Democrat June 2000 (Number 44)
Federalists push for Euro-Superstate
One currency, Army, Tax and Justice system
by Brian Denny
A Brussels campaign to impose the single currency
onto Britain has gone up a gear with the deliberately weak euro further
damaging the already reeling British manufacturing industry.
The euro has been allowed to fall to as low as 88
cents to the dollar to enable Germany to increase it's exports to
boost Berlin's struggling economy at the expense of other countries.
Eurofanatics have also used the situation to whip
up fear and attempt to batter down mass opposition in Britain to membership
of the single currency.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson has pressed
home this message by claiming that "as long as we are outside the
euro there is little we can do to protect industry against the destabilising
swings in the value of sterling."
Reality
This of course is standing reality on it's head as
the pound has more or less kept pace with the yen and the dollar.
If Britain had been signed up to the euro from it's
inception we would have been in a more disastrous position, saddled
with an economic policy totally unsuited British conditions, as witnessed
in Ireland.
However, eurofanatics like Mandelson care little for
economic reality as belief in "Europe" was always an act of political
faith.
Such kite-flying revealed Mandelson's ambition to
force the government to campaign openly for EMU membership rather
than the present Downing Street policy of burying the issue in an
attempt to avoid angering a profoundly eurosceptic public.
However, the disasters at Rover, Ford, Harland and
Wolfe to name a few, combined with the continued rape of Britain's
fishing grounds under the CFP, has been enough to increase resistence
to Euro rule.
Good for whom?
For Blair to openly declare what is good for the
European Central Bank must be good for the peoples of these islands
would be tantamount to political suicide.
Therefore you could assume that Mandelson's political
ambitions lay beyond Westminister and lay within the corridors of
Brussels itself.
As Blair cannot deliver membership of the euro he
has given the consolidation of a European military-industrial complex
a boost with £5,000 million worth of orders.
As The Democrat predicted, Blair angered the
US and bought the European Meteor air-to-air missile from Matra BAe
Dynamics to arm the Eurofighter as Germany demanded.
Orders
The European Airbus consortium also won enough orders
from London to produce its first military model, the A400M airlifter.
Defence secretary Geoff Hoon also claimed that an order to lease
four US Boeing C-17 transport aircraft was "evidence for our partners
on both sides of the Atlantic of our strong commitment to enhance
European defence capabilities."
However, Blair's move to reject US demands to buy
Raytheon's Amraam missile for the Eurofighter will have incensed Washington.
Euro-federalism
Despite the flam, there is growing evidence that
all is not well in terms of public support for the masterplan of building
a eurofederalist empire.
European Commission President Romano Prodi felt it
necessary to call for a "committee of wise men" to discuss plans for
a federal Europe as outlined by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
He told the Paris daily Le Monde that "the
time to think about the future has returned" but cautioned against
using the word "federal" because of growing opposition to the project.
Personal view
In another bout of kite-flying Mr Fischer announced
his "personal view" that the EU should develop into a federal state
with a constitution and Germany and France in the driving seat.
Mr Prodi agreed that "Germany and France must be in
such an avant garde."
These moves are a thinly veiled attempt to regain
the initiative and repair a growing rift between Paris and Berlin.
The neoliberal privatisation feeding frenzy witnessed
at the Lisbon EU summit infuriated the French who made clear that
the peasants at home were on the point of revolt over EU demands for
further mass sell offs.
This of course was ignored by other EU leaders, particularly
by Britain and Spain.
There are rifts opening up in the rotten heart of
"Europe" at the very time when Brussels proposes to expand it's empire
east and to curtail any form of democratic accountability by abolishing
the veto.
Therefore the need for unity and alliance within the
democratic anti-EU movement has never been greater and the demand
for action never more pressing.