2004 will see the European Social Forum coming to Britain, almost definitely to London. It will be a massive opportunity to develop the anti-war and anti-capitalist movements further, and to involve the trade unions, NGOs, political parties of the anticapitalist left, and people from muslim communities.
This cannot come at a better time for the movement in Britain, which, as well as mobilising a huge anti-war movement, has also created the worst political crisis Blair has ever seen.
It will be the third ESF, after Florence in 2002 and Paris in November 2003. The aim of the ESF is to build a huge social movement which unites struggles involving people who, in many cases, would not have worked together before. Capitalism has divided people race from race, men from women, lesbian and gay from heterosexual; the ESF is the place to put them back together again.
The Paris ESF was a huge step forward. It confirmed that the anti-capitalist movement has been strengthened by the anti-war mobilisations across Europe and the rest of the world, and established and consolidated networks of activists determined to resist neoliberalism and war, and also to engage in common discussion about a world free from • • poverty and imperialism.
Already, preparations are being made for the ESF in Britain. A European assembly was held in London in December with delegates from France, Spain, Italy, and Eastern Europe and reached some conclusions about the kind of ESF we want to have.
There was an agreement that the plenaries - the big set piece meetings with headline speakers - did not allow enough time for discussion from the floor. Too often, they took the form of an enlightened minority preaching to a passive audience.
A number of other points were raised about the plenaries; there should be scope to cross-fertilise different debates within the ESF, rather than just having single issue meetings for instance on war or the environment, more of an effort should be made to establish where the connections are between issues.
For the past two years, plenary speakers have been decided by the assembly of national delegations and some felt this was a false way of making decisions.
Some of the most interesting discussions in Paris revolved around a questioning of the nature of capitalism, and through that, how to fight it - in other words, they were debates.
Delegates felt that one of the most successful aspects of the ESF were the seminars, which tended to bring together activists who had a common purpose and were able to create networks, or where they provided a real opportunity to debate.
It was also felt that women, immigrants, people of African descent and young people were under-represented as speakers, even though these groups make up a large proportion of the social movements across Europe. Mobilisation
There was some discussion about how to broaden the ESF to include more people. Some felt that, in France, the slogans for the ESF were not sufficiently political, and that the posters made it look like a specialist conference, rather than an anti-capitalist mobilisation.
This could be solved by having publicity which has a political and campaigning focus, for instance, against war and neoliberalism, but there clearly needs to be more discussion on this. Assembly
The assembly of the social movements has been a central focus of both the Florence Demonstrators march through Paris during the ESF 2003 and Paris mobilisations. It is literally an assembly or meeting, normally on the Sunday, where activists within the movements take initiatives for common activity in the year ahead.
The world-wide day of protest against the war on February 15 2003 was launched from the ESF in Florence in 2002 and was spectacularly successful.
The assembly in Paris was slightly more problematic and some felt weaker than in Florence.
The general problem seemed to be that participants found it difficult to understand what its function was, and how decisions for mobilisations were made. The decision to call Nos vies a Europe-wide day of
action sponsored by Calert plus
the European trade union federation to : que •
coincide with the ratileurs profits fication of the
European Constitution may now be • LC affected by the collapse of negotiations over the constitution. However, by calling for a Europe-wide day of action, we need to ensure that whether the EU constitution is ratified or not, we continue to mobilise for a Europe free of neoliberalism and war on that day.
There is a huge amount of work still to do to mobilise for the ESF. The initiative to hold it in London is backed by Ken Livingstone and the Greater London Assembly, and so far a number of NGOs and trade unions
A further European Assembly meeting is due to be held in London on 6 and 7 March, with the British organisers meeting on an ongoing basis to organise the programme and content and to ensure the maximum possible mobilisation.