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The 25 commissioners are merely top of a rotten pile. The European
parliament is famously pampered and famously corrupt. Official perks
for MEPs cost around £140 million annually. MEPs are paid
the equivalent of the salary given to members of their national
parliaments. At the upper end that means Italians get £78,244,
while those from Spain have to make do with around £25,000.
MEPs from Britain are on £57,485. Those who are MPs too are
paid at a so-called duality rate - that would put them on a basic
of £76,647.
However, there is a £19,162 accommodation top-up. MEPs also
receive two more standard payments - one of 44% of their salary
and the other of 33%. The first is for office expenses, the second
for office staff. That amounts to a total package of around £120,000.
There are many other ways of making money, though. Claiming no-questions-asked
travel expenses has proved particularly lucrative. MEPs are reimbursed
at the highest economy rate for making the round trip in order to
attend the regular sessions of the EU’s parliament - whether
that be in Brussels or Strasbourg. Air flights are often discounted,
though, and sold at rock-bottom prices. Some MEPs thereby manage
to notch up tidy savings of around £10,000 - which they duly
pocket. Allowances are also provided for taxis, language lessons,
daily living, etc. Most tax-free. Nor is there any prohibition on
MEPs employing their own relatives as aides - at least two dozen
reportedly do so. There are generous pensions too. MEPs over 60
who have served for more than five years receive around £1,000
per month.
The EU’s so-called ‘fraud-busters’ calculate that
in the year ending June 2003 proven scams amounted to £590
million. Probably the figure is around twice that amount. Subsidies
provided for under the Common Agricultural Policy being an easy
target. According to the United Kingdom’s own National Audit
Office, during Neil Kinnock’s period as a commissioner corruption
in the EU doubled. Amongst those accused of petty cheating was one
Glynis Kinnock.
Fittingly the EU as a whole has, in popular parlance, become a byword
for cronyism, extravagance and venality. And Tory rightwingers,
the Murdoch media, the Daily Telegraph, the United Kingdom Independence
Party and the whole chorus of little British chauvinists never miss
an opportunity to heap scorn upon the EU’s institutions and
personnel.
Rank hypocrisy. Blundering Tory MEPs have been caught with snouts
deep in the EU trough. More importantly, the constitutional ideal
of the Europhobes - monarchy, cabinet, unelected House of Lords,
established church and Whitehall mandarins - is inextricably interwoven
with the system of bribery. Capitalism strives to commodify everything
- including virtue, propriety and honour. The wheels of profit must
be greased. Democracy subverted. Hence fat donations to party funds,
liberal wining and dining, luxurious Caribbean holidays, the old
NUS network, jobs for sons and daughters, and straightforward blackmail.
That way come continued restrictions on trade union rights, extensive
infrastructural projects, useful legislation, juicy government contracts,
huge subsidies, massive tax breaks, etc.
To a greater or lesser extent all countries dominated, or penetrated,
by capitalism present the same essential picture. Italy, Saudi Arabia,
Iran, Japan, Russia, China and South Africa are notoriously corrupt.
But nowhere is immune. Capitalists will always try to use the state
to fix the market. Despite the pious assumptions of Adam Smith and
classical political economy and their present-day Chicago epigones,
there is not and there never has been anything remotely like ‘perfect
competition’. There is only unfair competition.
Frankly, the anti-capitalist left faces an open goal. Eg, Socialist
Worker reports that young people often automatically presume that
“deceit, spinning and personal ambition” are endemic amongst
politicians (February 28). And it is not only youth. Opinion polls
regularly show that wide swathes of the population regard the entire
political establishment with utter contempt.
Clearly though, the fight to expose and uproot corruption is not
only to key into mass discontent - it is, if it is to be more than
a sham, to take up the war against capitalism itself. Our main slogans
must be equality and democracy. And yet, and yet ... In the midst
of last month’s European elections, John Rees - the Socialist
Workers Party’s paramount leader and Respect candidate in the
East Midlands - issued what might appear to be a well aimed authoritative
statement: “Our MEPs,” he pledged, “will be leading
the campaign in the European parliament to derail the financial
gravy train and clear up the mess”(www.respectcoalition.org/index,
June 6).
Unfortunately a rather sorry own goal. It was not that Respect
failed to get anyone elected. The words of comrade Rees simply rung
hollow. There is the stench of double standards. After all one of
the ‘shibboleths’ voted down by the SWP majority at the
January 25 founding convention was the second letter in the Respect
acronym. Supposedly the ‘E’ in Respect stands for ‘equality’
and this could, if it were taken seriously and made concrete, have
a profound impact on a working class that has visibly grown sick
and tired of Labourite politicians such as Mandelson and their naked
career-ism.
At the Respect convention the CPGB backed a motion, ably moved by
Lesley Mahmood, which would have committed all its elected representatives
to stand well clear of the Euro gravy train and take a personal
salary no greater than the average skilled worker - the balance
being donated to the movement. We have no wish to see yet another
generation of socialists become hooked on the bloated parliamentary
lifestyle - one which undoubtedly is designed to go hand in hand
with all manner of conservative and backsliding pressures. The fighting
instincts of even the best militant can be subdued and tamed in
conditions of political theatre, cosy compromise ... and middle
class affluence.
Disgracefully, though, the motion was overwhelmingly defeated (other
‘shibboleths’ which were unceremoniously dumped included
republicanism, open borders and political inclusivity - women’s
and gay rights would surely have gone the same way too, if the SWP
leadership reckoned they could have got away with it).
The SWP has got itself into a hopeless mess over equality. Paul
Holborrow, for instance, urged the Respect convention to vote down
the motion on a worker’s wage because “Respect is not
a socialist organisation” (Weekly Worker January 29). Quite
frankly this is risible: limiting the pay of representatives is
a principle which our tradition applies to all spheres of representation.
The 1871 Paris Commune - originally the equivalent of the Greater
London Authority - guarded against the “inevitable” danger
of the “transformation of the state and the organs of the state
from servants of society into masters of society”. It filled
all posts - administrative, judicial and educational - “by
election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject
to the right of recall at any time by the same electors”. And
all officials were paid “only the wages received by other workers”.
In this way, said Fredrick Engels, “an effective barrier to
place-hunting and careerism was set up” (K Marx and F Engels
CW Vol 27, London 1990, p190).
The Bolsheviks upheld this heritage. In Vladimir Lenin’s so-called
‘April thesis’ we read: “The salaries of all officials,
all of whom are elected and displaceable at any time, not to exceed
the average wage of a competent worker” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24,
Moscow 1977, p23). Later, in State and revolution, Lenin argued
for the growing “equality of wages” as an integral part
of the programmatic aim of introducing labour certificates and,
finally, realising a communist society, where need determines consumption,
not hours done.
True, the Bolsheviks were forced to conduct a complete about-turn
over ‘bourgeois experts’ in 1918. To dissuade them from
going over to the whites in the erupting civil war and to get them
to work diligently and effectively engineers, agronomists, scientists,
etc, were generously bribed by the Soviet Republic. Nevertheless
till the Stalinite counterrevolution within the revolution and the
first five-year plan no member of the Communist Party was allowed
to earn more than a skilled worker. SWP founder Tony Cliff rightly
says this provision was “of great importance” (T Cliff
State capitalism in Russia London 1974, p68).
And only a few years ago the SWP experienced no problem voting for
this principle in the Socialist Alliance. Indeed there was unanimity
amongst us. Subsequently every one of the SA’s 98 candidates
in the 2001 general election - not least the chair, Dave Nellist,
a former Coventry MP - proudly proclaimed that they were not like
the self-seeking career politicians who dominate establishment parties.
They were not in it for the money. They would live on a skilled
worker’s wage. Tommy Sheridan and the Scottish Socialist Party
made the same pledge ... and won considerable esteem in the working
class as a result. Today their six MSPs take home something like
£23,000. Roughly half the official Holyrood salary.
This approach was unproblematically extended to the entire labour
movement. People before profit - the SA’s 2001 election manifesto
- demands that trade union officials must be regularly elected,
accountable and “receive the average wage of the workers they
represent” (p7). Ditto a recent SWP pamphlet, written by Martin
Smith, its industrial organiser. After slating the “astronomical”
salaries enjoyed by the trade union bureaucracy, he promises that
“a rank and file trade union official” would take home
the “average wage of the workers he or she represents”
(M Smith The awkward squad London 2003, p26).
Whether it be a class party or a sect, nothing, it seems, can be
easier than repeating elementary Marxist principles in order to
accrue prestige. Eg, Alex Callinicos boldly, and rightly, says that
to “demand equality is to propose revolution” (A Callinicos
Equality Cambridge 2000, p128). However, it is only when there is
a price to pay - eg, a government ban, temporary unpopularity, loss
of big names - do we discover beyond any shadow of doubt what is
authentic, serious and worthwhile and what is merely an affectation.
The right and centre of the German Social Democratic Party showed
their true colours in August 1914 by treacherously voting for the
kaiser’s war budget. Obviously the SWP did the same on January
25 2004 when it voted against equality, republicanism, open borders,
etc. Its leadership routinely preach Marxism in books and articles
and at their fortnightly Marxist forums. But SWP practice is thoroughly
opportunist: ie, principles are sacrificed in favour of anything
that is perceived as advantageous in the short-term. Quite frankly
in that light Socialist Worker has no right to criticise Labour
Party turncoats such as Charles Clarke and Diane Abbott for reneging
on their principles (nor does International Socialist Group/Resistance
leader Alan Thornett - who suddenly no longer knows what an average
skilled worker’s wage is, or how one might arrive at a suitable
figure).
Presumably the SWP calculated that sticking to a workers’ representative
on a worker’s wage might risk seeing the likes of George Galloway
and Yvonne Ridley swiftly head for the door marked ‘exit’.
Galloway publicly states he needs a minimum of £150,000, if
he is “to function properly as a leading figure in a part of
the British political system”. Ridley is the same, only perhaps
more so. She sends her daughter to an exclusive public school in
the Lake District and enjoys a rich Harper’s and Queen lifestyle.
Not surprisingly she views the idea of getting by on a skilled worker’s
wage with a mix of unconcealed horror and blank incomprehension.
Not that an MP’s “meagre” wage of £57,485 would
be enough for her. “Give me three of four times as much”,
she says. Only then can she “do the job properly” (Weekly
Worker July 1).
Leading SWPers - crucially John Rees and Lindsey German - have assiduously
courted, defended and promoted the likes of George Galloway and
Yvonne Ridley. Why? These paragons of middle class socialism rate
with the bourgeois media. Minor celebrities they may be, but they
are celebrities for all that. As such, they and their aristocratic
airs, hallowed prejudices, sudden whims and garbled politics must
be allowed to set Respect’s agenda, because they alone are
conceived of as the bridge to a mass audience. The operative conclusion
is clear: shed the baggage of past ages and move further and further
to the right. Then the left can garner votes - a mirror image of
what the SWP used to say about the sorry course plied by successive
generations of Labourites.
Under the leadership of John Rees the SWP’s craving for respectability
is palpable. Increasingly elections are seen not as a means of making
propaganda and enhancing class combativity; rather of saying what
you think people want to hear in a desperate bid to get yourself
elected - despite the failure of the June 10 elections and the subsequent
ratcheting down of expectations, the fond hope is that eventually
careers as MPs and MEPs will follow.
To achieve that end Respect must be all things to all people - “What
you want: we’ve got it,” Galloway is fond of saying. In
other words, Respect is a rainbow coalition within which any working
class component is merely listed alongside pensioners, students,
muslims and other religious groups, ethnic minorities “and
many others” who have been “deeply disappointed by the
authoritarian social policies and profit-centred, neoliberal economic
strategy of the government”.
This non-class approach is understandable from Galloway. His background
lies in Stalinism, third worldism and left Labourism. But for Rees
and the SWP it represents a practical collapse into populism: “a
form of politics which emphasises the virtues of the uncorrupt and
unsophisticated common people against the double-dealing and selfishness
to be expected of professional politicians and their intellectual
helpers. It can therefore manifest itself in left, right or centrist
forms” (A Bullock, O Stallybrass, S Trombley [eds] The Fontana
dictionary of modern thought London 1988, p668).
There can be no doubt that Respect is a manifestation of left populism.
Nor can there be any doubt that the SWP leadership is nowadays consciously
acting as a conduit for bringing petty bourgeois influences into
the socialist and workers’ movement - not least those gathered
together in 2003 in the Stop the War Coalition “mother ship”.
Jack Conrad
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