Nationalism vs Globalism= Coming to a Town Near You?

[conspiracy analyst]

In the last few years various hybrid movements have emerged.
Britain had protests under the slogan 'British Jobs for British Workers'

Then the neo-fascistic army outfit of the English Defence League with its militaristic slogans of 'No Surrender to the Taliban' mirroring the No Surrender to the IRA has emerged in its anti-muslim tirades which implies it is a front for something sinister ('Huntingdons Clash of Civilisations brigade')

Now we have protests in Moscow under the slogan Russia for the Russians with army trucks posted outside railway stations in Moscow and 1,000 arrests


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/15/second-moscow-riot-1000-de tained?INTCMP=SRCH

The imploding NWO models of ever expanding 'multicultural' states based on the US model are coming into conflict with the historic nation states of Europe.

Nationalism is once again on the march. The question will be whether it will be a progressive one or a reactionary barbaric one that sets us back to the middle ages...

[ian neal]

Putin's Russia has never shy of beating the nationalist/racist drum and Putin's youth brigade is creepily similar to Hitler Youth in my eyes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_(youth_movement)

In the UK it is easy to see the clash of civilisations being stoked by 'both sides'. So on the surface it is good to see something like this arise in response

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/article/1018/A-plague-on-both-their -houses

However call me cynic but whilst I would buy into the 'plague on both their houses' message I can't help but notice that this organisation is effectively searchlight and the origins of searchlight would appear to be close to MI5

This has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated agenda by those who seek a 'clash of civilisations'. If searchlight is indeed connected in the shadows to the intelligence services this would fit perfectly since I don't doubt that the hidden hand of the hidden state lies behind the origins of Muslims Against Crusades and the EDL

[TonyGosling]

So you weren't in the scouts then Ian?
Personally I want nothing to do with the globalist agenda on offer right now.
Nationalism is becoming the only bastion against global economic enslavement.
I'd love to see a world in harmony but this ain't it.

[conspiracy analyst]

[conspiracy analyst]

Lincolnshire Workers Against Mass Immigration!

Posted by admin ⋅ November 8, 2011 ⋅ Leave a Comment

http://thirdway.eu/2011/11/08/lincolnshire-workers-against-mass-immigr ation/




Dean Everitt, organiser of the anti-immigration protest in Boston, Lincolnshire. He aims to have around 2000 Bostonians on the streets.

LATER this month a march and demonstration will be held in Boston, Lincolnshire. Largely organised via a Facebook group, local workers will be protesting against the effects of mass immigration on the town.

The Third Way Think Tank understands that those behind the PeacefulBoston Protest March are not against individual migrant workers, but it is aimed at the local council and government.

As one of the organizers – Dean Everitt – put it “the people of Boston ain’t happy. Things need to change as this immigration madness cannot carry on.” Thus the demonstration is “to protest at the mass immigration forced upon us.”

Locals have also gone out of their way to say that the demonstration will be peaceful.

With this in mind, we wholeheartedly support the local people of Boston in their stand against mass immigration.

In doing so we would point out that we have no beef with ordinary migrant workers. After all, many of them are just simply trying to provide for themselves and their families.

Our real problem is with the unjust capitalist system.

We agree with the sentiments expressed by one worker against mass immigration who pointed the finger of blame at the evils of capitalism (or of ‘Corporatism’ as he called it):

“I believe the real problem is Corporatism. This is the system in which law and policy are changed not for the good of the people but for the good of the corporations seeking to profit from the change. Immigration policy has in the past been changed as a result of corporate influence. This is Corporatism. The situation in Boston may well have been caused by corporatism where the policy change has had a positive effect for big business, with no regard for its effect on the people. The government are supposed to represent the people, not the big corporations. If your bothered look up corporatism and you’ll see its behind most of the bad stuff you hear about today, like banking.”

(Spelling kept as in the original)

[conspiracy analyst]

Long Live the EU from globalists on the ...fake left

Europe and the delusions of leftwing nationalism

David Cameron's veto is a dangerous blunder, argues James Turley - so why does the left reproduce Tory stupidity on the EU?


Going it alone
The abiding reaction among the more serious elements of the British bourgeoisie to David Cameron’s use of the veto to scupper an emergency European Union treaty is, quite frankly, one of baffled incomprehension. Even against the background of the Tories’ inbuilt Euroscepticism, and Cameron’s realignment of the party with the far-right cranks of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in the European parliament, there is much head-scratching to be seen - what on earth was the PM thinking?

Ed Miliband did not waste any time sticking the knife in, naturally, but perhaps more significant is the very visible strain in the coalition. Having tried, in the most laughably craven fashion, to put a brave face on things, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable ultimately had to lambast the prime minister for his frankly bizarre conduct. The Liberal Democrats, of course, are traditionally staunchly pro-Europe; their leaders have come, belatedly, to the conclusion that there is no way they can sell Cameron’s apparent posturing stupidity to an increasingly disaffected rank and file.

All of this was obviously of no concern to David Cameron, which in itself is a snapshot of the power relations in the government. On the other hand, it is certainly true that pressure from the right of his party is mounting on the issue. It is not at the pitch that tore the Major government apart, but the breakneck speed of economic developments on the continent, almost all of them representing bad news, is apt to increase Tory twitchiness on the issue.

One depressing side effect of this whole mess has been to show up, yet again, the sheer scale of confusion that exists on the left in this country (and, for that matter, elsewhere in Europe) on the matter of the EU. Ever flying the flag for petty nationalism, the Morning Star reported quite uncritically Bob Crow’s elation that more and more Britons favour withdrawal from the EU.[1] Elsewhere, an editorial argues that the EU has been anti-democratic and anti-working class from the beginning, and applauds the foresight of an earlier generation of Labour politicians in rejecting membership of the Common Market in the 1950s.

This summit, the comrades argue, existed solely to impose even greater fiscal restraint on national governments - an argument taken up by Labour left Owen Jones in The Guardian: “At a stroke, [the agreement] effectively abolishes social democratic governments in the euro zone,” he worries.[2] The Marxist economist, Costas Lapavitsas, meanwhile continues to argue for an orderly Greek exit from the euro zone - most recently at a debate on December 9 at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Lapavitsas at least had the honesty to acknowledge that a Greek exit would trigger a foreign exchange crisis and thus enormous disruption to food and fuel imports - in time, however, this would be overcome.

Even Alex Callinicos of the Socialist Workers Party, despite his group’s admirable refusal to succumb to the left-Labourite nationalism of the Bennites during the original debate over Britain’s accession to the European Economic Community in the 1970s - could be found at the Coalition of Resistance’s Europe Against Austerity event calling for beleaguered nations to exit from the euro.[3]

The latest issue of the SWP’s paper is a little ambiguous on whether the organisation is for a British withdrawal from the EU itself: “Socialist Worker is against Britain being part of a bosses’ Europe and is against the latest treaty. But not for the same reasons as the Tories.

“The EU is a neoliberal bosses’ club which aims to protect profits by attacking workers and public services. The Lisbon treaty enshrined this vision of a neoliberal Europe. It centralised a host of powers within the European council and European commission.

“But withdrawing from the EU wouldn’t guarantee workers’ rights - the Tories remain committed to attacking us.”[4]

This commentary appears in a piece headed ‘The new euro deal - your questions answered’ as a response to the question, “Wouldn’t things be better for workers if Britain pulled out of the EU?” So was that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ then?

It is, of course, correct to say that the EU is a “bosses’ club”, designed to impose the will of the market on recalcitrant populations without regard to anything resembling democracy. However, in the shift from the premise to the operative (in the SWP’s case, implied) political conclusion - EU withdrawal - there is an ideological sleight of hand: the EU goes from being an institutional mechanism of capitalist control to the mechanism; it becomes, in other words, a fetish for global capitalism. This fetishised view of the EU leads these various left - even Marxist - forces down the petty bourgeois blind alley of left nationalism.

This is a general point; but it is peculiarly obvious in the case of Britain. It is worth looking at the dynamics of last week’s EU tragicomedy, and the British state’s clownish role within it.

The British case

Let us return to the opening question: that is, just what the hell is David Cameron up to?

The initially obvious matter is the increasing intensity of grumbles from the more reactionary of his backbenchers. Within the factional life of the Tory Party, it makes sense for Cameron - already under fire for supposedly offering too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats, though Nick Clegg would no doubt beg to differ - to throw the right wing a bone now and again, and the latter have been overjoyed to see Cameron’s ‘bulldog spirit’ on display.

This, surely, is not a sufficient explanation for a decision whose net effect, despite all the guff about Churchill and Dunkirk, will be to exclude - formally or otherwise - the British government from political processes whose outcome could spell economic disaster for this country. The Tory right may howl and groan at the erosion of British sovereignty, but Cameron has more than enough tricks up his sleeve to deal with them.

We also have to consider Britain’s relationship to the United States. Ever since British entry into the European Economic Community as it was then, the US has made good use of the ‘special relationship’ to ensure that European unity proceeds at as cumbersome a pace as possible. Successive British governments, Tory and Labour alike, have been more than willing accomplices; it is the US and its agents in Europe that pushed for rapid expansion in the last 10 years, calculating - correctly - that it would act as a constitutional block on closer, deeper integration of the EU’s member-states.

America’s interest in all this is quite clear - while it remains very much the global military and economic hegemon state, its power is in long-term decline, and a hypothetical United States of Europe would represent a potential rival. As for Britain, it gets all the benefits of being the 51st state - the UK, and especially London, is not only the pre-eminent tax haven, but also the lynchpin of the whole system of tax havens. The majority of transactions that supposedly take place in Jersey, the Caymans and so on in fact take place in the City. The reward is a healthy slice of imperialist superprofits, which allow Britain a more muscular role on the world stage, half a century after the empire coughed its last, than it strictly speaking deserves.

Visible between the lines of this whole farrago is the Atlanticist strategy under immense pressure from events. It is ultimately of peripheral significance, but nonetheless appropriate, that Cameron should have made his stand on some pretty trifling regulations, which may or may not have mildly hindered transactions in the City. Fundamentally at issue here is American power.

That is not to say that the answer to the perennial million-dollar question - quo bene? - is America. On the contrary, this seems to be a last desperate throw of the dice on the part of the Atlanticist establishment to obstruct closer European unity when the choice is quite boldly posed from the perspective of the major European powers - either closer union or disintegration; the slender hope of stabilisation versus the certainty of economic ruin. The point of no return is several miles behind us. No wonder Sarkozy told Cameron where to stick his veto. This looks rather like bungled Atlanticism - but the US and UK are running out of options.

Left idiocy

The nub of the matter is this: the EU is, indeed, a bosses’ club; but it is no more or less so than the British state. Indeed, the net effect of British membership has been to pull the EU even further to the right - the endless niggling moans from Tories and more idiotic capitalists about the mountains of red tape and so forth refer to the fact that the EU as an institution - Viking, Laval and the rest aside - is actually more generous on the question of working conditions than Britain.

The more fundamental point follows from here: this is not true because we Brits (or, pace Scottish left nationalists, the English) are basically more conservative than those hot-headed continentals, but because Britain, and indeed every country in the world, is involved in a complex network of determinate relationships with other states and with global capital, be they economic or otherwise. Withdrawal from the EU is not a baby-step towards national self-determination, still less (god help us) some version of socialism on one island.

As for countries such as Greece, the picture is even more grim. Suppose the Greek people follow Alex Callinicos’s advice and withdraw from the euro: will they no longer be at the mercy of speculators and other enforcers of the world market? The question answers itself - it is an opportunist idiocy. The integration of capitalism on an international scale is not something we can wish away - it is a bald-faced objective fact, and it has been a tendency busily at work in capitalism since its first stirrings in the womb of feudal absolutism. Comrade Callinicos, who has written a substantial book on such matters,[5] really should know better.

This tendency entails, to be sure, horrific suffering, with many millions dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases every year because there is no percentage in their survival - even the citizens of Greece and Ireland do not know the half of it. Nonetheless, it is objectively progressive, eroding the national prisons in which the different sections of the working class are held, and indeed making possible a workable, international socialism. One of the reasons capitalism needs to be overcome, in fact, is because it can only go so far along this road of globalisation.

The EU is not merely an expression of the internationalisation of capital, but also of the concomitant internationalisation of politics. It may, indeed, be irrational in the extreme and run by corrupt bureaucrats in the interests of its strongest members - but, for all that, it is a negative anticipation of the necessity of democratic, rational political authority that transcends national barriers. The soft-left and ‘social-liberal’ prettification of the EU as a potential ‘progressive’ counterweight to the blundering American colossus is wishful thinking, of course; but our job is to fight to transcend it, not retreat into petty nationalist stupidity.

Lenin, in a different connection, made a point that is highly pertinent here: “The bourgeoisie makes it its business to promote trusts, drive women and children into the factories, subject them to corruption and suffering, condemn them to extreme poverty. We do not ‘demand’ such development, we do not ‘support’ it. We fight it. But how do we fight? We explain that trusts and the employment of women in industry are progressive. We do not want a return to the handicraft system, pre-monopoly capitalism, domestic drudgery for women. Forward through the trusts, etc, and beyond them to socialism!”[6]

In this, Lenin was simply being a good Marxist - for Marx and Engels, and all those who deserve their mantle, socialism is the future of capitalism, not some mangled mythologisation of its prehistory. For Marxists today, the key task is to use this convulsive crisis engulfing the EU to argue for Europe-wide working class organisation, and ultimately Europe-wide revolution.

[conspiracy analyst]

Is it any wonder there is wide-scale resentment to population movements whose aim is a perpetual race to the bottom.

The Con-Dems only interested in propping up their City backers are chasing what they call 'benefit scroungers' or the indigenous population for not being able to get a job.

They sold them all.
Maybe the Tower of London needs to re-opened in its original form?



Youth Unemployment and Immigration from the A8 Countries

Summary

1 The accession of eight former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe – the A8 - to the European Union from May 2004, led to a very substantial migration from these countries to the UK. Around 1.6 million workers from the A8 have come to the UK since accession.[1] Many will have returned but the number of people from these countries working in the UK increased by 600,000[2] between the second quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2011. The impact on the UK labour market has clearly been significant. For example, in 2006-07 alone almost 223,000 Polish migrants registered in the UK to work[3]. Estimating the impact of this migration on employment levels of UK-born workers has proved to be very challenging, and the methodologies of those few studies that have looked into it have been criticised. Studies have had greater success with gauging the impact of migration into the UK on wage levels, which – for the lowest 15 per cent of earners – have been adversely impacted. According to the NIESR, the impact of East European migration on our GDP per capita can be expected to be negligible.

Youth Unemployment in the UK and A8 Migration

2 A particular challenge is estimating the impact of this migration on levels of youth unemployment in the UK. During the transition period since their accession in May 2004, an estimated 1.6 million workers came to the UK from the new EU Member States. Between the first quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2011, employment of workers born in the A8 increased by 600,000. Over the same period the number of unemployed young people in the UK almost doubled, from 575,000 to just over a million. Figure 1 plots the two variables. Is there a causal linkage between the two?

Figure 1: Youth Unemployment and A8 Migration

Briefing Paper 3.16 - Figure 1

Source: ONS

3 The major cause of higher unemployment among the young must be the economic recession. However, examination of the characteristics of A8 migrants would suggest that their arrival might well have been a factor because of the high ‘employability’ of immigrants from these countries and their age profile. A8 migrants to the UK are:

disproportionately young compared to the UK population as a whole: in 2008 about 70 per cent of A8 migrants were aged between 18 and 35, compared to about a third of all immigrants and less than a quarter of UK born.
relatively highly educated: whilst the median school-leaving age for UK-born workers was 16 in 2008, for A8 migrants to the UK it was 19 years of age
strongly motivated to work – in most cases, seeking employment is the primary motivation for immigration, and their participation rate in the economy is higher than for UK-born. For men from the A8 the participation rate is 95 per cent and for women, 80 per cent. Comparable figures for the UK born are 83 and 75 per cent respectively[4]. A8 workers have frequently been praised for their strong work ethic
prepared to work for low wages: 89% of A8 (and Romanian and Bulgarian) workers earned less than £400 a week in 2007, compared to 57 % of UK-born workers

Empirical Studies and Their Limitations

4 There have been a few econometric studies which have looked at the labour market impacts of A8 migration into the UK, but no published studies which have looked specifically at impacts on the unemployment of young UK-born workers. The studies have found no “statistically significant” linkage between A8 immigration and the employment of UK workers.

5 These results have been criticised on the grounds that they are counter-intuitive, given the scale of A8 migration into the UK and the characteristics of the migrants. Furthermore, estimation of labour market impacts is beset by technical problems of errors in measuring data, and uncertainty about the overall impact of migration on labour markets. These concerns were expressed by Professor Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, in evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee Inquiry (in 2007/0 into the economic impact of immigration into the UK. He argued that finding effects that are statistically insignificant “does not mean that they are small, it simply means that there is too much noise in the system to estimate them accurately”. Below is an extract from Professor Rowthorn’s written submission to this inquiry:

House of Lords – Select Committee on Economic Affairs – The Economic Impact of Immigration - Volume 11 – Evidence:

Impact on the Labour Market

“An indication of the potential scale of this competition in the UK is given by the statistics on the operation of Eastern European migrants who are registered under the worker registration scheme. Between May 2004 and March 2007, the number of national insurance certificates granted to such migrants was 623,575 and 77% earned between £4.50 and £5.99 per hour. Over this period, the statutory minimum wage was in the range £4.50 to £5.35 per hour for adults. It is hard to believe that competition on this scale has no effect on the economic prospects of local workers, as many advocates of immigration claim. Indeed, such a claim is inconsistent with the widely accepted argument that modern technology and structural change in the economy have destroyed many low-skill jobs and undermined the labour market position of low-skilled workers. If workers at the bottom end of the skill ladder are losing out because of adverse shifts in the demand for unskilled labour, then it seems obvious that their situation can only be made worse by making them compete with migrant labour. Those who point this out are often accused of a racial preference in favour of white locals against non-white immigrants. In the case of the UK, many of the locals who compete with low-skilled migrants are from ethnic minorities, for example black Caribbeans, whereas nowadays the immigrants are often white. This situation is similar in the United States, where unskilled black workers face competition from Hispanic migrants

Estimation

“The following are some of the main difficulties:

Causality. Immigrants tend to go to areas where there is a strong demand for labour. These are likely to be areas where employment for local workers is high or rising. This could be interpreted incorrectly as evidence that immigration into an area creates employment for locals.

Induced Migration. When immigrants come into an area, this may cause locals to leave or may deter people from moving into the area from elsewhere. The result will be a ripple effect, whereby a migration “shock” in one area is dissipated to the rest of the country. For example, if there is a big inflow of migrants into London, there may be initially a rise in local unemployment. After a time, some residents of London may go to Scotland and fewer Scots may come to London. As a result, unemployment may eventually increase in Scotland and fall back again in London. This means that the conventional “spatial correlation” method for analysing the effects of immigration may seriously underestimate its impact. Hatton and Tani have shown that induced migration in the UK is important and they warn that it may result in a downward bias in the estimated impact of migration on the labour market.

Measurement Error. Migration statistics are based on samples and are subject to error. The econometric analysis of migration normally subdivides the population into “cells” based on such factors as area, education, age or gender. Many of these the cells have a very small number of migrants in them and the resulting errors may be proportionately very large. …this may lead to a serious underestimate of the impact of migration on the labour market. A similar point about the bias arising from errors was made by Rowthorn and Glyn. All of the above factors lead to a downward bias in the estimated impact of migration on the labour market. Econometricians normally seek to correct for this bias but it is often very difficult”.

6 It is worth noting that Studies have had greater success with gauging the impact of migration into the UK on wage levels, which – for the lowest 15 per cent of earners – have been adversely impacted[6].

7 As regards Eastern European migration, a study by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) in April 2011 found that “the long run impact on [UK] GDP per capita can be expected to be negligible”[7]

Conclusion

8 Youth unemployment in the UK increased by almost 450,000 in the period from 2004 Q1 to 2011 Q3, from 575,000 to 1,016,000. Over the same period, numbers of workers from the A8 countries grew by 600,000. Correlation is not, of course, proof of causation but, given the positive employability characteristics and relative youth of migrants from these countries, it is implausible and counter-intuitive to conclude – as the previous Government and some economists have done - that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment in this period. Accurate estimation of the size of the impact is beset with problems of statistical ‘noise’ and more research needs to be done to assess the true scale of the impact.

6 January, 2012
Notes

Hansard 26 April 2011 Column 84 gives 1.1 million as the total of registrations under the Worker Registration Scheme. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/.../110426-0002.htm
Following the methodology of Pollard et al. (2008), we take the total number of approved WRS applications, and multiply it by 1.49 to account for an estimated 33 per cent of A8 workers who do not register with the scheme.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/.../index-of-data-tables.html#tab-Employ ment-tables Table EMP 05
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/new_europeans.pdf page 14
Dustmann et. Al – see Sources of Data
House of Lords Report The Economic Impact of Immigration paragraph 83 - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/.../82/8202.htm
Migration Advisory Committee – Limits on Migration: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/.../report.pdf?view=Bina ry
http://www.niesr.ac.uk/pdf/270411_143310.pdf page 2

Sources of Data

EHRC -The UK’s New Europeans – Progress and Challenges Five Years after Accession
www.equalityhumanrights.com

Dustmann, C and Frattini, T and Halls, C. July 2009. Assessing the Fiscal Costs and Benefits of A8 Migration to the UK. CReAM Discussion Paper 18/09
http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_18_09.pdf

House of Lords – Economic Affairs Committee: The Economic Impact of Immigration – Vol 11 Evidence
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldeconaf/82  /82ii.pdf

Migration Advisory Committee – Limits on Migration (November 2010)
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/.../mac-limits-t1-t2/rep ort.pdf?view=Binary