Brussels demonstration (2002)

Party News from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Three members from Birmingham branch joined local members in Brussels in distributing a bilingual (English and French) leaflet and running a literature stall at the internationals demonstrations organised there on 14 and 15 December during the summit of EU heads of government. Some of the other leaflets distributed were very disappointing, not to say disturbing, illustrating the extreme nationalist position adopted by some of those present. For instance, a leaflet from an organisation calling itself the Workers' Communist Party of Norway stated that "it is the imperialist forces that are undermining the nation states and subjecting them to supra-national state forms. The multinationals are traitors to the nations of Europe". Our leaflet put the opposite point of view, that socialism can only exist on a world[wide] scale and will involve the disappearance of all nation-states, nationalism being a divisive ideology which socialists must oppose on every occasion.