01.08.2013
Left Unity: Rules for flirting
Dave Isaacson reports from Left Unitys second national coordinating group meeting
Left Unity’s national coordinating group (NCG) met for the second time on Saturday July 27 in central London.
With the controversy around specific matters of transparency and democracy which dogged the previous meeting1 - though not to the point of paralysis - seemingly dealt with for now, July’s meeting was more focused on the immediate organisational tasks.(Though, at times to the point of mundanity.)
The meetings and conference working group, of which I am a member, had a number of proposals concerning the dates, venues, access arrangements and costings of upcoming NCG meetings, a policy forum in September, and LU’s national launch conference in November. These proposals were discussed in the first section of the meeting prior to lunch and probably took longer than needed. Discussing this level of detail in a meeting of 40- 50 people (I did not do a head count, but it was around that number), with various comrades expressing their own individual preferences, was bound to be a bit frustrating - but we got there in the end.
It was agreed that LU’s launch conference will take place on Saturday November 30 at the Royal National Hotel, central London. Prior to that, two further NCG meetings have been agreed for September 7 in Birmingham and October 19 or 26 in London. There is also to be a policy forum/non-voting conference in Manchester on September 28, where the various policy commissions that have been launched within LU will be given workshop space to continue their deliberations.
It was evident that there is confusion, even at the level of NCG members, over what role the policy commissions are playing and how this relates to the founding conference. Most of the commissions will have no direct input into the November launch conference - which it was agreed at the last NCG meeting would focus on producing a general statement of principles, internal democratic structures, and a handful of matters relating to our immediate practice, such as our position on the European elections.
The work of most policy commissions is not expected to come up before a conference for voting until 2014. Mark Boothroyd of the Anti-capitalist Initiative raised some fundamental questions about the use of these commissions, saying that they run the risk of walling most people in LU off from participation in some crucial discussions.2 For his part, Andrew Burgin informed the meeting that there were 150 people signed up to the various policy commissions so far, but that there was significant unevenness, with some having very few members. It was agreed to make it clearer on the LU website how people could get involved.
After lunch there was a short initial discussion of an eight-page draft document entitled ‘Safe spaces policy’, which had been produced in one of LU’s working groups. To the relief of many we were informed that we were not being asked to vote on the document then and there. Whether you agreed with its substance or not, this was a long document that many had not seen until they got to the meeting. Personally I think the whole approach that it takes is wrong and worrying. While there was concern expressed about some “issues” that needed dealing with already within LU, much of the text gives the impression that the specific context of the Socialist Workers Party crisis was very much in the minds of the authors. Yet the conclusions drawn are of grave concern. Much of the document outlines what amount to proposals for a policing operation concerning the sex lives of LU members. Suggested rules include “No adult to teenager sexual contact”; “No sexual contact where the power relations are disproportionate”; and “When one person is considerably younger, no relationships should be secret or clandestine”. There are even rules for flirting: “Always treat the absence of enthusiastic reciprocation as an unequivocal ‘no’ with immediate effect.”
Beyond how we engage in relationships, the ways that we communicate in speech or writing would be under examination. Part of the definition of “personal insult” (which is against the proposed rules) is that it could be “criticism … expressed aggressively, with the outcome of causing hurt, intimidation or humiliation”. Surely it is obvious to all that in the wrong hands formulations such as this could easily be used to shut off free-ranging, democratic discussion and probing criticisms. Or is LU deemed to be immune to bureaucratism?
I explained to the meeting that, rather than beginning the life of LU with a censorious methodology, our starting point should be the development of a party culture in which members can develop themselves and strive to be strong and confident individuals. Central to this is the encouragement of active participation in the internal democratic life of the organisation. Abuse is far less likely to happen in a culture where members are used to freely expressing themselves without an overbearing fear of causing offence or being seen to be disrespectful.
Also vital are transparency in all political and organisational matters, and processes of collective education. Knowledge is a form of power and access to it must be freely available to all within LU. Undeniably LU will need some basic rules as part of the constitution it adopts on November 30, but these must be kept as simple and unambiguous as possible.
The draft of ‘Safe spaces policy’ is due to be published on the website to stimulate further discussion. While we were not asked to vote on the whole document, we did vote on adopting four sentences. None of them constitutes a rule of any sort. They are in essence platitudes, such as “LU actively opposes bullying and harassment” (see the minutes on the LU website for all four sentences and other decisions not fully detailed in this report3), with no clearly stated proposals for putting them into practice. Nobody felt able to vote against, but a minority abstained.
A more positive decision was to introduce “founding membership”, so that supporters can at last sign up to join LU. Founding membership will cost just £2 per month (50p per month unwaged) and will entitle members to attend the November 30 launch conference with full speaking and voting rights. Members with no local branches will be integrated into ‘virtual’ online branches.
A motion to the NCG meeting from Cambridge LU branch was one of the few times when platforms were mentioned .
Recently a group of LU supporters, including Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson, have launched the Left Party Platform, which would imprison LU within a non-revolutionary, reformist template. The Socialist Platform has also been launched, to which the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee is giving critical support. Members of LU are urged to put their names to its statement of aims and principles. The motion from Cambridge LU welcomed the decision of the last NCG, which gave platforms of 10 people or more the right to submit motions to the founding conference. It also said that the website should be used to facilitate discussion “with a clear, non-preferential presentation of these platforms”. This was carried with no votes against and one abstention.
The final motion of the meeting was from Tower Hamlets LU, which called for an expansion of the NCG to allow each branch to send two delegates, and for at least one of these delegates to be a woman. Following discussion it was agreed by the mover that this decision was not within the remit of the NCG, which had been brought into being by the May 11 national delegate meeting with a clear statement of how it should be constituted. A last-minute adjustment to this motion to try to introduce a gender quota without expanding the NCG was narrowly defeated, but not on political grounds - rather, there had not been time to debate what was essentially a different motion with different implications and I suspect it was this that led most who voted against to do so.
Notes
1.See ‘Policy put on hold’ Weekly Worker June 20.
2. See his article on the LU website: http://leftunity.org/abolish-the-policy-commissions.
3. http://leftunity.org/minutes-of-left-unitynational-coordinating-group-meeting-27-july-2013.