“So, what is the point of these meetings?”
a first-time participant asked me at one of the European Preparatory
Assemblies (EPA) for the London European Social Forum (ESF) 2004. And
for a moment I had to pause and ask myself; which answer should I give,
the official answer or the unofficial one? I chose the route of compromise.
“Well, the EPA is the highest decision making body of the ESF.
The host country has to bring all the important decisions to this meeting
for approval and/or amendment. The decisions taken here are binding
for the host country and they must be followed. These meetings are therefore
rather important and can shape central aspects of the ESF itself. However,
in reality, certain people within the host country have a near complete
decision making power irrespective of what is decided here or at the
national level meetings. If any of the decisions taken here are implemented,
it will be because the key people in the host country want to see them
implemented, not because it was what the EPA decided.”
As the look of confusion swept over his face I felt
guilty for having spread cynicism rather than hope, but at times it
is hard to do otherwise. The London ESF 2004 was a lesson in the weaknesses
of our existing structures. Our structures for where decisions are made
(macrostructures) as well as our structures for how decisions are made
(microstructures) could benefit from serious examination of the on-the-ground
reality of ESF organising. This contribution has two immediate goals:
first, to highlight the gap between the official decision-making structures
and the actual decision-making structures of the London ESF 2004, and
secondly, to try to learn from these experiences in order to build stronger
organising structures for the future.
Part of this learning process inevitably brings into
question our decision-making procedures and confronts us with the reality
that thus far we have used consensus as little more than rhetoric. In
light of this, I have included an outline of some consensus decision-making
basics, which I base on years of experience teaching and using consensus
techniques among groups of all sizes.
Macrostructures: The official and unofficial loci of
decision-making power
The European Social Forum was born in 2002 at the World
Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre where the decision was taken to set
up regional social forums. Originally there were three countries interested
in hosting the ESF: Italy, France and Greece. It was decided that Italy
would host the ESF in November 2002 and Paris would host it the year
after. The semi-official structures that arose out of these two ESFs
created three or four loci of decision-making power. First, there is
a local committee set up in the city where the ESF will take place.
In the UK this was the UK Coordinating Committee (UKCC), which met every
Thursday at City Hall. This is where all practical matters involved
in organising the event can be discussed and hopefully resolved on a
regular basis. Anyone who is involved in political organising or campaigning
can be a part of this committee. This committee answers to the national
organising committee, which is the second highest decision making body
of the ESF. In the UK, this was the UK Organising Committee (UKOC).
Meetings of the UKOC were held approximately once a month. In the ESF
process, this committee is open to anyone in the country who wishes
to be involved. This is in contrast to the WSF process where the membership
of the Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) was originally closed to
all except the eight founding member organisations. In the India WSF
2004, the Indian Organising Committee was larger and organisations earned
their position on the committee by officially affiliating to the WSF.
This more open structure is now being mimicked by the BOC for the WSF
in 2005. Despite these differences, wherever the forum takes place,
all decision taken locally are expected to be reported to this national
organising committee to be approved of and/or amended. Finally, and
most importantly, there is the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA),
the highest decision making body of the ESF. These meetings are held
approximately every other month in various cities across Europe and
are open to all who can afford to get to them. These meetings create
an opening for people from all over Europe to input into the ESF process,
thereby making it a European process and not just a local event.
There is however another locus of power in the official
ESF organising process: the office. For every ESF an office space is
obtained (either by paying for it or by donation or a mix of both) and
several people are hired to staff the office. In London there were two
offices, one for the ESF and one for Babels. In all, nine people were
employed full time by the ESF company and many others who were employed
by the Greater London Authority (GLA) were working on the ESF in and
out of the two offices. In Paris, several people were paid by their
organisations or trade unions to work full time for the ESF. In addition
to these full time staff there are also many full time and part time
volunteers who work in the ESF office unpaid. The office staff is officially
there to carry out the decisions taken by the local, national and European
meetings.
These structures are the official macrostructures through
which the ESF is meant to be organised. However, after actively having
helped organise two ESFs and one WSF, it has rarely been my experience
that these structures function entirely as they are meant to. This sometimes
results in a gap arising between the official (or formal) and unofficial
(or informal) structures of the ESF organising process. Even under ideal
circumstances, in the day-to-day practice of organising an ESF there
is no one body which has final decision-making power over everything.
Nor could or should there be. Regardless of any decision-making structures
that are set up, decisions will always be taken through a variety of
different groups and people, and through a process of negotiation between
these groups and people, be it at a local, national or European level.
This has been the case in Italy, Paris and London. Nevertheless, the
London ESF 2004 witnessed a stark shift in decision-making power, where
it was not only the case that ESF structures were being adjusted for
the day-to-day organising requirements (as they have always been to
varying degrees), but also that alternative structures were being created.
In London a dual system of decision-making emerged.
For all decisions that required the release of funds or that were of
concern to the Greater London Authority (GLA), the GLA would decide
in communication with the director(s) of the ESF company. The vast majority
of all the decisions that were taken during the London ESF 2004 fell
into this category. All decisions taken by the UK coordinating committee
(UKCC) that cost over £50 were subject to approval by the GLA.
Through this structure the GLA in conjunction with the director(s) of
the ESF company had full veto power over nearly all decisions taken
by all other decision-making bodies of the ESF. The GLA had promised
to fund the ESF, but never actually donated any money to the ESF company
and so the UKCC had no budget from which to manage or allocate funds
as it saw fit. Instead the GLA maintained control over the funds themselves,
setting up a hierarchical system where funds were released on an as
needed basis by those with the authority to do so, i.e. the GLA. Consequently,
the GLA’s neoliberal top-down ‘new public management’
style of organising determined the entire ESF organising structure.
If you didn’t jump through their hoops you didn’t get your
treat.
To give just one example, in August the UKCC decided
to have a float at the Notting Hill Carnival. The UKCC felt that having
a float at the carnival would provide the ESF with a unique chance to
reach minority communities in London (the Notting Hill Carnival is an
afro-Caribbean carnival attended by nearly 1 million people). Even when
the price tag attached to this event was reduced by 60% (a savings that
was made possible by building relationships with several black community
groups who were going to share the float with the ESF), the GLA in conjunction
with one of the directors of the ESF company refused to release the
funds. A GLA representative (who had been appointed by the GLA to be
the ESF office manager), made this decision clear when she told me that,
“the coordinating committee doesn’t decide these things,
I do.” She had the valid point that we needed to look at the Notting
Hill Carnival in the context of the wider outreach budget, but this
budget was never made available to the UKCC. The result was not only
a missed opportunity to do outreach among minority communities, but
also the betrayal of the relationships that the ESF had built with local
community groups.
By way of contrast, in Mumbai during the WSF, there
was a finance committee that was responsible for releasing funds. The
members of the finance committee were also members of the Indian Organising
Committee (IOC) and therefore decisions were always taken with full
knowledge of the budget and funds were released for decisions taken
by the IOC by those responsible within the IOC. Not by an unaccountable
external government agency.
In London a second system of decision-making was in
place for all decisions that didn’t cost money or that did not
interest the GLA. Although this was a very small domain, at least the
UKCC and the respective task-specific committees, such as outreach,
culture, programme etc. could make their own decisions as long as they
did not interfere with other decisions taken by the GLA/ESF company.
For example, if the culture group wanted to arrange an Indian dance
presentation they could do so without the approval of the GLA as long
as it wasn’t going to cost money. In a conversation I had with
one of the ESF office staff, he made it unintentionally clear that there
was only one thing he was responsible for where the GLA did not have
the final word: the film festival. In both these examples, the number
of available film screens or dance spaces was determined by the GLA/ESF
company, but what occupied those spaces did not concern them as long
as the price tag remained the same. However, it should be mentioned
that if they had wanted to decide which films were showing, they would
have. On a smaller scale another example is Babels interpreter selection
and booth planification. The GLA did not understand nor care to understand
anything about the procedure for selecting interpreters or for placing
them in booths and consequently Babels could make these decisions without
explicit GLA permission. Although Babels was under daily direct line
management by a GLA representative, the only Babels decisions the GLA
could veto were ones that would require further funds to be allocated
or ones that challenged their managerial style of working (Babels often
insisted on a less hierarchical and more transparent working practice,
but these requests were always ignored. See the article by Julie Boéri
and Stuart Hodkinson in this newsletter.)
Within this second category of decisions, a further
differentiation existed between decisions which required approval by
the UKCC and decisions that did not interest the UKCC. The EPA and the
office staff were able to make decisions in areas that were not deemed
to be of political import to the UKCC or that did not require the UKCC
for implementation. In the case of the ESF and Babels office staff,
the approval of the UKCC follows the official line of accountability
where the UKCC is the decision-making body and office is an implementation
body. The Mumbai WSF office also functioned in this way, where the office
staff’s mandate was to carry out the decisions of the IOC. However,
the fact that decisions taken at the EPA or the UKOC needed to be taken
up by the UKCC (or by the GLA under the above decision-making system)
and subsequently by the ESF office in order to be put into practice
meant that in reality the UKCC was the highest decision making body
of the ESF for all matters that were not of concern to the GLA.
A good example of this is the slogans for the demonstration
at the end of the London ESF 2004. The EPA decided that the slogans
could not only be about Bush and war but also had to be about privatisation,
precarity, racism etc. The slogans were not of special interest to the
GLA, and the demonstration would cost just as much regardless of the
slogans used, so it was up to the UKCC to implement this EPA decision.
This implementation never occurred and as anyone who was at the demonstration
will have seen, the final result was a demonstration primarily against
Bush.
Unfortunately, this is not a dilemma unique to the
London ESF 2004 but rather a structural problem inherent in the official
ESF decision-making structure. Without a system of accountability for
ensuring that the decisions taken at the EPA are carried out, the local
organisers end up with de facto power over most decisions.
Microstructures: the problems with how we meet
Despite the few problems of accountability inherent
in the macrostructures of the ESF, the official structures of decision-making,
where the local committees and groups have privilege in daily decisions
while the EPA ensures input from across Europe on critical political
issues, is a rather effective and inclusive process. Unfortunately,
the form which these meetings take can often be less inclusive. The
official decision-making procedure of the social forum movement is consensus
decision-making. However, in practice, due to a misunderstanding of
what consensus is and a limited commitment to consensus, it is unclear
what the exact procedure for making decisions is at the EPA.
What is Consensus?
Despite there being many models of consensus decision-making,
some basic principles are common to all these procedures:
1. No decision can be reached unless all present are willing to accept
it. This does not mean that everyone agrees or that everyone prefers
the particular decision that is reached. It does mean that no one’s
basic moral principles are violated by the decision reached and that
they can accept the agreement as the decision of the meeting, even if
they would prefer to see a different decision taken.
2. In order to have a meeting where people are able to accept decisions
that are not their own preferred decisions, there needs to be commitment,
patience and willingness on the part of every single member of the group
to put the group first. Without this commitment and a proper understanding
of what consensus is, no group can ever reach consensus. No amount of
teaching, learning or discussing can change anything without this basic
commitment form everyone involved.
These principles need to be explained at the beginning
of every meeting and reinforced by the facilitator of the meeting or
preferably by the meeting as a whole if possible. The Social Forum movement
far too often assumes an awareness of consensus procedures that is not
there. Most powerful organisations within the ESF process are not accustomed
to working with consensus procedures as they tend to come from political
party backgrounds or trade union structures which function through a
more hierarchical and representative structure than the ESF. This lack
of familiarity on the part of the key organisers and the participants
creates a confusing atmosphere where all the weaknesses of consensus
arise and very few of the benefits. If we are really interested in working
through consensus decision-making structures then we need to be in a
constant process of teaching ourselves and others how consensus works.
Some essential procedures required for consensus are
as follows:
1. The problem or decision to be made has to be identified and outlined
for the whole meeting by the facilitator of the meeting or by the affected
parties. It is best if all relevant background information is given.
If a particular proposal is being put forth, the details of the proposal
should be clear to everyone and how this proposal was created needs
to be explained. In smaller groups it is possible to start without a
concrete proposal and to brainstorm solutions to the outlined problem,
but at larger meetings, it is usually better to only discuss issues
in reference to concrete proposals so that it is possible to have a
targeted discussion eventually reaching an altered but acceptable version
of the original proposal or a different proposal that avoids certain
identifiable pitfalls of the original proposal.
There is an obvious need for clear proposals in the
EPA process. We have now witnessed many complaints by new-comers and
old-timers alike that it is never clear what we are talking about at
these meetings; topics get interchanged with each other and there is
no system in place for keeping the interventions to one topic at a time.
Nevertheless, several important questions arise around the idea of proposal-based
discussion. The most obvious are: how proposals are written and by whom,
and when and where are they presented and to whom? It was commonplace
at UKCC meetings to have proposals brought to the meeting completely
ignored with a “we’ll come back to that” or a “you
can’t just introduce a document in the meeting when we haven’t
seen it before.” There was no clear procedure for dealing with
proposals brought to the UKCC and the result was such that proposals
by certain people were adopted without proper presentation or discussion
while others were refused or ignored, creating subcategories of legitimate
vs. illegitimate proposals depending on which side of the political
divide the proposal came from. The situation was so dire that when a
proposal was presented to the UKCC (often after having been circulated
by email), it was refused on the grounds that providing a written and
photocopied proposal and distributing it at the UKCC meeting was an
“unacceptable way to make a proposal.” When I interrupted
the argument to ask what the acceptable way to make a proposal was,
no one could tell me. Although it did become clear over time that the
‘acceptable’ way of making a proposal was to claim to represent
as many people as possible (preferably the oppressed) and to have membership
of particular political organisations/parties. If we would like to have
an inclusive ESF organising process, we obviously have to consider all
proposals equally, even when brought forward by politically less powerful
organisations/people within the ESF process. Proposals cannot be branded
as illegitimate or ill timed.
2. The first interventions to be taken after the proposal
is read should be points of clarification. Any questions people have
about the proposal take priority over people who are offering their
opinion about the proposal. After this, people who have problems with
the proposal are first asked to explain their reservations before any
further interventions are made in favour of the proposal. If it seems
that the majority of the people are opposed, the proposal needs to be
re-written entirely and a small group (made up of a few people who are
opposed to the proposal and one of the original authors of the proposal)
should leave the meeting to do this. The large meeting then carries
on discussing another issue until the revised proposal can be put forward.
If the majority of the people are for the proposal, those who have reservations
need to state their positions to the entire meeting and if these changes
are minor they can be made in a small group (again outside the large
meeting, with all those who have reservations or amendments and some
of the original authors of the proposal). If agreement cannot be reached,
and the objections are not objections with fundamental moral implications,
disagreement must be noted and the meeting proceeds to another issue.
Every time a new proposal is reached, it must be re-presented to the
large meeting for approval and/or further adjustments. Again, the adjustments
themselves can be made outside the large meeting. There is usually no
need for more than a few statements in favour of the given proposal
except in as far as they clarify the proposal or are in direct response
to the suggested amendments and reservations voiced. If it becomes apparent
that there is enough opposition to the proposal for it to require extensive
defence, a new proposal needs to be written. In this way a situation
is avoided where long queues of people speak for and against a proposal
that is not satisfactory to anyone or for a proposal to which no one
is opposed.
3. Once an amended proposal is put forward, the facilitator
needs to check for consensus. In order to do this, the facilitator first
re-states the proposal and then asks if anyone is opposed to the proposal.
If no one opposes, the facilitator can ask, ‘do we have consensus?’
if there are still no objections after a moment or two of silence, the
decision is official. At this point it helps for the facilitator to
re-state the proposal once again so everyone is clear what has been
decided. If on the other hand, there is opposition to the proposal,
the facilitator can ask those opposing to stand aside and let the group
decision go through and offer to minute the non-support and the specific
reservations. Under extreme circumstances, those expressing opposition
can use a ‘block.’ A ‘block’ is a powerful tool
in consensus decision making that in theory ensures that all people
present are included and have some power over the decisions being made
and not just the loudest or most articulate people. However, a ‘block’
should almost never be used and this should be made clear to everyone
involved at the start of every meeting. A ‘block’ is only
used when someone’s fundamental moral principles are being ignored
by the decision taken and only when the person blocking is directly
going to be affected by the decision made (i.e. you cannot block a decision
unless that decision in some way binds you personally to act in a way
that violates your principles, and even then it might be better to find
a way out for yourself rather than block the group.) If a block is felt
by the meeting as a whole to be disingenuous, the meeting can decide
to overturn the ‘block’, to ‘counter block,’
and to go forth with the decision reached.
Although no recognisable consensus procedures were
ever used in the UKCC, certain individuals who had the power to do so,
did block group decisions on occasion. This is where the danger of consensus
without consensus can be clearly seen. When there is a dramatic power
inequality between the various members of a group (as there was in the
UKCC) and when there are people prepared to take advantage of that power
inequality, a ‘block’ can become the death of the group.
In the case of the ESF, anytime a block is used after much discussion
and under circumstances other than the above mentioned emergency circumstances
the chair/facilitator should give all the non-blocking members of the
group a chance to collectively overturn the block.
4. In all discussions people who have not spoken yet should be privileged
and allowed to speak before others. In the case of the EPA it might
be worthwhile to limit to total number of interventions each person
is allowed to make in order to ensure that everyone chooses their words
and the interventions wisely.
Is there any hope for consensus in the European Social
Forum process?
The problems the EPA has faced in using consensus decision-making
procedures are not new problems and are quite common to consensus in
any group as large and diverse as the EPA. Ideally with such a large
group based across such vast geographical distances, a spokes council
system could be put in place where small groups meet in a decentralised
fashion all over Europe to discuss the set agenda and then people selected
by each smaller group to temporarily represent them go to the larger
meeting. This would create a process which could include more than only
those among us who are able to travel and who are brave enough to speak
in a large room on a microphone. The small meeting size and the locality
make it psychologically and physically more accessible to everyone.
This structure has worked for much larger groups than the EPA, including
the organising of the successful WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.
But if this sounds too drastic a change for us, it
can be kept much simpler. For some very useful and practical suggestions
as to how to improve the consensus procedure of the EPA without any
major structural changes, see the proposal that was circulated by some
Scandinavian participants entitled, “Could we have better meetings?”
reproduced in this newsletter. This proposal was never acted upon at
any EPA meeting. However, were it to be taken up it could transform
our micro organising structures into far more effective decision-making
instruments than they are today. Unfortunately the chances of this proposal
being taken up by the EPA are very small.
While I have seen genuine good will on the part of
most people participating in organising the ESF, there is not a commitment
by everyone to put the group first or to consensus, despite it being
one of the guiding principles of the ESF. And what commitment there
is diminishes day by day. In Paris we witnessed a struggle to use consensus
decision-making without a very good sense of how it worked, but with
a genuine commitment to making it work. Since then, even the way the
word ‘consensus’ is treated has shifted greatly. Whereas
in Paris ‘consensus’ was used as a powerful word to invoke
shared values, in London it was perceived by many of the key organisers
as a problematic word used mostly by trouble-makers. If the EPA wants
to decide not to use consensus as a decision-making process and to place
value instead on another type of meeting or structure, then we should
do so, but it must be clear.
In London the biggest impediment to consensus was the
lack of understanding and motivation to use consensus decision-making
methods by those who had the power within the London ESF 2004 process.
This lack of commitment to the principles of the ESF led to distrust
and deep divisions across Europe. Implementing the above structures
would go a long way to improving our meetings, but no structures can
save us from an environment of hostility and selfish intentions. Our
only real hope is if everyone commits to treating each other with respect.
If this commitment cannot be reaffirmed by the European process in 2005
and beyond, consensus will indeed remain a waste of time and we should
make our first priority redefining what decision-making procedures we
would like to use instead. Perhaps we should just flip coins.
Marianne Maeckelbergh