The Queen opens the muppet show

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
18 May 2016

Under this system, the political scene is always more about show business than actual political content. Thus the side-shows of Parliament's opening with its grand pantomime in the foreground and in the background, the shoddy Ugly Sisters squabbling over "in" and "out" of the EU.

So the Queen announced that "her" government will introduce 21 bills in the next parliament... calling them "social reforms"! What a misnomer!

These reforms (even the prisons reform) are just more ways of cutting and privatising and screwing down conditions and wages - in fact deforming the situation of the working class even further. And by the way, there's nothing new in that.

Neither is there anything new in the "to Brexit or not to Brexit" theatre. Except that it's getting more farcical by the day!

Already the "Leave" camp has produced a film called "Brexit: the Movie", which is set to be released through main cinema chains.

Meanwhile, the schedule of TV referendum broadcasts is causing grief, with the "Leave" camp accusing ITV of taking orders from Downing Street.

The point is that on both sides, political grandees want to be seen on prime-time under the best possible light. Among them are Tory heavyweights who, like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, are positioning themselves in preparation for Cameron's succession race. And, of course, there's also Farage, who hopes to use this referendum and its TV broadcast as a platform for his party in preparation for the next general election.

These politicians are as short-sighted as one can be, when it comes to the interests of the majority of society, but when it comes to promoting their own careers, they can be very long-sighted indeed.

Workers' interests are not represented

What has all this show-business to do with the EU? Not much in fact. The issue of the EU has long been a pretext used by various rival political cliques of the capitalist class in their on-going in-fighting. No more, no less.

Just as none of their show business has got anything to do with the interests of the working class majority of the population.

The "Remain" camp warns of a job onslaught in case of Brexit. But they're the same politicians who've presided over, if not encouraged, the British bosses' onslaught against permanent, decent jobs, replacing them with low-paid casual jobs!

As to the "Leave" camp, its position is best summed up by one of its main donors, billionaire Peter Hargreaves, who takes a notorious stance against flexitime, against extended maternity leave, against the right to limit the working week to 48 hours and against most other rights introduced through EU regulations. Whatever they may say about "standing for British jobs", they are just like the other camp - standing only for British bosses against the whole of the working class.

And, of course, what both camps have in common, is their blaming of EU (or any foreign) workers for depriving British workers of their jobs and for undercutting wages. Something which clearly is the responsibility of the bosses in this country. In their attempts to make their workforces even cheaper, they even used a loophole in EU law on "equal pay for equal work" to invent the notorious zero-hours contract!

Our only camp is working class unity!

So, with both camps in the referendum representing so clearly the interests of the bosses, we will not have any means of expressing our own class interests with our ballot papers on 23rd June.

Indeed, what are our class interests? First of all, to make the capitalists pay for the crisis they have caused with their frenzied dash for short-term profits. To achieve this, we have a long way to go: and along this road, we will need to assemble workers from all sections and all nationalities to fight together against the bosses and their politicians, using all of our strength.

But beyond that, our interests are much broader and our ambitions should be much greater. Our capitalist enemies are all dependent on the subsidies and life-lines extended to them by their respective states. But we're not. We may have a British, Romanian, Polish or Pakistani passport, but we're all workers, exploited in the same way, by faceless shareholders, who live off our sweat and deprive us of any say in this society.

This is what makes the working class an international class. In our ranks, many different languages and cultural traditions not only can co-exist, but actually enrich one another. In fact, this was how mankind developed to the point where it is today, 60,000 years after our common ancestors emigrated from Africa. And we have no need for nationalities nor national states - which have long been outdated. Our country is the entire planet.

This is something that the "Remain" camp cannot and would not want to offer. On the other hand, we certainly cannot and would not want the narrow, self-centred "fortress Britain" that the "Leave" camp is promoting.

If mankind has a future - based on a social organisation which has been freed once and for all from all remnants of private profiteering - it will have to be on the scale of the entire planet.