21.04.2004

Bad methods slammed

Over 250 people were in Istanbul for the latest assembly to prepare for the European Social Forum 2004, which will take place from October 14-17 in London. Tina Becker reports from a meeting which saw the Socialist Workers Party and their allies take a beating

Here is another reason for closer European integration: the Europeans. They have once again intervened to try to stop the undemocratic and bureaucratic behaviour of the Socialist Workers Party-Socialist Action axis in the preparations for the ESF.

It has become something of a routine: for two months, the SWP-SA bullies, bribes and forces through various stupid positions in the British ESF coordinating and organising committees (‘If you don’t accept this, there won’t be an ESF’).

Having no coordinated organisation of its own, the democratic opposition (which pretty much consists of everybody who is not a member of either the SWP or SA) bravely tries to prevent the most obvious abuse and fights for some basic principles - but is mostly defeated. Then, every second month, our comrades from across Europe come to the ESF assembly and basically overturn everything the SWP-SA has railroaded through in Britain.

In previous meetings, for example, they ended the right of the SWP/SA to automatically exclude people - I had been thrown out of meetings of the coordinating committee whenever it discussed finance. This time around, they again reversed some of the most obvious expressions of the control-freakery that is holding back the ESF. As a representative from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (linked to the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany) put it, “This is not an English ESF with some minor European participation”. He was one of many to give voice to such criticism. Stefane Bieker from Greece demanded that “our English friends really need to start to listen to us”. And some others even whispered that “we made such a stupid mistake giving the ESF to London. We really thought the SWP would behave better.”

The biggest British revolutionary sect has certainly not succeeded in presenting itself as a major force on the European left. The inability of the British left to influence anything apart from themselves is all too obvious. There were no trade union representatives from Britain in Istanbul and the few delegates from British NGOs were extremely critical of the SWP-SA. The serious lack of finance was also clear - though our European comrades have been told that on June 11 (the day after the European elections) money would start to pour in. Apparently, some trade unions are holding back their full support until then. Needless to say, this has never been mentioned in any meeting in Britain.

Hosted by the Istanbul Social Forum, which is run almost exclusively by the SWP’s Turkish comrades, the meeting overturned almost every single decision forced through in Britain.

Plenary sessions

Plenaries are the only centrally organised meetings and are therefore viewed as the most important part of the programme. The SWP-SA had previously insisted on having only eight (which was pushed up to 13 when a sizeable number from Britain criticised this artificial and unnecessary limit) and supplied a ready-made list of proposed titles. At the Paris ESF in 2003 there were over 50 plenary sessions.

But our European comrades were pretty outraged, to put it mildly. All of Friday afternoon was dedicated to the programme and representatives from almost every country used the opportunity to trash the proposal. “The lack of money really is not the main problem with the British proposal,” Piero Bernocchi from the Italian trade union Cobas said. “It is the bad method. Yes, we should have fewer plenaries. But what is the point of limiting us now to a certain number, without having properly discussed what we want to debate in those sessions?”

Pierre Barth from the French League of the Rights of Man criticised the fact that “we have not seen this proposal in advance. Why didn’t our British friends email this to us?” It was interesting - and surprising - that the SWP seems to have made no attempt to run the suggestions past the other Europeans. A crass approach, which again highlights the SWP’s arrogance.

An Italian trade union representative, Alessandra Mecozzi, suggested simply throwing out the whole proposal and replacing it with another structure, almost identical to last year’s: three main themes, under which the plenary sessions, seminars and workshops should all be grouped. Her suggestions - the ‘system of war’, ‘citizenship and democratic rights’ and ‘deregulation and privatisation’ - were actually accepted in the end, with the addition of themes on racism and the environment. Following her proposal, no limit on the number of plenaries has been set, though the overwhelming majority was in favour of a lot fewer meetings with more real debate.

However, the self-appointed chairs fought tooth and nail for the original proposal. Of the six comrades presiding over the session, four of them were members of the SWP’s International Socialist Tendency (three from the IST’s Turkish section plus Jonathan Neale) and two were members of Socialist Action (Anne Kane and Sarah Colborne). The consensus against the proposal was so overwhelming that we could have finished the meeting after 30 minutes. However, not wanting to admit defeat, our chairs made no attempt to cut the debate short. In fact, they tried to turn it all around. Having listened to four hours of discussion, with one speaker after another criticising the proposal, comrade Kane thought it appropriate to declare it all null and void. She attempted to conclude proceedings by - falsely - declaring that “in Britain we all agree that we need to fix the number of plenaries and we really must insist on a maximum of 13”. Goodnight and thanks a lot for your valuable contributions.

European comrades could hardly believe their ears and there was a minor tumult, with people complaining and shouting. In the end, the comrades gave in to the demand for a smaller, international working group which would meet in the evening to sort out the mess.

Just before going into this meeting, the SWP-SA contingent of about 15 were seen in a group hug. Their main man, Redmond O’Neill (Ken Livingstone’s appointed adviser on transport and leading Socialist Action member), must have told them to drop it, as the figure of 13 has not been heard since. In fact, they have even dropped the “absolute necessity” to fix any particular number.

They also backtracked on another, similarly bad idea. They had proposed that speakers for the plenary sessions should not be chosen by an international programme working group, as happened in previous years. Instead, they suggested that a group of “at least three organisations from at least three countries” would work on each plenary, choosing the speakers. It seems that this proposal originated from Bernard Cassen, the founder of Attac France. I am told that he is in regular contact with comrade O’Neill and that many ideas that Redmond puts forward are in truth Cassen’s. While Cassen is still a leading left personality in France, he has in previous years become even more controversial - in and out of Attac. He is known as a vain and arrogant anti-democrat with expensive tastes for life’s little luxuries.

Attac France’s main representative in Istanbul, Pierre Khalfa (who is also a member of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire), certainly made no attempt to even bring up Cassen’s proposal to disband the programme working group - quite the opposite. While there is a risk that this group could try to act like a small, unaccountable leadership, its meetings are always open and observers can at least find out what is happening.

Comrades from SWP-SA then attempted to limit the damage. Jonathan Neale insisted that there could not be more than “one or two representatives from each country” attending those meetings: “If we allow everybody to turn up who wants to, then we do not have a democratic meeting any more,” he announced. Obviously, it does not take a genius to work out which two people from Britain he had in mind. Comrade Neale himself has been one of our “representatives” in previous years.

A number of British and European comrades strongly criticised him, and a consensus was reached that there will be no limit on British representation (though the figure of four or five was mentioned a few times). As the last person to be allowed to speak on this item, Redmond O’Neill used the opportunity to go with the flow and, all of a sudden, the consensus.

But in another exercise in damage limitation, he tried to convince the audience that the reason for this was that “many trade unions and NGOs support the process, but they do not come to our meetings, which are dominated by a handful of people”, he said to giggles and heckles. Dominating meetings is of course exactly what he and his SWP cronies do. But no, he was not referring to his own controlling position or the undue influence of the SWP: “These people do not represent anything, but they shout at trade union leaders, who feel excluded,” he said. “We need to keep places open for the unions to attend programme group meetings.” But his audience did not seem convinced. I really doubt if there is anybody left at our ESF assemblies who does not know about the undemocratic shenanigans of the SWP-SA bloc.

Seminars

These meetings are self-organised by the groups putting them on, but are equipped with simultaneous translation (workshops, on the other hand, are self-organised meetings without translation). It is likely that - as in previous years - the proposals for seminars will far outstrip the available space and an unavoidable merging process will have to take place. For this reason, the SWP-SA wanted to consider only proposals that had already been submitted, and by a minimum of three groups from at least two countries.

Many people in Britain, including myself, argued against this proposal, which favours the big, already established international networks. Instead, we should encourage organisations to voluntarily come together - and possibly form Europe-wide networks in the process. Surely, this is the main function of the ESF in any case. We must get our own act together if we are serious about building an alternative to the bosses’ European Union.

Again, the rest of the European left was with us on the subject. Speaker after speaker argued against the setting up of these criteria and, at least for the time being, every organisation can propose a seminar - whether they are part of an international network or not. The only condition will be that no group can propose more than five seminars.

Europe or the war?

Sunday morning saw a discussion on the curiously termed ‘The political situation and its context’. This is a standing item in our assemblies, because the World Social Forum and the ESF suffer from the self-imposed inability to organise any activities. This ban is supposed to ‘hold the different movements together’ - rightwing trade unions or NGOs might walk away from the forums if they organised any controversial demonstrations or campaigns.

Rather than disengaging ourselves altogether from such unreliable rightwing ‘allies’, our comrades in Italy invented the ‘assembly of social movements’ (ASM) just before the first ESF in Florence in 2002 in order to get around the ban. Here at last, we can discuss joint activities across Europe and issue ‘calls of the social movements’ to mobilise for European-wide protests. The historic anti-war demonstrations on February 15 2003 and March 20 2004 were decided in by the ASM. (Redmond O’Neill, incidentally, revealed that the TUC had for a long time refused to give any support to the ESF in Britain, because last year’s ‘call’ criticised the EU. But he is trying to convince its members that the ASM has nothing to do with the ESF.)

Pierre Khalfa opened the item with a short contribution, in which he proposed that the question of the European constitution and the EU enlargement should guide our joint activities for the coming year. He also criticised the feebleness of our action on the question so far: “We have to accept that we are going far too slowly,” he said, referring to the international protests against privatisations, which took place on April 2-3 across Europe. Britain was not the only European country which really did nothing for the occasion. Comrade Khalfa urged us to be “more efficient” in order to “make more of a difference” - however, he was a little short on hard proposals, tactical or strategic.

Most comrades used the three-hour-long discussion that followed to talk about the things close to their heart. While many contributions were either eccentric or instantly forgettable, a clear division emerged. The French want to make the EU the sole focus of our common activities across the continent. The SWP-SA only want to mobilise against the war. And the Italians want a bit of both. Obviously, the latter position is the most sensible and was echoed by many speakers.

A number of contributions from Britain gave evidence of the utter ignorance and contempt with which the left treats the EU and its constitution. Because of its economism, questions of democracy and how we are ruled are seen as a diversion from the ‘real issues’: trade unions, the NHS, public services, etc, important as these are. Debates on the state, how our rulers rule or the monarchy are “boring” and “not important”. Chris Nineham (SWP) argued that the “EU constitution simply cannot be the focus of our assembly. The central thing needs to be the fact that Britain is the backdrop to this disgusting war.”

The previous night, a smaller meeting of an international working group took place. This group is attempting to formulate the left’s opposition to the EU constitution and put forward our own constructive alternative in the shape of a ‘social charter of human rights’ (more about this in next week’s Weekly Worker). During this meeting, comrade Nineham argued that “because the British establishment is split 50-50, the left is parochial on the issue. Our European comrades need to understand that the constitution is simply a non-issue in Britain.” In the same meeting, comrade O’Neill argued that it is a very difficult issue, as the TUC is in favour of the EU and its constitution, while many individual trade unions and the Labour left are against it.

The point of both contributions was of course to argue against making the EU or the constitution a focal point of the ASM. While in Istanbul comrades Nineham and O’Neill were arguing passionately about the unimportance of the issue, in London Tony Blair was making his dramatic U-turn on a referendum. The next 18 months will show what a “non-issue” the question of the EU is. Presumably even the SWP will now have to come to a position more sophisticated than a simple ‘no’.

In general it was difficult to follow the ASM discussion, not just because of the various contributions which had little or nothing to do with the subject. The chairing was particularly badly handled by Milena Buyum from the National Assembly against Racism, who is also a member of Socialist Action. She interrupted those she did not like after two minutes (like myself), letting others speak for over five (like Chris Nineham and Redmond O’Neill). She made no attempt to steer the meeting towards a consensus position, which could easily have been reached. She just let everybody speak on whatever they wanted.

In fact she actively prevented the meeting from arriving at any kind of agreement: when comrade Khalfa tried to sum up the discussion and present a consensual proposal, she would not let him speak. “We are already 15 minutes over our time limit and the translators are getting tired.” Although the translators offered to carry on for a few minutes and people from across Europe were calling for comrade Khalfa to be allowed to speak, comrade Buyum thought it wise to close the session and with it the whole assembly. Comrades will have to wait another two months before we can decide the campaigning priorities of the European left for the coming year.