04.08.2004

Ken pays the piper and now calls the tune

Should we hand over the European Social Forum opening ceremony to Livingstone? Tina Becker thinks not

The cat is out of the bag. For months, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone has been firmly in control of preparations for the European Social Forum, to be held in London in October. Via his lackeys in Socialist Action he has made sure that only trusted individuals are put in charge of key organisational tasks. Whenever somebody outside the ‘inner circle’ of SA (and to a lesser extent the Socialist Workers Party) puts themselves forward, they are firmly pushed aside. Be it the group that will oversee finances, the ‘office working group’ or any other decision-making body - all are kept free of members of the democratic opposition (which consists pretty much of all groups and individuals not involved with either SA or SWP or those they consider safe).For example, it looks as if Livingstone has quietly taken control of our ESF website. Danny Cooley from Babels (the volunteer group that is organising translation and interpretation for the ESF) has reported that he has not been able to upload translations of important documents. It looks as if other aspects in relation to the interpretation at the ESF are now also being run by Livingstone’s Greater London Authority: an international group of comrades is proposing a revolutionary new interpretation method (Nomad), which sidesteps many of the expensive companies providing translation equipment. However, rather than taking a political decision at an accountable ESF body as to whether we want this system to be used, the comrades were told in clear terms by the GLA that they would have to negotiate with them - and only with them. Livingstone will decide if he wants to pay for this system or not.

London’s mayor, of course, not only wants to be solidly in control of the organisation of the event. In exchange for the GLA’s £400,000-plus donation, he also wants to be seen and heard from as many ESF platforms as possible. After all, he needs to restore his recently tarnished image as a leftwinger. At the last meeting of the ESF coordinating meeting on July 29, Socialist Action’s Milena Buyum elaborated: “We should continue what happened last year in Paris, where the ESF opening ceremony was organised by the mayor of Paris. We should have an opening event in London, organised by the GLA, with Ken Livingstone speaking.”

Aahh! A mixture of cynical smirks and nervous giggles met this announcement, as many comrades had expected as much. For weeks, a number of ESF activists had insisted that the coordinating committee should start a discussion on how the opening and closing events should be organised. Again and again, the item was put at the bottom of the agenda - and naturally fell off it.

Interestingly though, Milena was not backed up by comrades from the SWP. Chris Nineham and Rahul Patel contradicted her, with comrade Nineham suggesting that the “opening ceremony is clearly part of the ESF and therefore the ESF should organise it. We could discuss if Livingstone should speak at such an event, or he might even chair it. But it is up to us to organise it.”
Looks like our SWP comrades have had enough of being treated like pawns in the Livingstone personality cult show. This is a new development: all the way through the ESF process, most decisions have in reality been made well in advance of the meetings that are supposed to take them. SA and the SWP had pretty much been presenting a united front in meetings of the coordinating committee.

However, in the last few weeks this has changed quite significantly. It appears that the SWP has recently been frozen out by Livingstone and his minions. For example, a number of SWPers complained openly about not having been given information on the ESF budget. They have also started to publicly criticise the fact that our event has been dramatically scaled down - no longer are we aiming to attract 40,000 people: only 20,000. The GLA’s representatives simply announced, for example, that there will be only 20 rooms available with translation equipment and that only 7,000 headsets have been ordered - just enough, maybe, for 20,000 participants, but totally inadequate for an event similar in size to the last two ESFs, which saw over 50,000 visitors.

SWP comrades also did not seem particularly happy about putting Livingstone forward to speak in one of the 28 plenary sessions at the ESF as part of the British ‘national quota’. The key here surely is in what context Livingstone would speak: Should he be given the space to simply present himself as the self-proclaimed leader of the so-called “progressive alliance” that allegedly dominates London’s politics? Or should he be challenged in debate? How about, for example, having him speak from the same platform as Bob Crow of the RMT union? Watching Livingstone having to defend his outrageous call on RMT workers to cross picket lines during the London tube strike of June 30 would be instructive. On the other hand, giving Livingstone carte blanche to rejuvenate his ‘Red Ken’ image would be a bad mistake.

A similar attitude should be adopted in relation to other controversial potential speakers, such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has been publicly invited to the ESF by Livingstone.

UK speakers
The latest meeting of the ESF programme group discussed how we should fill our ‘national speakers quota’. In the 28 plenary sessions, there will be space for 15 speakers from Britain. So we had Kate Hudson (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a member of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain) propose the SWP’s Lindsey German. Alex Callinicos put forward his SWP comrade, Chris Nineham, while Jonathan Neale in turn suggested Callinicos. You almost got dizzy watching this merry-go-round of people proposing each other. The CPGB’s Jack Conrad was put forward, as were Ken Livingstone, George Monbiot, Jeremy Hardy and dozens of others. The final decision will be made at the next European assembly, which meets from September 3-5 in Brussels.

Unfortunately, the meeting displayed all the problems we experienced during the preparations for last year’s ESF: with the unfortunate national quota system still in place, the tendency is for groups to put forward their favoured representatives without reference to the particular meeting where they would speak. It looks as if we will select our British speakers first, then decide what they should talk about and when afterwards. A better approach would be to start with the topic to be addressed and then decide who would best stimulate the debate. Of course, it is important to strike a balance between the various countries represented, but not at the expense of achieving a productive discussion. As things stand, we might well end up with a platform being filled with people who more or less have the same viewpoint.

A small controversy broke out when the CPGB’s Anne Mc Shane raised the question of whether we should include speakers from Northern Ireland in our quota - especially as the whole of Ireland was granted only one speaker. A participant in the meeting backed her up, volunteering Gerry Adams.
Neither suggestion went down well. Jonathan Neale thought the first would lead to a “political minefield” and we should steer well clear of it. Jayne Fisher from Socialist Action (and officially ‘Friends of Ireland’, an organisation that campaigns for “the implementation of the Good Friday agreement”) was outraged that we should dare to “tell the Irish what to do”. What? By suggesting an extra speaker from Ireland? She was backed up by her comrade, Milena Buyum, and unfortunately most participants in the meeting who did not seem to want to open that particular can of worms.
This is particular unfortunate, as the question of Northern Ireland statelet and the struggle for a united Ireland are of tremendous importance to the working class movements in these islands. It would be very strange, to put it mildly, if the question of Northern Ireland were not raised at all at any of our key ESF meetings, considering the central role it has played in British politics over the last few decades. Presumably we are supposed to leave this one to the bourgeoisie to sort out - along with all the other democratic questions.

This economism, which leads the left to pooh-pooh all questions that deal with the way we are ruled - be it the monarchy, Northern Ireland or the European constitution - also lies behind another controversy that arose over an official ESF poster produced by the SWP. Many European comrades were understandably outraged when tens of thousands of copies were printed before they had had a chance to see the design - especially as it leaves out one of the six ESF themes, ‘Democracy and citizenship’. French and Italian comrades in particular have put a lot of work into this theme, with a view to launching a European-wide campaign against the EU constitution at the London ESF in October.

As can be imagined, they were less than happy with the explanation that “there was simply not enough room on the poster to include all themes”, as its designer, SWP member Noel Douglas, put it. Absolute rubbish. It was of course a political decision that reflects the SWP’s refusal to take political questions seriously.

Healthy interest
As most decisions are actually made outside official ESF structures, the latest meeting of the organising committee on July 31 was a rather strange affair. This committee was originally set up to be the ‘highest decision-making body’ in Britain, but has been totally sidelined. This was reflected in the low turnout - only 30 people came to spend four hours in a sweltering TUC council chamber. While I suppose you could say it released a few tensions (in the form of heated exchanges amongst comrades), it hardly made any decisions at all.

Rather than addressing the problem of why so few people show up (representing so few organisations), the SWP’s Rahul Patel thought this proved that we should either have fewer meetings or not meet over the weekend. What it does prove is the necessity to make more organisations feel that the ESF is actually their property. Unfortunately, to many groups - in both Britain and Europe - it has become quite obvious that Ken Livingstone is firmly in control of the event. Why would they want to spend their Saturday afternoon rubber-stamping a Livingstone jamboree? The coordinating committee, meeting every Thursday morning, is suffering from a similar problem: rather than getting bigger and bigger and pulling in more organisations every week, the opposite has happened. Not only has attendance stagnated - it has actually gone down, with not much more than 20 people showing up.

However, while many groups have pulled out of the organisation process, there has been a very healthy interest in the ESF weekend itself, with more than 800 seminars and workshops having been proposed (the deadline has now gone). Most of these will have to be merged by the international programme working group, especially as our expensive website - despite numerous requests - has no facility for the self-merging of meetings.

CPGB comrades have proposed a number of seminars around the question of the European constitution and will be merging with organisations from Italy and France. While Livingstone has been able - with the help of SA-SWP - to totally dominate the preparations for the ESF, there is still a good chance that the actual event itself could be a very lively and interesting affair. The setting up of international networks and closer cooperation between our forces must now be the focal point for all organisations interested in developing structures that could actually challenge the Europe of the bosses and bureaucrats.

Volunteers needed
Hundreds of volunteers will be needed at the ESF and also in the month immediately prior to the event itself. Can you help?

If you are able to volunteer for three days (October 15-17), you will receive a free ticket, guaranteed free accommodation and food expenses - and you will still be able to participate in many of the meetings. If you are able to volunteer for one of these days you will be given food expenses only.
Please contact: ukesfvolunteer@gn. apc.org or download the volunteer application form from the ESF website.