[g8-sheffield] Re: g8-sheffield Digest, Vol 4, Issue 64

[IAN WALLACE]

1. "In Sheffield, for 
example, they insisted on doing their own thing via StWC with regards to the 
G8 visit." 
 

2. "If you have been trying to follow  then you will have found it very difficult. 
You read of no debate in their publications, but instead have to try and 
read between the lines of what the leadership is saying."

3. "There is no real internal democracy for ordinary members of the SWP.
Decisions are made by a self-electing leadership."
 
1. 'Come the revolution' you will no doubt be saying that we insisted on 'doing our own thing via the Working Class'. Hope so. 
 
2. If you want to know,  "what is going on in the SWP at the moment, 
with regards to RESPECT and StWC" why don't you just ask? Then come along to a meeting.
Did you come to the George Galloway et al meeting? 700 others did. 
 
3. Maybe you have been speaking to some disaffected former members? I might not be the best non-disaffected non-former member to relate to because I have only been a member since 1977 so I might lack your experience, but my (no doubt highly biased) view is that we are working to a direction agreed through our structures in the run up to, and at, our national annual conference. Where we also elect our leadership. 
 
Ian
 
 
Eh?


Lee Rock <lee.rock at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
Dan


The SWP does not operate 'democratic centralism'.

All of this is a real problem for the rest of us on the left - as the SWP 
are by far the largest and most influential group. (Many of their members would not even have been aware of the 
Dissent campaign.) How much better it would have been if there had been a 
single united campaign around this one issue, don't you think?

All the best

Lee
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan" 
To: "IAN WALLACE" 
Cc: 
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: [g8-sheffield] Re: g8-sheffield Digest, Vol 4, Issue 64


Hi,

Yeah, it's good stuff. I also got send this today, from the SWP website:

http://www.swp.org.uk/article_swp.php?article_id=305
"Democracy without centralism will fail"

It's an interesting article. The writer, for example, cites something
that both Naomi Klein and Starhawk have previously picked up on:

> At one anti-capitalist demonstration not long ago, in Washington DC, 
> demonstrators agreed to blockade all the entrances to a World Bank 
> conference. But in one area a group decided to follow their own decision, 
> ignoring everyone else, and let the bank delegates through-dissolving the 
> whole protest into pointlessness.

There are certainly discussions to be had about what kind of structure
works where. The drive toward decentralisation is something that both
certain left-wingers and most economists share. We need more argument
about is when it's really appropriate, and when it doesn't work. The SWP
writer simply says that the task of working towards revolution demands a
level of organisation that autonomistas cannot provide. I have always
believed that we must walk the talk - that our actions today must mirror
the future we want. That would mean, for example, not having a civil war
in order to give power to the proletariat, because I believe in peace -
and because too many revolutionaries have a category for 'reactionary
elements of the working class' who can also be shot. (This may be naive
of me, but I refuse to drop it just yet!)

There's also a nice bit in Mark Steel's 'reasons to be cheerful' that is
a rather amusing critique of 'the tyranny of self-organisation', about
an anti-fascist rally he was on.

"... every single person amongst the thousands who attend, as they
arrive asks the nearest person ‘what’s happening?’ But no one ever knew
the answer. Eventually, a group of fifty or more would walk in the same
direction and everyone followed. They might have all been going for a
burger, but as everyone joined them it would go around that the fascists
were definitely this way. So even if they were going for a burger they
would now believe that the fascists are this way anyway and abandon the
burger.” [Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful, London, Simon & Schuster,
2001, p.39]

I'm personally still much more in favour of self-organisation, because
centralisation, historically, always leads to abuses of power. But then,
saying "there's no power here" doesn't make it so either!

A couple of other resources: the Joseph Rowntree foundation have been
funding a 'power inquiry' (see http://www.powerinquiry.org/) and they've
produced a book called "Beyond the Ballot - 57 democratic innovations
from around the world." (PDF from
http://www.powerinquiry.org/publications/documents/BeyondtheBallot_000.pdf)

Maybe we could do something at Matilda, from a much more leftie angle?
It could be an inquiry from the left - with democratic centralists and
autonomists making up two of the positions, for example. (It was
heartening to read in the SWP article that debate is so important: and I
noted that I fit in to the 'fevered dreams about the SWP being
armies...! I only hope it's not merely spin...)

And if you have time, take a look at http://www.extremedemocracy.com/ -
lots of chapters on devolving democracy until it looks a little like a
free market...

Maybe we shouldn't close this list. Perhaps it could be used for debate...?

Dan
----


IAN WALLACE wrote:

> I think Vol 4, Issue 64 might go down in history itself. Two very good, 
> thoughtful, measured, and generally excellent contributions focusing on 
> some of the real issues from Mozaz and Fabien.
> Maybe the G8 Sheffield Digest could always be like this?
> Ian
>
> */g8-sheffield-request at lists.aktivix.org/* wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Inside the Murky World of Make Poverty History (zerosevenfour two)
> 2. Fwd: [resistg82005] Great article in the guardian today (fabian)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:49:44 +0000
> From: "zerosevenfour two"
> Subject: [g8-sheffield] Inside the Murky World of Make Poverty History
> To: g8-sheffield at lists.aktivix.org
> Message-ID:
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>
> a must read
>
> http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/315058.html
>
> Make Poverty History would seem an unprecedented success story.
> Uniting
> trade unions, charities, NGOs and a stellar-cast of celebrities,
> its cause
> is dominating media coverage while the campaign's white wristband
> is being
> worn the world over. So why, as the G8 summit approaches, are leading
> members briefing against each other to the press and African social
> movements saying ‘nothing about us, without us'? Stuart Hodkinson
> investigates.
>
> For a sun-soaked Friday in late May, there was an unusual air of
> panic at
> the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) for the monthly members'
> assembly of
> Make Poverty History (MPH). Officials hurriedly briefed reception
> with some
> last-minute security instructions: “You must make sure that only
> assembly
> members are let in,” one instructed. “The meeting is open to the
> public, but
> only public members of Make Poverty History.”
>
> The nerves were understandable. Two damning stories about MPH were
> about to
> break in the British national press. The cover story of British
> centre-left
> weekly, New Statesman, ‘Why Oxfam is failing Africa', had exposed
> deep anger
> among members of the MPH coalition at Oxfam's ‘revolving door'
> relationship
> with UK government officials and policies, accusing it of allowing
> Britain's
> two most powerful politicians, Prime Minister Tony Blair and
> Chancellor
> Gordon Brown, to co-opt MPH as a front for New Labour's own
> questionable
> anti-poverty drive.
>
> The right-wing Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, had given notice of
> its shocking
> exclusive on how large numbers of the ubiquitous MPH white
> wristband – the
> very symbol of the campaign – had been knowingly sourced from Chinese
> sweatshops with Oxfam's blessing.
>
> Inside MPH, however, the embarrassing revelations were no
> surprise. For the
> past six months, some of the UK 's leading development and
> environmental
> NGOs have been increasingly vocal in their unease about a campaign
> high on
> celebrity octane but low on radical politics. One insider, active
> in a key
> MPH working group, argues there “has often been a complete divergence
> between the democratically agreed message of our public campaign
> and the
> actual spin that greets the outside world”. He is angry:
>
> “Our real demands on trade, aid and debt, and criticisms of UK
> government
> policy in developing countries have been consistently swallowed up
> by white
> bands, celebrity luvvies and praise upon praise for Blair and
> Brown being
> ahead of other world leaders on these issues.”
>
> THE RISE AND RISE OF MPH
>
> This is surely not what campaigners had in mind back in late 2003
> when Oxfam
> initiated a series of informal meetings with charities and
> campaigning
> organisations to consider forming an unprecedented coalition
> against poverty
> in 2005 to coincide with the UK presidency of both the G8 summit
> and EU, the
> first five year evaluation of progress on the UN Millennium
> Development
> Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000, the 6th WTO Ministerial Meeting in
> Hong Kong,
> and the 20th anniversary of Live Aid.
>
> In September 2004, the Make Poverty History coalition was officially
> launched as the UK mobilisation of an international coalition, the
> Global
> Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP), led by Oxfam
> International, Action
> Aid and DATA – the controversial Africa charity set up by U2
> frontman, Bono
> and multi-billionnaires, George Soros, and Microsoft's Bill Gates,
> the
> world's second richest person with a fortune of just under $50
> billion.
>
> Since then, MPH has become an impressive campaigning coalition,
> boasting
> over 460 member organisations including all the major trade unions
> and the
> TUC, development NGOs, charities, churches as well as several
> faith and
> diaspora groups. Its successful mix of celebrity backers and
> anti-poverty
> message has captured the attention of both politicians and mass
> media,
> encapsulated in the near-hysteria following the annoucement by
> veteran rock
> star and Africa campaigner, Bob Geldof, that a series of free
> concerts in
> London, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, and Berlin would take place
> under the
> banner ‘Live 8' to coincide with the MPH campaign to lobby the G8
> summit in
> Gleneagles, Scotland in July.
>
> But despite the success, there is widespread unhappiness within the
> coalition over the campaign's public face and its cosiness to
> Blair and
> Brown. Critics argue that on paper at least, MPH's policy demands
> on the UK
> government are fairly radical, especially its calls for “trade
> justice not
> free trade”, which would require G8 and EU countries, notably the
> UK, to
> stop forcing through free market policies on poor countries as
> part of aid,
> trade deals or debt relief. MPH also says rich countries should
> immediately
> double aid by $50bn per year and finally meet 35-year old promises
> to spend
> 0.7 per cent of their national income in development aid. More and
> better
> aid, meanwhile, should be matched by cancellation of the
> “unpayabale” debts
> of the world's poorest countries through a “fair and transparent
> international process” that uses new money, not slashed aid
> budgets. With
> additional calls for the regulation of multinationals and the
> democratisation of the IMF and World Bank, John Hilary, Campaigns
> Director
> of UK development NGO, War on Want, has a point when he asserts
> that MPH's
> policies “strike at the very heart of the neo-liberal agenda.”
>
> The problem, however, is that when these policies are relayed to a
> public
> audience, they become virtually indistinguishable from those of
> the UK
> government. This was brought home back in March this year when
> Blair's
> deeply compromised Commission for Africa set out its neo-liberal
> proposals
> for the corporate plunder of Africa's human and natural resources
> under the
> identical headlines used by MPH – ‘trade justice', ‘drop the debt'
> and ‘more
> and better aid'. In return, most MPH members, led by Oxfam and the
> TUC,
> warmly welcomed the report's recommendations. As Ghana 's Yao
> Graham makes
> clear in July's Red Pepper, African civil society is far less
> enamoured with
> the Commission's report, which he argues lays out a blueprint for
> “the new
> scramble for Africa ”.
>
> REVOLVING DOORS
>
> Thanks to the New Statesman exposé, much of the blame is placed on
> the
> leadership of Oxfam – the UK 's biggest and most powerful development
> agency. Despite its pro-poor image around the world, over the last
> two
> decades, Oxfam has become a feeder school for government special
> advisers
> and World Bank officials and has a particularly close relationship
> with New
> Labour. Blair's special advisor on international development, Justin
> Forsyth, was previously Oxfam's campaigns manager. Forsyth's
> opposite number
> at the Treasury is Oxfam board member, Shriti Vadera, a former
> director at
> the US bank, UBS Warburg, and specialist in public-private
> partnerships, a
> policy that litters the Africa Commission's report. Less well
> known is John
> Clark, who left Oxfam for the World Bank in 1992 to join the World
> Bank
> where he was responsible for the Bank's co-optation strategy with
> civil
> society before advising Tony Blair in 2000 on his “Africa Partnership
> Initiative” that directly led to the New Partnership for Africa 's
> Development (NEPAD) in 2001. At the heart of MPH is Oxfam's Sarah
> Kline, a
> former World Bank official who champions the organisation's
> ‘constructive
> dialogue' approach with the IMF and World Bank.
>
> Oxfam's political independence from neo-liberal governance is also
> compromised by the £40m or so of its annual income that comes from
> government or other public funds. Nearly £14m alone originates
> from the
> Department for International Development (DfID), which is a major
> champion
> of privatisation and its benefits for UK companies in developing
> countries.
> In this, Oxfam is of course by no means alone – almost every
> development NGO
> in Britain is on DfID's payroll. While it is possible to take and use
> government money progressively while being critical of the donor's
> policies,
> such large amounts of government funding inevitably influence how
> far Oxfam
> will stick its neck out politically and risk future funding cuts.
>
> Oxfam's unrivalled financial resources and existing public profile
> make it
> by far the most powerful organisation in the MPH coalition. Last
> year,
> Oxfam's annual income surpassed £180m – three times the amount
> received by
> its nearest rival, Christian Aid, and dwarfing more social
> movement-oriented
> development NGOs like WDM and War on Want who punch way above
> their weight
> on just over £1m each. Such wealth disparity inevitably translates
> into the
> direction taken by the coalition, especially its public image.
> Oxfam's army
> of press officers, researchers and campaign officers can naturally
> take
> advantage of the huge media opportunities generated by the campaign.
>
> But making Oxfam the scapegoat for MPH's co-optation by New Labour
> misses
> the key role played by Comic Relief and its celebrity co-founder,
> the film
> director, Richard Curtis. As one of Britain's most prolific and
> brilliant
> comedy writers, Curtis shot to fame in the 1980s with the TV series
> Blackadder, and his since penned hits like Mr Bean, The Vicar of
> Dibley, and
> the blockbuster movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral. With wealth
> and fame has
> come enormous political clout. In 2001, British centre-left daily
> broadsheet, The Guardian, ranked him the 10th most powerful person
> in the UK
> media industry, ahead of every national newspaper editor, except
> Paul Dacre
> of the Daily Mail.
>
> Curtis's personal commitment to raising money for Africa goes back
> to 1985
> when, at the height of the Ethiopian famine, he visited refugee
> camps as a
> guest of Oxfam. It was a life-changing experience and on his
> return to
> London persuaded showbiz friends to set up Comic Relief, the
> celebrity-led
> charity that uses the medium of comedy to raise both awareness about
> poverty, famine and disease in Africa , and huge sums of money to
> such
> causes.
>
> Despite its incredible success in bringing in the bacon – over
> £337m since
> its inception – Comic Relief's live televised shows every two
> years are also
> criticised for their distinct lack of politics and inaccurate
> portrayal of
> Africa as a continent-come-country ravaged by natural disasters
> and warring
> tribes – the roles of colonialism, IMF and World Bank structural
> adjustment
> programmes and Western corporations don't get a look in.
>
> THE MPH MEDIA MACHINE
>
> Comic Relief's apolitical approach to Africa is deeply important
> to the
> fractious debate inside MPH. For while Bono and Geldof get the
> limelight and
> Oxfam dominates the policy agenda, it is Richard Curtis who is in the
> driving seat of MPH's all-important publicity machine.
>
> Curtis's power partly lies in the financial and human resources he
> brings to
> the campaign. He has personally ensured the bankrolling of MPH,
> convincing
> Scottish multi-millionaire business tycoon, Sir Tom Hunter, to
> donate a £1m
> to the campaign, and advertising executives to donate more than
> £4m of free
> airtime. This helped propel his ‘Click' advert worldwide in which
> global
> film and music mega-stars, like George Clooney, Bono and Kylie
> Minogue,
> kitted out in full white T-shirt and wristband regalia, click
> their fingers
> every three seconds to mark another child dying in Africa . Curtis
> has used
> his unrivalled celebrity address book to ensure that MPH's
> platforms, events
> and entire PR strategy are dripping with celebrities.
>
> While most MPH members gratefully accept that Curtis's celebrity
> support has
> been integral to the campaign's phenomenal marketing success
> (sales of the
> MPH white wristband are nearly 4 million and the website gets
> thousands of
> hits a minute), some believe it has come with too heavy a price.
> First
> there's the dubious role of Sir Tom Hunter, no ordinary sharp-dressed
> philanthropist. Worth £678m, his Hunter Foundation charity is an
> evangelical
> force behind public-private partnerships and child entrepreneurism in
> Scotland . Since 2001, it has helped fund the Scottish Executive's
> Schools
> Enterprise Programme in which the private sector helps groom
> children as
> young as five in the wonders of business.
>
> Ewan Hunter, CEO of The Hunter Foundation, rejects this
> characterisation of
> the scheme as “completely erroneous”, and claims it is “a world
> leading
> initiative” to support a “can do” attitude in children: “For the
> record we
> consult widely with the relevant trade unions, councils, governments,
> teachers and children before agreeing any investment in
> education.” Note he
> doesn't actually refute the business-child relationship.

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