The ef­fects of the vote

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Per­haps the worst ef­fect of all the hot air gen­er­ated by Brexit is the way that it cre­ates all sorts of false po­lar­iz­a­tions. It’s be­come easy to be con­vinced that a politi­cian we pre­vi­ously des­pised is now “OK” be­cause they de­fend the in­teg­rity of the EU and there­fore (in prin­ciple) free­dom of move­ment, or be­cause they might have the power to veto Brexit in some way (the Scot­tish Na­tion­al Party looked like they could do it at one point!). Whatever the fi­nal out­come — and it is still per­fectly pos­sible that Brexit won’t hap­pen²⁰ — the im­me­di­ate ef­fects of the vote will con­tin­ue to be grim:

• Con­tinu­ing slowdown in the eco­nomy as in­vest­ment is delayed. There is already a sig­ni­fic­ant slow-down in the con­struc­tion in­dustry (which makes up around 6% of GDP), al­though this has been in “re­ces­sion” (two suc­cess­ive quar­ters of con­trac­tion) since well be­fore the ref­er­en­dum.²¹ Spend­ing on in­fra­struc­ture has de­clined sharply, with spend­ing in Ju­ly down by 23% re­l­at­ive to Ju­ly 2015. There were also 2000 less houses star­ted than in the pre­vi­ous month.²²
• Fall in real wages as the pound falls. An ob­vi­ous point, but we still have to make it… Bri­tain is a coun­try where most wage goods are im­por­ted so a fall in the pound al­ways trans­lates in­to fall­ing real wages. It’s been that way since at least the 1970s, but is much more marked today.
• Ef­fects on the NHS and oth­er pub­lic ser­vices as staff con­sider leav­ing. Around 5% of all NHS staff, in­clud­ing 10% of doc­tors, come from oth­er EU coun­tries. The NHS Con­fed­er­a­tion (an as­so­ci­ation of health man­agers) has warned that re­cruit­ment of EU staff is already slow­ing down and that this could ser­i­ously ex­acer­bate NHS staff short­ages.²³ Both un­cer­tainty over the status of EU work­ers and the fall­ing pound will make it harder to at­tract staff. There is already evid­ence of staff want­ing to leave the NHS for bet­ter jobs abroad,²⁴ with Aus­tralia, New Zea­l­and, Canada and the US be­ing as pop­u­lar as ever.
• Rise in ra­cism and xeno­pho­bia. There was an im­me­di­ate rise in re­por­ted “hate crimes” after the ref­er­en­dum res­ult. In the second half of Ju­ly 2016 the level was 40% high­er than in the same peri­od in Ju­ly 2015.²⁵ In many cases, verbal ag­gres­sion was dir­ectly ref­er­en­dum-re­lated.There were re­cently two at­tacks on Pol­ish men in Har­low with­in 12 hours of each oth­er. The first, on 27 Au­gust, was fatal for one of the vic­tims. It’s still not clear what the mo­tiv­a­tions were (there were no re­ports of xeno­phobic verbal ab­use, for ex­ample) but the fact that these at­tacks are widely as­sumed to be hate crimes shows the kind of at­mo­sphere that ex­ists in many parts of the UK. There is also some evid­ence that the in­crease in ra­cist and xeno­phobic at­tacks is par­tic­u­larly high in areas that voted strongly for Leave.²⁶
• Un­spe­cified re­stric­tions on free­dom of move­ment. We don’t know what they’ll be yet, but let’s not for­get that they could well af­fect the right to study and re­tire, as well as the right to work where we want to! We can be sure that the Tor­ies’ 2015 mani­festo com­mit­ment to re­du­cing an­nu­al net mi­gra­tion to the UK to “the tens of thou­sands, not the hun­dreds of thou­sands” will not be met — May is a prag­mat­ist, not a UKIP sui­cide bomber who wants to blow up the UK eco­nomy — but there will have to be some nasty re­ad­just­ments to the rights of mi­grant work­ers, par­tic­u­larly less skilled ones.
• Stok­ing of ten­sions in North­ern Ire­land. The vote for re­main in North­ern Ire­land (56%) is not as simple as it looks. His­tor­ic­ally Prot­est­ant neigh­bor­hoods strongly voted for Leave — that is, to keep a sep­ar­ate iden­tity for the UK, with­in which Prot­est­ants can keep their priv­ileged status, or even for re­li­gious reas­ons.²⁷ A corner­stone of the 1998 peace agree­ment which has held so far was that the UK and Ire­land would both be mem­bers of the EU, and the bor­der between the two coun­tries (once en­forced by barbed wire and ma­chine guns) has be­come as nom­in­al as the one between France and Bel­gi­um.All that could change as the UK tries to con­trol im­mig­ra­tion and un­reg­u­lated trade from the EU. Im­me­di­ately after the vote, Mar­tin McGuin­ness (Sinn Féin) Deputy First Min­is­ter called for a ref­er­en­dum on united NI with the Ir­ish re­pub­lic. Straight af­ter­wards, First Min­is­ter Ar­lene Foster (a mem­ber of the gen­er­ally Prot­est­ant DUP) said it was not on the agenda.²⁸ On the ground, Prot­est­ant and Cath­ol­ic neigh­bor­hoods re­main strongly di­vided, with “peace walls” (anti-pogrom for­ti­fic­a­tions) still in place and still needed, and open­ing up the ques­tion of a united Ire­land could re­ignite the bloody and bit­ter con­flict which was nev­er really re­solved and which has di­vided the work­ing class for many dec­ades.
• Sep­ar­a­tion of Scot­land from the UK. Scot­land strongly voted (62%) for Re­main. First Min­is­ter Nic­ola Stur­geon quickly called not only for Scot­land to stay in Europe but for it to ad­opt the euro. Scot­land’s slightly-more-gen­er­ous-than-Eng­land wel­fare sys­tem mostly based on oil rent can’t last forever, so it makes sense to ac­cept the euro as a more stable cur­rency than the in­creas­ingly shaky pound. Join­ing the EU will give a sig­nal to for­eign in­vestors to in­vest in Scot­land rather than Eng­land, as a ru­mor about Nis­san in Sun­der­land may in­dic­ate. But an in­de­pend­ent Scot­land would be fiercely op­posed by Spain, be­cause in­de­pend­ence for one small na­tion could well give ideas to oth­ers, start­ing with Cata­lonia… The po­ten­tial “dom­ino ef­fect” of small-coun­try na­tion­al­ism will not be pretty for the work­ing class, as yet more di­vi­sions open up.
• In­creas­ing cracks ap­pear­ing between the EU coun­tries. At the re­cent emer­gency EU sum­mit held in Brat­is­lava on 16 Septem­ber (without the UK) three po­s­i­tions emerged on the ques­tion of mi­grants:
  • Italy and Greece, who ac­tu­ally re­ceive al­most all the mi­grants, pushed for a mu­tu­al shar­ing and man­age­ment of mi­gra­tion flows. Itali­an PM Mat­teo Ren­zi a ac­cused France and Ger­many of let­ting the Medi­ter­ranean “fron­ti­er” coun­tries fend for them­selves.
  • France and Ger­many, who have to deal with their prob­lem­at­ic in­tern­al polit­ics and who try to con­tinu­ally put off the shar­ing of mi­grants across the EU, pre­vi­ously sup­por­ted by a good num­ber of north­ern EU coun­tries and Spain, which has for a long time put up its own wall, with the com­pli­city of Mo­rocco.
  • The Visegrad group of four ex-East­ern Bloc coun­tries (Hun­gary, Po­land, Cze­ch­ia, and Slov­akia) who openly call for na­tion to block mi­gra­tion. They made their break from the rest of the EU clear and of­fi­cial by pub­lish­ing their own state­ment at the end of the sum­mit.

  Cer­tainly, this po­lar­iz­a­tion ex­is­ted be­fore the Brexit vote but its form­al­iz­a­tion is a clear byproduct of it.

By way of a con­clu­sion

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As com­mun­ists and class fight­ers it is clear that we have to op­pose the most co­her­ent myth peddled by the pro­tec­tion­ists of left and right — the idea that the state re­strain­ing the func­tion­ing of the mar­ket can make life bet­ter for the work­ing class, wheth­er it’s by re­strict­ing the free­dom of move­ment of “job-steal­ing” mi­grants or by re­strict­ing the im­port of goods or the ex­port of cap­it­al.It is not “glob­al­iz­a­tion” that has caused wages to fall for large num­bers of work­ers across Europe and the US. It is the fact that the bal­ance of class forces is so much in fa­vor of the bosses. It is an ex­pres­sion of the lack of polit­ic­al in­de­pend­ence of the pro­let­ari­at. For­tu­nately, his­tory has shown that this state of af­fairs is neither in­ev­it­able nor per­man­ent. If wages and con­di­tions be­gin to im­prove it will be be­cause of col­lect­ive struggle by the work­ers, and not be­cause a right-wing gov­ern­ment re­stricts im­mig­ra­tion or a left-wing one ren­ation­al­izes privat­ized com­pan­ies.

But we also have to op­pose any idea that a par­tic­u­lar ar­range­ment of cap­it­al­ist so­ci­ety makes the work­ing class stronger or bet­ter off. It’s tempt­ing to say that we prefer the “glob­al­ized” world of free move­ment and a “cos­mo­pol­it­an” work­ing class con­tinu­ally in com­mu­nic­a­tion and co­oper­a­tion with each oth­er across con­tin­ents (and we do, of course!). But the freedoms ap­par­ently gran­ted by glob­al­iz­a­tion to the pro­let­ari­at are nev­er guar­an­teed, as the mi­grants from Syr­ia and else­where quickly found out about “free­dom of move­ment.”

Sim­il­arly, the growth of pro­let­ari­an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist con­scious­ness is not guar­an­teed by glob­al­iz­a­tion. The same world mar­ket which makes work­ers co­oper­ate with each oth­er across bor­ders and sup­ply chains also sets them in com­pet­i­tion with each oth­er. It’s nice to think that the EU fa­cil­it­ates solid­ar­ity between work­ers in neigh­bor­ing European coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly giv­en the al­most nom­in­al nature of many bor­ders. But there have been very few in­stances of this. At the time of writ­ing, there has re­cently been a strike by train man­agers on the Eurostar train ser­vice link­ing the UK and France… but only on the UK side!

Pess­im­ists of­ten claim that, this side of a re­volu­tion, the dom­in­a­tion of the work­ing class by na­tion­al­ism is in­ev­it­able. This is used to jus­ti­fy the whole pack­age of so­cial demo­crat­ic class com­prom­ise — a sep­ar­ate so­cial­ist party and “so­cial­ist pro­gram” for each coun­try. But even in the “re­form­ist” struggles of today na­tion­al­ism can be fought. In the Lind­sey Re­finery strike in 2009²⁹ we saw a clear con­flict between na­tion­al­ist and in­ter­na­tion­al­ist tend­en­cies with­in the strik­ing work­ers, and the in­ter­na­tion­al­ists won (at least for a while).

The fact that so many pro­let­ari­ans voted Leave is a sign of the weak­ness of our class but so is the fact that so many felt they had to par­ti­cip­ate in the ref­er­en­dum at all, and care about the res­ult. We have to stress that there is no such thing as a “cor­rect” vote here — a vote for Leave was a vote against im­mig­rants (as the Leave voters them­selves openly stated) but a vote for Re­main was a vote for cap­it­al­ist or­der, for a strong eco­nomy in which the work­ers sup­posedly had their place. And it’s not just the ref­er­en­dum it­self… In the ab­sence of any polit­ic­al in­de­pend­ence of the class it’s hard not to get drawn in­to the stu­pid­it­ies of bour­geois polit­ics.

This is par­tic­u­larly true now that the rise of “pop­u­list” parties of the right and left, to­geth­er with “anti-Es­tab­lish­ment” politi­cians in­side the “Es­tab­lish­ment” parties, has cre­ated so much more (ap­par­ent) choice. There’s now a whole su­per­mar­ket shelf of polit­ic­al products, from the “fair-trade, or­gan­ic” Left to the “loc­ally pro­duced” Right. Corbyn-mania is just the latest mani­fest­a­tion of this tend­ency in the UK (something like 300,000 people have joined the La­bour Party in the last year — 183,000 of them in one week in Ju­ly). The ease with which tra­di­tion­al cyn­icism to­wards politi­cians is be­ing swept aside only shows how this cyn­icism was nev­er an ex­pres­sion of class con­scious­ness.

Nor do we think it is pos­it­ive that the Brit­ish rul­ing class (and to some ex­tent the rul­ing class across Europe), not just the politi­cians, has been thrown in­to chaos. Chaos does not cre­ate op­por­tun­it­ies for the work­ing class to act. Chaos is just chaos, for all classes.

The polit­ic­al in­de­pend­ence of the pro­let­ari­at has noth­ing to do with giv­ing a rad­ic­al spin to the po­s­i­tions of the bosses’ polit­ics, wheth­er “Lexit” or a “Work­ers’ Europe,” but must al­ways base it­self on the struggle against the ma­ter­i­al con­di­tions of cap­it­al­ist ex­ploit­a­tion and op­pres­sion. The polit­ics of our class is that of ex­tend­ing and deep­en­ing the class struggle, not that of pro­pos­ing the best way to man­age cap­it­al, sup­posedly in our fa­vor.

As com­mun­ists we are against any state, whatever col­ors it drapes it­self in, for now and forever. But today hav­ing an ef­fi­cient and strong state (that is, one able to val­or­ize cap­it­al with­in the area it rules), able to over­come con­flicts with­in its rul­ing elite, forces the pro­let­ari­at it is fa­cing to be cleverer and more ef­fi­cient. Nev­er­the­less, for us, all na­tions (small or big) are fake com­munit­ies.

We are “in­dif­fer­ent” to­wards any na­tion­al ques­tion, and we have no “dogma” re­gard­ing the re­vamp­ing of states. If sep­ar­a­tion takes place (like in the case of Cze­ch­ia and Slov­akia) based on a com­mon agree­ment with no civil war, we don’t take sides. Where civil wars take place we op­pose all sides, as in any cap­it­al­ist war. Where re­arrange­ments of states take place there is no in­her­ently “good” or “bad” res­ult, and we al­ways have to pay at­ten­tion to what’s really happened and to study the eco­nom­ic con­sequences, the at­ti­tude of the work­ing class and the pos­sib­il­it­ies for re­sur­gence in class struggle.

The work­ing men have no coun­try. We can­not take from them what they have not got. Since the pro­let­ari­at must first of all ac­quire polit­ic­al su­prem­acy, must rise to be the lead­ing class of the na­tion, must con­sti­tute it­self the na­tion, it is so far, it­self na­tion­al, though not in the bour­geois sense of the word.”

Na­tion­al dif­fer­ences and ant­ag­on­ism between peoples are daily more and more van­ish­ing, ow­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of the bour­geois­ie, to free­dom of com­merce, to the world mar­ket, to uni­form­ity in the mode of pro­duc­tion and in the con­di­tions of life cor­res­pond­ing thereto.

The su­prem­acy of the pro­let­ari­at will cause them to van­ish still faster. United ac­tion, of the lead­ing civ­il­ized coun­tries at least, is one of the first con­di­tions for the eman­cip­a­tion of the pro­let­ari­at.”

— Marx En­gels, Com­mun­ist mani­festo, 1848
Part 2, “Pro­let­ari­ans and Com­mun­ists”

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Notes

¹ “Dav­id Camer­on prom­ises in/out ref­er­en­dum on EU.”
² As we poin­ted out in a rather old leaf­let.
³ It goes without say­ing that the use, by the me­dia and politi­cians, of “pop­u­list” in­stead of “re­ac­tion­ary” is an in­sult to the Rus­si­an nar­od­niki.
⁴ Lord Ash­croft is an ec­cent­ric pro-Brexit Tory busi­ness­man, phil­an­throp­ist, polit­ic­al pub­lish­er, and poll­ster, who re­tired from the House of Lords be­cause he was too busy with his oth­er polit­ic­al projects. See his poll res­ults and ana­lys­is.
…There’s also been an art­icle on lib­com of­fer­ing some ana­lys­is of the data.
⁵ See our Let­ter #41, “What does the May elec­tion res­ult tell us that’s use­ful to know?”
⁶ Cor­rob­or­ated by the YouGov poll.
⁷ See: “UK stu­dents and Brexit.”
⁸ “What mattered most to you when de­cid­ing how to vote in the EU ref­er­en­dum?”, Brit­ish Elec­tion Study, 11 Ju­ly 2016.
⁹ For ex­ample, In­de­pend­ent, 2 April 2015: “Nigel Far­age warns a cap on mi­grants com­ing to Bri­tain ‘im­possible,’ des­pite ad­voc­at­ing it.”
¹⁰ “Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leav­ing the EU,” BBC News, 10 Aug 2016.
¹¹ Out of ap­prox­im­ately 50 mil­lion adults in the UK, up to 9m may not be re­gistered to vote. See: “Brit­ish Polit­ics and Policy” LSE blog, “The next gen­er­a­tion of voters? Get­ting the ‘Miss­ing Mil­lions’ back on to the UK’s elect­or­al re­gister.”
¹² “Bri­tons among least know­ledge­able about European Uni­on,” Guard­i­an, 27 Nov 2015.
¹³ Press Gaz­ette, 21 Ju­ly 2016: “ABC fig­ures: Na­tion­al press sees June Brexit vote boost in print and on­line.” Al­though the po­s­i­tion of the Daily Star was not so clear as the oth­ers… This most down-mar­ket of tabloids mostly con­sists of stor­ies about sport and pic­tures of scantily-clad wo­men, and didn’t take a def­in­ite ed­it­or­i­al stand on EU mem­ber­ship, but its choice of ac­tu­al news stor­ies in­dic­ated a clear choice for Brexit.
¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ “Eng­lish In­dices of Depriva­tion 2015,” Great­er Lon­don Au­thor­ity, May 2016.
¹⁶ ibid., pg. 19.
¹⁷ For ex­ample, Guard­i­an, “EU ref­er­en­dum: full res­ults and ana­lys­is.”
¹⁸ See the re­port by the Joseph Rown­tree Found­a­tion on de­clin­ing city.
¹⁹ Lexit is a fantasy put for­ward by some left­ists in the UK ad­voc­at­ing for all coun­tries to leave the EU.
²⁰ Theresa May (the PM at the time of writ­ing) has already stated that Art­icle 50 will not be in­voked un­til at least the end of 2016. Mean­while there is law suit, brought by, among oth­ers, an on­line in­vest­ment man­ager, to try to force a par­lia­ment­ary de­bate on Brexit be­fore Art­icle 50 can be in­voked. It ap­pears to have some leg­al mer­it and could yet pro­voke a “con­sti­tu­tion­al crisis” in a coun­try with no con­sti­tu­tion. See “A hairdress­er’s law­suit could spell trouble for Brexit.” Bloomberg News, 7 Au­gust 2016.
²¹ “Con­struc­tion in re­ces­sion even be­fore Brexit vote, of­fi­cial fig­ures show,” In­de­pend­ent, 12 Aug 2016.
²² “Brexit: In­fra­struc­ture spend­ing falls by 20% after EU ref­er­en­dum,” In­de­pend­ent, 23 Aug 2016.
²³ “Brexit ‘will make NHS staff short­ages worse’,” BBC News, 30 June 2016.
²⁴ “Brex­odus: ‘Brain drain’ fears as NHS work­ers seek to emig­rate after Leave vote,” Sunday Post, 3 Ju­ly 2016.
²⁵ “In num­bers: Has Bri­tain really be­come more ra­cist?”, BBC News, 10 Aug 2016.
…Of course, we al­ways have to be a bit skep­tic­al about re­port­ing of “hate crimes.” Not only does the level of re­port­ing vary enorm­ously re­l­at­ive to the ac­tu­al level of the crime (gen­er­ally there is un­der-re­port­ing), but the defin­i­tion of the crimes as “hate crimes” (in the UK at least) is en­tirely sub­ject­ive. If a vic­tim says that someone at­tacked them be­cause of their race, for ex­ample, then the crime is re­cor­ded as a ra­cial at­tack, even if there was no verbal ra­cial ab­use. This policy is set out in the Col­lege of Poli­cing’s “Hate Crime Op­er­a­tion­al Guid­ance.”
²⁶ “Brexit: Surge in anti-im­mig­rant hate crime in areas that voted to leave EU,” In­de­pend­ent, 31 Ju­ly 2016.
²⁷ “For hard-line Prot­est­ants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of eschat­o­logy,” Eco­nom­ist, 24 June 2016.
²⁸ “EU ref­er­en­dum: Mar­tin McGuin­ness calls for ref­er­en­dum on united Ire­land,” Daily Tele­graph, 24 June 2016.
²⁹ See “The strike at Lind­sey Re­finery: a struggle en­tangled in na­tion­al­ism.”