AUT: ESF in London

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks.

Here's my understanding of what was going on on
Sunday.

The Sunday incident happened proximately because of
arrests on the peace/anti-capitalist demonstration.
Police had made pre-emptive arrests of four or five
people and other ESF activists wanted to announce this
to the crowd and attempt to organise some kind of
response.  Having been told by international ESF
organisers that they could, they then found the
British organisers would only let British people on
the platform!  Hence the storming of the platform.

The underlying issue is about what the ESF is to be.
This debate regarding ESF democracy, inclusiveness and
"verticals versus horizontals" has been going on for
some time.  Basically, the previous ESF's have been
organised by a wide range of groups and have been
organised internationally, in line with the
recommendations of an international ESF body.  They
were also largely horizontal, with various groups
organising their own sessions in different places, all
affiliated to the official ESF.  This was not the case
in London because Livingstone, the Mayor's Office
(mainly Socialist Action) and the SWP tried from the
start to take control of the process and take over the
ESF.

The result was a semi-official event where crowds were
largely passive, everyone had to register and submit
to bag searches, surveillance and other demeaning
practices, only a handful of "official" speakers were
allowed, events were overcrowded and the whole thing
was stage-managed.

A wide range of people have objected to this, from
other Trotskyist groups (for instance, Alliance for
Workers Liberty, who promoted the alternative ESF
events, and Workers Power, who were at the forefront
of disrupting an earlier meeting before Sunday), the
Ya Basta/Disobedientes/White Overalls factions and all
the various kinds of anarchists - in other words, a
huge swathe of the movement deemed more radical than
the official ESF organisers.

The point is that the SWP and Mayor's Office are
taking the ESF signifier and giving it a new meaning,
effectively recuperating it for capitalism.  As well
as excluding many people, they were ignoring the
international dimension - for instance, one of the
groups involved in the Sunday protest was the
translators' organisation, who were unhappy that the
official ESF had done nothing about the UK state
preventing Turkish and Kurdish translators from
attending the ESF.

In other words, the point was not about "no
platforming" Livingstone or anyone else; it was about
registering a protest against the hijacking and
mismanagement of the London ESF, and standing up for a
different interpretation of the meaning of the social
forum movement.  The Sunday intervention was not even
intended to prevent Livingstone or Jaspar from
speaking , but was more of a symbolic protest.  Given
that the hijacking of the ESF is an established fact,
and that the SWP and Mayor's Office have repeatedly
evaded criticisms and attempts at engagement for the
last six months at least, I don't see how anyone can
object to such an intervention.

The background to this is that Livingstone is not even
really a social democrat.  His faction has done very
little in terms of concrete reform since taking power;
his one flagship policy, to stop the privatisation of
the Tube (which on close examination turned out to
mean, to favour an alternative kind of privatisation
of the Tube to the one favoured by Blair), he
abandoned the moment the establishment started kicking
back.  Livingstone in particular is also widely hated
for his collaboration with persecution of
anti-capitalist protesters, especially his
condemnation of the Mayday protests and his defences
of police violence at these protests and even
encouraging people not to attend the protests.  Lee
Jasper, who was stopped from speaking on Sunday, has
also condemned Mayday.  Livingstone also sold out the
tube strike, mass slaughtered London pigeons,
pioneered a crackdown against beggars which has
criminalised begging, made a public statement after a
Fathers for Justice protest which effectively
condemned ALL disruptive civil disobedience and direct
action, and has generally acted like a ruling-class
arsewipe.

The plan on Sunday was not apparently to stop the
rally, but to register a protest by occupying the
stage for half an hour and then leaving (which is what
happened).  The protest got a good reception from the
audience, according to what has been posted from
people who were there.  The SWP and Mayor's Office
have since launched a smear campaign alleging that the
protest was all white and was racist, that people were
attacked and robbed by the protesters, etc., all
basically smears.  Livingstone meanwhile, who was
meant to speak on Sunday, didn't show - the second
time he has chickened out in the face of protests.

A previous meeting on Saturday which Livingstone was
addressing was actually shut down by the Wombles
(British White Overall group).  Earlier in the week, a
speaker from IFTU, the official Iraqi trade union, was
prevented from speaking by hecklers, because the IFTU
is basically a state-sponsored union and supports the
US occupation of Iraq.  The protesters in this case
were Iraqi exiles and some leftist supporters.  This
has also prompted a lot of debate.

Another incident was that there was to be a march in
Canary Wharf in solidarity with the struggle of
low-paid cleaners, which was banned by a Nazi judge on
the pretext that canary wharf is officially private
property.  A rally was organised to defy the ban - the
big chance to stand up to the state and make something
interesting happen at ESF this year.  But one of the
big trade unions scabbed on the protest and actually
gave out leaflets telling people not to go, and the
official ESF people did nothing to build it either.
In the end, 150 people showed up and were outnumbered
by cops and left without doing very much.  A missed
opportunity to stand up to the scumbags.  This I think
is the biggest indictment of the London ESF - that
more was not made of this opportunity to stand up for
low-paid workers and against fascistic state
repression.

Andy


		
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