British trade unions | The myth of a progressive EU

Ready for change? Great Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham Photo: AFP/Paul Ellis This year's TUC (British Trade Union Confederation) congress in Brighton this week formulated important demands for Great Britain's economic transformation and its political implementation.

Despite the decline of the two-party system and the rise of rivals on the left, what remains clear is that most unions continue to see Labor as the only viable vehicle for change in the interests of workers. They believe that Andy Burnham (British Labor Prime Minister – ret.) offers the party a chance to regain the public's trust.

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Several unions welcomed his commitment to close the chapter on over 40 years of neoliberalism. Support for this came from both party-affiliated and unaffiliated unions. Some on the left may be skeptical of Burnham's actual willingness to change or his ability to implement it. But turning the union movement into a fighting force for this change makes sense either way.

The central proposal for the economic realignment of Great Britain - including through the nationalization of public services, sustainably higher government spending on public services and wages, higher taxes on assets and profits as well as the use of state aid and procurement to reindustrialize the country - must shape all negotiations between the unions and the government in the future.

Positive was the broad support for a joint motion calling on the government to work towards an end to the Iran war. Not least because of its impact on the cost of living, supported by the narrow success of the University and College Union's motion (“Welfare instead of War”). This confirms: The TUC rejects the militarization of society and the trend towards war.

The resolutions for a national day of action for fairer taxes and public services as well as for coordinated strikes in collective bargaining also show that concrete consideration is already being given to how the pressure on the government can be increased to implement this program.

However, the TUC remains divided when it comes to the neoliberal model of globalization that has been the breeding ground for Thatcherism and the market-based policies of every government since the 1980s.

Delegates initially voted against "divisive debates about nationalism and EU/single market membership", called for "respect for the result of the 2016 EU referendum" and recognized that single market membership would slow down the nationalization of the railways. However, the following day they voted for a motion that called for the "deepest possible partnership with the EU" without "arbitrary red lines" - put forward by a speaker who explicitly called for Britain to rejoin.

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In a week in which the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland tied their demands for independence to an EU future, there is now a risk of a return to the dead end of “progressive” (rather than class-conscious) politics. A politics that pits cosmopolitan against nativist identities instead of uniting workers against the rich.

This is based on the myth of an EU that stands for tolerance and prosperity. The reality is different: EU countries such as Germany, Italy and France are experiencing the same economic decline and attacks on working people's living standards that British liberals attribute to Brexit. In addition, the EU is acting increasingly militaristically, authoritarian and racist.

Such an attitude would throw Great Britain back into the toxic Brexit debates of the 2010s, instead of using the freedoms outside the EU for a new economic beginning. It would mean tying the goals of unions to the crumbling construct of neoliberal globalization, while our economic demands demand precisely its dismantling.

Rebuilding class-oriented and anti-imperialist politics requires abandoning liberal illusions about the explicitly capitalist EU - a pillar of an unjust trading system based on the exploitation of the global south.

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