United Europe: Can #14N be the start of something bigger?

Today is a European-wide day of action against austerity. Trade unions across the continent have called strikes and protests against the actions which have been replicated, to varying degrees, by every government in the EU - actions which pointlessly pump blood into the hemorrhaging veins of the neo-liberal economy. The levels of disruption varies by country - for the most part, it is the southern states which have taken part the most, with general strikes called in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Malta.

The actions follow, for some countries (Greece especially) several years of strikes and protests, each challenging the government spending cuts which were all meant to be the last. The message has been, and will continue to be - the people can take no more. And yet, the governments of Europe do not listen, further pulling their economies down into the abyss. Measly job growth figures for Britain, no matter what the coalition government say, cannot hide this fact. Much of the work created is part-time, in an economy geared towards full-time employment (for full-time consuming). We are set, one day, to join Greece and Spain, and Portugal and Italy, and France and Germany, staring to the abyss. With those 700 million European people there, it might actually be a bit cosy.

Britain sees itself as a European rebel, not even really part of the continent. Physically and mentally it sits aloof, an outcast. There is a seam of anti-Europe sentiment in Britain, stereotypically mined by the political right. Far right parties like the BNP push this agenda, but in the mainstream it is carried by the right-wing of the Tory party (which always finds itself at odds with the less-right-wing faction, a rift which threatens to rupture every few years), and, increasingly, Ukip, which has always done well in the European elections (although less so in strictly domestic polling). The standard is: to oppose Europe is right-wing, to welcome Europe is left-wing.

Europe, in this case, does not particuarlly refer to the continent itself, or the countries which comprise it, but the European Union, and the various facets and organisations through which it governs. In this case, is there any reason for the left to support 'Europe'? Owen Jones recently wrote an article lamenting the tendency of the British left to blindly support Europe and the EU, which, as he says, is 'an institution which both threatens democracy and the interests of working people'.

Democratically, the EU is indeed a worrying sight - it is controlled largely by the Council of Ministers, which is undemocractically elected, being picked by the governments of each country rather than by the European people themselves. European interegration also means submitting to the will of the European Central Bank, which 'obsess[es] over inflation while parts of Europe crumble'. Jones also points out various measures which, if implimented, would make the lives of working people in Britain better - the nationalization of the train network, and the introduction of a living wage - which are blocked by a European Union driven only by free trade and privatisation.

In short, the EU has been a sustained attack on both liberty and workers rights, and yet the left sit on their hands, uninterested in trying anything to change this. People across Europe are unhappy with the current functioning of the EU, but they are not far-right xenophobes who don't own passports and are suspicious of all other cultures. European interegration as a concept is not the problem, merely the current method of it. Mainstream centre-left parties across Europe need to wake up to this realisation, and face down the right-wing who do oppose Europe on paranoid xenophobic grounds.

As these parties are, by definition of being mainstream political parties, vote chasers, it must be the people of Europe which drive this change in the anti-EU discourse. Days of continental solidarity like #N14 are examples of this. The general strikes in the south have been complimented by solidarty meetings and protests across Europe, in places too innumerable to mention. Like the Occupy movement, they share a common, international bond while retaining a focus on local matters. They oppose neo-liberalism austerity in whatever shape it appears to them. The Glasgow march, for example, while titled 'From Scotland To Greece: No Justice, No Peace!' and designed solely as a solidarity meeting was altered to focus on the recently-announced privitisation of George Square.

The European Trade Union Confedertation, which called todays day of action, must push for further integration with unions across Europe. Most of the time when general strikes are called in each country the unions go out on their own. No longer - further solidarity must be shown. The concept of a strike is simple - when the workers stand together, they can win. When scabs begin to drift back to work, the strike is weakened, perhaps not in numbers but in spirit. The site of an open workplace is demoralising to a picket line, essentially a failed task in this case, is hovering about outside.

If Europe is really to be 'shut-down', as some blogs claimed it was, then a greater cohesion of the worker's unions must be achieved. A 24- hour general European strike, comprising of all public and private sectors unions from all countries, would be a start. It would do two things - firstly, reclaim the anti-EU dialogue from the political right, who are currently using it to channel their own jingoistic views.

Secondly, stop the ability of the EU and the ruling class to divide us - "it's the Greeks! They only work for about three hours a day over there! And they retire at fifty!", showing the true nature of an integrated Europe which the EU promises, but could never provide. An EU for the people of each and every country, united against greed, profit and neo-liberalism.