[Ssf] weekly worker on Paris ESF meeting

dave thompson mpower0 at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 11 18:20:14 GMT 2005


hi
interesting article from WW on the goings on in Paris

health warning applies

'No ideas from SWP
It was interesting to see how little our comrades from
the Socialist Workers Party had to say on any of these
vital matters. SWP members in various guises
(Globalise Resistance, G8 committee, Unite, Stop the
War Coalition, etc) got up to simply talk about
whichever campaign they happen to be involved in. Most
contributions had nothing or very little to do with
the ESF. Incredibly, not one SWP comrade made a single
suggestion on the future of the ESF.'

dt

I wonder why?

Weekly Worker 558 Thursday January 6 2005
No structure and no decisions

On December 18-19, around 200 representatives from
across Europe met in Paris to discuss the future of
the European Social Forum. The overwhelming majority
agreed that the problems of the ESF London should be
seen as a wake-up call to rethink the way we organise
and work together. Unfortunately, there was not much
agreement on what changes should be made, reports Tina
Becker

In the run-up to the meeting, delegations and groups
from across Europe had published their proposals on
the future of the ESF (see Weekly Worker December 16).
The majority of proposals agreed that urgent changes
are needed on a number of levels: firstly, the way our
preparatory assemblies are conducted; secondly, the
forum itself; and thirdly - and most importantly - our
cooperation over and above our yearly (or biannual)
event.

Unfortunately, we did not even manage to come to any
conclusions on the first level of our tasks, the
organisation of our assemblies (which currently take
place every two months or so). The main reason for
this disappointing outcome lies in the way this
weekend meeting itself was organised: in short, there
was no preparation at all which might have allowed for
democratic and structured discussion - which, of
course, is the main problem with the assemblies in the
first place …

The only proposals available on the day were those
brought along - already photocopied - by the
delegations themselves. The chairs made no attempt to
shape the meeting, despite a couple of attempts from
the floor to at least adopt an outline agenda. With no
agreed structure, the meeting started at 10.45am. By
11am there were 70 people on the speakers list. In the
end, around 85 people must have spoken in that
session, which lasted all day.

Not everybody spoke on the future of the ESF. We also
heard many, many speakers who treated us to
explorations of the particular issue that they are
working on (racism, Palestine, agrarian issues, etc) -
with no direct relevance to the purpose of the
meeting, of course.

Others felt the need to talk about the London ESF,
which took place from October 14-17 2004. Fair enough:
many wanted to express their disappointment with the
undemocratic way in which the event was put together
and raise the various organisational problems
encountered during the three days. Others, like the
small sect Socialist Action (which ran the October ESF
on behalf of London mayor Ken Livingstone with an iron
fist), naturally viewed its task as that of painting
the event with a rosy gloss.
Apparently, for them the key things to mention were
the “fantastic” advances made in terms of women’s
participation, the “inclusive nature” of the event and
the “high level” of discussion on racism and
Palestine. Although most ESF activists must have by
now got used to the spin those comrades and their
allies in the Socialist Workers Party put on ‘their
event’, quite a few participants could not help
chuckling over this attempt to rewrite ESF history.
Everybody seemed quite aware that it was of course
exactly the undemocratic and exclusive manner of
organisation, the low level of debate and the lack of
any palpable outcome at the event itself which
triggered the need for this special assembly.

In the seven-hour-long meeting on the Saturday, dozens
of suggestions were made, various proposals put
forward, many ideas raised - though most of them were
desperately lacking in concreteness and addressed
vastly differing aspects of the ESF. For this reason,
this article will concentrate on the most far-going
proposal.

ESF leadership?


http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/558/esfdecisions.htm


		
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