Niccoló Milanese

Europa, November 2007

Whilst the debate over the EU Reform Treaty grows ever more trivial, and each side makes appeals to ‘democracy’, democracy in Europe becomes ever deeper in crisis. What is required is a new movement for democracy amongst the ‘frontierless generation’. ‘Major Major never sees anyone in his office whilst he is in his office.’ So Sergeant Tower explains to Appleby that he can only have a meeting with Major Major Major Major (whose first, middle and surnames are ‘Major’), in his office when he is not in his office.

The increasing familiarity of this kind of ‘catch 22’ explanation in all domains of British public life surely gives reason to think that Joseph Heller’s novel of that title is more than ever the book for the moment. The UK ‘debate’ over the EU reform treaty is a particularly fine example of this, as anyone who has tried to understand the status of the ‘red lines’ supposedly drawn by the British government in negotiations over the treaty to protect ‘our national interest’ knows.

The ‘red lines’, depending on who you ask, are ‘stronger’, ‘thinner’, ‘water based’, ‘transparent’, have ‘had a horse and cart driven through them’, ‘been perforated’ or ‘been secured’. All of which is completely meaningless. The baffling net of confused arguments surrounding Europe in the UK not only displays the intellectual confusion of the protagonists involved: as in Heller’s novel, they also represent an attempt on all sides to prevent public understanding and scupper public engagement. What is more sinister, and more dangerous, is that they pretend to be doing this in the name of promoting democracy itself. For there is a profound crisis of democracy in Europe, both at the national and European levels. Most people recognise this, and are absolutely right to kick up a fuss.

What has yet to happen is for any political organisation to sincerely uphold attempts to deal with this crisis, instead of generating political capital from it. There is no way of dealing with the crisis of democracy at the national level without dealing with it at the European level as well. It makes no sense to ‘pull out of European politics in the name of democracy.’ All democratic politics in Europe for the foreseeable future will be pro-European, and this can fairly straightforwardly be shown. There are at least three precepts of democracy that should be aspired towards. The first two are frequently invoked by both sides in the debate over whether there should be a referendum. The third is ignored by almost all the political establishment: 1.

That the public is not just ‘consulted’ once every few years about its opinions by being given a choice between candidates, and ignored the rest of the time. Democracy means that each member of society has the power to influence the way that society is run, and this has to be a continuous power, exempted only in the most exceptional of circumstances for a temporary period. 2. That the public should not be deceived by those who govern society. 3. That every member of society should be able to take part in democracy on an equal basis, and should have their voice heard. The pro-referendum campaign claims that the Labour government made a manifesto pledge to have a referendum on the EU constitution, that the reform treaty is extremely similar to the EU constitution, and that therefore there should be a referendum. This is an appeal to the first and second precepts above. The reason given for a referendum being required is that the treaty transfers significant powers to the European Union, and that the ‘British government’ should have control over ‘British’ problems.

This argument entirely ignores its own premise that the British government is unrepresentative of the ‘British’ people. If it were to be convincing, it would have to propose a program for how the national parliament should be reformed to be more representative, more ‘democratic’. The British government wearing one face claims that the treaty can be democratically ratified in parliament, because British citizens live in a ‘representative democracy’, and wearing the other face claims that a profound renewal of democracy is required, based on consultation and public involvement. Both of these are catch 22 circular arguments, which repose on the deep rooted myth in British consciousness that we live in a democracy. This seems to me an institutional myth, which runs through our media, governmental and educational institutions, rather than a myth that is actively believed by most people in the UK.

Most people in the UK might say they live in a democracy, but when questioned as to whether they feel there is a possibility of their voice affecting political decisions, they know full well the possibility is far from guaranteed. The poverty of voices involved in the debate over the reform treaty is symptomatic. Where are the voices questioning the British ‘red-line’ protecting us against the European Charter on Human Rights? Who is making the arguments that it would actually give greater rights to workers in the UK? Who is asking about immigrant labour and the reform treaty from the point of view of the migrant? Whether it really would help these people or not is a different matter, but there is simply no public discussion. Where are the voices of all those who have come to the UK through the opening of borders by the European Union, who have an interest both in the politics of their original countries and of Britain? What sense for the generation of students travelling freely around Europe? What sense does it make for ‘them’ (that is, for us) to claim that the British should have control over British affairs? This argument is for them (for us) entirely spurious, for these people know that one of the un-repealable consequences of the European Union is a generation who live across borders, that a person’s reality is not neatly contained within national frontiers. This goes to the heart of the matter.

The debate over Europe in the UK is blind to the question ‘who is part of society in the UK?’, because it is dominated by people for whom this question is not at issue. Once we ask the question “who is the ‘we’ that should have control over ‘our’ own affairs?” there is no plausible definition of any particular group in the UK that should have control: there is only the reality of those who have power at the moment, and those who are excluded. Since these groups have no real voice, the bourgeois majority in Britain is able to continue to slumber in a post-imperial daze, unwilling to give up the belief that Britain can really tackle any political problem presented to it by means of the ingenuity of its ‘innate’ population (which is in any case anything but innate), and its long-standing ability to win at the Westphalian game of balancing powers against each other.

It is this majority that the Conservative party in the UK have recently been so good at attracting, with implausible promises on UK foreign policy, climate change and immigration without any indication either given or asked for as to how they would be achieved without taking some structure that resembles the European Union. It is catch 22 politics again – the refusal to give any meaningful explanation, the blank refusal of dialogue or acknowledgement. After the rejection of the Constitution in referenda in France and the Netherlands, many hoped that the European Union would change the way it carried on its business, open itself up to citizens and thereby become more democratic. The way the reform treaty has been drafted and negotiated has been even more hermetic than the way the constitution was written.

This is not something that can be entirely blamed on the European Union itself (without the good will of national leaders and administrations, there is at the moment no other way for them to get agreement) – it is to be blamed on the entire way democracy is not working in Europe. Until this changes throughout Europe, things will only get worse. Britain would have had important role to play in the new context. There is little sign that any significant public debate over the reform treaty will take place in France or the Netherlands and therefore it would have been up to Britain to insist on changes to the way the democracy in Europe functions at this particular moment. This would be a worthy campaign for greater democracy in the EU and one that would resonate strongly with the whole of the British public, as well the public right across Europe. Instead the debate has already been hijacked by those with a different agenda, and there is little sign of any coalition demanding democracy coming about.

Perhaps this is too pessimistic, and the pro-European forces in the UK will find ways of joining forces with the pro-democracy pressure groups. A pro-European coalition in Britain would be a coalition which stands against the catch 22 politics, which stands with all those who have no voice at the moment: the immigrant communities, the frontierless generation, the poor – who are ever more ignored throughout the whole of Western Europe. It would be a coalition which confronts unblinkingly contemporary reality, and stands up against the dogmas which prevent us from seeing it, which make us powerless in the face of it while telling us we have all the choice in the world. It would be a coalition which necessarily reached beyond ‘Britain’ as it appears on the map, and finally realised what is surely the most important intellectual shift of our times: that all the human world, just as all the physical world, is inescapably joined and mixed. It may sound like a huge project: and it is, in its importance. But that is not to say it is impossible : that is the biggest social dogma of all.