Some people claim that this year's ESF has been a tremendous success, the likes of which has not been seen before in Britain 's recent history. Others claim that it was a sheer disaster, exposing all the worst aspects of the leftist movements. Here is a picture of people who seems to be talking about two different events.
I have been participating in the preparatory assemblies since Istanbul in March, and have followed it from the sidelines since after Paris . I had a great time at the ESF in London , I achieved some good contacts and I also learned lots. I was with a group of newcomers to the ESF process, young union activists, who went here to learn and to enforce their activities back home. Generally, they went home with useful knowledge thanks to good people who arranged good and useful seminars and workshops. Seen from this perspective, the ESF in London was a success.
At the same time, it has to be noticed that far fewer people participated in London than in Paris and Florence, and the level of conflict amongst our own ranks seemed to be far, far higher. The first fact can have lots of explanations: the ESF was more expensive, it was in the north, not in the Latin speaking south, some activists may experience ESF-fatigue, but also some might have stayed away because awareness of the problems of this year's event. Seen this way, the ESF can hardly be claimed a tremendous success, though it would also be an exaggeration to say it was a fiasco.
But on democratic terms, I will have to say we failed. And that is serious. We claim to want to create another world, and even that this is possible. But if we can''t even create a trustworthy democratic alternative within our own ranks, how can we expect people from the outside trust us to create the conditions for a more democratic world? So what created these problems?
I have been told from people who participated in the first meetings after Paris , that the “ London bid” was promoted with promises of lots of money to do a great event. Obviously, there was les money to support this year's ESF than the previous years and it wasn't possible to offer free accommodation as was done in Paris . This was not a good start of the process. Before I arrived at the preparatory assembly meeting held in Istanbul in April, I joined the ESF mailing list, expecting to get information on what was to be discussed there. I never received any. Of course this made it impossible for me to discuss the ESF with my people here.
Therefore, in Istanbul I could only talk as a private person. This way of working gives power to the “inner circle” of the process, those who have been part of the process for some time and know each other. That can hardly be claimed to be a very democratic working style.
Then I experienced a meeting where the chair never made it clear what we were discussing and what decisions were to be made. Thus, nobody could object to the purpose of the meeting, since everybody could have their own ideas, not knowing if their idea was the same as that of the next person. A sheer waste of time. This was realized after some time by the chair, who then decided to arrange a small working group meeting to prepare the next day's meeting. Only the group did not just prepare. It actually began to make the decisions of the next day's meeting. I couldn't help thinking of the “green-room” meetings at the WTO. People present in Istanbul must have been aware of this. The working group meeting wasn't much smaller than the big meeting.
After the Istanbul assembly no minutes was ever made. Of course this enforces the power of the “inner circle”, making it very, very hard for new organizations or people who are not “nerds” with political meetings to have a say in the process. This was corrected after the Paris working group meeting after strong demands from several people from NGOs from different countries. We even got an agenda for the Brussels meeting.
Unfortunately the problems with the leadership of the meetings continued. For one thing, we often seemed to use tremendous amounts of time on discussing who was to speak on which plenary, and how to merge which seminar proposals with each other, leaving very little time to discuss other issues such as, for instance, the main slogans for the demonstration. But worse: the chair did not make a great effort to lead the meetings. Thus, everyone talked about what they found important and nobody knew in detail what was being debated. The chair concluded on certain issues and left others unconcluded. I am not saying that this was necessarily a deliberate strategy. But it is clear that the result is that after a meeting, lots of issues are left with only vague conclusions or none at all. Maybe this is one of the explanations for the different opinion on issues like what decision was made on the Iraqi speaker at the Paris meeting. Whether or not, it again leaves lots of power to the inner circle and undermines democracy.
Having said this, I also have to say that certain groups within the ESF have been behaving very undemocratically. Maybe those who prevented the Iraqi speaker from speaking were doing that. But surely the people producing leaflets and placates for the demo were. For example, it was a clear decision of the ESF preparatory assembly that the main slogans of the demo should be some that covered the whole ESF: war, privatization, racism. Then on the website we saw that it was “No to Bush, no to war” and a leaflet was produced giving the impression that this was the official slogan of the ESF demo. Loads of placards were also made with Stop Bush printed on them. This despite there having been a clear – not consensus, but agreement that the elections in the US should not be at the core of our demonstration.
Maybe that's how democracy works in England . But seen from at least a Scandinavian point of view this is a major break of trust. If this had happened here, the group behind it would surely be excluded from further participation in any kind of common cooperation. Not by an authoritarian body, but just because nobody would have enough trust to cooperate with them anymore.
My conclusions are that it is fundamental to our movement and to our chances of any success in our aims that we put forward a democratic world where people, not power or money (whether from public resources or private corporations) are the sources of decision making in our society. We need to have more clear rules of how a meeting is prepared, conducted and how the decisions are made and communicated to those not present at the meeting. And we need some kind of policy about how groups can act at ESF events in order to prevent abuse like the one made at our demo.
Democracy is not only important because everyone wants to have a say in the decision-making. It is also crucial because we all might just be wrong every now and then. That is why debate and democratic deliberation leads to better decisions than power games. Our ideal should be that of Porto Alegre participatory democracy, not that of elitist Blairite England.
Lars Bohn, member of ATTAC in Denmark