RMT leader Bob Crow was in full flow on the BBC’s Broadcasting House yesterday, eulogising (seemingly) the return of wildcat strikes. Happy shades of the 1970s. But now the week-long strike at the Lindsey oil refinery has been called off and attendant wildcat strikes have ended, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the dispute. Two factors stand out.
The first is that some commentators seemed to be slightly fazed by the notion that the UK had effectively no control over EU nationals entering its territory and working in its workplaces. But this is a fundamental aspect of EU membership and the Single Market with its four freedoms of goods and services, people and capital. And it does seem that the strikers were really objecting to the basic EU principle of the free movement of workers, rather than individual directives (including the much maligned Posted Workers Directive) or specific court cases.
I was quite astonished. Could it really be that even now, after over 35 years of membership, people are still unaware of the huge restrictions on this country’s ability to make its own sovereign decisions as a member of the EU? It is as if there is still the view that, somehow, EU membership means belonging to a club which imposes very few obligations on its members. Whereas the truth is that the EU’s rules and regulations penetrate just about every aspect of our lives. Indeed employment law and related matters is an area where the EU has been especially active in creating “Social Europe” with numerous and costly regulations that have been vigorously supported by the unions. A recent, excellent, report on regulations by Open Europe found that EU employment law had cost Britain £31bn since 1998 and that new EU health and safety legislation had cost £5.7bn during the last decade. These are significant extra costs by any standards.
It concerns me that when people are asked about their main political concerns the EU is well down the list. After all, membership of the EU has such major implications for our overall prosperity. EU integrationists seize on this observation to claim that the British people are content with their lot. But it is clear from our polling that this is not the case. All the polling we have done for Global Vision shows that only about a quarter of the respondents are happy with our current relationship with the EU – a half would like a trade relationship only and up to a quarter would like to withdraw. But there are several reasons why the EU is so low down the list. The first is the lack of appreciation of the sheer extent of EU interference in people’s lives. This is turn can be partly explained by the lack of honesty of British politicians from Edward Heath onwards about the significance of EU membership. The second reason is that the EU “cross-cuts” many other issues – not least of all of the issues which ARE top of the list of people’s concerns including the economy and immigration. And thirdly is people’s feeling of impotence and resignation to the status quo.
The second factor was the sheer anger of the strikers in seeing jobs they believed should be “British jobs for British workers” – as our Prime Minister foolishly pledged at the Labour Party Conference in September 2007 - go to EU nationals. Much of this reaction has been dismissed as xenophobic, and I shall not cover the precise rights and wrongs of the Lindsey strike here. But it is only fair to point out that relatively few of the jobs created in recent years have gone to British workers. According to data from the Labour Force Survey, over 800,000 jobs were created between Spring 2005 and Spring 2008, of which 700,000 went to immigrants. About 450,000 went to “other EU” (non-UK) nationals and 250,000 to non-EU nationals. Very few British jobs have gone to British workers.
Large scale, if not uncontrolled, immigration has been Government policy for several years, ostensibly for economic reasons and irrespective of the implications for the social fabric and public infrastructure. Critics of large scale immigration have been disgracefully condemned, if not vilified, as “racist” and any questioning of the policy has been fatuously labelled “unacceptable”. But the economic arguments are flimsy. The very thorough and balanced House of Lords Report on the Economic Impact of Immigration (April 2008), for example, found “no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population”. And part of the “existing UK population” is clearly deeply unhappy about the situation.
