12.02.2004

Wheels start to roll

European Social Forum: Tina Becker excluded from London ESF co-ordinating committee

At last there is good news to report regarding the organisation of the next European Social Forum, which will take place in London. We might still not know when exactly it will happen, we might not know where or how, we might criticise the bureaucratic and dominant role that Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Authority is playing; but undoubtedly things have started moving rapidly forward in the last couple of weeks.

However, the biggest problem is still unresolved: there is a serious lack of money. Although we are not allowed to report in detail on this question (see below), no trade union or other organisation has made any firm commitment of financial support yet. This has even led to suggestions by Redmond O’Neill (Livingstone’s policy director on public affairs and transport) that the ESF in London might not take place in 2004 at all, but “maybe in November 2005” - a possibility that was rejected outright by Socialist Workers Party and GLA representatives when it was previously put forward by a wide range of 150 groups and individuals (see Weekly Worker November 6 2003).

For the time being though, we are planning for an event in 2004. But there is not much time: a European ESF assembly on March 6-7 will make the final decision as to whether holding the 2004 ESF in London is a viable option. This means that firm bookings for venues cannot be made until then. Alexandra Palace, which has been provisionally booked by the GLA for the end of October and all of November, demands that we make up our mind by the end of February. If they cannot be convinced otherwise, the ESF might have to move to 2005, as no other venue in London is really appropriate.

Big centres like Earls Court, Olympia, the Dome or the Excel Centre would have to be divided up with fabric curtains to create smaller meeting spaces - but this would present real problems in terms of sound-proofing. Alexandra Palace has also quite a few downsides: it is a brisk 25 minutes walk from Wood Green tube station, and can only host a maximum of 25,000 people - and that only with the setting up of large marquees around the building. According to comrade O’Neill (who is a leading member of the Trotskyoid sect, Socialist Action), it can host 14 plenary sessions and 90 smaller seminars and workshops per day. But the two previous ESFs have attracted over 50,000 people, attending almost twice that number of meetings.

To move things forward more quickly, a coordinating committee has been set up which is supposed to deal with the day-to-day organisational tasks coming up. There is no question that such a body is of absolute and urgent necessity. However, the way it has been set up is fully in the spirit of the process so far - ie, secretive, rather undemocratic and with no advance notice at all. The UK organising committee, meeting on February 5, was unexpectedly presented with a proposal to establish such a body.

A few people criticised the lack of prior notice, with Jeremy Dewar from Workers Power at one stage threatening to withhold his consent, thus vetoing any decision under the ESF’s ‘consensus principle’ (unless of course the chair decides to override this by declaring a consensus anyway). Like ourselves, WP is officially in favour of ditching ‘consensus’ cum arbitrary rulings in favour of voting. But comrade O’Neill hit the nail on the head: “The GLA gets criticised for organising things, but now you are against setting up a committee that could take over most of the work.”

CPGB comrades suggested that - like all other ESF structures - the coordinating committee should be open to interested observers and publish its agendas and minutes. This proved more controversial than should be the case, with Jane Loftus (SWP member representing the Communication Workers Union) and Fred Leplat (member of International Socialist Group, representing London Unison) calling “no, no” during our intervention, while other SWP members present shook their heads.

Fortunately, reason won - at least in part. Two amendments were accepted by the majority, which commit the organising committee and all other sub-groups to allow observers and publish agendas and reports of its decisions. However, following strong objections from the SWP and GLA, a little clause with big implications has been added. Meetings of sub-groups can “meet in closed session by agreement”. A day later, at the coordinating committee, this clause was already being put into practice. The majority in the meeting decided that I should not be allowed to report any financial details of the ESF: “Nobody can openly talk about figures if it is going to end up in a newspaper,” comrade O’Neill stated.

At the next meeting of the committee on February 11, the screws were tightened further: Thanks to comrade Jeremy Dewar from Workers Power, attendees who happen to write for newspapers will from now on have to leave the room whenever finance is being discussed (and that includes such minor items as registration fees, as well as general fundraising). After comrade O’Neill again raised the problem with “people from newspapers” being present, Jeremy incredibly suggested that “those journalists should be excluded who write for newspapers that have a record of leaking discussions. And I want to emphasise that Workers Power newspaper has no intention of reporting on any of these discussions in the future.” And Red Pepper has been behaving well, too. It was only the bad Weekly Worker he wanted to see excluded.

I guess Jeremy hoped he would gain some new friends. And those people present who are used to operating through backroom deals and secret meetings certainly jumped at the opportunity. Chris Nineham (SWP, aka Stop the War Coalition) suggested that observers should no longer be able to attend meetings of the coordinating committee. Although his proposal was not put to the vote, I would not be surprised if observers will be shown the door at next week’s meeting.

Nick Sigler (Unison’s head of international affairs) supported Jeremy, stating that “the mistrust that exists has nothing to do with exclusions or secret meetings. It has got everything to do with certain newspapers reporting these meetings, to the extent that these papers are read in any case.” This is a theoretically very interesting concept, which was greeted with enthusiastic nodding from the likes of Chris Nineham: without the Weekly Worker, people would never have known about those secret meetings - and would have had no reason to feel excluded …

Although I declared that of course the Weekly Worker will adhere to last week’s decision and has certainly not broken it, the overwhelming majority voted to exclude me. Then the wolves turned around and decided that now they needed some desert: Jeremy Dewar was duly expelled, too. A beautiful example of what happens once you start calling for bans, if ever there was one. Instead of sucking up to his new friends, Jeremy had to spend the next 30 minutes listening to me telling him off.

This ban shows of course that the GLA and co are in fact not very confident about raising the necessary funds. Last year’s forum in Paris was subsidised by PCF-run local authorities and the central government of Jacques Chirac to the tune of over €3 million (£2 million), while the comrades in Italy were given free use of the main venue to stage our first ESF in Florence. Imposing a blackout on reports of these shortcomings will certainly not make them disappear. All organisations in Britain and Europe should be informed immediately about this grim situation so that they can start to discuss their financial input.

The discussion around this item points to the biggest problem for the GLA-SWP alliance. I think I have heard the sentence, ‘The organisation is not broad enough’, at least twice at every single ESF meeting I have attended. Some national unions might have signed up to the ESF, but in reality they are not involved. Representatives from Unison and the CWU are almost exclusively members of the SWP. The South East Region TUC’s Laurie Heselden has not attended any meetings since he walked out of the ESF assembly in December. The TUC has so far refused to give its support. Maureen O’Mara (president of Natfhe) and Alex Gordon (RMT NEC) are the only ‘real’ and regularly attending trade unionists at these meetings.

This shows quite clearly that we are dealing with a qualitatively different situation from that facing our comrades in Italy in France in 2002 and 2003. The working class in Britain has a lower level of consciousness and neither the SWP, Respect or the Socialist Alliance have anything more than tenuous roots in society. They certainly lack the authority of a Rifondazione Comunista or a Parti Communiste Français (PCF).

For example, at the first meeting of the coordinating committee on February 6, Jane Loftus (CWU) and Alan Rae (Amicus) were the only trade union representatives among the 16 people present - they are also members of the SWP, of course. There were five GLA employees, one member of the CPGB, one from Workers Power (newspaper), one from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (aka No Sweat), three non-representative members of the Green Party, three from the SWP and the CND’s Kate Hudson, a member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain. There was also a comrade from the Kurdish Federation/Halkevi centre. Oscar Reyes, representing Red Pepper magazine, was the only one present who is not a member of a leftwing party (this of course also highlights the idiocy of the current ban on political parties openly participating in the ESF process).

In short, we had the usual suspects. And I very much suspect that the composition of this committee will not change too much (though at our second meeting on February 11, Nick Sigler and Adrian Weir (TGWU) were some welcome additions). A sad, but pretty accurate reflection of the reality of the left in Britain, which in the absence of a vigorous campaign from below means everything hangs on the GLA bureaucratic machine and Ken Livingstone’s ability to persuade national unions to financially support the ESF. Desperate for the thing to go ahead, in order to maintain its self-image of being a European mover and shaker, SWP comrades have therefore opted to be constitute themselves temporary GLA loyalists.

Of course we will adhere to the majority decision, which was in fact not as bad as it could have been. A couple of comrades suggested that there should be a ban on reporting all decisions of the committee. “Who would be interested anyway in reading about these meetings?” comrade Loftus asked. While minutes remain so pitifully uninformative, while agendas are not being distributed and while meetings are being called at one day’s notice, I would suggest quite a lot of people will find open reporting rather useful.

Anyway, at the ESF European assembly on March 6-7 comrade O’Neill will have to come clean about the financial side of our ESF. He will have to tell us what Ken Livingstone’s talks with trade union leaders have come up with. He will have to let us know if there will be an ESF in London in 2004.