SSP vows to challenge EU bureaucrats

THE Scottish Socialists launched their European election manifesto yesterday with a pledge to challenge the "top-down and bureaucratic" European Union.

The SSP will take a defiantly Euro-sceptic line into the election, promising to mount a "campaign of disobedience" inside the parliament, if elected.

The Socialists are demanding the closure of the European Central Bank and calling for opposition to the euro and the Common Fisheries Policy.

Tommy Sheridan, the SSP leader, denied that this hostile approach to the European Union meant that he wanted to withdraw from it. He said the SSP was an internationalist party, but the EU needed to be reformed to put power into the hands of the people, not those of unelected bankers and bureaucrats.

However, Alan McCoombes, the policy co-ordinator of the SSP, said that if the party had to choose between helping the workers and staying in the EU, it would chose the former.

The manifesto contains a number of commitments including: a continent-wide minimum wage of 7.50 an hour, a Europe-wide state pension of 200 a week and the cancellation of all Third World debts to Europe.

The SSP would pay for these policies with a range of new taxes including: corporate and top-rate income tax at 60 per cent and a tax on all cross-border financial transactions.

Mr Sheridan, whose sister, Lynn Sheridan, is standing as a candidate for the SSP, admitted that the manifesto had not been costed but he argued that Europe was rich enough to afford the proposals his party was putting forward.

He used the example of the 7 billion profit made by the Royal Bank of Scotland as an example of money which would be distributed across the country, rather than among the shareholders, if the SSP came to power. "It should be publicly owned and used for the development of our society as a whole," Mr Sheridan said.

The party failed to win a seat in Europe in 1999 after securing just 4 per cent of the vote, but Mr Sheridan believes that the SSP can secure one MEP if it can win about 10 per cent of the vote.

That MEP would be Felicity Garvie, 49, who has been Mr Sheridan’s office manager for the past five years.

If she wins, she would have to live on the average salary of a skilled Scottish worker, 25,000, giving the other 30,000 to the party.

She would also declare all expenses, pledging to challenge Europe’s "gravy train".

Ms Garvie lived in Germany for 20 years and speaks German, French and Italian. She now lives in Scotlandwell, Kinross.