Archives for June 2016

Opinion: The humanist case for staying in the EU

June 20, 2016 by Joan Smith

This blog is part of a series of perspectives on the EU referendum from prominent humanists on either side of the debate. Each puts forward a humanist case for the United Kingdom either remaining a member of, or leaving, the European Union. All six perspectives are linked in the image below.

Joan Smith: The humanist case for staying in the EU

Ideas know no boundaries. For at least two-and-a-half thousand years, Europe has been the testing ground of ideas about who we are, why we are here and the best way to live. From Greek philosophers to French anti-theists and the English and Scots thinkers who played a key role in the Enlightenment, European thinkers have driven forward the march of progressive ideas. They’ve done it against a tragic background of internecine warfare, pitting neighbours against each other in some of the most terrible conflicts to disfigure the planet.

Against the odds, the EU has persuaded huge numbers of people to focus on what unites us rather than old divisions – just look at all the individuals and institutions outside the UK pleading with us to stay. As I write, we are part of a community of more than 500 million people living in countries with a commitment to shared values and universal human rights. Those values are vital to humanists, creating a legal framework in which we are protected from age-old demands from religious and other extremists who would like to impose their beliefs on people who don’t share them.

I love living in a European community where my right not to have a religion is protected by law. I love the fact that no member state of the EU can use barbaric punishments like the death penalty. I love the fact that equality is at the heart of the European ideal, challenging centuries of bigotry (much of it sanctioned by church and state) towards women, the disabled and LGBT people. Of course individual countries could do this on their own but it’s easier – and our hard-won rights are easier to protect – when we are part of a larger whole.

I am proud of what Europe has become since the Second World War. I don’t think for one moment that it has destroyed the nasty side of human nature, and I have watched the rise of xenophobic forms of nationalism in some European countries with horror. But I think we are stronger when our political leaders recognise that they are part of project based on universal values and respect, drawing strength from each other. That is more important for me than the economic arguments, which are in any case a no-brainer.

I live in a continent influenced by Plato, Galileo, Voltaire, Simone de Beauvoir, people with inventive minds who shaped what it means to be modern. As a humanist, I don’t want to return to the petty nationalisms and squabbles which have torn Europeans apart so many times in the past. The EU isn’t perfect but I want to remain part of a community with a commitment to equality that’s made the lives of so many people immeasurably better.

Opinion: Remain in the EU for peace, security, women, and our economy

June 20, 2016 by Mary Honeyball

Mary Honeyball: Remain in the EU for peace, security, women, and our economy

We must never forget where and how the European Union was born: It followed two devastating World Wars and great anticipation and significant expectation followed. Nothing like those atrocities could ever or would ever happen again. And so the European Union was born.

And let us not forget that a fundamental principle of the European project is to secure common shared European values and to protect people’s fundamental and human rights.

Today, we must not seek to isolate ourselves from 27 of our nearest neighbours; instead we must work in collaboration with others to fight the threat of terrorism, to tackle climate change, to trade freely and simply and to protect the most vulnerable in society.

When our neighbours face serious terrorist attacks like the recent atrocities in France and Belgium we must stand side-by-side in solidarity and neither turn our backs or run away.

Part of what makes us safer as a nation is our ability to cooperate with other member states to exchange and share information. Being part of the European Union and having access to institutions such as Europol is a huge benefit to all member states security.

Of course the European Union, like all organisations, is imperfect and there are things we must improve. We must not run away from the European project but embrace it, work with it and continue to be at the heart of it. We are better and stronger together.

Meanwhile while myself and colleagues continue to fight for it, the Brexit campaign has played on people’s fear of immigration. I’m not dismissing those fears, but the truth is that whether we remain in the European Union or vote to leave, immigration will continue.

Official figures from the Office of National Statistics reveal that immigration from outside the EU is higher than from those within the EU. So for those who have a problem with immigration- it simply will not go away by voting to leave.

‘Much of my work since I entered the European Parliament has concerned women and gender equality. I know that some parts of the Europe have anti-gender mobilisations and the European Union is an important safeguard against such far-right beliefs.’

An Australian points based system has been floated among euro sceptics as an answer to the ‘problem’, but closer examination of the model reveals that immigration has increased in Australia since the introduction of the system. In the UK we rely on immigration, just look at the care sector where one in five of those people working this industry is from outside the UK. We are living and working for longer we need enough people within the sector to support us.

If people come to the UK, pay taxes and contribute more to the economy than they take out then surely it is a good thing?

But the question is not and should not be confined to immigration. The IMF, the OECD, the World Bank the Governor of the Bank of England all warn of the consequences to our economy if we leave. How often does such a varied and learned group of people agree on such a huge issue? If you believe all of these world experts are wrong, then cast your vote as you wish, but do so with great caution.

And what happens in the event we do vote to leave. Our economy may not collapse overnight but we will be under huge strain. The clock starts ticking on negotiations immediately. There will be a period of around two years to negotiate with 27 countries. If we fail to reach a suitable negotiation in that time, then we revert to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms. An example of the consequences if we are forced to abide by the WTO terms is clear immediately. Currently the UK exports some 2000 cars a day to Europe and because we are members of the European Union they enter tariff free. Under the WTO terms, the UK will be forced to pay a 10% tariff like The United States and Japan.

There are also concerns over our continued loss of sovereignty from the Brexit campaign who claim we relinquish our ability to be sovereign to the European Union. We are and remain sovereign state and two clear examples show unambiguously how we have maintained our sovereignty: We decided not to be part of the Eurozone or part of the Schengen free zone either.

Much of my work since I entered the European Parliament has concerned women and gender equality. I know that some parts of the Europe have anti-gender mobilisations and the European Union is an important safeguard against such far-right beliefs.

Those who have a traditional view of the family, gender and reproductive rights are launching anti gender mobilisations. This isn’t an abstract or baseless fear- it’s happening across Europe, now.

Such groups claim that the European Union is promoting a gender ideology and that it is trying to break down traditional gender roles. In fact, the European Union is progressive in all of these areas.

It has been influential in starting to change women’s position in the workplace, family and society as a whole. It promotes gender parity for women on boards and advocates a system of quotas to redress the imbalance. We need to be part of the European Union to encourage the UK to drive forward progressive change for women and gender equality. In addition, EU laws ensure that women are guaranteed the right to at least 14 weeks’ maternity leave as well as protection from maternity related discrimination.

It’s not just within the workplace that the European Union is working to improve the lives of women, it also seeks to protect them against violent individuals, abusive criminal gangs, traffickers and other areas of organised crime. The Victims Directive guarantees specialist support and protection from repeat victimisation. In addition, the European Protection Order and the Mutual Recognition in Civil Matters both protect women from perpetrators when they travel to any part of the European Union. And the Anti Trafficking Directive is a comprehensive framework which supports victims of this crime- 80% of which are women.

The European Union is progressive. It seeks to promote peace over hate and fairness over discrimination. It is something we must continue to be part of for our own sake and for that of future generations.

Opinion: Religious skeptics should be EU skeptics

June 20, 2016 by Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley: Religious skeptics should be EU skeptics

My biggest reason for voting leave this month is the European Union’s democratic deficit and bureaucratic surplus, which makes it an ill-suited organization for bringing prosperity and peace in the evolving and emergent global world we increasingly inhabit. It’s too top-down in philosophy, and too parochial in mindset. My euro-scepticism is dead in line with my religious skepticism, though you certainly don’t have to be an unbeliever to vote leave: I don’t like being told what to do by a priestly class.

‘My euro-scepticism is dead in line
with my religious skepticism, though you certainly don’t have to be an unbeliever
to vote leave: I don’t like being told
what to do by a priestly class.’

There is a certain similarity between the way fans of the European Union talk about Brussels and the way believers talk about the Almighty. Benevolent, omniscient, and remote, the European Commission sees far into our hearts and knows exactly when we need to be told through a directive not to buy something, not to make something, not to build something. It’s currently trying to tell us not to vape, for instance, at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry which has a nice little earner in prescription nicotine replacement, even though it is now clear that vaping is massive life-saver.

The entire basis of the EU is that leaders know best. It was set up by people horrified by what demagogues had done in the twentieth century, and were determined to put technocrats in charge instead, and insulate them from the democratic winds. It’s a stretch to call this religious, but the parallels with the papacy in its pomp are all too clear.

In Britain we nurtured a very different tradition, broke with Rome, killed a king who thought he had a divine right to rule and gradually absorbed the message of the enlightenment that the world is not run by great men, let alone deities, but is changed by ordinary people through trade, innovation, habit, and fashion. More than any other European country we resisted the urge to worship a leader and lend him (never her) the power to tell us what to do.

It is in that tradition that the current movement to leave the European Union should be seen. We do not like the imposition of a single currency, with the acute pain it has caused to many people, just as a way of forging a united polity. We do not like the fact that more than half our laws originate in the European commission and are justiciable by the European court, neither of whom is answerable to the people. We do not trust priesthoods and never have.

In the 1950s, when central planning was in its heyday, when we in Britain also still lived under a thicket of rules about what we could eat, buy or do, it was no surprise that the fore-runner of the EU began as a centralized, top-down, dirigiste bureaucracy. That was the way of the future then, before the collapse of living standards in Russia, China, and more recently Venezuela shows just where central planning’s faults lay.

In the 1970s, it just about made sense for Britain to join this regional bloc, which was at least partly dominated by the highly liberalized and free-market German philosophy of Werner Ehrhard. But now, in an era of cheap container shipping, free Skype intercontinental phone calls, budget airlines, rock-bottom World Trade Organisation standards, and global trading rules negotiated industry by industry at the global level, the regional focus of the European Union is an irrelevance and an anachronism. It perpetually tries to dictate rules for consumers and citizens within one continent, ignoring the wider world where we all trade.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the tech sector and the digital industry. Europe has not manage to negotiate a trade deal with America despite years of trying, yet that does not stop you or me buying software and hardware from the big American digital firms all the time. The EU has a dismal track record in creating digital start-ups, throttling them at birth with petty rules, so that we have not one to compare with Apple, Google, Facebook or Amazon. (One of our best candidates, Spotify, is threatening to leave the EU for America.)

The parallel with Humanism is pretty obvious. Humanism means suspicion of superstition, but is also means respect for human beings’ wishes. People have voted for a digital world with great enthusiasm over the past few decades by buying digital products, joining digital networks and embracing egalitarian values. Into this world lumbers a bunch of highly paid, lowly taxed, richly fed Eurocrats, who never saw this coming, saying things like “we must have a minimum of boring French films on Netflix” or we insist that hyperlinks respect intellectual property, or whatever the latest wheeze big companies have breathed into their ears over a four-course meal in Brussels.

In the sixteenth century, admittedly for carnal reasons, the English got a chance to tell a wealthy and parasitic priestly class, answerable to nobody and with a top-down view of the world, to get stuffed. We have the same chance again today.

Matt Ridley is a journalist and Conservative Party peer who is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. He is also a patron of Conservative Humanists.

Opinion: The EU is an invaluable venture in pooling sovereignty in a shrinking world

June 20, 2016 by David Pollock

David Pollock: The EU is an invaluable venture in pooling sovereignty in a shrinking world

The referendum campaign is immensely depressing for many reasons. For one, the two sides are merely shouting at each other, not engaging. For another, when all the best qualified institutions and experts agree that leaving the EU would be economically damaging, the Brexiteers respond only by invoking a corrosive and irrational distrust of experts, emulating the worst ways of conspiracy theorists. Moreover, their ramshackle coalition of rackety discontents from across the political spectrum cannot agree on any alternative economic policy, flinging out as many unformulated ideas as they have ways of spending the cash putatively saved by quitting. On the other side the Remain campaign has so far failed to respond to people’s worries about immigration: indeed, they are now reaping the whirlwind many of them had previously sown in their distorted and one-sided presentation of immigrants as scroungers and health tourists.

Sadly the EU has for decades been subject to a campaign of systematic distortion and lies in the proprietor-owned press. Even the BBC, in the interest of balance, is now presenting a distorted picture, reporting equally the lies of the Brexiteers (‘£350 million a week for the NHS’) and the sober warnings of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

The issues are far too important to be so demeaned. The EU is an invaluable venture in pooling sovereignty in a shrinking world. So far from representing a surrender, it offers Britain, with its mature democracy and pragmatic politics, a platform for wider international influence. It is undoubtedly imperfect (as in our own sphere the history of the European Humanist Federation’s engagement under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty shows) but in its espoused principles and standards (and devices such as its Ombudsman who in that case found for the EHF over the Commission) it contains the mechanisms for self-correction.

Indeed, the EU offers great promise for the future: it deserves commitment, not sabotage. The hated Brussels bureaucrats are the servants of the Council of Ministers, doing the will of governments and subject to their control. Just as our own Parliament had to fight over centuries for its powers, so the European Parliament is demanding – and gaining – more influence and powers. Already EU regulations – collaboratively adopted by all EU members – are improving our own standards in (for example) workers’ rights and environmental protection, providing a collaborative bulwark against big business’s devotion to short-term profit that individual nations are increasingly powerless to resist. It is the EU that is standing up to US-based multinationals over taxation, privacy and monopoly power. The EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and the associated agency are valuable backing for the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights. Its freedom of movement may bring low-paid eastern European migrants here – largely to do jobs that no-one else will take – but it is a huge benefit for those who remember queues and delays at endless national frontiers and a necessary corollary of the freedom of trade that boosts business efficiency and the prosperity of us all.

The EU was a great promoter of human rights and rule of law in eastern Europe, setting standards that candidate member states had to meet and maintain. The narrow nationalism of the Brexiteers, however, lends comfort to their confrères in unsavoury populist parties such as are now in power in Poland and Hungary and their even more dubious allies in neo-fascist and similar parties in France, Austria, Germany and elsewhere. These also play on anti-EU nationalism and atavistic appeals to past greatness. The way to resist such dangerous trends – and they are genuinely dangerous – is not to pander to them by walking away and so weakening the democratic forces in the EU: it is to stand up to them and engage in the argument, advancing cooperative internationalism rather than putting up the shutters and ushering in another age of unconstrained nationalistic rivalries. As so often, it is hard work, not extravagant gestures, that are needed.

No human institution is without fault, and the EU is obviously no exception, but it is a strong force for good and well worth defending in this referendum campaign and then reforming from the inside rather than petulantly quitting and pouring scorn on it powerlessly from afar.

Opinion: Lead a more democratic Europe from outside the EU

June 20, 2016 by Kelvin Hopkins

Kelvin Hopkins: Lead a more democratic Europe from outside the EU

The European Union is anti-democratic, anti-socialist, and failing economically. With low and negative economic growth, 25% unemployment and 50% youth unemployment in some member states, living standards cut by a quarter in Greece, forced privatisations and restrictions on collective bargaining rights as conditions of bailouts, the true nature of the EU is now plain to see.

Free movement of labour is designed simply to reduce wages and reduce wage bargaining strength. The Laval and Viking Line cases where the European Court ruled in favour of employers and against trade unions made a nonsense of the supposed EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and were a clear indication of the direction of travel being steered by the EU’s masters. Raising up the market and market forces against elective democracy was evident from the start in its original name, the Common Market, and was opposed at the time by British socialists including Hugh Gaitskell, Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan.

In a Commons debate in 1989, Tony Benn MP said, ‘I was brought up to believe, and I still believe, that when people vote in an election they must be entitled to know that the party for which they vote, if it has a majority, will be able to enact laws under which they will be governed. That is no longer true. Any party elected, whether it is the Conservative party or the Labour party can no longer say to the electorate, “Vote for me and if I have a majority I shall pass that law,” because if that law is contrary to Common Market law, British judges will apply Community law.’

Labour’s policies of public ownership such as returning the railways to the public sector will not be possible if EU free-market rules are applied. The franchising of Britain’s railway operations as supposed ‘privatisation’ is especially bizarre when Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway owns much of Britain’s public transport services, with British passengers effectively subsidising Berlin commuters.

The recent EU Fourth Railway package will soon be forcing continental EU state railways into the same mould as that in Britain.

Some people of faith say that membership of the EU is primarily a matter of values not economics. I say that does not cut much ice if you have no home, if you have no job, or if the government is forced to close down or sell off public services at the behest of the European Central Bank. The reality is that the EU is an arm of neo-liberal capitalism which is and has failed across the world and which even the IMF has now concluded. By remaining in the EU the UK will find itself dragged down in a sinking vessel.

The European Union project moved slowly and by stealth at first, later accelerating following the 1980s Single European Act. It was clearly intended to promote the dismantling over time of the post-war social democratic structures which brought such massive benefits to millions of working people across Western Europe.

The current secretive negotiations to impose TTIP, the proposed EU/USA trade deal which would give massive power to the giant private corporations to be able to prosecute democratically elected member state governments is conclusive proof – if further proof were needed – about the true nature of the EU.

It is time for democratic member state governments once again to stand up for their peoples and to reject the EU. The United Kingdom has an opportunity to take the lead in that process by voting ‘Leave’ in the coming referendum.

That being said, I always emphasise that the European Union is not Europe. The European Union is simply a political construct covering many of the countries of Europe. Europe is a sub-continent of great peoples, beautiful countries and superb culture. Democracy, socialism and trade unionism were all created in Europe. We can have a great Europe without the EU, a Europe of international friendship and solidarity which will not sell out working people to the global corporations. Britain can lead the way to that different Europe as other countries in the EU see the advantages of independence and a renaissance of democracy.

Opinion: Reject Europe’s claims of a Christian identity, reject the EU

June 20, 2016 by Crispin Blunt

Crispin Blunt: Reject Europe’s claims of a Christian identity, reject the EU

Today we find ourselves locked in much deeper integration with Europe than was presented to the British people when they endorsed our membership in the 1975 referendum. European judges can overwrite British law and direct our legal regulations. Those many aspects of the acquis subject to QMV leave our own government and Parliament frequently and controversially overridden by the competing interests of our partners and even more frequently our government’s position quietly compromised to achieve unanimity.

The truth is the geo-politics of our island and its history means the British position on Europe is hopelessly compromised. The integration required to make this great idealistic project work is disguised from the British people, because they don’t really get it.

For British humanists, the debate over Turkish accession is instructive. It brings out, not least from our central European partners, talk of Europe’s Christian identity. That a large Muslim country would be an unacceptable departure from this. Just at the moment it seems polls indicate we are now formally a majority nation of non-believers we are being asked to check back in for a particular ethnic religious identity within the EU. The UK’s situation reflects our global internationalist outlook, where all religions, and now mostly none, all rub along relatively happily together. In the same way our multi-ethnic population reflects that global cultural and historic legacy. That’s what makes the European project so much more conflicted for the UK.

The central European response to the prospect of Turkish accession doesn’t sit easily with us. The UK is formally still a strong supporter of Turkish accession. That reflects our much more relaxed view of religion and identity and the strategic need to secure Turkey within the European sphere of influence. But the practical consequences today of our economically marginal citizens being competed out of work and the prospect of progress in their own country by professionally qualified east Europeans would be made dramatically worse by Turkish accession. Their plight is going to become even more marked when the living wage kicks in by the end of this Parliament, whether or not Turkey accedes.

Our own society’s cohesion and stability should be of interest to humanists. With formal control of immigration we may just about sustain the pressures of global migration patterns. The challenges that will inevitably bring, difficult outside the EU but much more so inside, would at least produce politicians who can be directly held to account if we are outside the EU. Britain has produced a society with a very global outlook, and perhaps as a consequence it’s no surprise organised religion is now a distinctly minority sport. I believe we are best able to protect this outside the EU, but with the rights of all our minorities and identities still sustained by the wholly different treaty base of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The UK is a problem for the EU. Our lack of commitment to the institutions is being paid by our partners and us on security. Outside the EU we can and would continue to cooperate on security issues much as we do now. Inside the EU we actively prevent our partners achieving the kind of integration required to make the EU a really effective security and defence player in the world. It is absolutely in our interest that the EU sharing our values, becomes a more effective partner.

26 of our partners are either Euro or pre-Euro countries. They must move towards some kind of United States of Europe or the Euro area will collapse. An accountable body will have to vote the common tax and benefits across Europe to support the common currency area. Unsurprisingly many of our partners also want a common defence capability, which makes complete sense if your interests are so closely aligned that it’s bizarre that you should not defend them together.

And it’s us, the UK that actively seeks to prevent this. It’s toxic to promote this in the British body politic because most of us Britons are simply not checked in for the European ideal and are not prepared to make the sovereignty sacrifices involved. It’s why this kind of narrative has been completely missing from the Remain campaign.

We have the luxury of the option of a perfectly sustainable global role outside the EU, rather more attuned to our people, economic strengths, history and culture. We should take it and help our partners resolve their need for further political and security integration rather than obstruct them.