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European Social Forum
Scabbing and London's mayor
We need to wrest control of the European Social Forum out of Livingstone’s
hands, argues Tina Becker
Everybody involved in the preparations for this year’s European
Social Forum should carefully and soberly ponder Ken Livingstone’s
disgraceful statement attacking the June 30 underground workers’
strike. Before the whole of the assembled media the mayor of London
not only described the employers’ offer as “extremely
generous”. More to the point, he went on to say: “Were
I a member of the RMT [Rail, Maritime and Transport union], for
the first time in my life I would cross a picket line.” A spokeswoman
for Livingstone said afterwards that this was certainly no slip
of the tongue and that Livingstone did not intend to “retract
his words” (The Guardian June 26).
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If anybody had been in any doubt over Ken Livingstone’s political
trajectory and allegiance, this statement certainly makes things
clear. Even ‘moderate’ trade union leaders like Unison’s
Dave Prentis have been taken aback by what amounts to an open call
for strike-breaking: “It’s outrageous and shameful that
someone in Livingstone’s position, with his history and background,
should be telling people to scab on their trade union,” he
said. Livingstone has certainly betrayed a basic socialist and working
class principle. As RMT general secretary Bob Crow put it, “The
11th amendment clearly says: do not scab.”
Livingstone’s main adviser on transport issues is of course
leading Socialist Action member Redmond O’Neill, who has recently
been further promoted and now earns a whopping £111,000 per
annum. It is through comrade O’Neill and his Socialist Action
comrades that Livingstone is attempting to stitch up the preparations
for the ESF. Presumably these so-called socialists are now actively
involved on the side of the employers against London’s underground
workers too. Of course, as Socialist Action operate in total secrecy
and have not published anything for years, they are in no position
to clarify their position in an authoritative way or even perhaps
set the record straight. But then, any Livingstone-critical political
comments would certainly undermine their elevated and well-rewarded
positions in the Greater London Authority that employs so many of
them.
‘Red Ken’s’ attempt to undermine the RMT strike shows
the inherent limits of left Labourism and the attempt to run London
both for Londoners and capitalism. True, many Londoners voted for
him because he is thought of as leftwing or progressive on a whole
range of issues: not least opposition to the Iraq war. However,
all too often Livingstone indulges in politically correct posturing
in order to cover for the fact that he has no working class or socialist
programme - not even the semblance of one. So he makes great play
of his commitment to multiculturalism, women, anti-fascism, the
environment, etc, by promoting middle class do-gooders.
Meanwhile he gets on with the real business at hand: making London
work for big business and readying himself for his next move in
the Labour Party. Livingstone has made no secret of his high ambitions
- he dreams of one day inhabiting No10 Downing Street.
His brazen attack on the RMT is a calculated move to cement his
image as a responsible politician. The message is clear: if Ken
can be trusted to run London, he can be trusted as a minister (and
maybe in time as prime minister).
Under these circumstances the ESF should refuse all Greater London
Authority money. Remember - thanks to Tony Blair, London has a Bonapartist
mayor who acts largely independently and has extremely wide powers
over spending his budget. As in France and Italy, we must resist
the temptation to sell the ESF’s soul in return for easy money.
The risk otherwise is incorporation into the state. And, of course,
the London government is effectively Livingstone’s state. At
the end of the day it just ain’t worth it. Accepting GLA money
not only allows Livingstone to set the agenda - his SA intermediaries
have already threatened to withhold funding unless they get their
way - but totally discredits the whole social forum movement.
With rotten politics there inevitably comes rotten organisational
methods. And not surprisingly it has been Socialist Action which
has been primarily instrumental in blocking all attempts to make
the London ESF fully democratic and fully transparent: official
minutes of meetings are therefore kept to a bare minimum and are
sent out late (if at all); the organising committee - the highest
ESF decision-making body in Britain - has been marginalised and
meets only for a few hours every six weeks or so; reporting meetings
has been met with threats of exclusions; and the real decisions
are being made through underhand deals and behind the backs of activists.
In all of this, Livingstone and SA have unfortunately been uncritically
supported by comrades from the Socialist Workers Party, who seem
to be mainly interested in exploiting the ESF for their own narrow
purposes - chiefly the recruitment of new members - and presenting
themselves as one of the ‘big political players’ in Europe.
Needless to say, so far they have failed rather miserably.
If the ESF is to be of any use at all to the progressive and working
class movement across Europe, we cannot allow it to be turned into
a Livingstone-SWP rally. All democratic forces must work together
to make it truly open, inviting and free from all taint of corruption,
careerism and manipulation. A festival where the setting up of international
networks is actively facilitated, joint European-wide campaigns
are established, real debates are encouraged and the needs and wishes
of the participating groups and networks are put first - not those
of London’s scabbing mayor.
Show me the money
Livingstone’s grip over the ESF comes in no small measure from
his control over its finances and the GLA’s promise of £250,000.
£40,000 has apparently already been spent on the ESF website
(which is supposed to go live on July 7) and another five-figure
sum is rumoured to have been paid out to insure the ESF directors
against financial liability if the ESF were to make a loss. The
rest of the £250,000 seems earmarked for the hire of Alexandra
Palace.
Needless to say, none of this has been reported, let alone agreed,
at any ESF meeting. The ESF directors (amongst them apparently Kate
Hudson from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Morning
Star’s Communist Party of Britain) have been appointed without
any consultation with or even notification to any official ESF body.
We still only have rumours as to who exactly the directors are.
And it is Livingstone who is deciding how much money is to be spent
on which ESF post - not the organisations and groups involved in
preparing for the event.
And now the unions are following suit. It has been announced that
“Unison London will release their donation [of £50,000]
against specific requirements rather than a one-off payment”,
while the RMT’s donation of £1,000 will “assist
with current expenditure requirements” (coordinating committee
official minutes, June 16).
Apparently though, none of the above are interested in ‘releasing’
any money towards the wages of the six ESF workers that were supposed
to start employment at the beginning of July. Interviews for their
posts were set for June 30 and July 1, but they have now been postponed
indefinitely, apparently because of a “funding problem”.
This will most probably mean that the four unelected and unaccountable
“seconded staff” from the SWP-SA will carry on staffing
the office.
If there is any problem with funding, all forces involved in the
ESF process need to know about it - now. We might possibly have
to make alternative plans in consultation with our European comrades.
No more exclusions
Shoot the messenger! That is still how comrades from SA and the
SWP react to reporting the ESF. CPGB comrades have once again been
threatened with exclusion from the coordinating committee for daring
to publish critical information.
This small committee meets every Thursday morning and has been attended
regularly by delegates from the CPGB/Weekly Worker. We have twice
been excluded in the past, when financial matters were being discussed.
Then, we were accused of publishing “inaccuracies and lies”,
though our repeated requests to specify what was supposed to be
wrong have been ignored.
In fact, none of the information on major ESF questions published
in the Weekly Worker has turned out to be “inaccurate”
or a “lie” (though a friendly SWP comrade pointed out
to me that I had wrongly reported that no trade union representatives
attended the ESF assembly in Istanbul - when in fact two SWP members
present had been delegated by their union branches). Aside from
such minor issues, we are disliked and gagged by the London ESF
government precisely because we have reported the truth and exposed
the bureaucratic stitch-ups and financial problems hampering the
process.
Exclusions were stopped when the international ESF assembly, meeting
in London on March 6-7, decided that they were “against the
spirit of the ESF”. Our ESF affiliation statement has been
amended accordingly.
However, it looks like our comrades in the SWP and SA are attempting
to overturn this agreement. At the June 24 meeting of the coordinating
committee, we decided that the next meeting on July 1 would hear
an “open and frank report on finance” - the first one
ever to be presented to an official ESF body. Up till now, access
to this information has been restricted to the inner circle only.
But so vocal have demands for the truth to be told that the SWP’s
Chris Nineham had to concede and pencil the item in for the next
meeting.
Also, it was agreed that we should have an overdue and important
debate on how the ESF finances should be organised: Should there
be a finance and fundraising sub-committee? Or should everything
be placed in the hands of a professional ‘finance manager’,
recruited from an outside agency? Needless to say, the latter option
is favoured by the SWP and SA government, while the former is part
of a proposal presented by the opposition (which entails almost
everybody who is not in the SWP-SA orbit).
However, comrade Nineham also announced that “there is no way
that we will talk openly about finances or the establishment of
a finance group if Tina is in the room”. He was backed up by
Milena Buyum (National Assembly Against Racism/Socialist Action).
He linked this demand for our exclusion with his “outrage”
over the Weekly Worker having published a letter and subsequent
report from the Italian ESF mobilisation committee, in which the
Italian comrades were highly critical about the process in Britain
(Weekly Worker June 17).
“Both the letter and the report are based on total untruths,”
comrade Nineham claimed at the meeting. “None of these alleged
problems of exclusions or lack of inclusivity are happening. Some
people in Britain have hooked up with the Italians to discredit
the process and spread false rumours. These are the politics of
threat, which we will not accept. This is deliberately racking up
tensions.”
The implication was that it was the reports in the Weekly Worker
(and possibly Indymedia) that sparked the highly critical response
from our Italian comrades - and not their own negative experience
of the process itself. While we are obviously very flattered by
the implication in comrade Nineham’s remarks that the Weekly
Worker dictates how Europe’s most influential working class
organisations like Rifondazione Comunista, etc, think and act, it
might be just a little way off the mark.
In fact, comrade Nineham’s threat underlines the reality of
the problems mentioned in the letter and report presented by our
Italian comrades.
Appeal
This urgent appeal, sent out by CPGB comrades, has already been
signed by dozens of ESF activists from across Europe. To add your
signature, please email:
tina@jptw.freeserve.co.uk
“I/we confirm my/our commitment to:
l openness and transparency in all aspects of the ESF process;
l no exclusions from any ESF committee.”
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