, and from the Atlantic to the Urals! here - do we have to give these people (Railtrack and their agents) a penny compensation before we can take them back under state control?"
This was the straightforward question fired at RMT sponsored Gwyneth Dunwoody MP al a of the railway Engineering and Infrastructure National Committee called on 26 October 2000 under RMT Assistant General Secretary Bob Crow.
The answer was that the 'Labour' government's hands are tied by European Law.
None of the thirty-odd delegates, union representatives from railwav infrastructure companies in Britain were happy at this answer. Neither was the MP, for that matter, for Dunwoody is one of the better of the RMT's sponsored MPs.
It is plain for all to see that the government is now floundering in the face of a 'meltdown' situation on the British transport system, not just railways, after decades of neglect and virtually deliberate sabotage, plus a lemming-like rush to put most meaningful transport on to the roads, which was begun mainly in the Tory-dominated 1950s.
The terrible rail crashes of the last two years were merely the outward signs of this impending meltdown, culminating with the Hatfield disaster on the East Coast Main Line.
No amount of slick PR, however long Railtrack and their greedy backers planned it before Hatfield as a response to any more disasters, should be allowed to get them off the hook this time.
Apparently, this time John Prescott and Gus MacDonald (transport chiefs for Labour) did not support Railtrack boss Gerald Corbett's desperate attempt retrieve hus position. However, we must not forget that the aim of many recent rail disaster victims may be to have the whole of senior Railtrack management eventually answer to corporate manslaughter proceedings. Corbett's resignation may therefore have been a way of avoiding, not accepting, responsibility.
The situation on the railways is now so bad that guards were recently only blocked from striking over safety by sleight of hand -using still extant anti-trade union laws.
Signallers, too, are discontented with their decaying pay and conditions - they are direct Railtrack employees - while they face the music in many railway safety incidents more and more regularly, usually through no fault of their OWIl Intrastructure engineers have especially sorry tales to tell from the sharp end, particularly in track maintenance.
For example • Apprentices not even given written contracts to which they are entitled, and being used as chen oo • Trees falling on lines in gales. This could not have happened once because full time vegetationcutting gangs existed before privatisation.
• Decreasing regularity of eye patrols, even thought weight and frequency of rail traffic has increased • Abuse of railflow ultrasonic gangs. A News of the World exclusive on 29 October revealed that management has been discouraging reporting of faults detected because of cost-effective considerations. aLIULIs. The Hatfield crash was caused by a microscopic crack chenrino annatentiv on a curve Railtrack bosses have admitted they don't know even basic safety factors - like the fact that neglect of wet beds can be extremely dangerous.
Local safety reps are repeatedly not being summoned to do statutory three monthly safety walkabouts, in defiance of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Instead safety reps have been targeted for victimisation and sackings in all Since privatisation, 6,000 former British rail infrastructure workers have been made redundant. No wonder they can't maintain the network! rail sectors since privatisation (1994-1996) was effected. So much for safety being "paramount".
We have only scratched the surface here.
The whole problem at root is systemic, based entirely on the shoddy way the old BR was nationalised in 1947 and then finished off by Tory privatisation, planned under Thatcher and effected by Major, and since then almost criminally continued by New Labour - Blair, Mandelson and the other cuckoos in the nest of the workers' movement.
The ongoing three-tier Cullen Inquiry will eventually make some recommendations on its findings, we are told. However, recommendations are not binding on anyone, as the Hidden Inquiry into the Clapton rail disaster of 1989 showed us.
Access points
I believe it was recommended that access points to trackside should be constructed every 400 metres (¼ mile) adjacent to the railway lines, so that in any emergencv the services can get in and out efficiently. This is far from being the case even 12 years after Clapham, despite the fact that casualties at Clapham were aggravated by lack of easy access to the crash site.
The key overall factor today is the failure of the Labour government to grasp the nettle of the general transport chaos existing now in Britain. The road haulage, farming and fuel-price mess of September to November have merely highlighted the issues.
Britain is the most road-dependent country in Europe, a result of the get rich quick free for all followed since the 1950s, led by Beeching, Marples et al. This has allowed some of the most unsavoury, unaccountable organisations free rein, from the big international oil combines (Shell, Exxon, Texaco etc) through the car etc) to the likes of the road haulage lobby and all the opportunists (including, recently, fascist groups) who have jumped on the fuel crisis bandwagon of late.
"Après moi le Deluge', ("After me the flood") was the philosophy of the 18th century French king Louis XV, father of the doomed Louis XVI, executed in 1792 by Republican revolutionaries. What with the increasingly obvious effects of global warming arising mainly from unbridled 'dirty capiHurone and North America, this could be literally the slogan of the current free marketeers, typified by such cowboys as the right wing dominated road lobby of recent infancy.
The answer always was and remains socialism. But socialism must recognise the positivists' mistakes made by many of the pioneers of our movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These must be seriously re-examined in the light of recent developments. The teachers, as Lenin said, must be ready to teach themselves. This is the way forward for the socialist movement.
We cannot condemn small road hauliers and small farmers for fighting to defend their livelihoods, even if only to defend those whose jobs depend on the wages they earn from them.
However, we can cook the Tories' goose and confound all the other reactionary forces Who tries To exploit the recent fuel crisis with their road blockades for their own evil purposes.
The state must take over the bulk of road transport, all railways and road companies, plus the farming system, and form an integrated, rationally organised basic infrastructure in Britain. We must form a clean, just, efficient society with guaranteed employment and security for all.
This must be underpinned by a viable, democratic system of control by workers' committees in all these industries and services. There is no other fair way out of the impasse this government of Blair and Co have led us all into.
Private enterprise, through privatisation, has aimed to fragment and then pulverise piecemeal the organised working class. Our task is to turn the tables on our enemies and defeat them as totally as they intended to defeat us, our class, the working class.
The stone age did not end for lack of stones nor the bronze and iron ages for lack of bronze and iron. then should the petroleum based capitalist society not be ended even without a lack of this misused substance, ‹01? And why should it not "end" at the hands of a united, socialist working class movement?
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