It is ironic that the elections to such an irrelevant body as the European parliament should give such a clear insight into the state of European they are looked back at last weeks Euro-elections will be seen as a real political phenomenon of all - the simple refusal to vote described it, a 'disaster for the credibility of the That is a pure and simple gain for the left. attempts of big capital in Europe to knit organisation still lacks any serious popular supBut taking the three countries where there was a major shift in the elections — France, Italy and West Germany — there is a fundamental insight into European politics today In France the horrifying vote for Le Pen and criticism made of French Neil Kinnock - Sirane cois Mitterrand. In three years the Eurosocialist Mitterrand has brough the French labour move beforehand. Anyone with illusions in the dream ticket of Kinnock and Hattersley would do well to As for the French Communist Party its rout government was for its vote to collapse to its owest level since the Second World War There will be no recovery to anything like the Communist Parties which existed prior to Mitterrand s about a permanent shift in the relation of forces munist Party and in favour of the Socialists.
learnt the lesson of how to protect itset trom munism, to support for NATO and the EEC, to effectively functioning both as the Communist and Socialist Party in Italy, brutally dented the ambitions of Socialist Party leader Craxi exposing still further the cracks in the Christian Democrats But if France and Italy were the evident short term crises shown by the Euro-elections, overwhelmingly the most soared earlessly three the live the working class districts of the big cities If there were a general election in West GerDemocratic Party have an all mar.
strike in France shattered the social calm of post war western Europe. in short term socialist revolution in Europe -hopes that were dashed in the years that followEuropean 'far left' But both the hopes and the despair were based on a misunderstanding.
started, not finished, political crisis in western Europe. Indeed only today is that crisis beginning to break out with its full force If you want to see the evidence of that just look around at those Euro-election results.
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week of December.
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important result Eight per cent of the vote in West goes to a party explicitly against and that means 10 and 12 per cent in 1968 the general That event aroused belief despair gripped sections of the May-June 1968 in the social in saic)