The French capitalist press has been grumbling lately about the inconsistency of Harold Wilson-spending most of the 1960s trying to get Britain into the EEC, and now in the '70s trying to get out again. But despite all this, the Labour Government's re negotiations are now being generally accepted by the European ruling classes, who understand what the are: a manoeuvre to sell the Common Market to the British working class.
no laughing matter. The decline of the British Empire and the ineffic iency of investment-starved British industry has made it absolutely clear that British imperialism can no long er go it alone.
But the Labour Government las to deal with the very strong opposition to the Common Market inside the Jabour movement. Because Britain joined the FEC at a time when coonomic crisis was beginning to bite, the Common Market has become assoc iated with all the problems of capitalism in crisis: inflation, unemployment, attacks on trade union rights and on workers living standards through incomes policy, and all the rest RENEGOTIATION labour left and trade union bureaucrats is based on four main themes: national chauvinism, Britain's financlal contribution to the EEC, relations with the old Commonwealth, and defence of 'sovereignty" Wilson's to negotiation is aimed at undermining the last three of these in order to use the anti-marketeers" chauvinist arguments against them.
At present, the EEC central budgot is financed fron customs duties collected by member countries, levies on from outside the EEC, and a proportion of each country's VAT revenues. Since Britain Imports a lot of food from outside the EEC, British contributions to the common budget are relatively high.
The original British proposal was that budgetary contributions should be closely related to the economic output of each country, but this met with opposition from both France and Germany. It now seems likely that a compromise will be agreed under which the present system will be reformed to allow for refunds, not exceeding the contribution any country makes from Its VAT collections, to be made in cases where countres whose contr ibution exceeds their proportion of total EEC economic output are in 'serious economic difficulty.
FARM POLICY Agricultural Policy (CAP), farmers are guaranteed that they will not be paid less than a specified 'floor price' for their produce. To prevent prices paid to farmers falling beneath this "Noor the EEC agricultural department guarantee to buy any surplus produce at this price out of CAP This has had two particularly serious results. First, it has produced vast butter and beef "mountains" which the CAP authorities have found hard to dispose of. Second, it has meant that cheaper foods from outside the EEC could not be sold at prices below the agreed 'Roor.
The British position is that fares profits should be guaranteed by government subsidies Retail prices could then be allowed to fall, decrcasing the surplus food "mountuins", as well as allowing for the possibility of lower shon nrices. For British capitalism the EEC is The unti-market campaign of the three sources:
Karin imports tries.
Under the present EEC Common REGIONAL AIDS be safeguaried Given the immense increase in world prices over the last year, the possibility of cheap imports from outside the bEC exists only in the case of a very few foodstuffs, since in most cases BEC prices now compare favourably with world market prices. In this situation the small concessions which Labour agriculture minister Fred Peart has alroady won don'| louk as pathetic as they would have done a year ago. With EEC subsidies for sugar imports into Britain he can point to at least some coonomic benetit to Britain from the EBC; particularly in view of the rocent decision to ailow Britain to continue with a lower floor price for beef combined with subsidies, 35 of which will be paid by CAP. COMMONWEALTH The recent aid and trade ugreement, signed and sealed last month between the EEC and 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (mostly former French and British colonics) together with certain concessions regarding aid and trade for Labour ministers Shore and Callaghan welcome a new player to the renegotiation game the Indian continent, could not have come at a better time for Wilson. As even the capitalist journal The Economiss points out, these agreements will be most advantageous to the EEC countries themselves. None the less, the short ten increases in aid will serve as a useful counter to the argument that the EEC does nothing for the former Commonwealth coun For the Labour anti-marketeers as much as for Enoch Powell and the extreme right, the question of Parttamentary sovereignty has been the most prominent plank of their antimarket campaigo. The main practical debate has centred uround the question of regional aids. Under EEC rules, member countries cannot give subsidies to employers in industrially under class has. developed regions except as direct state subsidies for investment plans.
For Benn and the Labour 'left', the issue is that only Britain can decide the needs of its regional policy and that the British system of paying a Regional Employment Premium to firms in underdescloped regions must -In a similar vein, anti-marketeers have demanded that the EEC should not be able to determine the level of VAT in Britain, the amount of British investment in other EBC countrics, or the exchange rate of'sterling with other European currencies.
However, agreement is very near on face-savers for Wilson on all these questions. For regional aids, the Brit### STEVE KENNEDY ish system is likely to be permitted to coexist with EEC regional policy at least until 1977. VAT and co-ordination of currency exchange tales have effectively been swept under the carpet until after the referendum And EEC complaints about the fuiluse of British capital to Now freely into Europe have been damped down by a pica of economic crisis Trom the British Treasury (this will Keep the EEC civil servants busy investig ating well into the summer). ALLIANCES British capitalists and their Europ can counterparts realise that it is only on a European scale that they can compete witle thel American and Japanese rivals and confront their domestic working classes. But the ruling classes of America and Japan are equally well aware that without such institutions as the EEC, the dangers of a real setback for captalist class nile in Europe would be groutly increased. With the passing of the days in which individual imperialisi powers could delend their interests singie-handed, it has become increas ingly necessary, for the survival of capitalism itself, that they group together in military, economic and pol itical alliances like the BEC Of course these alliances have not been easy to forge, and their survival is by no means guaranteed. The need of the great. Buropean trusts is for the EEC to be eventually transformed into a sort of European "super-state' which could effectively guarantee their operations. But this goal is in sharp conflict with the sectional intcrests of different groups of Europ ean capitalists, with the nationalist ideology on which capitalism was built in Europe, and with the distinct interests that each national capitulst The chauvinist anti-market camp aign of the trade union bureaucrals and the Labour 'left' in this country is built precisely un the basis of the sectional interests of Brizish capital ism. In so doing they make it easy for Wilson, in alliance with the decIsive sections of British and Europ can capitalism, to out-manoevre them by producing a string of con cessions out of the renegotiations. The tasks of socialists in the period leading up to the refernum must be to build up opposition to the EEC as an institution of capilation and to counterpose to the chauvinism of the Labour 'left' the need for real working class solutions to the crisis of capitalism, and the unity of European worker in strugele fe