Stephen
Harper did his last hustings of the Socialist Party's campaign in
Brockenhurst last night. It was organised by a Remain group, New
Forest for Europe. There were about 100 people present and 10 parties
represented (no Brexit Party candidate, unsurprisingly). After
opening statements all candidates were asked a few questions. Briefly
summarised are his answers to them below:
Q.
We find ourselves in a unique position where some of you (the
candidates) wish that the positions you’ve proposed yourselves for
didn’t actually exist. Can you tell us how you see your party’s
role within the EU Parliament if you’re elected?
I
said that our party’s approach to the Euro elections is the same as
our approach to national elections, which is that we would take our
seats if elected, but we would use it as a platform or tribune to
advocate solely for socialism. The reason being that our party has no
intention of trying to reform capitalism, an approach that cannot
work.
Q.
Many people are saying that democracy is broken. Do you agree? What
would you do to fix it?
I
said that we have limited political democracy in the UK (although
elections are massively subverted by donations and vested interests).
But there’s no economic democracy: we must all work for an employer
who will exploit us, or we will starve. And no democracy in
distribution – 8 men have much wealth as half the world’s
population. So we need a truly democratic society where ordinary
people control production and distribution. We are a party with a
fully democratic structure that reflects the kind of society we want
– no leader, run by members, no personality cult.
Q.
Last week the UK Government were the only EU state to miss the
deadline on claiming aid to benefit the poorest people in this
country, losing £600k and jeopardising £2.9m in future payments.
What would you do to ensure that the UK Government uphold and take
advantage of all EU funding opportunities?
This
is not really a question for us, because even if the interpretation
of the UK government’s missed deadline is correct, we don’t need
to take part in the ‘reorganisation of poverty’. We live right
now in a society of potential abundance. Therefore we don’t need a
system of rationing, which is all that a money system is. We need to
unlock the wealth that is being kept from us and use it to transform
society. We
don’t want crumbs, we want the bakery.
Q.
EU migration to the UK has dropped to a 10 year low putting
increasing pressure on our agricultural, hospitality and service
industries. Who will fill these roles if we leave the EU?
This
is partly a question about ‘freedom of movement’. The limited
freedom of movement that the EU has afforded some workers is one of
the few benefits of EU membership for ordinary people; but let’s
also remember that the EU is also preventing freedom of movement
elsewhere, effectively drowning refugees into the Mediterranean (not
much response to this from the Hard Remain audience). The question of
who ‘we’ (i.e. capitalists) will find to exploit if EU workers
are not here is not our concern as socialists representing the
working class. We want a world without ANY exploitation.
In
the open questions at the end, I challenged the Labour candidate’s
claim that Labour represent the only challenge to the ‘rise of the
right’, pointing out that the last Labour government actually
‘out-righted the right’ with dawn raids on immigrant families,
detention centres and Gordon Brown’s infamous ‘British Jobs for
British Workers’ slogan, taken from the BNP (?)
A
few people I spoke to at the end said thanks for our contribution to
the debate. ‘I didn’t know you could be so far left’, said one!
(I pointed out that we’re not on the left and she said she’d
explore our literature).
A kindly email from one of the organisers
this morning: “Out of everyone I think you stirred the most
interest, in a landscape where we are used to politicians using
different words to say the same thing, to have a view that is
completely different was great and for me completely fascinating”.
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