Project hope

There is no need for a spoiler alert – Unite is fighting all the way for a remain vote and for Britain and British workers to build their future in unity with workers in the rest of Europe.

But I refuse to lecture or to patronise those working people who take a different view.  Who can be surprised that in so many industrial areas, voting for the status quo is not exactly a popular option?

I am just asking all those people, including many Unite members, to reflect on their concerns, and whether they would be best addressed by staying in Europe, or by a Brexit?

‘Gigantic experiment’

Let me turn first to the issue of immigration.  Some pundits and commentators, like explorers returning from a visit to the deep unknown, are stunned to find that this has become an issue among Labour voters.

I for one am not in the least surprised.  In the last ten years there has been a gigantic experiment at the expense of ordinary workers.  Countries with vast historical differences in wage rates and living standards have been brought together in a common labour market.  The result has been sustained pressure on living standards, a systematic attempt to hold down wages and to cut the costs of social provision for working people.

That is why for trade unions control of the labour supply in an industry or across society has always been the core of our mission, to ensure that workers get their fair share of the wealth they create.

But pulling up the drawbridge against the rest of Europe is the wrong answer. The right answer is the same one we used when migrants from Ireland were vilified in the last century.  It’s the same answer when Jewish immigrants were targeted a century ago, when Asian and Afro-Caribbean workers were attacked in the fifties, sixties and beyond.

That is strong trade unions delivering the rate for the job, whoever you are and wherever you come from.  We need a return to collective bargaining across key sectors of the economy to stop the race to the bottom.

Leaving the EU will not stop the supply of cheap labour coming to Britain.  Those who profit from wage-cutting found a way to import cheap labour without the EU in the past, and will find ways to do so again.   The idea that leaving the EU is a short-cut to social justice is a cruel con-trick by the right-wing of the Tory party.

Workers’ rights

Some argue that such workers’ rights as we have secured did not come as a gift from Brussels, but were the result of union campaigning.  That is true – but surely they can best be defended and extended by working in unity across borders, rather than each isolated in our own country?  Turning our back on trade unions abroad will only encourage Tory reaction at home.

And what of jobs?  I have been in enough multinational boardrooms fighting for the future of our factories to know that raising this issue is not scare-mongering. When the big investment decisions are made, particularly in manufacturing, Britain will be heading to the back of the queue if we stand outside the European market.

A Brexit will immediately cast a long shadow over factories across the country –  those owned abroad, but also many run from UK boardrooms too.

Would British industry survive?  Probably, in the long run, although cavalier Brexit economists like Patrick Minford seem quite happy to wave goodbye to manufacturing altogether.  Brexit is playing Russian roulette with our industrial base. As for the NHS, anyone who thinks that it will be safe with these hard-core privatisers is smoking something funny in their roll-ups.

Project hope

We owe the British people a clear warning against the dangers of walking out of the EU and into the arms or those who only think Maggie Thatcher didn’t go far enough. Brexit may or may not prompt an early election but it will certainly lead to an early shift to the right – a shift no trade unionist, nobody who cares about our communities, can afford.

I am not a partisan of Project Fear – I’ve been in Project Hope’s corner all my life. It is because of my confidence in the values and the initiative of working people that my appeal is on the basis of hope.

This hope rests on our internationalism, our commitment to democracy and social justice and our belief that the only race is the human race.

For sure, the EU as it stands is not the EU that it can and will be if we work together.  As our friends in Europe fight against the politics of fear and division stalking their streets, a vote for remain in the UK helps stem the rise of the reactionary right.

• This piece first appearted in the Guardian on Monday (June 20).