The Socialist Equality Party (UK) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality are holding a series of meetings across the UK titled “The Socialist answer to Brexit: for the United Socialist States of Europe.”

Parliament was suspended this month in an authoritarian move by Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson to prevent opposition MPs derailing his plans to withdraw the UK from the European Union (EU) on October 31, without a deal if necessary.

Johnson represents the wing of the ruling elite that sees Brexit as the opportunity “to complete the Thatcher Revolution” and for British imperialism to compete on the international stage as the junior partner of the United States.

But the Remain faction of the ruling elite is just as hostile to the working class. Representing the financial swindlers in the City of London and led by the Blairites in the Labour Party, they see continued membership of the EU as the best way forward to secure the interests of the ruling elite. They are utilising the courts in seeking to overturn government policy and are pledged to tear up the “limitations of the existing [parliamentary] rule book” to lay the basis for an unelected government of “national unity.” The Financial Times has lent its support—providing that this also safeguards the “Thatcherite revolution of the 1980s…”

Escalating attacks on the working class and the turn to dictatorial forms of rule are universal phenomena.

France spent two years under a state of emergency, and draconian measures are being used to brutalize Yellow Vest and migrant protesters. Fascist deputies from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) sit in the German parliament, collaborating with the grand coalition government and working hand-in-glove with the state security services. President Donald Trump is seeking to build an extra-constitutional fascist movement in the US.

Workers in Britain must assert their own independent interests and reject both factions of the ruling elite. The conflict in ruling circles in relation to Brexit is over whether to ally with the US or Germany and France in an escalating trade war that threatens to plunge the entire world into military conflict. The price will be paid with stepped-up austerity in the name of global competitiveness, along with the growth of the far-right.

Only a unified movement of the British, European and international working class for socialism, centred on the fight for the United Socialist States of Europe, offers a way forward.

Make plans to attend a meeting in your area. Full details below.

London
Sunday October 6, 3.30pm
Marchmont Community Centre
62 Marchmont Street, Kings Cross
London, WC1N 1AB (nearest tube: King’s Cross or Euston)

Manchester
Tuesday October 8, 7pm
Friends Meeting House, Room F11
6 Mount Street (behind Central Library)
Manchester, M2 5NS

Sheffield
Tuesday October 8, 7pm
Central URC Church
60 Norfolk Street
Sheffield, S1 2JB

Glasgow
Wednesday October 9, 7pm
Premier Inn, George Square
187 George Street
Glasgow, G1 1YU

Bradford
Saturday October 12, 2pm
Kala Sangam Arts Centre
St Peter’s House, 1 Forster Square
Bradford, BD1 4TY

Cambridge
Sunday October 13, 2pm
The Bath House
Gwydir Street
Cambridge, CB1 2BE