
Issue No 69		01 September 2000

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Away For The Games

The Heart of Europe

By Peter Lewis

It's one of John Howard's myopic rallying cries - Australia is a European, not an Asian nation. But he'd feel a long way from comfortable and relaxed in Europe's official heartland, Brussels.

Coming face to face with the city that houses the European Parliament, UNESCO and NATO, you can't help comparing Howard's longing for a European nation in the Antipodies with the dreaming of some of our own post-War immigrants for an Italy or Greece that no longer exists. While they practise the traditions with fervour in the back streets of Leichhardt or Marrickville, the homelands they strive to recreate have changed fundamentally from the places they remember. In the case of Brussels, what is most striking is the confusion that abounds when what you expect is clarity.

Brussels is a city of big ideas and even bigger contradictions; gleaming skyscrapers, hugging historical buildings with their green copper domes amid barren areas of neglect that would not be out of place in a developing nation. It's certainly not the shiny, efficient, modern polis one expects driving into the home of the unified Europe; the streets are cluttered, there are no street signs to speak of, there is a lack of logic in even the simple transactions. But as you get a feel for the place, perhaps it is more appropriate than it first appears. Because the Europe it is creating is itself still a work in progress, an attempt by the nation-states that have dominated the globe for the past millennium - and provided the theatre for so much bloodshed in the past century - to come to terms with a new way of being.

For a start, if this is the centre of Europe, then Europe is no longer a white continent. Aryan dreams of a master race have been subverted by the racial mixing pot that has accompanied the post-colonial era. There are African faces - many from the colonies of Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi that the Belgium so mismanaged; there are even more with olive skin, the southern Europeans, the Spanish, the Turks; many who have been here for two or more generations, intermarrying to create a multi-coloured mainstream. Of course there are still the dreamers of yesteryear, like the Flemish right wing Vlaams Blok movement which has secured a strong base in Antwerp and other centres across Europe; nastier than One Nation, they are caricatures of the Nazis who took their principles of purity to their unnatural conclusion just 50 years ago. They generate a lot of White Noise, but their chances of seizing control and implementing their programs on a broad basis are becoming slimmer by the day. The process of European unification is robbing them of nationalism, the only proven vehicle for driving the politics of difference.

The new Europe has no concrete borders, no check points where passports are stamped, suitcases checked, people searched. There's just a sign welcoming you to France or Belgium or Germany, much like you get when you cross the Murray River. The new Europe has a common currency, accepted everywhere alongside the local notes and coins - and, of course, the ubiquitous Visa and Amex cards. The new Europe trades as a block, pooling strength to former a bigger entity than the USA; and causing the rest of the world grief through its agricultural tariffs that protects a rural sector that still remembers the post-war famines. While economic integration gathers pace, the individual languages and culture of the member nations acts as a natural buffer against the homogeneity it promotes.

That's the theory, anyway. Resistance to integration remains high - in recent elections for the European Parliament, nationalist parties won widespread support across Europe. Britain remains, at best, ambivalent. And the corporatist fundamentals that have underpinned the economies of western Europe since the Marshall Plan are under assault from the 'Washington Doctrine' of deregulation, which bodies like the OECD appear determined to implement, despite the evidence of growing inequality and dislocation that flow in their wake. For a movement that is attempting to redefine state structures, a proposition that junks them outright looms as a major paradox for the EU.

For trade unions their international body, the International Council of Free Trade Unions, is based here, making it the centre of the world for organised labour. The links with Belgium and trade unions are profound. It was trade unions that led the push towards European unification after World War II - recognising that it was their members who were literally first in the firing line when partisan trade disputes and nationalistic fervour turned into armed combat. During the post World War II reconstruction phase it was the unions who recommended a European Coal and Steel Union, to be based in Brussels - between the mines and manufacturing belt of the Germany and France and the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Indeed, it is this economic body that has morphed into the European Union, ripping away trade the national borders and unifying the continent to the point where war between constituent states is beyond contemplation. And so, the original mission has, to an extent, been accomplished.

The plight of the union movement in this new Europe is less clear. The end of the Cold War has also seen the end of acceptance of trade unions by big business as the palatable alternative to Communism. Where once it was the shining light for labour relations, now it too is facing the hostility of the union-busters as big multinationals chase US-style short-term profit levels. Where the European model of unionism prevails, it is tripartism, its position at the centre of many European nations' welfare and pension systems - often more a corporatist model where policy influence obscures falling levels of activism. In France, for instance, where the Socialist Government implements the 35 hour working week initiative, the formal union movement is in disarray. While membership levels in Europe remain around 30 per cent, way above other continents, the legitimacy of the movement is being questioned for the first time.

Like everyone else in this strange and slightly discomfiting city, the international union advocates are trying to invent a new reality out of the collapsing certainties of the 20th century. In the case of the ICFTU it comes in global campaigns against the huge corporations, operating across borders to link workers to common causes.

Where we have celebrated nation builders in the past, today's historical mission is to build networks between people that serve some of the functions but mitigate from the excesses of nationalism. It's a tightrope mission - linking up cultures without losing their essence. At its heart are unresolved questions about identity and the collapse - or at least weakening - of nationhood. It raises the intriguing dilemma: what happens if we are ceasing to be European, African, Asian and are becoming just people? How does that change the way the world operates, what we share and what we fight over?

Bringing the question back to Sydney, it makes one wonder whether the Olympics are really just the last hoorah for the nation state. When entire racial descriptions, let alone individual countries are collapsing into the one mass, what do the Games really mean? Does the American of Jamacian extraction running against the Englishman of Barbados extraction, or even the Australian of Aboriginal extraction say anything about anything to anyone anymore? Can we gauge our worth as a nation by the number of medals we win? Or is it really just a group of professional athletes, sponsored by different government sports institutes - but often the same corporations - striving for individual excellence? Where is the national significance of success or failure when the boundaries and definitions of nationhood are so fluid?

As Brussels shows, internationalism is a tricky business, with many layers of contradiction. Merely cheering for our own might not have become meaningless but it's getting more and more confusing. And when John Howard, a neo-Nazi, or even a trade unionist points to the New Europe as the 'answer', it bears remembering that it is still more of a question.

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Issue 69 contents

Interview: Global Warrior
International unions have won a game of political football with soccer`s hierarchy - and Aussie Tim Noonan is behind the victory.

History: King of Broken Hill
John Shields recounts the colourful life of William Sydney 'Shorty' O'Neil (1903-2000) and his place in the rich history of a remarkable town.

International: History Repeats At Firestone
More than 8,000 workers, members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), are set to strike at nine Bridgestone/Firestone plants in the United States at midnight tonight.

Politics: The Past We Need To Understand
In his Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture Malcolm Fraser retraces the path of Australian race relations and laments the terrible impasse we've reached.

Unions: Economic Democracy
Sharan Burrow on making Working Australia's money talk and reforming corporate culture for the 21st Century.

Satire: Another windscreen washer joins millionaire list
SYDNEY, Monday: After just a year in his new job, John Samuels has added his name to the burgeoning list of enterprising Australians who have made their fortunes by offering partial car-washing facilities in convenient inner city road-side locations.

Review: No Long Term
Much political commentary is about the global marketplace and the use of new technologies as hallmarks of the new capitalism. Richard Sennett investigates another dimension of change: new ways of organising time, particularly working time.

» New Benchmark In Bank Greed

» Olympics Deal Sparks Soccer Ball Victory

» Two Day Strike Hits BHP Mines

» Leightons, SOCOG Tremble Before Haka

» Hilton Hotels Limp As Strike Bites

» Wran Lends Boffins A Hand

» ACTU Meets Joy

» Barracks Workers Put The Pinch On Local MP

» Olympic Win For Taxi Drivers

» Australian Unions Keep Spotlight on Fiji

» Staff Eye Telstra Prize

» Dice Loaded Against American Workers

» NZ Union Federations Heal Split

» Pressure Mounts On Nike To Live Olympic Ideal