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Taking our class nowhere

If Europe is a "continent of the mind", then its mind was not particularly switched on this past week.

Just six weeks ago, with much pomp, the European Union expanded to encompass 10 more countries. In elections to the European parliament last week, turnout in those accession states was just 26.4%. A mere 17% of Slovaks and 20% of Poles voted. Across the continent, only 155 million of the 350 million eligible voters bothered. The United Kingdom stood out in the sense that voter turnout actually went up, albeit to a paltry 38%.

That electors use the European elections to punish national governments rather than positively shape the Europe of their imaginations says much about the sterile and bureaucratised project that is the European Union and its unelected commission. The idea of Europe is powerful and could become contagious. But in the hands of the Brussels bureaucracy and the boring, nameless politicians of the parliament it has fuelled Euroscepticism across the continent. While the capitalist politicians view a united Europe as something to be carved out from above, below we remain uninspired.

In a typical bureaucratic and anti-democratic response to the poor turnout, the head of the European parliament, Pat Cox, said that these elections are "a wake-up call for those leaders in those states who propose to hold referenda on the constitutional treaty". In other words, for god's sake, don't let the people decide.

Because of this complete absence of any popular identification with the Europe of bureaucrats and bankers, domestic considerations dominated these elections. Where Europe was an issue, as in the UK, it was in the shape of Euroscepticism - wielded as national protest votes. But, there again, according to Slovenian foreign minister Dimitrij Ruple, "Any elections are about national politics."

The anti-war sentiment that stoked a mass movement across Europe last year found no clear electoral expression. It was the Eurosceptics and national oppositions that did well. Most electors took the opportunity to punish the incumbent government, no matter what its stripe. The exceptions being Spain, where the recently elected socialists consolidated their position, and the UK, where the Conservatives actually lost more votes than Labour, compared to the 1999 EU poll.
The socialist and communist left remains trapped in the failed electoral coalitions of the 20th century. The 'official' left stayed pretty much stagnant. In France the Trotskyite left coalition bringing together Lutte Ouvrière and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire lost all five of its MEPs. It took 3.3% of the vote - well below its 1999 return of 5.2% (and also well below the French Communist Party vote of 5.5%).

Eurosceptics did well in Sweden, where the recently formed EU-critical Junilistan came third, taking 14.4% of the vote and winning three seats in the new European parliament. The right-populist Vlaams Blok in Belgium scored 14.3%, making it the second biggest party in Belgium, while the populist Self-Defence Party in Poland won 11.5% of the vote and will be sending seven representatives to the Brussels and Strasbourg parliament. Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National consolidated its position as France's third party, with 10% of the vote.

In Italy the left did relatively well: five Rifondazione Comunista representatives were elected, up from three. The PRC vote went up - from 4.3% to 5.8% - but was still below its 1994 EU result of 6.1%. As for the bigger parties, the Olive Tree coalition went ahead of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.

It was in Italy that there seemed to be the clearest anti-war vote. Elsewhere, it all but evaporated. Given that there were millions on the streets against the war just a year or so ago, it is a crime that the left's opportunism and lack of imagination has so failed the movement. It seems that only in Italy and Spain was there a partial exception to this.

In Germany the ruling Social Democrats were hammered, receiving their worst national vote since the 1920s. The reformist/Stalinite Party for Democratic Socialism increased its representation by one, to seven MEPs. Of the former Soviet bloc countries, only the Czech Republic returned 'official' communist representatives, with the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia winning 20.6% of the vote and six MEPs.

Sinn Féin did well, returning two MEPs: one from the Republic of Ireland and one from the Six Counties, where it easily replaced the SDLP as the largest recipient of republican/nationalist votes with 26.3%. Similarly Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party eclipsed the Ulster Unionist Party, attaining just a fraction less than double the UUP's vote at 32.0%. Eamonn McCann of the Socialist Environmental Alliance won 9,172 votes (1.7%).

The centre-right Group of the European People's Party and European Democrats, which includes the UK Conservatives, remains the largest bloc in the 732-strong parliament with 278 seats. The Party of European Socialists bloc, to which Labour belongs, has 208 seats. The Liberal group has 67 seats, while the Greens have 41 MEPs.

The 'official communist' and left grouping (the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left) has 39 seats in the new parliament. UKIP has signed up with the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities, which has 16 members in the parliament; the other four coming from Eurosceptics in Denmark and the Netherlands.

For years leading up to these elections, the revolutionary left has said this is the opportunity of a lifetime to win socialist representation. That opportunity has largely been wasted. There are no moves towards a socialist unity bloc of the European Union, let alone a Communist Party of the EU, which is what the workers of Europe actually need. To the extent that the EU becomes a state, the working class must organise within it and against it.

The demand for and necessity of European-wide working class cooperation and unity is an urgent question. The European Social Forum in October provides the left with an opportunity to consider the next steps towards a continental unity from below. Unless the working class and its organisations become the champions of democracy within the European Union, that banner will remain in the hands of its usurpers - the demagogues and scaremongers of the Eurosceptic right wing.

One thing is for certain: what we are doing now is taking the working class nowhere

Martin Blum