European Social Forum

Closed door manoeuvres

Slowly, very slowly, the London European Social Forum seems to be coming together: 67 organisations are now officially affiliated to the organising committee - amongst them eight national trade unions and a number of local branches. The rest are pretty much made up of the usual suspects: the Stop the War Coalition, Globalise Resistance, Muslim Association of Britain, Cuba Solidarity Campaign, etc.

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to know if all of them have actually paid their full affiliation fee - if so, we should have at least £16,750 in the bank (national organisations with fewer than 50,000 members were supposed to pay a minimum of £250). All financial information is still deemed 'classified' and only the two main organisations running the show - the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Action - know the details. They decide who is allowed to know what and sadly the CPGB - even though we were amongst the first to pay the full £250 - does not figure amongst those considered worthy of being informed. We have been told though that the real figure in the bank is closer to £5,500. So who is not pulling their weight? And why?

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Of course, especially some smaller organisations will have difficulties coming up with that kind of money and it has correctly been decided that, at the discretion of the organisers, groups can be accepted for a reduced affiliation fee. However, there is never any report-back on these matters and calls for open accounting are sidelined at every meeting. The affiliation fees were supposed to be the icing on the cake - paid to finance the work of the organising committee until the ESF in October. We are still waiting for the big donations which will actually pump-prime the running of the ESF, the cost of which will be roughly £1.5 million. Most of this will be recovered through the high individual registration fees, but of course they will not materialise until a few weeks before the event.

So everybody is breathlessly awaiting June 11 - the day after the London and European elections - when the money will apparently start flooding in.

Witch-hunt and censorship
It is so easily done: once you adopt one bureaucratic manoeuvre, the next one follows quite naturally. Tracks need to be covered up, the undemocratic nature of the manoeuvre hidden and witnesses silenced.

The last meeting of the ESF coordinating committee on May 27 had it all. All hell broke loose when we discussed an expansion of the so-called 'office working group'. This group is overseeing the running of our newly opened office (which is located in the TGWU's building near Manor House) and - crucially - is supposed to decide who will be employed by the ESF. It is still unclear how many full-time workers we can afford for how long or how much we can pay them, but previous documents drafted by comrade O'Neill indicated that it would be a worthwhile job - he suggested a pro rata wage at the GLA annual rate of around £26,000.

Currently, the group consists of Adrian Weir from the TGWU, Dave Hillman from the Tobin Tax Campaign and Kate Hudson from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (and the Morning Star's Communist Party of Britain). As all of them belong to the 'first camp' around the SWP-Socialist Action, Rodrigo Nunes put himself forward as an additional member of the group - for the 'opposition'. The comrade has been heavily involved in all three World Social Forums and is a member of its international council.

But the SWP-SA bureaucracy would have none of it - and made sure that they found 'evidence' which made it 'impossible' to have him on this group, as Dave Hillman reported to the coordinating committee meeting. Rodrigo's crime? He had written a private email to another comrade, who posted it on one of the many websites that features discussions on the ESF. The email outlined "strategies" on how to get round the SWP-SA bureaucracy and ventured the opinion that, "unl ess we lie into their faces, which I really wouldn't mind", it would be impossible. That was it.

Interestingly, the comrade who posted the article only put Rodrigo's initials under it. Yet our detectives from the SWP found it. Alan Rae, officially representing an Amicus branch, proudly reported that it was his investigation that nailed the crook. The prosecution was duly outraged: "There is no way that we can have somebody like that in an ESF position," fumed Louise Hutchins (officially representing the National Union of Students). "It is totally out of the question that somebody who advocates lying gets onto this group," raged Lee Brown from the Student Assembly against Racism. Did I mention that both are also members of the underground sect, Socialist Action, which they publicly deny? There is a word for that, I believe … oh yes: lying.

Tim Lezard from the National Union of Journalists remarked that "if the Daily Mail got hold of this, they would tear us apart. We must be able to show that we moved swiftly and would not allow Rodrigo onto the group". And swiftly they moved. So swiftly that no other representative of the democratic opposition will be able to get on the group either. "It is working well: we don't need anybody else," said Milena Buyum from the National Assembly against Racism (and SA).

Then we moved on to the bit where you destroy the evidence after the crime: "Obviously, nobody should be reporting this incident," said Dave Hillman in passing. So, despite having moved "swiftly" and having thoroughly crushed this lying, cheating worm, we should now pretend it did not happen. Some of the democratic opposition could not help laughing out loud at this point.
This caused the SWP's Chris Nineham to step in: "I find it totally unbelievable that anybody would want to publish something like that. It would be disastrous if all of this came out." And another comment: "Our names already appear on Red Watch. It would be outrageous, self-serving and egoistic to publish any of this" (SWP member Rahul Patel, London Unison). Then there was: "Anybody who reports such a thing would be sabotaging the whole ESF process" (Louise Hutchins).

It certainly is "unbelievable" to watch socialists behaving like thought police. It is indeed "disastrous" for the working class that those who claim to want to liberate them in fact see themselves as the 'enlightened few' who make decisions behind our backs. And it is the equivalent of "sabotaging" the supposedly inclusive process when the SWP-SA bureaucracy refuses to incorporate anybody outside its own narrow circle.

Europe 'an issue'
The latest meeting of the programme group finally accepted that it might be a good idea to discuss the question of Europe at the European Social Forum. Previously, members of the CPGB (and Fred Leplat from Socialist Resistance) were alone in their insistence that the Europe should be one of the main issues. Chris Nineham had assured us that Europe was "boring" and a "non-issue" in Britain - even after Tony Blair announced he would be holding a referendum on the EU draft constitution.

At the heart of this lies the SWP's deeply ingrained economism, which regards questions of democracy and how we are ruled as a diversion from the 'real issues': trade unions, the NHS, public services, etc, important as these are. Debates on the state, how our rulers rule or the monarchy are considered unimportant.

Reality of course proves them wrong. Europe is a highly controversial question and hotly debated by the labour movement. The TUC, for example, has backed not only the EU, but also its draft constitution. It believes that the introduction of some of its labour laws would actually lead to improved working conditions for many British workers. A number of big unions are less enthusiastic and reject the constitution - without, however, putting forward an alternative vision for a Europe from below.

Ditto in the Labour Party: the parliamentary Labour Party is of course in favour of the constitution - while the left and the majority of constituency activists are dead against it. The Morning Star's CPB is so concerned about the EU being a threat to British sovereignty that it advocates withdrawal.
The latest programme group meeting finally agreed to include the question of Europe.

Undoubtedly, the European-wide meeting of May 22-23 in Rome to discuss the left's response to the draft constitution helped to underline the fact that our European comrades do not consider it "boring" or a "non-issue". The programme group will be recommending that three (of the roughly 20) plenary sessions should deal with Europe. The final titles are yet to be decided, but they will consider:

Should the EU act as a counterweight to US power?
What sort of Europe do we want? (touching on the constitution, the EU and visions of our Europe from below)
Citizenship, national identities and self-determination

Tina Becker

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