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by Our News Desk
BREXIT campaigners warned yesterday that calls to nationalise Britain’s steel industry would not work while the country remained a member of the EU.
Leave.EU said the wish of unions and shadow chancellor John McDonnell for a government rescue of Port Talbot were “impossible.”
“EU state aid rules do not allow public support for the rescue and restructuring of companies in the steel sector,” said Leave.EU spokesman Jack Montgomery.
But Business Secretary Sajid Javid’s proposal to “buy British” is equally impossible under EU law, Mr Montgomery said.
“Showing preference to our own industry, as the Chinese do, would have seen us hauled before the [EU] Commission and hit with punishing fines — a humiliating state of affairs for a country which used to be the workshop of the world.”
But rival campaign group Another Europe is Possible claimed that anything workers might gain by leaving Europe would be offset by lower wages.
After Brexit fan Culture Secretary John Whittingdale tweeted: “The higher our minimum wage rises the more attractive a destination we become for migrants #LeaveEU & regain control,” Another Europe is Possible responded: “Backed by multimillionaires, it’s no surprise Leave campaigners oppose higher wages for some of Britain’s poorest workers.”
The Communist Party Welsh committee in Pontypridd at the weekend heard vociferous opposition to those who refused to condemn the role of the EU in the long-term decline of Britain’s steel industry.
“Within the EU we have no power to protect a vital foundation industry against imports — especially those from elsewhere in the EU which are even greater than the cheap imports from China,” said CP Welsh secretary Trevor Jones.
“We cannot set our own tariffs or quotas or use public funds to subsidise steel plants through periods of glut.”
The Deesside trade union council secretary contrasted the bail-out of the Royal Bank of Scotland with the government’s refusal to fund the survival of Port Talbot and other steel plants.
The £45 billion state aid provided to RBS would see Port Talbot through steel trade cycles for the next 600 years.
The committee agreed that the government should renationalise the steel industry in defiance of the EU.
