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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 25, 19 June 1950, pp. 1 & 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The British Labor Party, through a statement of policy by its Executive Committee, has flatly rejected the Schuman plan for a pool of steel and coal resources in Western Europe. More than that, if also clearly turned its back on any present perspective or program for the economic integration of the area.
While it was certain that the British would not join the Schuman Plan, the Labor Party statement was remarkoble and unexpected in the extent to which its argumentation and conclusions pointed to even wider opposiied to any other orientation along the lines of economic unity.
This move, said the N.Y. Times, was caused by pressure from the left in the party for a “socialist foreign policy.” Such a comment is based on one of the reasons given by the BLP: They pointed to the impossibility of entering a Western European pool dominated by a capitalist majority without surrendering their own aims in organizing their own economy toward nationalization, and they argued that real international planning is impossible without national planning in the member countries.
This argument is well-based, but it does NOT make the BLP line a “socialist foreign policy.” Nor is it a basic reason for the party’s stand. Indicating the point: Lord Beaverbrook, notorious as a supporter of the empire above all else, praised the Labor Party for turning its back on Europe.
The party statement itself contains the reason for this praise and its justification. It argued that Britain, for its own advantage, preferred close ties with its own economic bloc, what is left of its empire, to European unity; with this, it argued specifically against the very notion of organizing Western Europe as a “third force” independent of both the U.S. and Russia. It counterposed to a Western European bloc two others: its “sterling bloc” on the economic side and the U.S. war bloc on the political side.
The seeming contradiction with its “socialist” argument is made possible by the narrow nationalistic outlook that pervades all sections of the current leadership of the Labor Party. On the one hand the base of the Labor Party is in the British working class and a policy of full employment, while at the same time it is tied to the cold-war policies of Washington and has planned its economic policy toward the Commonwealth and colonialism.
One of the reasons given by Labor Party Leader Hugh Dalton is that the Schuman Plan would create a supra-national body which “would have a permanent anti-socialist majority and would arouse the hostility of the European workers.” That it would arouse the hostility of the European workers is certain; but why must there be a “permanent” anti-socialist majority?
This passing remark, in its own way, reflects the perspective of the Labor Party, not only of the right wing which is ready to accede to Washington pressure and engage in doubletalk about integrating, but also unfortunately of the so-called left wing. It does not develop a program based on strengthening the forces and parties of socialism in Western Europe, nor does it carry out a program that would enable them to grow. It rather ties itself to the hope of continued and expanding imperialist exploitation of the Commonwealth and its territories.
At a time when an Independent Western Union is a crying economic and political necessity for Western Europe, the Labor Party turns its back on Western Europe and faces the Commonwealth. The initiative for unifying Western Europe in their own way has been seized by the capitalist governments in response to the demands of all social classes and is turning it into an arena for their inter-imperialist rivalries.
The Labor Party says that it “cannot see European unity as an overriding end in itself” and points to the necessity for close economic cooperation of all parts of the world. But it is only on the basis of the initiative supplied by an advanced industrial region such as Western Europe, unified under the leadership of workingclass governments, that this can be attained today.
It is only an Independent Western Union ready to plan production democratically and to disengage itself from the cold war that will be able to provide for worldwide economic cooperation and offer a political alternative to the two war blocs.
Instead of taking the leadership in the struggle for an integrated Western Europe and giving it a socialist content, and really providing a basis for the economic unity that is sought, the British Labor Party has in effect announced that it is banking on tying British imperialist interests to those of Washington. Its declaration is no more socialist than the Schuman Plan itself.
As against both the specific type of “national socialism” of the BLP and the capitalist integration outlook of the Continental governments, the socialist and internationalist road for the solution of the problem could be taken only if the Labor Party leaders adopted the aim of an Independent Western Union as their alternative to Schuman.
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