Intervention of the Communist Party in Denmark by Betty Frydensbjerg Carlsson

In the situation up to and during the collapse of the European socialist world all communist parties had their party struggle and discussions . Irrespective of we won our parties, or had to start a new communist party, we where divided and less than before. At us in my country, Denmark, the so called renewals won the party, and we had to leave and start a new party. The former leaders are all gone away now. But they – and the party-struggle left many former comrades back as disillusioned people.

But the development of capitalism has grown fast in the last eight years, and this development has showed us that we where right in our analyses of capitalism and imperialism, and continued our struggle for socialism, for peace and social justice.

A generation of youth who believed in the capitalistic slogan « Every body is the architect of his own fortune» has realized that it was a false slogan. And a new generation has realized what good old class struggle is. They do not know our terms, but they know and feel the class struggle at their body and daily life. The communist parties shall pick up this generation, organize them, teach them our experiences, - and listen and learn from them.

In Denmark we have just had the first big national strike in 13 years. The trade Unions at national level negotiated with the employers organization, and the workers voted no to the result of the negotiations. It is 40 years since this has happen last. The employers answered with a lock out. After two weeks, the government – under leading of the Social Democrats – brook into the strike, and made the unsatisfactory offer from the employers to low. All those workers, who has been in this struggle, has learnt a lot about class struggle, about the need of trade Unions, about the big distance to the top of the national leadership in the trade Unions and to the Social democratic politicians.

It is the same persons from so called working side, together with the employers organizations and the bourgeois parties who recommend the Danish working class to vote yes to the EU Amsterdam Treaty at the referendum we in Denmark are going to have May the 28th. The labor conflict has made them nervous, because many people has realized that the European Union supports the employers, and that the Amsterdam Treaty contains a chapter which will decide the labor conditions in all EU countries to the worse, instead of our tradition with negotiations between employers and the trade unions. We have also seen how the EU has ruined the former welfare, we have seen how the employers becomes more and more rich. We have seen that we ourselves and our parliament decides less and less, we have seen how the EU decides more and more privatization. A «no» from Denmark to the EU treaty the 28th is now more than possible and expectable.

As you possible know, the Danes voted No to the EU Maastricht treaty in 1992. Our government and politicians went into panic, the same did the EU. But when we where celebrating, they worked fast, and they betrayal us with the Edinburg agreement, where the EU could go on, and Denmark got 4 exceptions, we cannot use to anything. This time we are more prepared on a No from the Danish people. We, the people will demand that it is a veto to the Amsterdam Treaty, which will mean that the treaty will fall out. And we will say, that we votes for the people in all the EU countries, who UN- democratically cannot vote in a referendum themselves, because the people in Europe want to stop the development of building the European Union. The EU construction is undemocratic, it is build to give all rights to the capital, and to take away democracy for the people! We want a peoples Europe, a Europe with free, democratic nations working together and together with the whole world in respect of self dependence, democracy and peace. We don’t want a «Super» Europe with a common imperialistic army like the West Union!

A few words over how we in Denmark came to the situation that we could be able to have referendums about the EU question – and to vote no in 1992 and properly again this month. As communists we already in 1968 created and started the broad people’s movement against the Rome Treaty – the EEC as it was called at that time. The strategy was and is, that we shall build broad movements in questions we agree. We call this strategy Unity in action. We fight for what we agree in, and keeps all disagreements out of the common work for the case. This strategy has been fruit-bearing. The Danish peoples movement against the EU is very broad and known, we are in the parliament as a big group, and from this group the Danish people gets a lot of information of what is the EU, and what is going on there. In all political parties in Denmark they have a problem: Many of their voters are against EU.

But we also have a problem. The politicians tells the population that a «no» will isolate us, that a «no» will not be understood in the other EU- countries, and certainly not in the former socialist countries, the so-called east-countries, who – as we are told – are extremely interested for joining the EU.

We know that in many other EU countries there is resistance against the EU, the EMU and the development. We also know that communist parties in the former socialist countries are working hart to get their people to understand the danger of joining the EU. We have to help each other, and I think that to example the conference in Amsterdam last summer, arranged of the socialist party, and the conference in Berlin this year in January was good help to the resistance.

It brings me to my finally remarks.

I have been talking about Europe, but we are standing in a situation where the global capital will make a sort of EU for the whole world, starting with the MAI agreement. It is urgent that we in all countries starts the resistance against this new step for the world wide capitalism. In the 150 year of the communist Manifest the slogan: «Workers in all countries unite» really is topical.

We all know that the communist world movement have had problems by meeting in many years. We know why many communist parties in many years said no to common conferences with common resolutions, and maybe therefor still resists to meet at common conferences. But comrades, the situation is quit another since the sixties-seventies-and eighties! We need each other. We need to exchange opinions, analyses, experiences, and to co-ordinate activities for working class in our countries, in areas, in the whole world. And our meetings does not exclude meetings and conferences with other socialistic and progressive parties and groups.

Therefore we from the Danish Communist Party thanks our Greek comrades for this invitation and the opportunity to meet all of you.