22.09.2004

Drawing together the threads

The 'Call of the Assembly of Social Movements' will be discussed and finalised during the October 15-17 European Social Forum in London. The Assembly of Social Movements has, reports Tina Becker, increasingly taken on a life of its own

The Assembly of Social Movements was set up by our Italian comrades just before the first ESF in Florence 2002, in order to circumvent the ban on the ESF taking political decisions or organising united action. The coordinators of the World Social Forum imposed this measure on all regional forums - in order not to lose the support of the various NGOs, trade unions and other forces that are dependent on maintaining good relations with their governments.

This attempt to keep real politics in the hands of the established players - like the Workers Party in Brazil, which controls the various WSF bodies - is not only pathetic. Just like the WSF ban on political parties, it is also highly unrealistic. How can we sit on our hands while the ruling class goes about building a confederal Europe? How could we not take united action against their horrific war on Iraq? How can we do nothing while they enforce draconian attacks on welfare, unemployment benefits and pensions across Europe?

This year, attempts are underway to organise the ASM on more democratic and inclusive lines than in the past. Previously, unless you were part of the ESF ‘inner circle’, you could not be involved in organising the ASM and would not even be aware of the negotiations going on behind the scenes. For example, all 40 speakers for last year’s three-hour-long ASM were chosen the night before. In an unadvertised meeting half an hour away from the ESF venue, the unelected leadership of the ESF carved up the whole thing. At this late stage, the ‘call of the social movements’ was pretty much unchallengeable. Not that it was without its good parts. The speakers, too, were quite interesting, reflecting a wide range of campaigns and activities across Europe.

However, if we want to begin to challenge the EU of the bosses and bankers effectively, we need to be democratic, accountable and transparent. Otherwise, many activists across Europe will feel excluded. Leaders charged with drawing up such statements and deciding the composition of ASM platforms must be democratically elected. An unelected leadership that presents us - take it or leave it - with the line cannot hope to retain credibility.

To make this year’s event more democratic and inclusive, Pierre Khalfa (a leading French delegate and a member of Attac France and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) proposed at the ESF preparatory assembly held in Brussels at the beginning of September that we should have “daily activists assemblies” during our three-day event. At these assemblies, organisations linked by similar concerns could get together to discuss coordinating their actions for the next 12 months - and draw up proposals for the ASM on the Sunday morning.

This is an excellent idea. It would not just enable all ESF activists to participate properly and democratically in the ASM; it would also provide a long overdue opportunity to get some European-wide networks and campaigns off the ground. As many countries will be voting in referenda on the new constitution of the European Union, an international campaign would be of tremendous help to all forces that want to see a Europe of the peoples, not a Europe of the bankers and bosses.

The call of the social movements is positive in this respect: it recognises the need for a “a movement” against the EU constitution “that overrides our differences”, “groups all the forces of the peoples of Europe” together and calls for a common day of action and demonstration in Brussels in March 2005, coinciding with a meeting of the EU council of ministers.

There are, of course, many other possible campaigns and networks we should be launching - increased coordination amongst rank and file trade unionists; action against the occupation of Iraq; a united fightback against the European-wide attacks on pensions and the welfare state generally.
Comrade Khalfa’s proposal was backed up by many speakers from all over Europe. As usual though, the chairs of that session did not really attempt to come to a firm decision on this or any other issue, although the contributions from different comrades from across Europe certainly implied that there was overwhelming support for it. Also, the normal procedure seems to be that no minutes are taken to record what decisions are actually arrived at.

Incidentally, something similar happened in connection with the ban on political parties in June 2002: an ESF assembly agreed that national mobilisations could decide for themselves if they wanted to allow the open participation of political parties or not. But my own records of this meeting - and the memory of other individual participants - is the only proof that such a decision was taken. So Socialist Action’s Redmond O’Neill, who represents the mayor of London in the ESF, has been able to enforce a ban on political parties, claiming not to know anything of the 2001 agreement. As with just about every other bureaucratic decision, he has been supported by his foot soldiers in the Socialist Workers Party - although they previously fought against the ban alongside comrades of the CPGB. But that was of course before Socialist Action got the SWP to accept a whole raft of demands in exchange for Livingstone’s support for the ESF.

Since Brussels CPGB comrades have repeatedly brought up the issue of daily activists’ meetings. While quite a few members of the ‘democratic opposition’ (basically everybody who is not a member of either Socialist Action or the SWP) were in favour of such assemblies, the two ‘ruling parties’ would have none of it. The SWP’s Chris Nineham, for example, said that there will be an ASM meeting on the Wednesday before the ESF (October 13) and therefore we should not decide on anything now. This is quite clearly inadequate. At the very least we need to reserve a room now - to make sure the meetings actually take place.

Unfortunately, most of our European comrades have adopted an approach of ‘diplomatic silence’ and several have even told me that they “don’t want to get involved”. They have somewhat given up on any idea of making this year’s ESF the true property of the whole of the European left. With only four weeks to go, presumably they feel nothing much can be done for the better.

Having said that, other comrades have been very outspoken indeed. Eg, in March, the Greek Social Forum issued a ‘Letter to Europe’ (Weekly Worker March 4 2004). Even more damming was a report by the Italian mobilising committee. In particular it criticised “the more powerful groups in the British delegation” - namely the SWP and Socialist Action and their “incapacity or unwillingness to discuss things” (Weekly Worker June 17).

We can only hope that the comrades from France and Italy in particular have enough energy left to insist on those ‘daily activists assemblies’ - they could quite easily be the best thing that has come out of this year’s ESF.