London, whilst transient and humming with the passage
of political through-traffic, is also home to a retinue of political
inspiration of its own. This ranges from the grassroots DIY cultures
of environmental, anti-roads and direct action groups, to carnivalesque
critiques confronting the precarities of daily life, the reclamation
of space and autonomy from which diverse voices challenge present realities,
and everyday experiences of alternative forms of self-organisation.
Living elements of newly emergent political cultures
ebb and flow through the city alongside remnants of past visions and
action. Perspectives progress and mature, merging with influences from
the global southern movements and the restless movements and borders
of Europe. So when the European Social Forum (ESF) was solicited to
come to London back in 2003, despite initial concerns, many activists
and social movements in the UK lent optimism to a project that would
enrich and diversify our existing movements. Perhaps as well as intimating
that “another world is possible” we could hear it knocking
at the door.
That admirable optimism was short-lived, however. Those
of us who saw our struggles not merely as a three day event but as part
of a wider social change through the rejection of domination and control
by questioning the legitimacy of existing power structures; those of
us who celebrate autonomy and define our processes though our actions
and networks of exchange and diversity, were soon to discover that the
door painted in the global colours of the ESF would very soon be closed
in our faces and bolted from the inside.
What Principles?
The worlds of the mega-social forums from Porto Alegre to Florence have
broad and pluralistic definitions through the sophistic guidance of
a Charter of Principles, developed and set out from the World Social
Forum process in 2001. These principles conceive social forums as spaces
of “diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party
contexts that, in a decentralised fashion, interrelate organisations
and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to
the international to build another world.”
However, worrying trends emerged in the formative stages
of the UK ESF process which raised questions about the motivations of
the groups holding the reins of the event, namely Socialist Action,
the Socialist Workers Party and the Greater London Authority (GLA).
We quickly witness a lack of spaces for open dialogue, the delegitimisation
of local working groups (including the London Social Forum), vertical
company structures for the event and, most disturbingly, the silencing
of dissent in the process and non-consensus based decisions. The UK
ESF was sold as a gathering for those opposed to war, racism and corporate
power, global justice, workers' rights and a sustainable society”
but essentially it became a giant market place of commodified politics,
with blatant backroom dealing in seminars and the privatisation of the
event management.
The ESF organisers, almost entirely from political
parties, claim that “the process was entirely inclusive with every
shade of opinion and viewpoint within the global social justice movement.”
Whilst the cumulative impact of the ESF was substantial, the collective
efforts to shape the ESF came in the pre-packaged polemics of the traditional
left parties with recruitment drives and little sense of the linkages
or relevancy to autonomy and the grassroots. The mistrust of the non-standardised,
non-card carrying organisations and the installation of rank and file
power hierarchies meant the effective rejection of self-organised, self-managed
and autonomous intervention. Without the relevant credentials and party/union
card mandating us to participate, we were sans papiers in a new terrain
of (in)vested power.
Although the word autonomy is not part of the Charter
of Principles, “pluralism and to the diversity of activities and
ways of engaging” is. For many activists who work within anti-authoritarian
practice the basis of the ESF moved from what could have potentially
been a broard-based grassroots, self organised gathering, in collaboration
with unions, NGOs and local MPs, to a financially and governmentally
backed select committee through which working together meant a radical
rejection of political articulation and practice, which most were not
prepared to relinquish.
Activists who did attempt to intervene in the ESF process
to democratise the structures of control and exclusion were labelled
“wreckers” and “anarchists.” The “Horizontals”
was a term coined at around this intervening time as a polar opposite
of the vertical structures of the ESF process. Though a few horizontals
remained in the process to fight for the adherence to the Charter of
Principles or fight for open spaces within the organising process, many
saw the creation of autonomous spaces outside the ESF as a new space
for convergence.
Opening up alternatives
So as one door closed, new doors were opened during the ESF preparations.
These were doors that had been opened with crowbars. The coffee served
was fair-trade Zapatista and the discussions were facilitated, not chaired.
These were the doors of occupied social centres, campuses and town halls.
Many discovered that by unlocking these doors and working with each
other in very much more self-organised ways a stronger, more fluid and
diverse socialised (rather than socialist) forum was possible. For many
grassroots activists the development of autonomous spaces was the manifestation
of participation though collective action. As spaces they represented
exploratory forms of direct democracy, respect for diverse forms of
political articulation and finding communality in our various forms
of organising and difference.
The autonomous spaces (AS) were initiated by loose
collectives that had disengaged with the ESF, deciding to meet and shape
alternatives for the Forum participants outside of the official ESF
process. The variety of the initial groups that met included Horizontals,
Wombles, Indymedia, LetsLink, creative interventionists (Lab of ii),
carnival, urban, creative forums and clowns. It was a mix of people
more used to supporting each others’ tactics and actions through
solidarity rather than all-out collaboration.
The ASs did not have, nor represent, one single unified
position on the ESF. However, they thrashed out and agreed on the general
principle of standing some way outside of the official ESF process –
whether that was one-foot-out or both.
Although highly critical of the organising process,
many saw the ESF as a space to network with people and then take their
dialogues to open, non-fee-paying spaces. In contrast, others saw the
ESF as fundamentally flawed, merely representing a space for the co-option
of real struggles. Defining our group territories in this broad landscape
and shaping our boundaries without creating borders took time. It was
not an easy process and should not be idealised, but it was at least
open and honest. Over the summer we carved out our association through
sharing resources, time and energy. We collectively imagined a world,
not an event, that went beyond the ESF, in life without capitalism sharing
our commons, refusing a ‘pay to say’ mentality, and freeing,
in all manner, our messages.
AS a daily experience
For such a diverse bunch of activists, many of whose involvement coincided
with existing projects like running social centres, the time it took
to set up our various projects was limited. We developed our working
collaboration in a decentralised manner working through online wiki
pads, email lists, phone calls and regular meetings. Working via these
methods, the attempt to agree on a common callout was a highlight…!
This involved trying to explain and understand our own ‘differences’
as a source of strength whilst finding ways to transmit this to audiences
traditionally looking for ‘unity’ and ‘sameness’.
The AS meeting points were occupied social centres, away from the closeted
safety provided by the metal detectors and body searches at City Hall,
which was the meeting place imposed on the ESF process to suit the busy
agendas of GLA officials. While the social centre environments were
vibrant and rooted in local actions and participation, they were also
subject to state scrutiny by police photographers and intelligence teams.
Our meetings of mothers, academics, media workers, participatory economists
and pranksters were described to curious by-passers by the police standing
in front of the doors as full of ‘radical political extremists’.
Of course, this encouraged quite a few adventurous people to drop in
who, upon seeing the criminalisation of ‘normal people’,
offered their support!
As we began looking at the variety of limited spaces
on offer in London, aside from occupied social centres, one of the groups,
the Wombles, decided to find an area large enough for a convergence
space. With the collaboration of Middlesex University Students Union
they managed to put on a five-day/night event for several thousand people
with presentations, workshops and discussions from groups all over Europe.
It was “Part conference, part direct action, part celebration
of self-organised cultures of resistance”. Significantly, one
of their main focuses was on precarity, with this space playing host
to the first ‘Assembly Of Europe’s Precariat’ as well
as well as the VOICE Refugee Forum.
As we began socialising our physical spaces volunteers
from Indymedia London, as one of the groups fully engaged in the autonomous
spaces, also tried to petition the ESF organisers to utilise the movement’s
media and networked resources in the same way. We urged them to decentralise
the ESF working lists, to socialise the communication tools and to utilise
alternative and community media groups. Most of these points were ignored
by the official process, however, including the suggestion of setting
up Internet cafes and delegate resource centres at Alexandra Palace.
So after multiple attempts, Indymedia turned its attention to working
autonomously not only with ASs but also with NGOs engaged in advocating
communication rights. This coalition highlighted the need for an activist
gathering of thousands to address the issue of the freedom to communicate.
Working with NGOs was often difficult for a group with very open networks,
and potentially confusing information channels, non-9-5 working hours
and exploitable energy. However, the result was that we managed to create
a looser form of collaboration, which resulted in a wider understanding
of communication as it moved from the margins to become a more central
theme. The Camden Centre played host to four days of discussion on tactical
media and communication rights as well as free internet and a media
centre. Meanwhile, the wider collaboration and relationships built with
Communication Rights advocates turned into a very real node of critical
support when, as a result of an unrelated incident, Indymedia’s
servers were seized during the ESF preparations by the FBI.
One of the political advancements of the AS was to
gain the right to be in the official programme of the ESF, in order
to reach those who were just coming for those days, young people who
normally would only see the gilt facade of the event. However, to better
visualise the breadth of the autonomous spaces a separate newspaper
was created that gave readers a topographical vision of the spaces,
with bright pink arrows as our signposts. Mapping our alternatives gave
many people working on the autonomous spaces a sense of just how far
and wide we had decentralised our spaces and participation. We didn’t
just occupy buildings; we also occupied the streets. Most people in
the queues for the official ESF took the papers, not only out of interest
but because it was “free people, free spaces, free paper”
- free as in freedom, not just without cost.
However, one common and very real problem the autonomous
spaces shared with the official organisers of the ESF was the problem
of accommodation. To house thousands the ESF hired the imposing eyesore
of the Millennium Dome. To deal with the many that also needed free
spaces outside of the mass convoys of organised coach groups, the ASs
occupied a dilapidated, abandoned second campus. Within a few days there
was music, water, electricity and vegan food. The use of the AS accommodation
space was negotiated for use with low-waged security guards sympathetic
to the rigors of precarious work, rather than with the failed suited
guardians of a defunct big top.
Ultimately in whatever form, the AS’s strove
for a horizontal social dialogue amongst all participants in the ESF.
People that spent time at, or came specifically to the AS’s, shared
their struggles and resistance strategies. How to create free transport,
liberate goods and services, mobilise for campaigns, use free software
and dissections of radical theory. They found actions to support the
border crossing of ‘stateless peoples’, questioned consumption,
the sterile, styrofoam environs of Alexandra Palace and clowned about
in parody at the March for Capitalism.
A truly internationalist spirit stood in contrast to
the discussions about national quotas of speakers that occupied much
of the ESF process for months. ‘Big name’ speakers were
not the main priority at the AS. People came to exchanges real experiences,
stories and plain words with validity and legitimacy born of their presence
and action. We saw this as a way to effectively build networks all over
Europe and broaden our movements in the UK.
Some of the clear differences between the ESF and the
AS emerged out of the months of preparation. Many different political
groups answered the AS call out for participation and were able to suggest
seminars they would like to partake in and self-organise without speculating
whether they’d survive an official cull or forced merger. Groups
like the Dissent network, which had issues of non-representation in
‘official’ seminar panels and indecision on its participation
in the ESF, were able to hold a ‘Day of Dissent’ at the
AS in a much more lateral position. The issue of work was also taken
up from a completely different angle. At the ESF, union officials were
trying to find out how to survive in the wake of the waning of Fordist
modes of production: how to organise globally, how to engage the younger
generation. At the AS, those young people from all over who attended
the Assembly of the European Precariat were reclaiming Flexicurity and
trying to make sense of their own life conditions as some of the first
European generations without pensions since war times.
Environmental issues suffered from a lack of grassroots
involvement in both places, despite the effort of some committed activists
from NGOs. It would however be fair to say that the AS had a more honest
integration of green and red, as many in the official ESF only paid
lip service to environmental issues, dishing them out on non-recycled
paper and plastic overkill.
The process of decentralisation in the AS worked for
organising hundreds of workshops all over London, but it did suffer
from a lack of cohesion during the event, which meant a more ‘pick
and mix’ choice of participation. But with the ESF in town, choice
was an aspect of everyone’s experience. Not being in one central
place did mean that we were sometimes at odds with each other, on the
one hand running our particular AS and the other really wanting to participate
in someone else’s. We bonded over the action of creating the AS,
rather than the actual experience of coming together during the AS.
As a result, we experienced at the same time both an amazing, movement-building
experience and a loss of wider integration.
One of the main areas of difference between the AS
and the official ESF was the empty vacuum left after the ESF at Alexandra
Palace closed its doors. We may bump into some old friends on days of
action sanctioned by the Assembly of the Social Movements, we may look
at London, then the ESF in Greece as spaces where we feel our movements
legitimised by those who would speak in our name … but ultimately
our doors still remain open everyday. The social centres may have different
facades, the servers may be new and we may look a little more ragged,
but our approach to strengthening and building our social movements
remains as potent before, during and after the circus came to town.
Annie Bodie