Need for a British Sovereignty Movement [1988]

When is a country not a country?

[Editor’s Note: The article below was originally published in the March 1988 issue of the “Irish Democrat”, five months before its author’s death. It was written under the pseudonym “Feicreanach”, which Desmond Greaves used occasionally. Its original title was, “When is a country not a country?” and it was Greaves’s response to the proposal for turning the European Community/Common Market into a “European Union”. At a summit in Brussels shortly before, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had surrendered to the wish of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand to move towards a significantly new stage of European supranational integration, a European Union, in which the Member States of what was then the European Community would adopt the constitution of what would effectively be a federal “United States of Europe”, analogous to the USA. This led in time to the Maastricht “Treaty on European Union” in 1992, in which the term “European Union” was applied to the “intergovernmental” relations between the supranational European Community on the one hand and its Member Nation States, which still retained control of their foreign policy and crime and justice policies, on the other. The supranational European Union proper, endowed with legal personality for the first time, did not come into being until the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, when a constitutionally new European Union replaced the European Community, and foreign policy and crime and justice policy were brought within its supranational scope. The Lisbon Treaty was effectively then the “Treaty of European Union”.

In the penultimate paragraph of his article Desmond Greaves asks, “Why not a British Sovereignty Movement?” to fight Mrs Thatcher’s treachery in permitting this development. The CPGB, of which he was a lifelong member, was racked by internal disputes at this time over the meaning of various theoretical concepts in the party programme,“The British Road to Socialism”. It was Greaves’s view that talk of socialism was largely irrelevant in a country whose Government had agreed to it being bound by the European treaties to uphold classical laissez-faire – i.e. free movement of goods, services, labour and capital – as constitutional principles nationally and transnationally. As he indicates in his Journal, he would have liked the contending sides in the CP dispute to put theoretical issues aside and unite in organising practical opposition to the proposed European Union. One may speculate that if that had been done it might have led to Labour rather than the Conservatives leading the UK out of the European Union nearly forty years later. Instead, the faction-fighting led to the dissolution of the CPGB in 1991, three years after Greaves’s death.
In the final paragraph Greaves challenged Provisional Sinn Fein and IRA over their lack of concern at this supranational European Union development. Not long before he wrote this article European Commission President Jacques Delors had made his well-known remark that before too long Brussels would be making 80% of the economic laws for the EC/EU Member States. This led Greaves to comment that if that was the case Sinn Fein and the IRA were contending with the Unionists and Loyalists over who was going to exercise the remaining 20%! He always held the view that Irish independence was the supreme democratic value for genuine Irish Republicans and that national unity in independence was the only worthwhile form of Irish reunification. In his view to support membership of the European Union was to abandon both Republicanism and democracy.]

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When Is a Country Not A Country?

On Monday mornings BBC Radio Four runs a phone-in that frequently covers contentious matters and opinions not often allowed on the air.

It is an ideal agency for a bit of Government kite-flying. On Monday February 15th 1988 the subject was “Europe”.

The announcer was brutal and perhaps deliberately provocative to make sure there was a wind. The British people were bored by the EEC. But as far as Europe was concerned, they’d “seen nothing yet”.

In a month’s time the British Government intended to spend taxpayers’ money on a propaganda campaign in favour of European Union and, the gentleman explained, listeners had to be prepared to stop thinking of themselves as British, but just as Europeans, for by 1992 there would be no boundaries, just one combined country, “Europe”.

We’ll comment on the irony first. In the nineteenth century the Irish were told not to think of themselves as Irish, but as “West British”. When English capitalists pushed the railway on from Berwick to Edinburgh they called it not the Scottish Railway, but the North British, and if memory doesn’t fail me there’s still a “North British Hotel” in Edinburgh. And – bearing in mind that only the Scots, Welsh and Cornish have the historic right to call themselves Britons – today those who gave up their good national name to embrace a concoction, are being told to forget about it and be European!

I don’t think it will sell. But that was what the phone-in was designed to discover.

Those who telephoned – not all asked questions – were of two kinds, British people living at home and British people living abroad. Not a single one living at home supported the move. One woman in Bristol bitterly complained of the filching away of her national identity by no visible democratic process. Of British people abroad about fifty percent supported the merger of Britain into a European Union, but another fifty percent deplored it.

To an anti-EEC speaker from Paris, the Common Market man on the panel said, “But just see how good it is. You’re the sign of its success. You’ve got a job in Paris.”

“I don’t want a job in Paris, he replied – I think he was a Scot – I want a job where I was brought up.”

I believe the government is entering a very dangerous path. I think they may slip. And I don’t care if they do. For up to now Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationality was expendable. English was inviolable even under the title British. Now the rulers of Britain are in danger of throwing away the pepper pot with which for generations they have thrown dust in the eyes of the English people – their pretence to represent the nation. It may prove the most fatal event in twentieth century English history.

A few general comments. First, why are they doing it? The motive is revealed in the replies to the objection that British industry is to be further sacrificed. “What’s wrong with a service economy?” asked the radio Common Market man. Indeed what?

There is little question that the most powerful section of British capitalists is composed of the banks, insurance companies and the other financial institutions of the City of London. The London financiers think they can become the financial masters of Europe. Broadly speaking, the deal that has been struck is that London should process an increasing proportion of European financial transactions, and in return for this British industry will be sacrificed to the so-called West-European “golden triangle”.

There is no question however that following the projected establishment of a European Bank an effort will be made to bring the City under European control. There’ll be easy pickings for a time, that’s all.

This throws light on Mrs Thatcher’s ignominious collapse. She’d like to save money on agricultural expenditure. But of all British Prime Ministers she is the one most vigorously identified with the interests of the City. With the glittering prize of financial hegemony in danger of being snatched away, what could she do but collapse?

It was James Larkin who said that the English workers never react except under the direct impact of experience. Well, it looks as if the impact is not far off. And already the most forward thinkers are sensing the transmutation of the age. Different interests are being affected in different ways. But some react by preparing to resist. Others prepare to climb down. The logic of the European process is to leave Westminster with no more power than a County Council. Judging by the speed with which he is adapting Labour policy to the degrees of freedom permitted by the European Community, one would say that Mr Kinnock would accept a prison as long as he was the chief trusty.

But see how much is involved. The EC is to have an army linked to NATO. The peace movement is involved. The aim is to subvert Irish neutrality. The Irish movement is involved. Civil liberties are involved. Cultural autonomy is involved. One can foreshadow a massive future movement in which previously separate organisations will come together, taking a leaf out of the book of the Irish Sovereignty Movement.

Indeed why not a British Sovereignty Movement to fight Tory treachery step by step?

One final comment for our Republican friends. Without a moment’s disparagement of the worthy aim of a united Ireland, what will be the good of letting off bombs to unite two parts of a country that isn’t a country any longer, and which will have no more freedom of action joined or sundered? Need to think over that one.

Feicreanach

[C.Desmond Greaves]