PARLIAMENTARY COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: april 2013 :: RMTnews 9 The European Union (EU) is anti- democratic, anti-socialist, and from its 1957 origins as the European Common Market, has been driven by a free market capitalist ideology. It has worked by stealth, racheting towards its objective by degrees over decades but its direction has been obvious. The Euro is now in deep trouble, the Cyprus crisis is not the last, and the EU economy is failing. The core belief of the Eurocrats is neo- liberalism, an anti-socialist ideology which holds that markets should decide our fates, not democratically elected governments managing economies for the benefit of their peoples. Neo-liberalism is fundamentally opposed to the democratic socialism/social democracy which Western European nations established after the Second World War. The first three decades after 1945 saw full employment, rapidly rising living standards and the establishment of welfare states to provide security for all from cradle to grave. In Britain the National Health Service was founded, now threatened by privatisation, and trade union rights and immunities were secured. Vital industries across Europe were nationalised, including Britainís railways, and millions of decent homes were built for working people in Britain by local councils and by government created new town commissions. It was a world that worked. The ideologues of the Common Market/EU wanted none of that. They set about devising a scheme for marketising, liberalising and privatising European economies, and ñ most importantly ñ taking powers from national governments so they could no longer flirt with democratic socialism. For a long time they got away with all this simply because the post-war structures built by progressive governments were so robust and so popular that they could not simply dismantle them. Millions of Europeans assumed that they were secure for the long term. Not any more. The crisis in southern Europe in particular has seen forced fire sales of public assets with mass privatisations in a desperate attempt to buy time while their economies flounder and unemployment surges to previously unimagined levels. If unemployment in Britain was the same as that in Spain, we would have eight million on the dole not two and a half million, which is itself an appalling waste. Britainís railways have been privatised on an EU designed model but for the time being railways are still nationalised in most of the rest of Europe. Privatisation has indeed been an EU idea but there is fierce resistance to privatising other EU railways on the ìBritish modelî. It is obvious that Britainís railways need to be renationalised and soon. But the political elite both in Britain and in the EU know that this would be a major setback, a turning point indeed for the schemes of the right wing neo- liberals in Britain and the Eurocrats in Brussels. It is clear the European economic model is coming apart at the seams, starting to collapse from the inside. The Euro is in deep trouble and there is no rescue in sight. Cyprus with its tiny population is apparently being bailed out, but with savage terms imposed on bank depositors and on ordinary Cypriots. As the people of the EU come to believe that the Euro does not have a long term future they are bound to start taking their Euros out of European banks and buy other currencies if they can and the process of collapse will have started. It may be slow at first but could rapidly gather pace. Gordon Brown was absolutely right to keep Britain out of the Euro ten years ago, but it is now time to give up on EU membership. We must now elect a majority Labour government with a socialist programme to rebuild what has been lost in the decades of neo-liberal advance. In 1983 I was a Labour candidate for Parliament and fought the campaign on a manifesto calling for the nationalisation of banks and financial institutions and for Britain to leave the then Common Market/EEC. That manifesto was regarded as extreme by some people but it now looks rather like common sense! Kelvin Hopkins Labour MP for Luton North TIME TO LEAVE THE EU Parliamentary column Thousands of older people are "trapped" in their homes because of a lack of suitable transport, a new report has claimed. The charity WRVS revealed that as many as a third of a million over-75s are being unnecessarily socially excluded. Cuts in public transport services have made the position worse and are having a "devastating" impact on older people's sense of happiness, said the charity. A survey of 900 people in Britain over the age of 75 found that almost a fifth do not use public transport because it is not suitable for their disabilities, even though they are eligible for free travel. One in 10 of those questioned said they had lost their independence because they could not get out and about. WRVS chief executive David McCullough said that older people shouldn't be confined to their own homes simply because they can't access to transport. "Helping older people to stay active is vital for their good health and ensuring they remain connected is a really important factor in an inclusive society,” he said. RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that cuts to station and train staff being bulldozed through by the private train operators and the government would worsen the situation. “RMT will work with pensioners' groups to fight for access to transport services for all," he said. TRANSPORT POVERTY