01.09.2004

ESF chooses Ken's police apologist

The contradictions surrounding this year's European Social Forum in London are taking their toll, reports Tina Becker

festival of resistance. A space where the movements can come together to discuss and debate and plan common actions. A process of setting up alternative structures to those of capital. No doubt, different people have different takes on the European Social Forum, which will be held in London from October 14-17. Most are surely agreed on one thing, though: they believe that control of the event should come from below.

How it is possible then that this year’s event is firmly under the thumb of one man, the mayor of London?

Yes, Ken Livingstone is broadly ‘of the left’. When Tony Blair cheated him out of the chance of becoming Labour’s official candidate for the post of mayor in 1999, socialists and communists rightly supported him. Not simply because of elementary democratic principles; there was the possibility that his unofficial candidacy and campaign might split the Labour Party in London.

Livingstone is, of course, a complex, intriguing and many-sided political personality. He is a clever committee-room manoeuvrer and an arch populist; both a red-baiter and an admirer of Gerry Healy, a purveyor of pseudo-Marxist gobbledegook, who ruled, exploited and ravished his way through Workers Revolutionary Party like a minor lord.

Though he has been in many and varied Labourite factions - Socialist Organiser, Campaign Group, Labour Herald - he is today not closely associated with any of the organised groups in the Labour Party. He functions more as a Bonaparte figure.

As London’s mayor, he pursues a twin-track strategy, which - so he envisages - will one day catapult him into the office of prime minister. On the one hand, he wants to increase police numbers, eagerly promotes the City and big business, and disgracefully called for London underground workers to cross RMT picket lines. And on the other, he champions politically correct causes like multiculturalism, feminism, anti-fascism, the environment, etc, which, because he shuns any kind of socialist or working class programme, in his hands have no democratic content. Organisations like the National Assembly against Racism and the Respect festival, staffed by his Socialist Action cadre, do not in any way challenge the system.

Police intimidation
A recent episode shows how contradictory Livingstone’s involvement in the ESF is. A (publicly advertised) meeting to plan the so-called autonomous space at the ESF was put under heavy police surveillance. Those attending the meeting, which took place in a squatted social centre in north London, were greeted by a dozen policemen who took their pictures and questioned them individually. “They were not just there because we were meeting in a squatted space,” reports Dave Jones from Indymedia. “They had never turned up there before and specifically came in time for the meeting, asking us what we would be discussing there.”

Now guess who is in charge of policing in London? Correct. While we can (hopefully) assume that Ken Livingstone did not himself order the surveillance of the meeting, he has political responsibility for the actions of the police. The recent meeting of the ESF coordinating committee therefore quite rightly took note of the police presence and called on Livingstone to condemn this tactic of intimidation. Even Livingstone’s hit squad in the shape of Socialist Action went along with this and Dominic Hurley (who represents the GLA at most ESF meetings) was commissioned to bring up the matter with the mayor and Lee Jasper, Livingstone’s adviser on policing. (Controversially, Lee Jasper has since been selected as an ESF plenary speaker at a heated meeting of the programme group - see below.)

Who makes decisions?
Livingstone’s hold over the event has only one source: money. Again and again, attempts to democratise the process have come to a halt because of this.

Since no other major funder could be found, the donation of his Greater London Authority (which is actually slightly more than the £400,000 reported by the Tories and the Evening Standard) has - in Livingstone’s own mind - bought him the right of absolute control. His minions in Socialist Action - usually with the help of the Socialist Workers Party - make sure that no decision is made without Ken’s consent.

There is now an automatic ban in operation, prohibiting the reporting of any financial details. There are few details to report anyway. Apart from a very rough budgetary outline that was presented by Socialist Action’s Redmond O’Neill (who is Livingstone’s director for transport) over four weeks ago, there has been no further news.

Not only that: we have also not been allowed to question or even discuss any of the individual budgetary items. Whenever somebody requests more information on particular overheads, we are given to understand by our Socialist Action friends that none of the items are up for discussion, as “the budget is not finalised yet. It is mythical to discuss overheads”, according to SA’s Louise Hutchins. All the while of course, money from this “mythical” budget is being spent - but without any democratic control. Doubtless, the comrades will make sure that the budget will not be finalised until after the event …

Just before the Weekly Worker’s summer break, one particular controversy shed light on the real power structures in the ESF office. After a lengthy discussion, the ESF coordinating committee decided that we should organise an ESF float at this year’s Notting Hill carnival - an ideal promotional opportunity before the hundreds of thousands attending the carnival. Only the three Socialist Action members present (and one SWP member, who voted against her own comrades) opposed the action, but the overwhelming majority thought that this should not stop us from taking the decision.

However, when it came to putting down a deposit for the float, the power structures were laid bare. Deborah Dicky, who was declared ESF office manager by the GLA a few weeks ago and who has never attended a single ESF meeting, decided that this was an unnecessary expense - and refused to sign the cheque. Every little expenditure, every update of our website, every leaflet - in short, everything - has to be cleared by Deborah. Money is used to control the event politically.

The role of this mysterious woman has since been criticised at a number of ESF meetings. “This is about the ownership of the ESF,” complained Asad Rehman (who is political adviser to George Galloway and used to be a member of the SWP’s Globalise Resistance). “The ESF in previous years was given public money, but there were never problems like this.” Oscar Reyes from Red Pepper added: “An employee of the GLA cannot simply overturn a decision of the coordinating committee.”

However, both Socialist Action and their on-off allies in the SWP are vigorously defending the current structures, citing the GLA’s financial contribution. The GLA’s donation will of course account for only a part of the overall budget. Another £200,000 or so is supposed to come from the trade unions (though, again, we have not been given any details of this) and another £500,000 is the expected revenue from registrations, stalls and the charge for putting on meetings.

So in fact, ESF participants will be shelling out the biggest financial contribution. And even if Livingstone was to double the GLA’s money, he should still not be allowed to run the whole thing. A donation should be just that - a donation. It should not buy control.

SWP votes against Galloway
For the privilege of being allowed to stay in the inner ESF circle, the SWP has had to make some rather unpleasant compromises with Socialist Action. The latest meeting of the programme group, which selected the 15 ESF plenary speakers from Britain, might well come to haunt them. Blocking with their SA allies on almost every vote (the meeting did not even attempt to employ the normally [ab]used consensus method), the SWP voted for a slate dominated by rightwing trade union bureaucrats and GLA speakers.

Most interestingly, they even voted down - on several occasions - George Galloway. It was perhaps understandable that they voted in favour of their own Lindsey German, when both were put forward to speak at an anti-war meeting. However, they also chose Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and even SA’s John Ross over Galloway. Only when he was put forward for the fourth time by Asad Rehman did the SWP vote for him - but then again did not give him their support when the final list of speakers had to be shortened from 29 to 15.
Are we perhaps seeing the first public manifestation of the growing strains that have long troubled Respect? Galloway, historically no big fan of the SWP, is apparently feeling more and more uneasy about Respect’s failure to recruit organisations that could ‘neutralise’ the SWP and make Respect a real coalition.

The SWP leadership, on the other hand, is reportedly unhappy that - while they have to supply the foot soldiers to do the leafleting and canvassing for Respect - Galloway is calling the shots. His infamous interview in the Independent on Sunday, where he spoke out against abortion, did not go down well with many SWP comrades. The fact that the SWP has lost a significant number of members since the beginning of their Respect adventure will have added to its own internal tensions.

When it comes to the ESF, Livingstone’s wishes are the SWP’s commands. So the comrades used their considerable voting strength (roughly 30 of the 70 of those present) to put in place Unison’s Labourite general secretary, Dave Prentis - and against the far more leftwing Mark Serwotka from the civil servants union, PCSU.

We saw them cast their vote for virtual unknowns like Francis O’Grady from the TUC - against Jeremy Dear of the journalists’ union, NUJ. They voted for Gloria Mills (Unison) - and against the more radical Paul Mackney, head of teachers’ union Natfhe. Bob Crow from the RMT is the only left trade unionist who got through.
The SWP went so far as to vote for John Ross, who is a leading member of Socialist Action and draws an annual salary of £111,000 to advise Ken Livingstone on economics. That is his only claim to fame and most ESF activists will never have heard of the bloke. Despite the near-hysterical pressure SA members tried to put on the meeting to elect him, he did not make it onto the final list of 15.

But Lee Jasper did. Livingstone’s adviser on race relations and policing is a staunch promoter of the current policy of multiculturalism and in 2001 even suggested to black Londoners that they set up schools exclusively for the Afro-Caribbean population.

He was heavily involved in excusing the police operation when hundreds of May Day demonstrators were held hostage for over eight hours in London’s Oxford Circus in 2000. In a letter to The Guardian on the day of the protest, he wrote: “The mayor’s message is simple and straightforward: do not attend this demonstration. The Metropolitan Police has huge experience of handling sensitive demonstrations … we are depending on that experience to inform their professionalism today.” He also defends the police’s controversial ‘stop and search’ policy, though he wants it to become “fairer” and “more regulated”. Now this friend of the Met will be one of the ESF’s 15 speakers from Britain.

STOP PRESS
The latest meeting of the coordinating committee on September 2 decided to “not to endorse” the list of 15 speakers for plenary sessions from Britain. This follows a letter of complaint signed by various NGOs (including Oxfam and Greenpeace), which expressed concern that only two of the 15 were from an NGO background. They also complained about the method by which speakers were chosen and criticised more generally the “lack of transparency and openness in the UK process”.

The withdrawal of all speakers, as suggested by the SWP and GLA/Socialist Action, is clearly an attempt at damage limitation just two days before the international ESF assembly in Brussels. But it is questionable whether another, similar confrontation can be avoided. As long as the event remains under the total control of London mayor Ken Livingstone, participants will always be fighting for more space for themselves.