People's Assemblies can move beyond resistance

The powerful response to the call for the People’s Assembly against Austerity on June 22 confirms that the build-up of opposition to the ConDem cuts is reaching boiling point, presenting a unique opportunity to move beyond resistance.

Over 3,000 people have registered for the Assembly, many with the support of the major trade unions.

Clearly, people welcome the fact that the Assembly brings together all those fighting against austerity. The support of key figures like Tony Benn, Owen Jones and Ken Loach has helped boost attendance.

What is crucial is the perspective for and beyond the Assembly. The draft statement is absolutely explicit about the intended direction of travel, declaring: “We have a plain and simple goal: to make government abandon its austerity programme. If it will not it must be replaced with one that will.”

The statement insists that the government’s austerity programme is not “necessary” and that the “banks and the major corporations should be taxed at a rate which can provide the necessary resources”.

To that end, there is a call for a national demonstration and civil disobedience towards the end of the year, the building of local Assemblies and a recall of the national Assembly in 2014.

In practice, the central demand is based on the notion that this most reactionary of governments is for turning and, if not, that Labour is an alternative. Both are utterly misguided.

The ConDems are cutting not simply because they are viciously anti-working class (which they are) but in response to an historic crisis of the financial and economic system, aka capitalism. The dreaded “C” word does not get a mention once in the draft statement, however, which is a major weakness.

Its exclusion leads to the idea of restoring the status quo of the welfare state through taxing the corporations as the main policy idea. With key analysts forecasting another global crash, such a policy does not begin to match the gravity of the situation we face.

As to installing a government that will “abandon austerity”, the implication is that this is Labour. But Ed Miliband’s party, which is taking shape as New Labour Mk II, intends to continue with austerity and cuts and every day incorporates another ConDem policy.

So Owen Jones’ view that “there is a battle to be won in compelling the party to fight for working people” is based on faith rather than judgement. Unions like Unite which bankrolled Miliband’s election have put the pressure on already – and come away empty handed.

The central issue is the fact that the system is broken – economically and politically. A semblance of democracy is rapidly being replaced by an authoritarian, surveillance, security state as the leaks about the US/UK spy network reveals.

A minimal amount time has been found for discussing this crisis of democracy. Yet it is the key to our future. A World to Win and others have campaigned for a network of People’s Assemblies since August 2006.

We and others in Occupy and the Agreement of the People for the 21st Century see People’s Assemblies as integral to a strategy for moving beyond resistance towards a real democratic political and economic system in place of the façade we have today.

Permanent People’s Assemblies should

-         be inclusive, inviting all sections of the community to be part of their work

-         discuss in depth why there is a global economic crisis

-         draw up, with the help of experts, alternatives to austerity/cuts that go beyond the profit system

-         discuss how to introduce democracy throughout society - in ownership and control of workplaces, land, etc

-         debate the crisis of democracy, where our voices/votes count for very little

-         consider alternative forms of democratic government and self-rule throughout the UK 

-         consider plans to deal with the eco-crisis

People’s Assemblies should not develop into talking shops but rival centres of power to a system that has lost its legitimacy and the right to rule over us. That’s the big challenge and we call on others to help us campaign for this at on Saturday.

Paul Feldman and Corinna Lotz

Resistance must go beyond opposition

The question of how to stop the Con-Dem government’s programme of cuts lay on the table, but remained unresolved at the massively attended Coalition of Resistance conference in London on Saturday.

Around 1,300 people from around the country thronged in and out of the overflowing conference hall to hear dozens of speakers in different parts of the building and nearby halls.

The opening plenary featured school students and heard the newly-elected UNITE leader Len McCluskey leader of Britain’s biggest trade union. McCluskey pointedly ignored calls by Bob Crow of the transport union RMT and Mark Serwotka of the PCS civil service union, who spoke in favour of co-ordinated strikes.

Earlier last week, McCluskey breathed fiery words calling for "an alliance of resistance" he claimed would “rock the establishment” and force the Con-Dem government to step back from its plans to "decimate the very fabric of the welfare state".
But, adhering to the Coalition of Resistance’s founding statement, which talks only of general “opposition” to cuts, the notion of taking effective action to disrupt the state’s plans, was not part of his script.

CoR co-founder former NATFHE General Secretary Paul Mackney said it was in transition from being a pressure group to becoming a mass movement. Its success, he said, will be measured not by “programmatic elegance but by the breadth of the movement” – implying that united action was everything and clarity of purpose unimportant.

There were a few references to the raging crisis in Ireland which brought together EU finance ministers in an emergency summit in Brussels yesterday. But in practice, participants struggled to go beyond the low-levels aims set out in the CoR’s founding documents. From the platform, there was a studious avoidance of using the “capitalism” and “crisis” in the same sentence.

In the “analysing the crisis” debate, a wide range of people discussed the nature of the crisis: was it only financial, was it deeper, was it systemic? Keynesian and Old Labour solutions such as increased state spending, more taxation flew thick and fast as did proposals for various levels of protest up to and including General Strike. Film maker Ken Loach, who denounced the trade union leaders and Ed Miliband, was one of the few to point out that there was a crisis of the capitalist system that could not be remedied by policies such as “taxing the rich”.

A group of campaigners from North East England put forward a resolution proposing a “representative structure based on democratically elected representatives from local/regional groups”. In the event, the 120 people were nominated to a national committee due to meet in the coming weeks.

The big turnout and open spirit of the conference, despite its generally limited politics, shows a huge willingness to build a united movement against the government. The ongoing campaign by school students, some of whom will be picketing with rail and tube workers in London today and rallying in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, shows the enormous determination of a new generation not to cave in and to take their struggle to the wire.

They, and millions of working class people who are being offered only mealy-mouthed words by their leaders, are owed a lot more than patronising support. They deserve a real explanation of the crisis and a way out of it that can mount a serious challenge to the bankrupt capitalist system.

The raging debt crisis in Ireland, which on Saturday saw 50,000 people on the streets of Dublin on a bitterly cold day, with their leaders calling for a “campaign of civil disobedience”, was up against the fact that the mainstream opposition parties are signed up to the same cuts as the discredited Fianna Fail-Green government.

Struggles around Europe – from Portugal to Ireland, from students to public sector workers – are up against the same brick wall. The strategy of taking the struggle against the cuts forward to the formation of People’s Assemblies that can become the vehicle for transforming economic and political relations, is the red-hot issue of the day. Come to the December 11 event and start to go beyond resistance.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Breaking out of the circle

“We are alarmed to be informed that, despite earlier agreements with the Police and Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Police are attempting to stop the trade union demonstration against public service cuts from marching past the Conservative Party conference at the International Convention Centre on Sunday 3rd October... "

So begins a petition to West Midlands Police appealing to them to restore the rights of trade unionists and others to demonstrate outside the Tory party conference in October. It is not even a protest for the right to protest, it is simply a polite "ask" of the police to restore that which they had no right to remove in the first place.

There is a kind of circular logic to the whole "rights" question. Because really what are rights? Do we have a birthright to these rights and if so, then logic would seem to suggest that they cannot be removed no matter what arguments the police "in the interests of public order etc" and the state authorities make. If that route is taken, then that should be the end of the matter - our rights are inalienable.

But the dismayed tone of this letter suggests that the signatories to the document, who include Labour MPs and trade unionists and left-wing film director Ken Loach, do not viscerally believe in that idea. These members and supporters of the Right to Work campaign, good people though they undoubtedly are, are taking an underwhelming approach to this very serious issue.

There are in fact two issues here. First: what can people who are aiming to demonstrate against this government's austerity measures hope to achieve? The senior partner in the coalition is not going to return to Westminster convinced of the error of its ways - the protests will make no difference whatever in that regard. Second: what will they do if the 'right to protest' is not magnanimously restored, meekly acquiesce? Hopefully not. It would actually be uncharacteristic of them, going on past form, because back in February this year members stormed the Conservative Party Spring Conference in Brighton. Unquestionably a militant action!

They have also given support to workers in dispute, including building solidarity with the BA cabin crews and Royal Mail workers, for instance. Now however the ground seems to be shifting for some reason. Perhaps it's because they wish to appeal to a wider section of the population who might be frightened off by 'militancy' or 'direct action'? Probably not a worry the campaigners need entertain, given the level of dissatisfaction and anger out there. So, given that they have planned to protest, that is, they have decided that 'doing something', even if that something achieves not much at all, is better than 'doing nothing' they really ought to follow through and not be derailed by some sort of liberal respect for the forces of law and order, when quite obviously those very forces are intent on simply protecting 'our rulers' from any uncomfortable experiences.

Given that the supporters include the likes of Ed Balls and Diane Abbott, perhaps it's not too surprising that the Right to Work campaign is leaning towards respectability, at least in its public face. Having Labour Party leader hopefuls on board amounts to a kind of co-option, or at least the danger of it, they might after all be the government again one day!

Whatever the outcome of the Right to Work's little dispute with the police and however they resolve it if the answer is No, there will be protesters from various other groups outside the ICC on 3rd. October. Members of the IWW for example are planning to march along with a militant workers bloc and things may get lively!

This brings us back in suitably circular fashion to the basic question of what constitutes 'rights' and how far can we go in the exercise of them. Just applying peaceful pressure perhaps? http://www.abouthumanrights.co.uk/human-rights-your-rights-protest.html Or are there other courses of action such as working for People’s Assemblies, that we claim, assert and utilise, come what may?

Fiona Harrington
A World to Win