30.06.2004

Scabbing and London's mayor

We need to wrest control of the European Social Forum out of Livingstone's hands, argues Tina Becker

Everybody involved in the preparations for this year’s European Social Forum should carefully and soberly ponder Ken Livingstone’s disgraceful statement attacking the June 30 underground workers’ strike. Before the whole of the assembled media the mayor of London not only described the employers’ offer as “extremely generous”. More to the point, he went on to say: “Were I a member of the RMT [Rail, Maritime and Transport union], for the first time in my life I would cross a picket line.” A spokeswoman for Livingstone said afterwards that this was certainly no slip of the tongue and that Livingstone did not intend to “retract his words” (The Guardian June 26).

If anybody had been in any doubt over Ken Livingstone’s political trajectory and allegiance, this statement certainly makes things clear. Even ‘moderate’ trade union leaders like Unison’s Dave Prentis have been taken aback by what amounts to an open call for strike-breaking: “It’s outrageous and shameful that someone in Livingstone’s position, with his history and background, should be telling people to scab on their trade union,” he said. Livingstone has certainly betrayed a basic socialist and working class principle. As RMT general secretary Bob Crow put it, “The 11th amendment clearly says: do not scab.”

Livingstone’s main adviser on transport issues is of course leading Socialist Action member Redmond O’Neill, who has recently been further promoted and now earns a whopping £111,000 per annum. It is through comrade O’Neill and his Socialist Action comrades that Livingstone is attempting to stitch up the preparations for the ESF. Presumably these so-called socialists are now actively involved on the side of the employers against London’s underground workers too. Of course, as Socialist Action operate in total secrecy and have not published anything for years, they are in no position to clarify their position in an authoritative way or even perhaps set the record straight. But then, any Livingstone-critical political comments would certainly undermine their elevated and well-rewarded positions in the Greater London Authority that employs so many of them.

‘Red Ken’s’ attempt to undermine the RMT strike shows the inherent limits of left Labourism and the attempt to run London both for Londoners and capitalism. True, many Londoners voted for him because he is thought of as leftwing or progressive on a whole range of issues: not least opposition to the Iraq war. However, all too often Livingstone indulges in politically correct posturing in order to cover for the fact that he has no working class or socialist programme - not even the semblance of one. So he makes great play of his commitment to multiculturalism, women, anti-fascism, the environment, etc, by promoting middle class do-gooders.

Meanwhile he gets on with the real business at hand: making London work for big business and readying himself for his next move in the Labour Party. Livingstone has made no secret of his high ambitions - he dreams of one day inhabiting No10 Downing Street.

His brazen attack on the RMT is a calculated move to cement his image as a responsible politician. The message is clear: if Ken can be trusted to run London, he can be trusted as a minister (and maybe in time as prime minister). 

Under these circumstances the ESF should refuse all Greater London Authority money. Remember - thanks to Tony Blair, London has a Bonapartist mayor who acts largely independently and has extremely wide powers over spending his budget. As in France and Italy, we must resist the temptation to sell the ESF’s soul in return for easy money. The risk otherwise is incorporation into the state. And, of course, the London government is effectively Livingstone’s state. At the end of the day it just ain’t worth it. Accepting GLA money not only allows Livingstone to set the agenda - his SA intermediaries have already threatened to withhold funding unless they get their way - but totally discredits the whole social forum movement.

With rotten politics there inevitably comes rotten organisational methods. And not surprisingly it has been Socialist Action which has been primarily instrumental in blocking all attempts to make the London ESF fully democratic and fully transparent: official minutes of meetings are therefore kept to a bare minimum and are sent out late (if at all); the organising committee - the highest ESF decision-making body in Britain - has been marginalised and meets only for a few hours every six weeks or so; reporting meetings has been met with threats of exclusions; and the real decisions are being made through underhand deals and behind the backs of activists.

In all of this, Livingstone and SA have unfortunately been uncritically supported by comrades from the Socialist Workers Party, who seem to be mainly interested in exploiting the ESF for their own narrow purposes - chiefly the recruitment of new members - and presenting themselves as one of the ‘big political players’ in Europe. Needless to say, so far they have failed rather miserably.

If the ESF is to be of any use at all to the progressive and working class movement across Europe, we cannot allow it to be turned into a Livingstone-SWP rally. All democratic forces must work together to make it truly open, inviting and free from all taint of corruption, careerism and manipulation. A festival where the setting up of international networks is actively facilitated, joint European-wide campaigns are established, real debates are encouraged and the needs and wishes of the participating groups and networks are put first - not those of London’s scabbing mayor.

Show me the money
Livingstone’s grip over the ESF comes in no small measure from his control over its finances and the GLA’s promise of £250,000. £40,000 has apparently already been spent on the ESF website (which is supposed to go live on July 7) and another five-figure sum is rumoured to have been paid out to insure the ESF directors against financial liability if the ESF were to make a loss. The rest of the £250,000 seems earmarked for the hire of Alexandra Palace.

Needless to say, none of this has been reported, let alone agreed, at any ESF meeting. The ESF directors (amongst them apparently Kate Hudson from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain) have been appointed without any consultation with or even notification to any official ESF body. We still only have rumours as to who exactly the directors are. And it is Livingstone who is deciding how much money is to be spent on which ESF post - not the organisations and groups involved in preparing for the event.

And now the unions are following suit. It has been announced that “Unison London will release their donation [of £50,000] against specific requirements rather than a one-off payment”, while the RMT’s donation of £1,000 will “assist with current expenditure requirements” (coordinating committee official minutes, June 16).

Apparently though, none of the above are interested in ‘releasing’ any money towards the wages of the six ESF workers that were supposed to start employment at the beginning of July. Interviews for their posts were set for June 30 and July 1, but they have now been postponed indefinitely, apparently because of a “funding problem”. This will most probably mean that the four unelected and unaccountable “seconded staff” from the SWP-SA will carry on staffing the office.
If there is any problem with funding, all forces involved in the ESF process need to know about it - now. We might possibly have to make alternative plans in consultation with our European comrades.
No more exclusions

Shoot the messenger! That is still how comrades from SA and the SWP react to reporting the ESF. CPGB comrades have once again been threatened with exclusion from the coordinating committee for daring to publish critical information.

This small committee meets every Thursday morning and has been attended regularly by delegates from the CPGB/Weekly Worker. We have twice been excluded in the past, when financial matters were being discussed. Then, we were accused of publishing “inaccuracies and lies”, though our repeated requests to specify what was supposed to be wrong have been ignored.

In fact, none of the information on major ESF questions published in the Weekly Worker has turned out to be “inaccurate” or a “lie” (though a friendly SWP comrade pointed out to me that I had wrongly reported that no trade union representatives attended the ESF assembly in Istanbul - when in fact two SWP members present had been delegated by their union branches). Aside from such minor issues, we are disliked and gagged by the London ESF government precisely because we have reported the truth and exposed the bureaucratic stitch-ups and financial problems hampering the process.

Exclusions were stopped when the international ESF assembly, meeting in London on March 6-7, decided that they were “against the spirit of the ESF”. Our ESF affiliation statement has been amended accordingly.

However, it looks like our comrades in the SWP and SA are attempting to overturn this agreement. At the June 24 meeting of the coordinating committee, we decided that the next meeting on July 1 would hear an “open and frank report on finance” - the first one ever to be presented to an official ESF body. Up till now, access to this information has been restricted to the inner circle only. But so vocal have demands for the truth to be told that the SWP’s Chris Nineham had to concede and pencil the item in for the next meeting.

Also, it was agreed that we should have an overdue and important debate on how the ESF finances should be organised: Should there be a finance and fundraising sub-committee? Or should everything be placed in the hands of a professional ‘finance manager’, recruited from an outside agency? Needless to say, the latter option is favoured by the SWP and SA government, while the former is part of a proposal presented by the opposition (which entails almost everybody who is not in the SWP-SA orbit).

However, comrade Nineham also announced that “there is no way that we will talk openly about finances or the establishment of a finance group if Tina is in the room”. He was backed up by Milena Buyum (National Assembly Against Racism/Socialist Action).

He linked this demand for our exclusion with his “outrage” over the Weekly Worker having published a letter and subsequent report from the Italian ESF mobilisation committee, in which the Italian comrades were highly critical about the process in Britain (Weekly Worker June 17).

“Both the letter and the report are based on total untruths,” comrade Nineham claimed at the meeting. “None of these alleged problems of exclusions or lack of inclusivity are happening. Some people in Britain have hooked up with the Italians to discredit the process and spread false rumours. These are the politics of threat, which we will not accept. This is deliberately racking up tensions.”
The implication was that it was the reports in the Weekly Worker (and possibly Indymedia) that sparked the highly critical response from our Italian comrades - and not their own negative experience of the process itself. While we are obviously very flattered by the implication in comrade Nineham’s remarks that the Weekly Worker dictates how Europe’s most influential working class organisations like Rifondazione Comunista, etc, think and act, it might be just a little way off the mark.

In fact, comrade Nineham’s threat underlines the reality of the problems mentioned in the letter and report presented by our Italian comrades.

Appeal
This urgent appeal, sent out by CPGB comrades, has already been signed by dozens of ESF activists from across Europe. To add your signature, please email:
tina@jptw.freeserve.co.uk

“I/we confirm my/our commitment to:
openness and transparency in all aspects of the ESF process;
no exclusions from any ESF committee.”