Left Unity’s response to Theresa May’s Brexit statement

In definitively rejecting UK membership of the Single Market in order to appease reactionary anti-immigrant sentiment, Theresa May has dealt a double blow to the UK economy.

This decision removes Britain from the benefits of membership of the world’s largest market, hoping to replace it instead with a series of free trade deals at a time when global trade is about to hit a massive crisis.

It also deprives Britain of the benefits of free movement and migration which is a net benefit to the UK economy.

Theresa May is wilfully damaging the British economy in order to end free movement. We call on the Labour Party to fight against this punitive and disastrous position, reject the false narrative that migration is damaging, and stand up for rights and freedoms for the working class across Europe. May’s position is little Englander nationalism driving us into economic disaster built on prejudice and xenophobia.

Left Unity Principal Speaker Felicity Dowling says:

“All our communities should reject racism and the hatred of the migrant and foreigner. While these sentiments have grown in Britain and Europe, our lives have become in every sense poorer. United we are strong. Divided we die in wars and live in poverty or the fear of poverty. The trade union and labour movement is a strong-enough force to turn the tide on the Conservatives and their allies, if it can organise.

Let’s build that unity in action and organisation by campaigning for these issues:

• Money must be found for the NHS, as the lying Brexit campaign promised but then immediately broke their promise.
• Austerity for the poor should end, as it has ended for the very rich, for whom Government money flows freely (called quantitative easing and interventions in the market). We should tell the Conservatives we will not bail out this financial crisis as we did that in 2008. Since that crisis wages and living standards in the UK have suffered more than any in Europe, equal only to Greece.
• We will campaign for a million council houses to be built with a full apprenticeship system to train young building workers.
• We call for investment by government in renewable energy and modern technology.
• We call for fully-funded Local Authorities to protect services for all our communities and to end the care crisis.
• We call for the full recognition and respect for women’s rights.
• We reject the culture of war for oil and for natural resources; war is a part and parcel of modern capitalism but the spectre of war haunts us still more with Trump holding the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world.
• We will campaign within the unions for the trade unions to act, though a massive recruitment and organisation drive, to demand full recognition at work.

The trade unions must defend and organise all their members including migrants and make common cause with unions across Europe to defend and improve living conditions for all. The “Social Chapter” of European workers’ rights will die unless working people organise. If living conditions are damaged in one country it weakens workers everywhere. Making even  one coat, one computer, one modern building  can involve the work of people from many countries, many continents. So must workers’ organisation be global.

Assisting and supporting trade union organisation across the globe  directly helps workers here.

 Left Unity seeks to work with others to achieve these goals – Unity is Strength.”