A RESOUNDING No to continued membership of the EU should be coming from the working-class socialist movement. That is why campaigners have formed Trade Unionists Against the European Union (TUAEU). The inhuman punishment of Greece should not be duplicated anywhere ever again.

The EU has never worked in our interests, either here or throughout Europe and the world. The opportunity of the referendum on continuing EU membership offers a real opportunity to say no to austerity and the domination of the banks and to escape the clutches of the most anti-democratic superstate in the world. It is a major opportunity to express our internationalism and belief that another world is possible.

By voting No we also have an opportunity to drive a significant split in the Tories and wound the government. If we do not take this opportunity, we are stuck with them for five years.

Trade unionists and socialists led the campaigns against joining the European single currency. Imagine where we would be now if Britain had joined the euro. Voting Yes in the referendum will lead to renewed calls to join this single currency club and worsen our situation.

The hostility of the British people to continuing EU centralisation and its remoteness from our democratic control and influence led ultimately to the demand for the referendum. We last voted in a referendum on this issue in 1975, when it was a question of joining a common market.

Although this was a deception even at the time, we have never had chance to vote on the recent key neoliberal treaties that underpin the EU today. We have never had a chance to vote on whether we want to be part of a political and economic union led by those no-one elects, who make 50 per cent of our laws.

The EU referendum provides a significant chink in the armour of the Tores’ wafer-thin majority and their drive to a more authoritarian, more rampantly neoliberal agenda generally. To miss the opportunity would be tragic indeed.

While the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the Recall of MPs Act and Britain’s current parliamentary composition mean that it is near-impossible to remove this government constitutionally, or by continual protest and opposition, the opportunity of a referendum on the EU provides the people with a unique chance to upset the whole austerity apple cart and end our relationship with its strongest European advocate.

Many in the movement believed that the EU was the creator and saviour of manufacturing and other jobs in Britain, and the safety net for employment rights. Now the chickens come home to roost. The EU continues to pile up its mountain of mass unemployment throughout the continent and forces through the break-up of collective bargaining, pensions and workers’ rights. The only safe havens the EU creates are for tax avoiders, not workers.

You cannot oppose TTIP and still support the EU. As a supranational neoliberal body hardwired since its inception by austerity and anti-public services policies, the EU has sometimes secretly, sometimes overtly developed the mechanisms to override national democracies and sovereignty.

Its work to create TTIP is but one recent example. The EU needs TTIP badly, and the United States — which will benefit greatly from it — long advocated the creation of the EU. If it doesn’t get it in its current form because of opposition, it will get it in other ways.

The EU Parliament is toothless. The EU’s politics and economics are entirely determined by the banks and large corporations. It is a superstate with no real electorate, it acts entirely in the interests of capital. The EU’s four founding principles are the freedom of movement of labour, capital, goods and services. These cannot be reformed away from within. The EU and European Courts of Justice exist only to promote these “freedoms.” The mass forced migration it has caused has led to a tragic and nomadic life for millions.

Some argue that while the EU is entirely neoliberal and constructed in the interests of big business, it can be reformed in the people’s interests. The EU has ensured it is reform-proof and its fundamental neoliberal orthodoxy is enshrined in its treaties and its right-wing majority. The socialist group of MEPs is one of the smallest groups.

Some argue that Britain would be isolated, alone and economically weak outside the EU. Renationalising rail, utilities, the post office and energy and bringing public services back into public hands with a strong local government infrastructure and manufacturing investment would strengthen Britain. Yet all these policies are illegal in EU terms.

The break-up of a strong manufacturing economy with flourishing publicly owned services and infrastructure has been the very purpose of the EU and has severely weakened our country. Britain’s real economy has never been weaker than it is today.

The EU has always wanted to divide member nations up into smaller competing economic zones: at the top a vast centralised super-state, and at the bottom fragmented economic areas begging for handouts and national governments unable to plan coherent industrial policies, mounting up an unsustainable balance of payment deficits and forced to comply with EU rules regardless of national interests.

EU membership has cost a great deal in hard cash. The EU is legendary for its internal fraud and waste, yet Britain’s net annual payments into it are £10 billion a year. It is said: “But we get a lot back.” We don’t. It is said that our payments help the European poor, but they don’t. Poverty and unemployment ravage the continent and the main beneficiaries of our EU payments are directors of companies, big farmers and the opulent commissioners and functionaries of the EU.

The EU has never had anything to do with internationalism and solidarity between peoples. It stoked the flames of hatred in many areas and the war in Yugoslavia. The EU has not brought peace to Europe as many hoped — it has sharpened tensions and wars.

The EU, as we have seen in Greece and Italy, has not been shy about putting bankers in direct control of countries and replacing democratically elected governments. As in the case of Syriza it does all it can to undermine anyone vaguely opposed to EU diktats and using their own money to employ and look after their own people.

We have a unique opportunity to break the chains of neoliberalism. Let us hope that we take it. Vote No in the EU referendum.

• Doug Nicholls is chair of Trade Unionists Against the European Union www.tuaeu.co.uk
• Trade Unionists Against the EU will hold a TUC fringe meeting on Monday September 14 at The Old Ship Hotel, Kings Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1NR. Speakers include Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins, Helle Hagenau, Brian Denny and John Hendy.