Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will make a link between these two points. Obviously, the issue of a possible Brexit is a serious one not just for Ireland and Britain, but for the whole of the European Union. People Before Profit has not formally made a decision on what it will say or whether it will campaign either way on this particular referendum. However, we will meet in the next couple of weeks to make such a decision. It is an important issue for us not just because we are organised in the South, but also because we are organised in the North and our members and supporters there will have to vote in this referendum. I might note in passing that there is an election coming up in the North where People Before Profit is expected to take an Assembly seat in west Belfast and, possibly, in Derry. It is a positive sign that the philosophy of People Before Profit is spreading across the island, gaining ground and traction.

The question for us in trying to assess what to say about the referendum in Britain is whether it furthers an agenda across Europe of putting people before profits and corporate interests. Does it further the increasing momentum in the European Union towards militarisation? On the other hand, does it further an attempt, which we would see as vital, to break down the increasing momentum in the European Union towards a fortress Europe, with the shocking consequences which we have seen for refugees fleeing from desperate war-torn countries, drowning in the Mediterranean, holed up in refugee camps in the most appalling and abominable conditions, or being pushed back to countries like Turkey with terrible human rights records. Which way should one vote, if one wants to challenge that direction in which the European Union is going? It is a tricky question.

Whatever way we decide to go on this issue, it is important we say we want nothing whatsoever to do with the people who are leading the “Leave” campaign in Britain. Whatever about the merits of the pros and cons of an argument about whether Britain, or any other member state, should stay in the European Union or leave it, we should all agree we want nothing to do with the UKIPs of this world, or the far right in Britain and Europe, which are campaigning on the most appalling, despicable racist and anti-immigrant platforms. We should give no truck to that. Indeed, David Cameron deserves considerable criticism for playing around with dangerous racist, right-wing forces in the way in which he has prompted this referendum. Of course, Cameron did not call for this referendum on the basis of trying to move towards some sort of more progressive, fair, egalitarian, peaceful Europe of solidarity. It was quite the opposite. He provoked this referendum by trying to conjure up a threat to Britain and other countries in the European Union from immigrants.

It was really quite disgraceful and despicable and has given succour and encouragement to some of the most foul, right-wing, racist forces in British society. Whatever we say on this, we want nothing to do with that. However, the fact that some of those who are leading the Leave campaign are obnoxious politically and that we should have nothing to do with them should not in any way take from the need to have a cold, objective assessment of what the European Union actually is at the moment and whether it is a good or a bad thing to stay in it, for Britain or for any of us.

I want to echo the comments made by Deputy Murphy earlier when he talked about those who are promoting the Stay campaign using the politics of fear in order to say there should be no debate, that if Britain leaves the European Union, or if anybody leaves the European Union, the world is going to fall apart and it is going to be a disaster. We have heard that in every single European referendum. There was never a positive argument as to why one should support various EU treaties we have had in recent years or why we should stay in the European Union, but always a rotten argument based on fear and blackmail, suggesting to people that there would be dire consequences if we leave the EU. I do not believe that. I was reading through the ESRI's document on scoping the possible economic implications of Brexit and to be honest it is all speculation as to what might happen. People have legitimate concerns about the possible reimposition of border controls and impacts on trade, but I do not see how it could be in Britain's interests, whether it is in or out of the EU, to impose border controls or to restrict trade or the movement of people between Britain and Ireland. It would be in the interests of Britain and Ireland to negotiate bilateral arrangements on those things to ensure we continue to have free movement of people and trade between Britain and Ireland. I do not think we should conjure up those fears in trying to look objectively at this issue.

In so far as there is now a threat to the EU, where has that threat really emanated from? I argue that it is actually its own policies that are destabilising and undermining the EU, that the EU is its own worst enemy. There are pious and noble aspirations to European solidarity, to ensuring we do not repeat the horrors of the 1930s and that we have international solidarity across Europe, which all of us would support, but is that the reality of the European Union? When we look at the practice of the EU in recent years, it is a very different picture. It was seen most starkly when the economic crisis hit. That economic crisis was, to a large extent, instigated by the actions of one of the European institutions, the European Central Bank, which was essentially pumping cheap money into the peripheral economies in the interests of banks and financial interests in Germany, France and Britain in order to profiteer in the peripheral countries. When that caused an unmerciful bubble, which then burst, those same institutions demanded that ordinary people in this country, in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, pay a bitter price for that. When anybody here or elsewhere in Europe suggested that actually the bondholders, the ECB itself and the financial institutions should pay the bill, we had threats and bullying from the European Union. It was economic terrorism. Trichet told the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, that a financial bomb would go off in Dublin if we dared to do what was right and made the bondholders pay, rather than ordinary people. That has been the reality of the European Union - not one of solidarity but one of corporate domination of the interests of big financial institutions, the banks and so on, unloading a terrible and bitter cost on ordinary working people in this country and particularly in the peripheral countries.

I have not had time to go into the increasing militarisation of the EU, the creation of a Europe-wide arms industry and a European army, and the shocking facts of Fortress Europe, which I mentioned at the beginning. It is these things, and the hijacking of the European project by multinationals, by militarists and by racists, that are the biggest threats to the EU, which open the possibility of it unravelling.

See this speech in context