LSFGnotes

Notes from Local Social Forum gathering
Sharrow Community Hall, Sheffield
4th – 5th December 2004

People present from these cities: Sheffield, London, Leicester, Leeds, Liverpool, Durham, Manchester.

o What works? What do other groups do?
· Dave T:
o Can’t build local social forums quickly – have to organically build by making connections with different groups locally.
o Listen and learn from other groups.
· Bertie - Leeds University Social Forum:
o Really wants to work on networks –
o 141 people; regularly gets 30 people.
o Had debate between Coca Cola and Cuba solidarity.
o Aim: getting a strong UK network built.
· Tom: Liverpool Uni –
o in the process of setting up a social forum there.
· Alison:
o Getting views from others parts of the country
o Need for debate about organising – space or campaigning focus.
o Social forum taking on the inertia of the anti-war movement to build
o Feeling that social forum shouldn’t organise things – questioning this.
· Josh: Sheffield Uni –
o Post ESF: wanting to set up a SF in uni
o Aim to stop student politics from being so introverted.
o How can we, on a national level build the movement.
· Luke: Leeds Uni SF:
o What happened at the ESF – it reveals lots of things about the movement. It isn’t such a strong movement... is it?
· Ben: Leeds Uni SF
o Leeds Uni mobilisation for ESF was about 200! Cool!
o Q: what is social forum? What
· Malcolm: Leicester SF –
o Left the Labour Party, looking for a home.
o Initial reaction to social forum – a place to get people together to exchange ideas. Very wide sections of people doesn’t get them to
· Rosalie Huzzard – WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.)
o ESF – lot of networking that was very valuable there.
o View of social forums as exchange of ideas, general networking, general information gathering.
o Questions coming from the process of the ESF in London – opening up the ideas of the SF movement.
· Pete, Leicester SF:
o Local officer of NUT
o SF: Both a place for networking and campaigning.
o Trying to get Leicester twinned with Bethlehem – council interaction!
o Privatisation – what to do about that?
o What can LSFs get from the ESF? Difficult to carve an arena for LSFs in ESF. Are not LSFs lifeblood of ESF – we need to be inputting into the ESF. E.g. permanent space for LSF.
· Simon: UCL in London – 6 weeks old Social Forum.
o What form should meetings have? How to avoid exclusive cliques? Experiments… not worked yet!
o Desire: re-establishment of some sort of civil society. Taking the space (esp at Uni) back from corporatisation. Re-establishment of sense of community.
· Kath: Leeds SF –
o Can’t think of anything positive we did…!
o Mobilisation of ESF – two ideas to develop more
o Wants: ideas on what’s been happening? What works, what doesn’t work?
o Towards Athens in 2006. What do we do? How do we involve ourselves?
o What to do nationally for the G8 next year? Represents everything we’re fighting against.
o Horizontal vs Vertical – debate. Diagonal!
· Kev:
o Potential for innovation – learning from Experience.
o Positive thing – meeting on disability benefits.

Summary from Jase
· Talking about building local social forums
· ESF networking
· National networking

The meeting:
· How do they organise?
· What are the goals?
o Leftie pat on the back?
o Campaigning against / with local governments.
· Sheffield Uni:
o Want it to be active…
o Not for space and consensus. [Worker’s Power]
o Post-London ESF
· UCL Social Forum – six weeks old!
o Saw it as an anti-SWP thing.
o About providing a space for people who didn’t want to go the SWSS route.
o Goal – to actually emphasise student politics.
o Campaigning on education issues.
o Bringing student politics back into the foreground cf. SWSS.
o Forum itself as the core of a new student civil society at the Uni.
o Having a workshop on what education should be.
· Rosalie Huzzard –
o SFs have opened up to them new ways of working and coming into contact with people who they wouldn’t otherwise have met.
· Ben Leeds Uni Social Forum –
o Post ESF:
o Lots of groups but not much linkage – aim to get groups to link. Two months old, massive success. Things getting done.
o Many groups represented at meetings.
o Have our own campaigns – current campaigns and developing campaigns. (As long as they’re in a constitution drawn up.)
o Buzzwords: Education and Action
o Aimed to get on union council.
o Example: girl who never been politically active before – now is! Reason she gives – it’s easy to feel excluded; SF makes a big effort to be inclusive.
· Leeds: don’t want to be a clique…
o Organising – open, not prescriptive.
o Meetings are supposed to be for: Speaker, what are current campaigns, what’s happening with developing campaigns.
· Pete, Leicester:
o Started last December 2003 – through union branch motion. To get approval to go to other organisations around the city.
o Four months of preliminary meetings – how to involve other people, how to organise, what for?
o Launched in May: Partly about TUC campaign, partly about …?
o Then ESF meeting, with Kate Hudson CND.
o Involved most of the political groups in the city – including Alex Callinicos! Managing to involve SWP – Callinicos has told them that RESPECT is their priority.
o Decided that they didn’t have any officers.
o Don’t have any ground rules – as loose as that. Rows have happened, but they’ve been very friendly rows! Yet to have a meeting that didn’t end in consensus, even when starting with opposing positions.
o Set meetings as and when appropriate – and vary in type. E.g. public meeting, organising meeting, etc.
o Just moved to formal affiliations. (Which will get money in!) Community groups - £5, Unions £500.
o Pete tends to be the key organiser because of being a full-time union worker.
o Most communication by e-mail. Big forum in itself.
o Cultural just as important as campaigning. Last night – a cultural event with left bookshop, writer’s group, novelist. Poetry readings! Wine, buffet. Able to do it for £4 a head! Everyone had a damn good time.
o The local Secular society also take part.
· Kath, Leeds Social Forum:
o Didn’t succeed…
o Take the spirit of the ant-war movement.
o Weekly open organising meeting.
o Campaigning against school closures. Tried to get a broad coalition.
o Street action on refugees and asylum seekers.
· Leicester:
o Anti-cuts campaign came to them – they then got involved in that.
o Anti-privatisation campaign – probably going to be led by the social forum.
o If you have a forum that has all the existing activists together. A year ago most of them didn’t know the others! Now trust has grown, and they can start campaigning.
o Friends of Allaqsa (Muslim) & Indian Worker’s Association (Sikh, secular). (Associated with Communist Party of India Marxist.) Campaign to boycott all Israeli goods.
o Able to reinforce other people’s campaigns.
o They’ve managed to build a very broad coalition.
o 45% of Leicester is Asian.
o Friends of Allaqsa & IWA would never be in the same room. But, for feedback on ESF – got them in the same room.
o Trust! Trust! Trust!
o At end of meetings – announcements every 15 minutes!
o Local bookshop affiliated to the forum.
o Directory – write your own local entry.
o Involving the local NGO branches – important for balancing the memberships. If it’s just for people without a political home, it actually makes it something of a political party for them.
· Leeds: not just a talking shop!
· Kath: talking shop – used as a derogatory term! Should be a place for talking shops! Can be useful for some of the longer issues. A good place for genuine debate. (cf. structure for ESF.)
· Four stages – debate, consensus, education, action.
· ESF: many meetings as whammys – five speakers just wibbling. Need to answer questions! How do we deal with / move forward on specific issues. How do you oppose the drive for privatisation in the local council.
· Ben: Leeds – dissent meeting, just talking about what they were against.
· Building positive alternatives.
· Leeds: 500 students as the Coca Cola debate! Private Eye, local press.
· Manchester Forum for Palestine: don’t actually call the action, not in the name of…
· Manchester: forum cannot initiate campaigns.
· Leicester: forum can initiate campaigns.
· Debate over consensus, space, voting, campaigns, endorsing.
· Can majority go ahead and do something?
· London: if 60% are for, others 40%.
· Mariangela:
o What’s the point? How does the social forum differ then from a party?
o SFs not to be just another left group…
o To see if, by consensus.
· Pete: no place for the ‘concept’ of majority in a social forum. In Leicester, if we don’t have consensus, we continue. Maybe it’ll take five years. If you have a vote, you’ve failed.
· Either you have consensus. If you don’t, then that group has to go off and do it – but not in the name of the social forum.
· Flaw: a very small minority of people can stop something from happening.
· London UCL: majority voting – problem! Majority
· Kath: Minority rights –
o Can’t conceive of something – just coming to a decision, how do you make people do something they don’t want to do.
o Otherwise splitting will occur!
· Mariangela: the social forum is nothing – the social forum is a place.
· Pete: but this doesn’t mean that we don’t have positions on anything. E.g. opposed to torture / occupying countries.
· Mariangela: what’s the point of going through the process of deciding what it is we’re for or against.
o Is there a space in Manchester where you can go to build a campaign? Yes! A space…
· Dan: The action defines what you do! Therefore no need to have any collective SSF decision.
· Worker’s Power arg: we can’t play for the long game, coz we haven’t got enough time! The world is suffering. The only way to save it in time is revolution, and these consensus methods are not going to be able to do that.

Feedback1

· Fundraising: seen as absolutely crucial for running campaigns.
· Slogan: building alternatives
· Dissent – ‘it’s not important what the alternatives are…’
· How did Leicester manage to build its networks?
· Pete: an awful lot of it has been word of mouth. Affiliation will give them greater longevity. Affiliation is voluntary – gives no power whatso
· Mariangela: not for affiliation. (Cf. volunteer affiliation)
· Leeds: need statement for Paris – need to say that we’re against bureaucratisation – get the ESF to connect to local social forums.
· Problem of Uni Social Forums –
o Student bubble?
o Prob of dealing with groups that do not use language we’d usually accept.
· Kath, Leeds: student unions – depoliticised / corporatised.
· Exclusivity… have to change the way we act.
· Amp: how to make inclusivity – use a timebank to join up different groups
· Dan: inclusivity means being seen to work with others and get something done, not producing pieces of paper talking about inclusivity.
· Mariangela:
· Jon Cloke: three paradoxes – these issues to worry about
o Inclusivity
o Representation
o Structure
§ These are precisely what we should be debating! That’s what makes us good…

Group breakdown 2

1. LSF networking –
2. ESF process.

· Local autonomy: each can do whatever they want! There’s no McSocialForum.
· How does representation work?
· Leeds WP: Develop organisational structures based on what you need to do? E.g. strike solidarity – how to do this? Co-ordinate quickly.
· Leicester: there are specific roles, e.g. secretary.
· Implicit roles develop. How do we get away from that?
· If you talk to the press – and you say something outrageous.
· Networking – how does it work? How do we pass info between groups?
· How do you stop technocrats being in a position of control? Particularly when it comes to use of the internet especially.
· ICT: Participatory vs excluding.
· Development of a UK SF website – basic info exchange and debate.
· Leeds: expand the network – what about Bristol and Cardiff.
· UK LSF website – making it open.
· Cf. ESF – nasty control.
· Internal-facing to city / external facing to network.
· Specific role: one person who sends to UK list about what’s happening.
· Leeds: calls to action – that came from the ESF – days of action.
· Think of it like throwing balls into the court – lsfs can pick up whatever they want.
· Actions – discussion between different political parties.
· Getting councillors to debate issues – get forums together to do this. (This has happened in Leicester…)
· ID Cards…
· Housing…
· G8…
· How a web-site could facilitate this…
· Disability…
· Housing…
· Making the issues visible… how?
· UK meetings – who’s turn to host? How often? Tying in to the ESF?

ESF –

· Show the weakness in Britain.
· Tension between democratic centralism / bureaucratic and the grassroots local model – holographic organisation.
· Need debates to outline the kind of paths that the movement can take – the diversity of paths. Not just platforms for speakers who seem to agree with each other!
· What can we learn from other countries?
· Organisations in Britain small in number…
· TUC – integral to ESF organising, but TUC didn’t let their members know! No real effort to publicise it amongst their members.
· Cf. French trade unions have been a part of the movement, so they bought their members with them.
· Union involvement usually means general secretaries or local activists.
· Representatives of groups vs individuals.
· Working on a fund for getting individuals who can’t afford to go.
· 18/19th = de facto leadership, because professionals.
· Highlight where focuses of power are. Must make them accountable.
· Dan: get someone to PLEASE let the meeting know – the SWP are NOT representative of the British Movement.
· The leaders of the ESF process in London drove most of the British movement out of the process, and bypassed them. Some tried to constructively engage – many found this enormously difficult. Others felt that they had to organise events outside the ESF process. Many others simply opted out of a process they saw as being completely bankrupt. I request the European ESF process now takes account of this, and makes an effort to look past the front groups to all of the good work going on in Britain at a grass roots level.
· There is an enormous amount of knowledge, resources, technical expertise, theory, and ideas about how to build alternatives locally – not just define what we oppose.
· If we are to build another possible world, it must happen in many places at once – and it must happen locally. As these local movements grow, the power hungry will be circling like vultures, waiting for the movement to become cohesive enough before it can become their historical force for revolution.
· We must immunise ourselves against this. This is – and has always been – the reason for holding on so tightly to the social forum organising principles.
· The process is as important as the event: this is why London failed. Spectacle only.

Last session
Red
· Tools: website and UK list.
· More meetings like today! Every three or four months, going around to different cities.
· Proposal: for local social forum to be a place to facilitate the anti-G8
· [Dan: developing a book with concrete alternatives…]
· 19th March – anti-war: assembly of social movements. Big rally in Brussels. Called by Stop the War – a lot of criticism of this. Problem with groups controlling the large structures actually resisting local social forums.
· Co-ordinating days of actions.
· Diverse views on using Mayday as a national day. (No – to provocative.) [Dan – counter-proposal –work on positive alternatives again.) Proposal – diverse responses.
· Can people make a call for the action? Yes.
· Network in Europe:
o interesting to have the network & mailing list.
o Networking on themes.
· Representavity…
· The future of the ESF: not an event, but a process – a crucial part of the event in itself. Hence UK problems [see above.]
· All the action called in the assembly of social movements – have to come from the ESF process, not just from a small group.
· Did the fact that the ESF was in London cause problems? Yes – caused people to walk out, divided the movement. People walked out / washed their hands of the process.
· Q: is local social forum anti-capitalist or not? This caused some division! This problem is open. This question, we agreed, has to be answered at some point… in the future.
Blue team!
· Local groups are autonomous, but it’s useful to exchange ideas, co-ordinate campaigns etc.
· Potentially, by co-ordinating more, gives a chance to offer some leverage with the ESF / WSF.
· No representative structure – most people are very wary of that.
· But that doesn’t mean that we don’t take on roles!
· Suggestion: one person could be the UKLSF bod –
· Or – making connections between each social forums.
· ICT: possibilities and risks. Issue of inclusivity – how to deal with this? Skills building.
· Proposal: website
· Initiatives: people can float ideas, others can pick up.
· G8
· ID cards
· Sharing resources – e.g. sharing posters.
· BBC ican…
· Would Red Pepper support a local social forum space?
· ESF building process:
o Local mobilising groups – bad!
o Bureaucratic – TUCs funded but didn’t use their member-base.
o Sessions for debate: should map paths…
o Problems of non-representative people acting in our name.
Black team!
· Web working group – being set up.
o List being set up.
o Shall we use low-tech?
o Diversity in the content.
o No general overview because of political problems.
o If so, any web working group won’t make any content without checking with the network.
· G8: Counter-summit, hosted by local social forums – at Gleneagles.
· Sheffield counter-summit at the G8 security meeting in Sheffield.

Last go-around

· Luke – counter-summit in Perth, Stirling?
· Mariangela: send proposals for statement to list. We then try and synthesise this.
· Propose – UK LSF list.
· Mobilising in Gleneagles – we should try to mobilise.
· March 19th – Jase: ‘what do we want to do? Make an autonomous thing.
· Dave: hard work in local communities will pay dividends, not summit-hopping.
· Mozaz: education on what the G8 means. [Ties in to regeneration, producing some positive proposals.]
· Education: key to making people get involved. Shouldn’t lead to road block.
·

SSF gathering, Sheffield: Day 2

· Pete: proposing a US boycott.
· Mariangela: backs this up.
· [Dan: reminder - four stages – debate, consensus, education, action.]
· Mozaz: humanitarian support…
· Kev: boycott – policy-makers won’t be affected by this. It would just undermine us.
· Pete: use the boycott as a lever, to get others to act / speak.
· Workers in Colombia & India: calling for a boycott. They’re asking for our support.
· [Dan: find some of the best qualities of the US, put ‘em on T-shirts with coca cola logo…]

Agenda thoughts:

· Kev: what structures are LSFs using?
· Mozaz: wants to develop website.
· Kath: going over some of the things from yesterday
· [Effect of mobilising committee on Leeds…]
· Mariangela –
o wants to cover meetings in Paris.
o Is there any responsibility to be taken on by any of us?
· Dan:
o What do LSFs do?
o Internal and external facing – how does best practice get disseminated?

ESF
· This is for the future – not an event, but a process, in which the process is as important as the ESF itself.
· All decisions in the Assembly of social forums to come from seminars, workshops.
· In the UK there were a lot of consequences…
· Mariangela – ESF could be completely different.
· Plenaries important to hear voices, esp from the oppressed and from the south.
· A radical change: support for Phil McLeish.
· Pete: what was most interesting about social change was that ‘people like you’ were doing it. Therefore the most empowering! Cf. professional speakers, getting the crowd going.
· The ESF should be designed to empower. We should think hard about how to make this happen. Plenaries and spectacular events have their place, but we need to learn how to make another world possible. [This came from Mozaz’ point.]
· The space has to be designed to facilitate this. Examples of structuring the space. Thinking through how best this can work with the language issue.
o Suggestion – each seminar has a list of languages, and people willing to translate. Babels, or another group, to be closely involved in how to make this communication workers.
o Solution – system used: allowed internet broadcast, so it could be listened to all over the world. We’ll need to have solid server technology for this.
· Actions:
o Dan: contact Red Pepper re. having a local social forum page.
o Skills session in Leeds or Hebden Bridge (Speak truth to power.)
o Anti-terrorism and security conference in Sheffield, June.
o 25th January – the ignoration day.
o G8: building positive alternatives.
· Network with NGOs to work towards a document.
· Try to get this presented at the G8
· Local meetings before the G8 as part of this process
· Take this to the European meeting.
· Do EU lsfs want to work on this too?