A group of AWL members are attended the 4th European Social Forum here in Athens.
This 4th ESF is smaller than its predecessors with approx 10,000 people registered (50,000 was the figure given for the first ESF in florence in 2006)
Notably from Britain after the previous ESF in London there is no significant Trade Union prescence (speaking at seminars, organising delegation meetings, playing and coordinating with european sister unions etc)
Although about 40 unison activists are at the event mainly from the Northern and London regions or attending as individuals.
The event is an opportunity to bring together activists from the left, trade unions and campaigns, but the problem appears to the be lack of achievements since previous ESFs.
It could provide an opportunity for socialists and trade unionists to coordinate activity against the attacks faced by all from neo liberalism, privatisation and attacks on our class. But this still seems quite far off. At present it is an interesting event an opportunity to meet new activists, talk to other european socialists and trade unionists, and discuss ideas. This is important as much of the left in Britain is very poor at discussing with those who disagree. But unfortunately many of the big rallies have little time for discussion from the floor and there is not really a focus on big debates where socialists and trade unionists disagree.
The event should also be a possibility for discussing the coordination of campaigns against privatisation for strike action against attacks on public services, but again this seems far off.
Nevertheless AWL members have organised or participated in various sessions of the ESF.
DAY ONE:
The day started with our own meeting on the EU constitution and the left response. (Despite the lack of organisation of the event meaning that few had registered in advance and many people could not get into the event in the morning)
There was an interesting debate around the need for a workers europe not choosing between the pro-nation, pro-european capitalist camps
Unfortunately much of the left has still got a long way to travel to overcome nationalism. THe Swedish Left party arguing for no to euro or greater european unity, because of fears of not being able to win across europe but only a small local nation state level.
We also attended an excellent meeting on Working class movement and fundamentalism on which i will report later.
Got to go .
Ed
Comments
more from esf (sorry for delay)
Day 2 of ESF
I attended a session on workers in eastern europe and especially issues of women garment workers, including reports from Clean Clothes campaign on research done in east europe where many big names in Europes high street (H&M, Zara, C&A, Marks & Spencers etc) were using sweatshop, unionised labour.
This was followed by a session on Corporate Power including speakers from No Sweat, War on Want, Baby Milk Action, World Development Movement and Sinaltrainal (trade union representing Coca Cola workers in Colombia)
This session allowed a discussion on key issues such as boycotts (when they make sense as a campaigning tool) and legilsation versus workers power.
Unlike many of the sessions at the ESF where you are hearing many speakers agree, without clarifying differences, this sessions saw some disagreement and debate which was useful in developing strategies.
There was agreement on supporters boycotts when supported by trade unions and workers on the ground (such as Coca cola workers in colombia) and these were the boycotts that No Sweat supporters were involved with.
There was less clarity about the key demand of a campaign being a boycott. For instance War on Want and other speakers talked about campaigns to win rights for workers in Walmart. A speaker from the floor spoke of her visit to the US and attending a campaign by US unions against Walmart's practices titled "Bringing slavery into the 21st century" but this campaign was not to boycott Walmart, but to win rights for the workers, working with the unions.
On the issue of legislation against corporate power there was again some debate, some speakers called for a legal response to corporate power, legislating across europe to stop the powers of big corporations, but others identified the role of capitalism in creating profits off the backs of workers, and that the only answer to this was a strong workers movement able to unionise workplaces, defend communities and services. Laws will have loop holes, be replaced, or be impossible to win without a workers movement to demand them. So at least argued for by No Sweat and AWL supporters it was argued that workers movement has to be central not legislation.
Evening of Day 2 - autonomous playground and more
Back with activists from Unison northern region in the evening, it seems that everyone is having a great time and feeling politicised.
There was some discussion about why British workers were not fighting back in the way the french were. And why our union leaders had called off action on pensions without any victory so far, and French workers and students took to the streets and coordinated further action.
Representatives were hopeful that some european unity on a more rank and file level would be possible across public sector unions who were taking part in the public sector sessions at the ESF, there was interest in developing the proposal for european joint activity in defence of public services, and even talk of an ESF on public services for the future.
As the older trade unionists were settling in at the hotel bar, or heading for their beds. I headed off for the "Autonomous Playground" (see autonomousplayground.org)
This is where the 'horizontalists' organise, camp and get drunk... its for those in the 'social movements' who don't like structures and hierachy... so i went along with the youngist person on our delegation (the 22 year old son of my branch secretary) and we met up with really interesting folk from German, Greece, Ireland, Canada/ Amsterdam.
We got free Mojitos, much cheaper beer than in bars, and found out more about what going on in campaigns and initiatives that you would have found out in many of the workshops.
Speaking to someone in Attac - Germany, i was told that noone in Attac - Germany believes in the Tobin Tax, and that Attac was just a non-party vehicle that took off because it was there at the right time. Everyone thought that No Sweat sounded like a great initiative and had no problem with working to build strong trade unions rather than boycotting everything.
I met some people from Ireland, who had met Sacha and other students involved in Education not for Sale network (Owen says hi sacha if you reading this)
In fact the people all seemed interested in our politics and not at all sectarian as much of the left is in Britain.
So we left at 5.30am having had some fun at the playground and realising that the ESF has many different spaces and discussions going on.
More later on the demo, the riot police, being tear gassed, and response to the BNP election results in unison etc
Demo in Athens on Sat 6 May 2006
In reply to Evening of Day 2 - autonomous playground and more by Newcastle
A regular feature of the European Social Forums was the demonstration on the saturday afternoon.
These are just some personal thoughts or comments on the day.
It seems unclear how the demonstration has been built beyond the ESF, although a lot more than the 10,000 at the ESF attended the demo (30,000 - 50,000 who knows?) Even at the ESF the demo appears to be called under the slogans of the ESF - not to racism, war and neo-liberalism. So the demo seems like a very big rally.
We join the union and international section and the front, and it is obviously a good turn out. But although it great to see the banners, i feel unsure quite what we are uniting for. The slogans tend to mask the differences between the groups and individuals rather than clarify it. And not understanding many other languages, let alone the greek alphabet makes it hard to see what other peoples slogans are.
Behind us were a small group of Russian Communists, young but with slogans that appear to be stalinist. Boris Kagarlitsky was with them. But it like others is unclear what they are for.
Then out of nowhere some young blokes with gas masks appear with molotov (not sure how its spelled) cocktails and chuck them at a building near a line of riot police. The people with me from Unison all older than me, head up off a side street and we hear tear gas shots from behind us.
The fifteen or so of our group were very unlucky. If we had been a thousand people ahead or behind on this slow moving march we may not have known this had happened other than the sight and smell of tear gas in the air..
So we left the march for a while and rejoined it later on. To see that there had been similar kickings off at the US Ambessy.
Its difficult to see the role of the police as other than confrontational. The tear gas wouldnt have stopped those with the homemade cocktails, cos they had gas masks... it would just anger the crowd.
On arriving back in the centre, the rally is over ??? We had down into touristy Plaka for a drink cos the tram stop is crowded if running. We see many shop fronts smashed up. And a heavy police prescence.
Talking with others back at our hotel many think the riots was anarchists, others think it was a police set up to discredit the demo and the esf in greece. The later seems possible.
Searching the web though you find webpages celebrating the 'taking on' the greek state... some victory ? a couple of burnt out buildings and a few smashed up police cars... but who knows.
The problem is the left seems in a less radical way just a political confused as these who set fire to cars and smash windows... it seems unclear what either of them are actually fighting for.
The need for independent working class socialist politics seems stronger than ever...
And meanwhile back in the UK? Respect? It's a bit depressing
Declaration of the Assembly of the Movements of the 4th ESF
This is the text adopted by the Assembly that took place on the day after the Athens ESF. The Assembly is a kind of permanent assembly of a body that - according to the founding principles of the World Social Forum, which the European Social Forum has accepted - isn't supposed to have a a permanent assembly! It agrees some campaigning plans for the period until the next ESF takes place.
Declaration of the Assembly of the Movements of the 4th European Social Forum
Athens 7th May 2006
We, women and men from social movements across Europe, came to Athens after years of common experiences, fighting against war, neoliberalism, all forms of imperialism, colonialism, racism, discrimination and exploitation, against all the risks of an ecological catastrophe.
This year has been significant in that a number of social struggles and campaigns have been successful in stopping neoliberal projects suck as the proposed European Constitution Treaty, the EU Ports Directive, and the CPE in France.
Movements of opposition to neoliberalism are growing and are clashing against the power of trans-national corporations, the G8 and organizations such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, as well the neo-liberal policies of the states and the European Union.
Important political changes have materialized in Latin America that have shaken the neo-liberal offensive, and in some of them popular mobilizations managed to reverse the privatization process.
The current situation is full of opportunities but also dramatics dangers. Opposition and resistance to the war and occupation of Iraq have exposed the British and US strategy as a failure. The world is facing the nightmare of a new war in Iran. The arbitrary decision of the EU to cut funds to the National Palestinian Authority is unacceptable and exacerbates the whole situation. The oppression of Kurdish people has still not come to an end.
Conservative forces in the north and the south are encouraging a “clash of civilization” aimed at dividing oppressed people, which is in turn producing unacceptable violence, barbarism and additional attacks on the rights and dignity of migrants and minorities.
Although the EU is one of the richest areas of the world, tens of millions of people are living in poverty, either because of mass unemployment or the casualization of labour. The policies of the EU based on the unending extension of competition within and outside Europe constitute an attack on employment, workers and welfare rights, public services, education, the health system and so on. The EU is planning the reduction of workers’ wages and employment benefits as well as the generalization of casualisation.
We reject this neo-liberal Europe and any efforts to re-launch the rejected Constitutional Treaty; we are fighting for another Europe, a feminist, ecological, open Europe, a Europe of peace, social justice, sustainable life, food sovereignty and solidarity, respecting minorities’ right and the self-determination of peoples.
We condemn the witch-hunts and criminalization of alterglobal and other progressive movements in Eastern and Western Europe.
We emerge from the ESF in Athens having made a step towards a better coordination between Eastern and Western movements, with a common determination to fight for peace, jobs, and secure existence. We will promote our agenda of European campaigns and mobilization on the main issues of our common platform developed in the ESF networks.
We need to coordinate our work, to define an effective strategy for the next period, and to strengthen and enlarge our movements.
We call on all the European movements to open a large debate in order to decide all together new common steps during the next months within the framework of the ESF process.
Some very important events are already on the agenda:
· We will mobilize for a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, against the threat of a new war in Iran, against the occupation of Palestine, for nuclear disarmament, to eliminate military bases in Europe and we call for a week of action from 23 to 30 September 2006.
· We appeal for a international day of action and mobilization the 7th of October 2006 in Europe and Africa, for a European unconditional legalization and equal rights to all migrants; for the closure of all detention centres in Europe, for the stop to externalization, for the stop to deportations; against the precariousness and for the uncoupling of the link between resident permit and the labour contract, for a residence citizenship.
· We will mobilize against the casualization and the dismantling of public services and for the social rights coordinating our struggles in the whole Europe in the next months.
In January 2007, the ESF will meet in Nairobi. The growth of the African social movements is crucial for the world. Building for the WSF will be an opportunity to fight against European exploitation and neo-colonialism.
In June 2007, there will be a meeting of the European Union Council and a meeting of the G8 at Rostock in Germany after the one in St Petersburg in July this year. We will seize the opportunity of these occasions for a general convergence of our struggles.
Public Services Statement from ESF
At ESF i went with some unison folk to a meeting to launch a public service network to link activists across europe opposing privatisation and attacks on public services. It agreed to a european seminar in the autumn... see statement below.. though think its been amended since this was an early draft
Ed
ATHENS’ STATEMENT
ANOTHER EUROPE WITH PUBLIC SERVICES FOR ALL
BECAUSE common public goods and services are important social elements, in that they constitute an essential tool in social and territorial solidarity, in the redistribution of social wealth, in sustainable society and in the exercise of citizen’s rights
BECAUSE with the affirmation of the neo-liberalistic social model in the ‘80’s of the so called “single market construction”, public goods and services have been undergoing an offensive aiming at transforming them into economic assets and goods that must obey market rules
BECAUSE public services have long since been under attack at all levels:
a) on a global level, by international trade agreements such as the Gats (General Agreement on Trade of Services), endorsed by member States of the WTO (World Trade Organization). The agreement provides for the liberalization of services, opening up to private investment and “competition” of 160 sectors, among which water, energy, transportation, education and health. Other similar bi- and multilateral agreements between states like the EPAs (Economic partnership agreements) are strenghtening further this logic.
b) at the European level, because of different policies, which are leading directly or indirectly to deregulation and that are promoted by the European treaties, the Lisbon strategy, judgements by the ECJ (European Court of Justice) and various sectoral and crosssectoral directives, among which the Bolkestein directive project is the latest striking exemple.
c) at national level, through the various political welfare reforms and modernisation carried out by the various Governments together with economic choices that favors mostly profit driven enterprises even in the most competitive countries and branches, the promotion of public/private partnerships (PPPS), which threaten public ownership infrastructure and core public services and further tax cuts that are generating erosion of the financial basement of public services.
d) at the regional and local level, by not providing the necessary means to allow citizens and local authorities to decide on their own how public services should be organized.
BECAUSE, the European Union has the obligation to play a role of primary importance in implementing the “European Social Model”, in which public services constitute an essential part, in order to fight the roots of global economic and social inequality that are threatening the very survival of the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. For that purpose, the EU has to abandon its neoliberalistic policies.
UPON THESE PREMISSES
We, men and women members of associations, trade union organizations, social and political movements, institutional representatives, have committed ourselves to the struggle against the World Trade Organization and the GATS Agreement, to the withdrawal of the Bolkestein Directive project on services and to the directives that go further into liberalizing and privatizing public services.
Knowing that, thanks to the counter power we have been able to exercise, the Bolkestein project has been modified in some of its unacceptable essential aspects. Nevertheless, we consider that most of the “compromise” is still pro-liberalization in a field of services that is crucial to the idea of ‘common goods’. For this reason, we will continue to challenge the neoliberal agenda in Europe.
AWARE of the need to bring together our experiences, our knowledge and our struggles to oppose the attacks brought forward by the great political and financial elite, AWARE of the need to amplify social mobilization and to develop proposals to counter neoliberalistic policies, AWARE of the need to relaunch a new public space from the bottom for social rights and labour which are founding and unrenounceable elements in a social Europe and for peace.
WE HAVE DECIDED, at this IV European Social Forum of Athens, to confirm our commitment against the principle of liberalistic and therefore to open a new phase of struggle with the aim of deciding - at both European and National level - the cultural, social and political-institutional conditions for the definition and the regulation of services designated to guaranty universal access to fundamental rights, entrusted by public ownership and administration, and free of whatever form of total or partial liberalization and privatization.
To this aim, we therefore decide:
a) to constitute ourselves into a European network for public services;
b) to launch a campaign for European public services, with objectives and practices commonly decided, set out from a number of unrenouncable characteristics, such as: universality, accessibility, equal access, continuity and quality of service, solidarity, democratic control, social participation, quality employment/labour rights.
Therefore, WE COMMIT OURSELVES :
to create and develop in each country a National Coordination for public services, open to all organizations and social movements, to political and trade union organizations that share the goals of the present statement, for the defence and for the promotion of public services at local and national level.
to develop the European Network for public services, based on European convergences of the national coordinations and the different existing networks, which will be a tool to promote and develop initiatives, mobilizations and campaigns.
to develop alternative policies and strategies for public services.
to build links through direct support, twinning and seminars/workshops between older, newer and incoming European countries and with developing countries.
WE PROPOSE right away:
a) to pursue our European mobilisation against the Bolkestein directive project;
b) a meeting in GENEVA (27 oct) before the European authorities convention of 28 and 29 of October, to decide a day of European mobilisation, with national demonstrations, and to work on the neo-liberal European agenda and on possible alternative policies;
c) to call for the first European Forum of Social Movements for European public services in 2007.
Athens, 6 may 2006
First adhesions:
European Attac network (Attac France, Attac Italy, Attac Germany, Attac Belgio..)
European public service confederation
ADEDY- Supreme administration of civil servants trade union - Grecia
Confederation of Trade Unions of public sector workers in Turkey
Belgian Social Forum (Attac Vlanderen, Confederation of Christian syndicates, Mouvement Ovrier Chretien, 11.11.11, FGTB-ABVV)
Protect the future/Vedegylet (Ungheria)
Ver.di (Germania)
Foundation Rosa Luxemburg (Germania)
CGT (Francia)
Union Syndacale Solidaires (Francia)
Federation of associations for the defense and promotion of public services (Francia)
FSU (Francia)
IPAM-AITEC (Francia)
Leicester Social Forum (Inghilterra)
UNISOM (Inghilterra)
Comitato StopBolkestein - Italia (FpCgil, Attac Italia, Cobas etc.)
Seattle to Brussels Network
European Convention of Local Authorities for the promotion of public service (Liegi 2005-Ginevra 2006)
Day one part 2
Another important session at the ESF was:
The working class movement between milestones of fundamentalism and imperialism
Farooq Tariq from the Labour Party of Pakistan spoke about there experiences of fighting for working class politics in a country where the fundamentalists are strong and the importance of independent working class politics.
He gave experiences of building an movement against the war in Iraq seperate from the Islamists. And how this movement had grown.
The speaker from Spartakas (Greek Fourth International?) also echoed those sentiments for the working class in Europe and Iraq.
Unfortunately the final speaker from Alternative Info Centre - Israel / Palestine argued that Hamas although fundamentalist should be supported in the liberation struggle against israel. This was questioned by an AWL member who argued for a third camp position and Farooq warned the speaker of complacency towards the Islamists in Palestine, who may not show their real intentions initially but that we should learn from Pakistan today and also from history and experiences of socialists in Iran.
Pauline Bradley convenor of Iraq Union solidarity spoke about the importance of support Iraqi workking classes
Must go more later about
this No Sweat meeting, autonomous playground etc
Ed