ESF reports from Weekly Worker

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday November 14, 2002 16:27 by Weekly Worker

The Weekly Worker reports from Florence

European left gathers

Comrades from a wide variety of revolutionary, radical and leftwing traditions travelled from all across Europe and beyond to hear thousands of speakers address meeting which ranged from a couple of hundred to many thousands. Most railed against capitalism, some even talked a good revolution, but few offered anything much by way of practical organisational or political suggestions about the way forward. Nevertheless despite the conventional platitudes many useful contacts were made and the culture of dialogue deepened.

The ESF was certainly the biggest gathering of the European left for many decades. Undoubtedly thousands will go away inspired by the whole thing. Yet so much more could have been achieved.

Meetings were run more like rallies than genuine arenas for debate and the considered exchange of ideas. It was not unusual for 20 or more platform speakers to address meetings of thousands for up to three hours. Equally to the point, speakers from the floor were generally selected, or preselected, from amongst those with what passes for acceptable opinions.

Trying to introduce minority politics in the 30 minutes 'free time' that followed the platform speeches - amongst all the others vying to speak - was, quite frankly, a joke. It was left to comrades on stalls and the team selling the Weekly Worker to get our politics heard and then on a one-to-one basis.

Bob Paul

Socialist Alliance marginalised

The Socialist Alliance unfortunately played no real part in the ESF. There was no SA stall, no SA workshop and no SA speaker. Besides the distribution of some leaflets at a couple of the meetings and a banner on the demo, it was nowhere to be seen.

CPGB members had pushed for the Socialist Alliance to have a platform speaker at the meeting on 'political parties and the movement'. This was rejected at the last organising meeting in Barcelona in favour of a Globalise Resistance speaker, and CPGB comrades were attacked by Alex Callinicos of the Socialist Workers Party for daring to suggest that Chris Nineham should be replaced by a representative of the Socialist Alliance.

Unfortunately the focus of the SWP, the largest SA component, at the ESF was on building itself. Globalise Resistance (GR) was used on this occasion as the united front through which this would happen.

A meeting hosted by GR with the title 'Another world is possible' was predictably a transmission belt for the SWP and its International Socialist Tendency. Jonathan Neale opened with a call for a revolutionary alternative by which he meant, of course, the SWP and its clones.

Comrade Neale was followed by amongst others Alex Callinicos, who spoke of the need for openness, democracy and revolutionary politics. All good stuff, but hardly the kind of politics that the SWP promotes in the Socialist Alliance. Comrades will remember, this is the same Alex Callinicos who derided SA members at the euro conference for talking like "Marxist professors" when they raised the need to take a revolutionary approach to the question of Europe. He is also the same man who has opposed CPGB proposals for the SA to commit itself in its programmatic documents to a working class, internationalist socialism rather than some red-green mish-mash. But in Florence, with an audience of young people eager for change, he presented the SWP's most leftist face.

However, true to form, the GR meeting was a stage-managed affair. The chair was 'guided' by comrades Nineham, Callinicos and Chris Bambery as to who to allow in as speakers from the floor. A few token women speakers were allowed, but in general it was an array of GR/SWP members who acted merely to confirm what their leaders had already said. The thing ended with comrade Bambery conducting the r-r-revolutionary chanting.

The same breathless leftism dominated the SWP's overall intervention. They were eager to present themselves as the revolutionary pole of the ESF and were determined that the Socialist Alliance should be kept safely at home. No mention of the SA was made by any of their speakers that I heard. This is despite the fact that Rifondazione Comunista - the main organising spirit behind the ESF - has made it clear that they are very keen to work with the Socialist Alliance and indeed want to promote political unity across Europe. Indeed CPGB comrades found that the Weekly Worker's front-page call for a Socialist Alliance of Europe provoked a lot of interest at the ESF conference and on the November 9 demonstration.

Our SA executive should have organised an effective intervention but did not. There must be answers as to why this did not happen. It was an opportunity lost. The preparations for the next ESF in France are beginning. The executive must make sure we are involved from the very beginning.

Anne Mc Shane

Communist SWP

One rather amusing incident took place in the Fortezza da Basso castle shortly after the Globalise Resistance rally.

The SWP amassed in the central ground of the fort and proceeded to march around the lawn chanting, "Peace not profit, peace not war" and "One solution - revolution". Evidently the need for more demonstrations, put forward by the SWP but subsequently rejected during the talks leading up to the ESF, was such that comrades simply could not hold in their anger against capitalism, and decided, in the absence of a permit to march in the city, to parade around the venue instead. Yes, the SWP were behaving like revolutionary clowns.

Also amusing was the SWP's attempted use of the word 'communist' - albeit in Italian - when selling Socialist Worker. According to sellers, the paper was one of "English communism". Comrades were also selling a journal which contained the previously unutterable 'c' word in the title. Thankfully Socialist Worker is no longer welcoming the "death of communism", as it did in 1991. When in Italy do as the Italians do, but when back in good old Blighty then it's a case of aping rotten old Labour once more.

The irony of this superficial posturing was compounded by Socialist Worker's list of the principal groups attending the ESF - Rifondazione Comunista was listed simply as "Rifondazione". This is not only dishonest, but degrades the significance and political meaning of the word 'communist'. This 'where the wind is blowing' approach does little to concretise and develop politics, but might perhaps help feed the SWP's rotating door recruitment methods.

David Hunnam

European SA needed

Around 50 comrades attended the No Sweat meeting held in Fortezza da Basso on Friday November 8. No Sweat, an Alliance for Workers' Liberty front against sweatshop labour, attracted a number of trade union and NGO speakers from across the continent, all of whom outlined the ills of 'sweated' labour and argued for a large, broad campaign against the injustices suffered by many workers in the so-called third world.

Mick Duncan of the AWL made a largely sound speech outlining the need for an organised working class movement against sweatshop labour, a phenomenon which enslaves hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them children, in diabolical conditions with no trade union rights and negligible pay. He cited work by PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka and others in building resistance in the United Kingdom, and denounced the tactic employed by some of the left of boycotting 'sweated' products, which, he emphasised, would only undermine the already abominable conditions experienced by many workers in factories run by capitalists contracting to the likes of Nike and Gap.

Unfortunately neither comrade Duncan nor other speakers mentioned the Socialist Alliance, nor did they explain in what political form they envisaged unity across the continent against sweatshop labour. The inference was that we simply needed to create a larger No Sweat coalition on a European-wide scale, in alliance with trade unions and a few non-governmental organisations. This was regrettably typical of the approach some of the left take: ie, to disregard the necessary project of building a real workers' party in favour of building their own sect through 'feeder' single-issue campaigns.

Surely a Socialist Alliance of the EU, if it was based on the collective strength of Europe's left groups and parties, would be a force to be reckoned with - in elections, in trade unions, in the anti-war movement and, yes, in a campaign of solidarity with sweatshop workers across the globe.

We need to fight for what every worker on this planet needs - a global communist party. And one step towards that is a European Socialist Alliance. This is unachievable unless we merge our sect projects and build collectively towards this common aim.

James Bull

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