Was leaving the EU a racist move or an achievement to be celebrated?
Comrade Christina talks from the floor of the recent Workers Party of Britain meeting in Birmingham, congratulating Britain’s workers on having successfully achieved an exit from the much-hated European Union.
“I’m glad,” she says, “that you do not have to share the pain of the 61 percent of Greeks who voted to leave the EU and had their votes overturned.”
Greek workers were betrayed first by Pasoc (the Greek social-democratic/Labour party) and then by Syriza, the allegedly ‘left’ ‘alternative’, which had promised to let the people decide but ended up overturning that decision and handing Greece’s economy over the the unelected EU banking troika, who have been administering shock austerity treatment to the country ever since.
Christina describes how Greece has effectively been colonised by the EU, its resources stolen, its people plunged into poverty and its decision-making put into the hands of unelected EU bureaucrats.
The impoverishment of the Greek people has gone hand in hand with the privatisation of all the country’s wealth – everything from its beautiful landscapes and natural resources to its public services, industries, ancient monuments and cultural heritage.
“I’ve seen my country of origin destroyed by the European Union. I hate the EU because of what it did to the hospitals, because of the genocidal policies that are literally killing my country. We have no sovereignty any more. There is no voting in Greece – democracy has ended.”
Christina rebuts the idea that workers who oppose the EU must be racist. She warns that if the left is not able to unite workers on a progressive platform, the right step in to harness workers’ anger against their own interests.
Class unity in the struggle for socialism is our best weapon against the neoliberal imperialist system as represented by the EU.
