WeeklyWorker

31.03.2004

European Social Forum: Control and 'consensus'

Preparations for the 2004 ESF are being stepped up, despite the bureaucracy and gagging orders. Tina Becker reports on the latest developments

Only 70 people turned up to the latest meeting of the European Social Forum organising committee, which took place on March 27. In an attempt to facilitate participation of groups from around the country, the meeting was held in Birmingham. However, while there were about 20 or so new people present, most of them did not engage in the meeting.

No wonder, really: the gathering saw a continuation of the old and not very attractive struggles between the axis of Socialist Action/Socialist Workers Party and the rest of the participants. Even a group of comrades from Brazil, who simply asked to give a 10-minute presentation on a book project organised by the World Social Forum, were not allowed to speak on the insistence of Redmond O’Neill, Ken Livingstone’s adviser and the ESF’s central organiser - presumably because they were invited by comrade Oscar Reyes from Red Pepper.

The SWP has also been incredibly unsuccessful in exercising any hegemony over the participating groups. Sure, they often join forces with the trade union bureaucracy and the organisations represented by members of Socialist Action (like the Greater London Assembly, Abortion Rights, Conference of Socialist Economists and Friends of Ireland). But those have their own agenda for the forum and have currently chosen to use the SWP to help them fight their battles.

Almost all other participating organisations have been pushed into a second camp - the camp of ‘the opposition’. It is of course not as well organised as the first camp and even less formal, as it has thrown together people and organisations who would under ‘normal’ circumstances hardly ever work with each other. However, this second camp has certainly seen the most interesting debates when preparing for ESF meetings, the most lively discussions on the question of decision-making - and some real close cooperation on many related issues. Who would have thought only 10 months ago, that members of the CPGB, Indymedia, Attac UK, the London Social Forum and the Green Party would work out joint tactics on the way to a meeting in Birmingham?

Many members of this second camp have been very dispirited by the outcome of this latest meeting and a few have announced that they will now give up on the ESF. These comrades seemed to have been under the illusion that the SWP would behave better in the ESF than elsewhere. They thought that the often quoted “principles of the World Social Forum” would somehow force the group to break from its decades of control-freakery and sectarianism. They seem to have believed that the GLA and the trade union bureaucracy would be interested in building a genuinely democratic, transparent and inclusive event for all the progressive movements across Britain and Europe.

Time to wake up and face reality. Neither the SWP, nor the trade union bureaucracy, nor the GLA are interested in any such thing. Anybody who has any interest in bringing the European left to London; who thinks it is worthwhile that the notoriously disunited and fragmented movements in Britain start cooperating on a higher level; who believes that control-freakery, bureaucracy and sectarianism should not be the main features of the British left, will simply have to carry on fighting.

And a hard fight it is, as the Birmingham meeting showed. Maybe the most important issue was put down the bottom of the agenda - and, not surprisingly, fell off it again: for a number of months now, people have suggested that the meetings of the all-important coordinating committee should take place in the evening. This committee, which was supposed to deal with ‘technical day-to-day decisions’ has in fact become the most powerful ESF body. Meeting at 10am every Thursday in the GLA’s City Hall, it makes all the major decisions. Our Birmingham assembly, for example, referred various items back to this committee, which was supposed to contain only one member each of the affiliated organisations. The SWP is now represented with six or seven people (four of them from Globalise Resistance) and Socialist Action has at least five of their members at every meeting, plus a minimum of three GLA employees.

Censorship

Like all ESF meetings the latest gathering of the organising committee was of course a public meeting and anybody could sit in, listen and report back to whatever group or organisation they wanted. Despite the open nature of the meeting, control-freakery won the day again and a number of gagging orders were issued.

First, the issue of filming or photographing ESF meetings came up. When anarchist video artist Hamish Campbell began openly recording the event, there were objections. “Stop, stop” - chair Milena Buyum (National Assembly against Racism) interrupted our discussion on accommodation, when she noticed Hamish. “We have to find out if there is consensus for you filming. Does anybody disagree with it?” she asked. Hamish tried to turn the tables and suggested that “these meetings are open. Surely you need a consensus not to film them”. Of course, Redmond O’Neill would not have any of it. “The principles of the World Social Forum state quite clearly that all meetings are open and public. However, they do not state that the meetings should be filmed,” comrade O’Neill stated disingenuously.

This leading member of the shadowy sect, Socialist Action, was backed up by all those people who are used to secret meetings, backroom deals and fear open reportage like the plague. In his only contribution to the meeting, a comrade from the Socialist Party insisted that “if only one person does not want to be filmed or photographed, the whole meeting should not be filmed”, he said, saying this should apply also to photographs.

Maureen O’Mara (president of the lecturers’ union, Natfhe) even suggested that no ESF meetings should ever be filmed or photographed ever again. “At the ESF European assembly at the beginning of March I already disagreed with pictures being taken. I do not want to have to go through the same discussion at every single meeting.” While a number of SWP comrades supported this, members of Workers Power and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty kept their mouths firmly shut during the discussion.

Some more open-minded people tried to swing the mood around. Comrade Javier Ruiz from Indymedia suggested that a smaller group of people should work out a “method to deal with situations like these”. He mentioned the possibility of certain items not being reported and likewise suggested that everyone should agree to abide by the wishes of anybody who does not wish to be photographed or filmed. However, there should not be a blanket ban on reporting or filming, he quite rightly suggested.

Unfortunately, the chairs would not let me speak in this heated debate, although I have been the only person to be repeatedly excluded from meetings of the smaller coordinating committee. Without a doubt, this subject of filming/photographing and the question of exclusions will be revisited - be it in a smaller working group or one of the next ESF meetings.

Another gagging order was issued by comrade O’Neill when the subject of ‘legal liability’ was discussed. The debate about the kind of company that should be set up to deal with bookings and contracts for the ESF 2004 raged for over two hours ... Unfortunately though, despite a mass of emails having been published on the issue, details about the matters discussed “cannot leave this room”, he insisted. So, the workers’ movement across Britain and Europe will simply have to trust Redmond and his SWP allies to make the right decision at the next meeting of the coordinating committee, which will decide the final details of this controversial issue.

Suffice it to say that two different proposals were presented: one, in written format, was presented by Brig Oubridge from the Big Green Gathering festival; the second was only put forward as a concept by Maureen O’Mara. However, it had a pretty persuasive element to it: if we did not accept it, we were told, “the trade unions and the GLA will not give any money to the ESF”. That certainly did the trick and after a long, painful discussion the proposal was accepted against the wishes of an increasingly demoralised opposition. Those wishing to find out more about this will find a bulk of information on Indymedia and the various ESF email lists.

Control-freakery

Comrades from Socialist Action would, of course, never mention the fact that they happen to be members of one of the most secretive Trotskyist sects in Britain today However, it is normally quite easy to spot one of them. I will share my knowledge about how to identify them, because frankly, I cannot keep up with the requests I have received in recent weeks, asking if this or that particular person happens to be “one of them”.

Firstly, almost all of them seem to be middle-aged and most of them are quite well presented - a give-away on the British left. They never engage in small talk with the rest of the left and keep to themselves to themselves. They normally arrive and leave in small groups - for protection, I presume.

Secondly, they represent groups you most likely will never have come across before. Groups which have either been set up by or involve Livingstone or trade union leaders (like Friends of Ireland, which campaigns to support the Good Friday agreement). For a reason best known to them, many of the younger Socialist Action members (around the National Union of Students) often wear those tight official T-shirts marking some GLA-sponsored event or campaign - LondOn, Unite against Fascism and the Respect festival (not to be confused with the unity coalition of the same name). They are the only people I have ever seen wearing these naff shirts in ‘normal’ life.

Thirdly, they repeat almost word for word any contribution made by their leader, Redmond O’Neill. For example, the comrade has for the last few weeks raised the idea of having only eight plenary sessions at our ESF in October (those are the only centrally organised events: the rest are self-organised meetings). Almost the entire contribution of the five SA members at the last meeting of the programme group consisted of repeating this point: “Hmm, having thought about this long and hard, I think we should go for eight sessions”, one comrade after the other repeated - with the ‘second camp’ breaking into louder and louder giggles. “Socialist Action? - Socialist Action!” I heard people whisper to each other.

The SWP, whose members had previously pushed for 20-30 plenary sessions, obviously did not want to annoy their friends in high places and announced that they would wait for the result of a ‘consultation process’ amongst other groups, who should also be asked what they want out of the ESF more generally. As our programme group meeting was restricted to just 90 minutes, leaving no time to discuss this properly, this process now consists, for example, of Milena phoning “all anti-racists groups”, Socialist Action member Ann Kane (officially representing Abortion Rights) contacting unspecified “women’s groups”, etc.

A third group of people - who made up about half of the programme group meeting - proposed a totally different way of deciding the matter. Rather than concentrating on an arbitrary figure, argued comrades from the CPGB, Friends of the Earth, Workers Power and Attac, surely we should first discuss what the purpose of plenaries is. If we mainly want them to feature interesting debates about some of the most important issues in Europe - which most participants seem to agree on - then surely we should identify those subjects first, before deciding how many sessions should be organised.

It seems strange that the Socialist Action should concentrate on this particular issue. It is, along with their suggestion for an overall ESF slogan (see below), the first issue they have focused on that is not entirely technical. But is hardly a very important one, you would think. Why rush into a decision on this? After all, the plenary speakers will not be chosen before August.

I think it simply reflects the comrades’ attempt to totally control as much of the process as they can. Plenary sessions are the only meetings that are centrally organised by the ESF as a whole - in long, often tedious discussions with comrades from all over Europe. The GLA, as the main funder of the event, might more readily be held accountable for the plenaries by the media. Imagine a situation where the ESF internationally decided to invite the controversial islamic militant, Tariq Ramadan, to debate with others on the question of ‘Islam and the anti-capitalist movement’. Ramadan has been witch-hunted by the French press as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and ‘anti-semite’. In the current political climate, it is not hard to imagine a similar response from papers like the Evening Standard, which has already started to pick up on the ESF. ‘GLA invites muslim terrorist to London’ is not a headline Ken Livingstone would be particularly keen on. So the more the larger, well publicised plenaries can be submerged amongst a sea of seminars, the better.

Working groups

Control-freakery also runs wild on the question of working groups. At the Birmingham organising meeting, for example, Stuart Hodkinson from Red Pepper presented the proposal for a ‘finance and fundraising’ working group. Hardly controversial stuff, one would think - especially as serious financial shortcomings are a real problem in organising our event. However, this had been proposed various times at meetings prior to Birmingham - and comrade O’Neill has always rejected it outright. The budget is still a secret and he will only report on financial details when I leave the room.

Similarly, the proposal for a working group to deal with ‘communications’ has been rejected time and time again. This has led to the untenable situation where the official email address, which has been published on various documents, is controlled by GLA employees - who never reply to any emails! When myself and comrade Laura Sullivan from the Spirit Matters group criticised this at a coordinating committee meeting two weeks ago, the SWP and Socialist Action would not agree to outsource the maintenance of this account. All the comrades could stomach was to add the item ‘correspondence’ to the standing agenda. When an GLA employee brought the list of emails received to the next meeting, it became clear that over 40 had been sitting unattended in the GLA’s in-box - four were from groups asking how to affiliate; others from people asking for information on how to get involved.

There is also the question of the website. For the first two ESFs in Italy and France, a group of volunteers maintained the site. However, the website for last year’s ESF in Paris was totally inadequate: registration payments could only be accepted two days before the event and information on locations was posted just a few days before that. Therefore, for this year’s event - quite rightly, in my opinion - it has been decided to outsource the design to a professional, unionised web design company. Our ESF is so seriously short of money that the efficient collection of registration fees is of crucial importance. However, this site will not be operational before the middle of May. Until then, a temporary website is online - and is being maintained by an GLA employee.

The proposed communications working group would be in charge of overseeing the official site, as well as the temporary one. It would also make sure that emails get answered and that all working groups are equipped with functioning email lists. How Redmond O’Neill could ever be against such working group really is hard to understand. However, it makes total sense if one remembers the level of control the comrade is exercising over the whole process. The fewer working groups, the better. The fewer organisations participating actively, the easier it is to control the process.

Then, in Birmingham, a minor miracle happened. Comrade O’Neill changed his position and suddenly announced his support for a finance group, along with a separate group that would deal with the ‘solidarity fund’, and a communications group - to the surprise of even his own comrades, who had spoken against the setting up of those groups a few minutes earlier. However, there was a small but crucial condition: the next coordinating committee will decide the remit and tasks of all of these groups. No doubt, ‘consensus’ will be established again to make sure that all stay firmly under the control of comrade O’Neill.

Consent to disagree

In a letter to the Weekly Worker (March 18) comrade Stuart Hodkinson from Red Pepper took exception to my criticism of the consensus method. But, this latest meeting again showed up the serious shortcomings of this method of decision-making.

Bureaucrats like Redmond O’Neill have been able to use ‘consensus’ not just against the ‘horizontals’ (which is how the couple of dozen people from anarchist-autonomist backgrounds describe themselves), but to exercise control over the whole ESF. Of course, he could attempt to do the same with a formally democratic voting method, but consensus actually plays into his and the SWP’s hands and makes his task somewhat easier.

At our meeting in Birmingham, for example, the second camp was actually in the majority. However, this did not result in any ‘victories’ - thanks to the peculiar way in which ‘consensus’ is wielded in the ESF: Basically, the chair announces whether we have achieved consensus or not and, since voting is not supposed to happen, for much of the time nobody is any the wiser. If, however, a minority clearly disagrees with a given proposal, then it all seems to depend on who the minority is. If somebody from the SWP or Socialist Action suggests a course of action, it requires an absolute majority against it to prevent ‘consensus’. If, however, somebody in the second camp makes a suggestion, it only needs one or two of the ‘big players’ to rule it out: in the second case, the withholding of consensus is used as a veto.

Genuine consensus can often be achieved, particularly within a group of people who are working together in the pursuit of clearly defined common aims. For example, in the CPGB we often do not need to vote where it is clear everybody agrees - that applies to most decisions actually. Stuart’s explanation of consensus as “a process where decisions are ‘constructed’ together, collectively and openly, through dialogue and compromise” sounds good and could be used in situations where general agreement already exists.

In many other situations, however, this method simply leads to impasse. It does not work in a situation where people have diametrically opposed objectives, particularly when those involved attempt to reach agreement on a whole range of issues.

Take the question of the demonstrations, which took place in London in January, on the subject of the French ban on the muslim headscarf. The Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain organised a protest against the ban. Our comrades in the Worker-communist Party of Iraq organised a counter-protest in favour. The two sides could have sat down together, ‘constructing’ away, until next year without reaching agreement. The only possible “compromise” would be for neither to do anything. Unless, of course, the consensus arrived at was that anybody could do whatever they wanted. An organisation that cannot act for as long as a minority, no matter how tiny, exercises a veto is pretty useless when it comes to making an impact in the real world.

In addition the minority comes to be regarded as a problem, rather than simply comrades with a different position - that may subsequently turn out to have been correct. However, under pressure from the majority, the opposition may simply give up, without even being able to have their position acknowledged. This is of course exactly what happened in our discussion on the ‘company’ issue: the SWP-Socialist Action-trade union bureaucracy axis blackmailed and wore down the opposition.

ESF slogans

Another item that fell off the agenda is the question of the main slogan we would use to advertise the ESF. Comrade Kane previously proposed: ‘For social justice - another world is possible’. The SWP will push for their old favourite ‘Against war, against racism, against privatisations - another world is possible’. While the GLA-Socialist Action proposal stinks of half-hearted liberal reformism, the SWP’s suggestion is too negative. Personally, I think a positive slogan like ‘For a people’s Europe from below’ might be more appealing.

These and other questions that fell off the agenda will be discussed at the next organising meeting, which has been called for April 13.

ESF important dates