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ENTER THE COMMON MARKET
It is in this context that the Common Market issue must be examined. The Common Market has become the ideological issue on which Left and Right have joined battle.
The battle has been fiercer than other recent disputes precisely because of the pressure of the working class and trade unions. The Left dare not take on the Right on issues which concern the class struggle directly because they can offer no alternative and because such a lead at the political level would intensify working class opposition seriously and make a political confrontation between working class and ruling class more likely. It is precisely this political confrontation that the Left must avoid: its generation would force them down from the heights of passionate rhetoric into effective leadership which they cannot give.
The centrists of the Party took up the Common Market issue with something approaching indecent haste. It provided them with a chance to mend most of their fences with the trade unions and also with a non-class issue to appeal to the petty-bourgeois nationalism of the electorate (Much of the trade union opposition derives from petty-bourgeois nationalism; the other element being fears that the working class’ standard of living will worsen. See B&ICO pamphlet: The EEC, a Communist History).
As the class struggle has intensified, so has the Left's anti-Common Market zeal. Though the Left never even considered forcing a General Election on the Industrial Relations Bill, it has come to believe that one fought on the Common Market could be won by Labour and all would be well afterwards (presumably this means no class struggle and no necessity to hit the working class). The Centrists have had to acquiesce, because to oppose the "will of the Party" would negate and destroy their reasons for taking up the anti-terms of entry position - mending Party fences. The resignations of the Right and pro-marketeers from the Shadow Cabinet were precipitated by the danger that the Left's use of the fence mending would really jeopardise not only Common Market entry but also parliamentary democracy. If the amendment by a Tory backbencher for a referendum on EEC entry had been supported by a 3-line whip by the PLP, it would almost certainly have been carried. And so strong is petty-bourgeois nationalism (its strength certainly a vestige of the Empire-Commonwealth of Nations ideology fostered by both Labour and Tories. Norway and Denmark should have no trouble with their referenda not having the encumbrance of an imperial past) that a referendum on entry could be lost.
The British public has shown itself perfectly willing to allow Parliament to get us into the EEC, though "itself" does not particularly relish the idea of becoming European (see any published opinion poll for the last two years). In addition, a referendum at this time would also net votes against entry on a straight anti-Tory basis directed against the state of the economy, school milk charges, Fair Rent Policy etc. There is no basis for arguing that a referendum would be more democratic than a Parliamentary decision given the structure of British politics. Jenkins and co are correct in that referenda are a populist, or petty-bourgeois democratic device which have proven unworkable in practice. The best example being the USA where referenda are a recourse "of the people" in nearly every state, but which are never in practice used. If public pressure were effectively against EEC entry in Britain, Parliament would not be able to take us in. It is a bourgeois issue and Parliament is a bourgeois institution amenable to bourgeois pressure.
So the Labour pro-Marketeers have taken a stand. The bourgeois press has seen the stand with mixed reactions. They are glad that the "national interest" has been assured; getting the EEC enabling Bill through Parliament and defeating the referendum amendment on the way should now be relatively simple. But they are worried at the "internecine war" within the Labour Party. The Labour Party must be preserved in its two functions intact if parliamentary politics is to continue. If Jenkins and co never come in from the cold of the back benches this may not be possible. For the Left can never provide the leadership necessary for Government or HM's Opposition on their own. They need the "realism" of the Right to maintain the Party whole.
Michael Foot, nominal head of the Tribune group, has clearly recognised this by the gentleman-like treatment accorded by him to the Right on the EEC. He is front bench spokesman on the EEC and has shown a disinclination to turn the knife into the pro-Marketeers and indeed to stop entry by any but the most orthodox of Parliamentary means. The press are agreed that it was Wedgwood Benn's hankering after the party leadership that led to the present "crisis". He has a vested interest in driving Jenkins out into the cold and thereby narrowing the field for the next leader of the PLP. However, so astute a manoeuvrer has Benn proved (something not often seen in the Left who are usually more pre-occupied with principles and conviction) that Tribune, Foot’s organ, can describe the events as a vindication of democratic process and a harbinger of more democratic control by the NEC and Annual Conference over the PLP. The centrists, including the centrist of them all, H. Wilson, have been wondering over the ruins of their mended fences.
Mending them again will he a tricky problem. There is still the need to avoid issues of the class struggle. Wilson is hoping that if he closes his eyes, it will all go away. Meanwhile, the ruling class are waiting anxiously. They are not so much worried about what the Left would do if in power in the PLP, but more about the deterioration of the Labour Party if led by a group with no policy except oppositionism and rhetoric. It would cease to be a governing party and so throw parliamentary politics into flux.