1. The third European Social
Forum in London (14-17 October 2004) provided further evidence - if
more were needed - of the vitality of the altermondialiste movement.
It also confirmed - after Porto Alegre and Paris, Mumbai and Florence
- that the social forum remains an astonishingly dynamic and successful
political form. The success of the London ESF can demonstrated in various
dimensions:
-> First of all, the figures: approximately 25,000 took part in 500
plenaries, seminars, workshops, and cultural events, which were addressed
by over 2,500 speakers: the figures for pre-registered delegates show
that the participants came from right across the continent and beyond
the boundaries of even the expanded European Union:
Belgium 593
France 1,003
Germany 834
Greece 363
Italy 1,362
Poland 499
Russia 190
Spain 1,271
Sweden 170
-> The concentration of the bulk of the ESF at Alexandra Palace recaptured
something of the atmosphere of the Fortezza at Florence, producing an
intensification of energies by bringing together a large number of different
actors and debates in a confined space for two and a half days;
-> London also displayed the same interplay of mobilization and debate
that has been the driving force of all the great social forums: the ESF
culminated in a demonstration in central London of around 100,000, before
which the Assembly of the Social Movements launched a call for international
protests against neo-liberalism and war on the weekend of 19-20 March
2005.
These are all measures common to the London ESF and its predecessors.
But in certain respects, the ESF marked a significant step forward.
-> The mainstream of the trade union movement in Britain was actively
involved in both the preparatory process and the Forum itself: feedback
from various unions has been overwhelmingly positive, with reports of
highly successful seminars involving important networks of activists;
-> There was also a marked increased in participation by black, Asian,
Muslim, and refugee networks: this is an important achievement given the
Europe-wide offensive against civil liberties and the rights of migrants
and asylum-seekers;
-> There was a very rich and ambitious cultural programme;
-> The number of plenaries was sharply reduced, giving more space
to self-organized events. Moreover, the efforts to reduce the number of
plenary speakers, establish a gender balance among them, and allow more
time for discussion from the floor were quite successful;
-> My impression - and that of others to whom I have spoken - was of
a significant increase in the intellectual quality of the debate: in the
seminars that I attended I was very struck by the extent to which both
platform speakers and contributors from the floor avoided the ritual denunciations
of neo-liberalism and imperialism for serious analysis and discussion.
All these improvements did not occur randomly. They were among the aims
of those centrally involved in organizing the ESF. We are therefore entitled
to claim a fair measure of success.
The ESF in London was smaller than its predecessors in Florence and Paris,
which each attracted around 50,000 people. This is hardly surprising:
the altermondialiste movement first began to take shape in Europe with
the formation of ATTAC in France in 1998; since Genoa the movement has
been strongest in Italy. In Britain there has been a very strong anti-war
movement, but only a widespread, but diffuse anti-globalization consciousness.
The London Forum, which involved the plentiful participation of young
people and a broad coverage of all the issues of concern to the movement
in the plenaries and seminars, should, together with the mobilization
for the G8 summit in Gleneagles next July, help to transform this consciousness
into much stronger organized networks in Britain. The corporate media
in Britain are notoriously reluctant to provide serious coverage of the
altermondialiste movement, but the Guardian (18 October 2004) acknowledged
the significance of the Forum, warning that mainstream politicians are
out of touch with both the spirit, content and the style of the inclusive
non-party politics now emerging under the ESF umbrella. Any professional
politician observing the audiences of 1,000 or more people raptly listening
to debates on globalisation, the power of corporations, racism, food or
the environment would do well to reflect on the narrowness of their own
political agenda and the genuine transnationalism now clearly informing
European youth…Out of the connections being made between radically
different groups, it is possible to see in years to come the emergence
of a genuine new politics of the European left.
Of course, there were weaknesses. No one comes to London
for the food, but the food at Alexandra Palace was terrible, and terribly
expensive. The experience of the preparatory work on the programme confirms
Bernard Cassen's criticism of the first two ESFs that an enormous amount
of time and energy is devoted to deciding the subjects of the plenaries
and selecting the speakers. It will be interesting to see the experiment
at the next World Social Forum at Porto Alegre of dispensing entirely
with plenaries and having only self-organized events.
Other problems were more subjective. Some people didn't like the way in
which the division of the rooms at Alexandra Palace meant that noise from
one seminar or plenary spilled over into others. Personally, I thought
the noise was manageable and that it did have the virtue of making audible
the diversity of voices that is such a powerful feature of our movement.
2. The London ESF was accompanied by plenty of political noise. To
a significant degree this reflected the fact that our very diversity means
that there are plenty of political disagreements. For example, many comrades,
especially from France, didn't like the fact that the war in Iraq was
very prominent in London, as it was in Florence.
In part this disagreement reflects differences in national context. In
Britain the war dominates politics and is far and away the biggest mobilizing
issue. Without the prominence of the war and the leading involvement in
the ESF of the British peace movement, the Forum would have been a far
less dynamic affair, and the final demonstration would have been little
larger than the participation in the Forum itself.
But there is more involved here. The war in Iraq is also the dominant
issue in world politics. This is not simply because of the divisions that
it has provoked among the major powers. The Bush administration's unilateral
assertion of military power, the brutality of the occupation, its accompaniment
by the imposition of the full neo-liberal economic programme on Iraq -
all of this for many activists sums up what is wrong with corporate globalization.
Others - and they are particularly influential in France - disagree. They
believe there is no necessary connection between the Bush war drive and
neo-liberal globalization. I think they are mistaken, and that every day
that passes underlines the importance of understanding the links between
economic and military power that are at the heart of modern imperialism.
This is a substantive political disagreement with which we are going to
have to learn to live while working together in the same movement.
Often it is more difficult to acknowledge the significance of these disagreements
because they are presented as procedural problems. Thus a number of French
networks have complained about the fact that the platform at one seminar
were all agreed in defending the right of young Muslim women to wear the
hejab, even though this does not seem to have prevented a very vigorous
debate taking place from the floor. This seems to me like an evasion of
the real issue.
The truth is very many activists in the rest of Europe find the support
that much of the French left and union movement gave the law banning the
hejab in French state schools quite incomprehensible. ATTAC France's recent
assessment of the ESF complains about the role of 'confessional organizations'
in London. But a secularism that excludes the most oppressed sections
of French society is as communalist as any of the Islamist organizations
it denounces.
The issue of the hejab is really a symptom of the real problem, which
is how to expand our movement to embrace those at the bottom of European
society who suffer both economic exploitation and racial oppression and
many of whom, for that very reason, strongly attach themselves to their
Muslim faith. Once again, this isn't a question on which we will reach
rapid or easy agreement. But at least we should recognize the importance
of the debate, rather than take refuge in arguments about how one seminar
was organized.
3. These disagreements spilled over into several attempts at disruption.
Overall these incidents had very little impact on the ESF. The vast bulk
of events went on completely unaffected by them, and most participants
in the Forum and the final demonstration and concert didn't see them.
But both because they received some attention in the media and on the
net, and because this is the first time that an ESF has been successfully
disrupted (an attempt to attack a Socialist Party representative in Paris
was foiled by security guards), these attacks are worth discussing.
Their apologists have offered various excuses. One is the alleged lack
of democracy in the organizing process in Britain. One difficulty in this
process has certainly been that participants have very different conceptions
of democracy and often showed little tolerance of definitions different
from their own. But the real problem with the British process lay elsewhere.
At different stages this process embraced a very wide range of forces
- stretching from the Trade Union Congress and mainstream NGOs to autonomist
groups with a history of intermittent violence such as the Wombles. Holding
this coalition together would have been difficult in any circumstances.
Of course, the Italian and French comrades also have developed very broad
coalitions, but it was probably an advantage that these had been constructed
well in advance of actually organizing the ESF, so that people had an
experience of working together.
In Britain, by contrast, the altermondialiste networks that had participated
in the earlier Forums were relatively weak. A coalition had to be created
from scratch to organize the London ESF. This involved bringing together
very diverse organizations with no history of working together and huge
differences in political culture. Working together would have been hard
in any circumstances.
Nevertheless, a very heavy responsibility for the difficulties that developed
must rest with the autonomist circles. Their attitude towards the ESF
varied between outright opposition (theorized by the Wombles in a critique
of the Social Forums as inherently reformist) and variable but usually
not very constructive participation in the process (often through the
agency of various fellow travellers). Every effort was made to accommodate
them: for example, the London ESF provided an Autonomous Space along the
lines of those organized in Florence and Paris. As agreed at the European
Preparatory Assembly, all meetings of the UK Organizing and Coordinating
Committees were open. But many of those associated with the autonomists
expressed hostility to the experience of the Social Forums as mass events
and therefore to the participation of the unions and the NGOs. To have
given way here would have led to an ESF in London dramatically smaller
than any of its predecessors and confined to a self-selecting circle of
the already converted.
The case of the Iraq plenary illustrates the problem. I think it was a
mistake to have invited a representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade
Unions, which supports the Anglo-American occupation, to have spoken at
the ESF. The fact that one did was as a result of very strong support
for the IFTU from many British trade unions (the IFTU now has an office
in the headquarters of the largest union, UNISON).
The unwelcome presence of the IFTU at the ESF was thus a consequence of
building a Forum that reached deep into the mainstream of the labour movement.
The foolish decision by a handful of protestors (in this case mainly members
of British and Middle Eastern far left sects) to shout down a platform
mainly composed of the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and Iraqis
opposed to the occupation was thus a refusal to engage with this mainstream.
It represented exactly the kind of sterile sectarian politics from which
the rest of us are trying to escape.
4. The attacks made on the anti-fascist plenary and the stage in
Trafalgar Square were the work largely of autonomists many of whom are
in principle opposed to the Social Forums. In addition to claims of lack
of democracy, two other excuses were given for these actions. First of
all, the 'corporate ESF' and the support given by Ken Livingstone, Mayor
of London, were denounced.
It is hard to take this seriously. Anyone who has attended the WSF in
Porto Alegre will remember the corporate adverts welcoming delegates and
the VIP suite at the PUC. The importance of support from local government
(and indeed from political parties) is indicated by the proposal that
was made to move the forthcoming WSF from Porto Alegre after the PT lost
control of the city in November.
The pattern has been the same with the ESF. Florence received support
from the regional government. In addition to help from the municipalities
of Paris, St Denis, Bobigny and Ivry, the Paris ESF received €1 million
from the office of the right-wing Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
No one criticized the French comrades for this, presumably because we
all understood that a mass Social Forum needs money and money means compromises.
In the case of London this money was provided by a mayor who, despite
his mistaken decision to rejoin the Labour Party, has consistently supported
the anti-war movement. Why are different standards applied to London than
to the other Social Forums?
The other excuse given for the disruptions was the role of the police.
It has even been claimed that ESF organizers were responsible for the
arrests at the demonstration and in Trafalgar Square. These assertions
are entirely false and indeed libellous; but they are also ridiculous
- how could a veteran revolutionary socialist like me have any influence
over the Metropolitan Police? The comrades who have made such claims should
withdraw them at once.
It is, moreover, puzzling that some arrests rather than others have attracted
attention. For example, during the registrations at Conway Hall on Thursday
14 October a very aggressive police squad cleared Red Lion Square of the
queues and arrested a Socialist Workers Party organizer. Two Globalise
Resistance activists were stopped leaving the final demonstration under
the Terrorism Act 2000. One of them was arrested and fined £80.
An individual who appears to have been part of the group that tried to
storm the stage in Trafalgar Square was also arrested and fined the same
amount. But only his case attracted sympathy and attention, for example
from some leading French activists. Once again, a double standard seems
to be at work.
But even if the criticisms that have been made of the British organizers
were largely correct, this would not justify the introduction of violence
inside the Forum. Violence and debate are antitheses: those who believe
that diversity and discussion are among the greatest strengths of our
movement cannot tolerate attempts to settle arguments by force. Moreover,
those who bring violence into the movement bring the state in with them:
the attacks in Trafalgar Square gave the police the pretext to intervene
and arrest people. Those European comrades who have refused to condemn,
or condoned, or even colluded in the disruption of the London ESF should
reflect on the very dangerous precedent they are creating for the future.
5. It is, in any case, the future about which we need to be thinking.
The next ESF will be in Athens in the spring of 2006. What political lessons
does the experience of London offer? The most important is that, as the
Italian comrades pointed out after Florence, the great strengths of the
movement are radicality and diversity. We have managed the near-miracle
of developing a movement that embraces an extraordinarily wide social
and political range but that has mounted a challenge to capitalist imperialism
as a system. This was very evident in London: as at Florence, many of
the largest and most dynamic meetings were dominated by the politics of
the radical left.
But London also showed that combining radicality and diversity becomes
harder, not easier, over time. Important divergences have crystallized
over a variety of issues - the war, the European Constitution, the hejab,
the role of the radical left. There are also differences over how to build
the movement: some networks are much more ambivalent about involving the
trade-union mainstream than others. This last difference cuts across others:
for example, I suspect I am closer to some French comrades about bringing
in the unions than I am to some Italian comrades with whom, however, I
agree much more about the war. This makes holding together and expanding
the coalitions we are trying to build much more complicated.
We must also confront the fact that the process itself is becoming increasingly
dysfunctional. ATTAC France rightly points to the fact that attendance
at the European Preparatory Assembly has stagnated since Florence and
argues that 'the functioning of the EPA must be improved in a logic of
democratization, of representativity and of enlargement'. This is easier
said than done, particularly given the stress laid in our procedures on
meetings being open to all and deciding by consensus, which can give great
power to disruptive but unrepresentative minorities.
Hence the strains that became visible in London. We need to understand
this when we prepare for Athens. The divisions in the British process
tended to polarize between a coalition of significant social movements
and a disruptive but socially weak autonomist fringe. But there are some
four powerful forces that will need to be brought into the ESF - the Greek
Social Forum, the Genoa 2001 Campaign, the Greek Communist Party, and
the trade unions, whose leadership tend to be linked to PASOK. Only the
first two have been involved in the ESF process, and all four have a history
of mutual conflict. Bringing them together will be a big challenge for
us all.
So things are unlikely to get any easier for us - and not primarily because
of our own petty squabbles. After all, George W. Bush has been re-elected
with what he regards as a mandate to carry on waging global war and polluting
the planet. This is a reminder of the distance we have still to travel
before we can imagine having achieved any of the concrete goals adopted
in all our seminars and plenaries. But our successes - most recently at
the London ESF - leave me confident of our ability to build a movement
that can start to win real victories.
Alex Callinicos