DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT PRESS RELEASE

OCTOBER 22 2009

WHO ARE THE REAL AUTHORITARIANS TODAY IN EUROPE, MR MILIBAND?

Foreign Secretary and opponents of a Lisbon Referendum accused of being the new, real authoritarians in British and European politics. As the imposition of ‘President Blair’ becomes ever more likely, David Miliband is challenged to debate in public ‘anti-democratic politics in the EU today’.

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has launched a typically New Labour, McCarthyite attack on the Conservative party for teaming up with some east European political parties in the European parliament who are alleged to hold anti-semitic, homophobic and ‘neo-Nazi’ views. However, since the European Parliament is clearly not where significant power lies in Brussels, the decision of the Tories to team up with East European centre-right parties is of little legislative consequence, regardless of whether or not the claims made against their new allies have been spun in some typically New Labour way by the foreign secretary.

New Labour, throughout its Peter Mandelson-orchestrated history, has frequently employed a McCarthyite ‘xenophobes under the bed’ tactic against political opponents - whether of the traditional left or right - in order to distract attention from the actual substance of the inconvenient political position or claim being advanced. The foreign secretary in making the attacks he has is merely continuing a long, disreputable tradition, characterised in relation to the European issue principally by former Europe minister Denis MacShane. David Miliband’s intention now is to draw attention away from his government’s anti-democratic breaking of its promise at the 2005 general election to let the British people vote on the Lisbon treaty (the cynically re-named European Constitution rejected by a large majority of French and Dutch voters in 2005). Nor does he want us to focus on the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the system of EU governance that citizens from all the member countries are being increasingly placed under the control of without their consent.

Since Mr Miliband has attempted to create this McCarthyite smokescreen, he should perhaps reflect that, as Dr Laughland’s book The Tainted Source: The undemocratic origins of the European idea (Little Brown & Company, 2000) demonstrates, the original project of creating a Pan-European political system was actually enthusiastically supported by fascist movements. The National Alliance in Italy, the successors to Mussolini’s party and partners in the Berlusconi coalition government, are firm supporters of greater European political union today. The British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, campaigned post-war on the slogan of ‘Europe a nation’. The original plans for a single currency were drawn up by the Nazis. Former French presidents and drivers for European centralisation, Francois Mitterand, Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Delors were all active for the Vichy government in various capacities. Mitterand even received the Francisc medal from Marshall Petain for his service to the fascist regime. Robert Schuman, one of the EU’s founding fathers, voted as a member of the French national assembly to give Petain dictatorial power, and then went on to serve as a Vichy minister. Paul-Henri Spaak, whose Spaak report laid the foundations for the creation of the European community, had been a member of the Belgium Nazi party. Fascists were attracted to the idea of a politically unified and regulated continent with a non-elected elite at its heart.

The Democracy Movement believes that the peoples of Europe today are confronted by a new and dangerous post-democratic elitism - Euro-Authoritarianism - of which New Labour and David Miliband are classic manifestations. Euro-Authoritarianism is self-evidently more subtle than Twentieth Century fascism, and it is not motivated by anti-semitism and racism. The Euro-Authoritarians do not seek to end multi-party elections, but rather to greatly restrict the parameters within which electorates can make meaningful collective choices by transferring ever more law-powers to appointed, non-accountable institutions in Brussels. The new Euro-Authoritarians are driven by a post-modernist, Third Way ideology. This represents a direct threat to the liberal, anti-colonialist legacy of the European Enlightenment and the idea that sovereignty should reside with national communities of people rather than unaccountable elites.

Mr Miliband and his associates in New Labour today are working to create a political system based in Brussels that does not accord with the rule of law and can by-pass parliamentary and public accountability. The Euro-Authoritarians fear the concept of popular democracy, hence their hysterical denunciations of the idea that voters should be allowed to directly determine important issues.

The New Euro-Authoritarians support…

1. …preventing the peoples of the EU member states having a direct democratic say regarding whether or not new law-making powers should be centralised in Brussels. When the French and Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the Lisbon treaty (then named the European Constitution) their wishes were ignored. When the Irish rejected both the Nice and Lisbon treaties they were forced to vote again within a year in rigged referenda so that these treaties could be forced through.

2. …the centralisation of more law-making powers in Brussels. Once directives are passed, no national elected government or parliament can opt to reject or reverse them as the unelected Commission retains the monopoly right to initiate new legislation. Because of the volume of laws emanating from Brussels, most of the measures are passed in Britain through the use of statutory instruments. MPs do not even get the chance to debate them, let alone vote to block them.

3. …the introduction of a raft of measures designed to increase state surveillance and control. Lisbon will lead to the creation of the Committee on Internal Security (COSI) which will share DNA, fingerprint, CCTV footage and internet surveillance material between security organisations. In May, the EU Data Retention Directive was passed. This enables state agencies to find out what all citizens - not just those suspected of committing criminal offences - have been downloading and who they have been contacting electronically. The Commission is already funding Project Indect which is a mass surveillance project dedicated to identifying “abnormal behaviour” through CCTV footage and a “continuous monitoring of websites, discussion forums, usernet groups… and individual computer systems”. The EU now has an embryonic police force, Europol, whose officers, like senior EU officials, enjoy, revealingly, immunity from prosecution in member states (Statutory Instrument 1997 No.2973). This body will gain powers of “implementation”of operational powers within the member states as a consequence of Lisbon. EU citizens can now under the European Arrest Warrant be deported automatically to another member country without any hard evidence having been provided by prosecuting authorities. The Commission has been for many years financing various projects designed to result in the introduction of ID cards, though their formal implementation is still a matter of national law.

4. …the current undemocratic structure of the EU. In addition to the unelected Commission’s monopoly right to introduce new legislation, the Council of Ministers meets in secret and votes are not recorded. In reality, the vast majority of its decisions are taken by civil servants representing the ministers from the member states in COREPER. European voters cannot hold these bodies collectively responsible through the ballot box. The executive and the key legislative body, therefore, are beyond democratic account. It is illegal under article 108 of the current treaty for elected representatives from the member states to in any way try to influence the deliberations of the European Central Bank. Under Lisbon, the political leaders, meeting behind closed doors in the European Council, will be able to appoint a full-time president and foreign minister to represent the Union on the World stage.

5. … an elitist, corporatist system of politics. The mindset of the EU political class is to concentrate power in the hands of elite bodies representing big business and the major trades unions. Hence, the Committee of the Social Partners which affords elite access to the European Round Table of Industrialists. The EU model of corporatist politics cuts out ordinary voters and gives a massive advantage to lobbyists from big financial interests, as was seen in the decision to outlaw 300 alternative health treatments following extensive lobbying by Pfizer, Boots and other big companies. Democracy Movement director Stuart Coster has written to the foreign secretary to challenge him to publicly debate the question of ‘anti-democratic politics in the EU today’ in the wake of Mr Miliband’s accusations that William Hague and the Tory party have consorted with ‘neo-Nazis’. In addition to discussing this question, Stuart Coster wants to investigate to what extent Mr Miliband’s government is helping to advance a fundamentally illiberal, non-democratic politics through its adherence to the Euro-Authoritarian characteristics identified above.

Stuart Coster comments: “New Labour have shown themselves to be notoriously cowardly in terms of openly debating the EU issue, as well as virtually every other issue. They prefer, as good authoritarians, to speak only at controlled, all-ticket party events with no or only planted questions from the floor. Hopefully, Mr Miliband will take me and a lot of other people hugely by surprise and agree to debate Dr Laughland. I gather the foreign secretary claims to be an intellectual so it might just be that he will relish the opportunity to justify, in a contested environment, his European political stance and his recent comments”.

CONTACT: Stuart Coster 020 7603 7796 mail@democracymovement.org.uk