WRP sectarians divide Workers Aid
Socialist Outlook1990sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE MANCHESTER conference of Workers Aid for Bosnia, and International Workers Aid, produced a very mixed result. While the international meeting on Sunday 31 October was a success (see above), the Saturday 30 October conference of British Workers Aid resulted in a hijacking of the campaign by the Workers Revolutionary Party.
By seizing absolute control, by refusing to allow the establishment of any democratic structures, by reducing the campaign to a front, the WRP has effectively divided the campaign.
As a result of this undemocratic hijack, Socialist Outlook refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the conference decisions.
Its supporters will continue to build Workers Aid through supporting the initiatives of International Workers Aid. But we refuse to work in a campaign which has been reduced to a front for the WRP. ALAN THORNETT reports.
ALTHOUGH it has yet to reach Tuzla, the Workers Aid convoy has been a big success. It raised the banner of an international working class response to the Bosnian disaster throughout Europe.
It made crucial bonds with the trade unions in both Slovenia and Croatia and in other parts of Europe.
Three vehicles, with 40 tonnes of aid from Denmark and Belgium, continue to try to reach Tuzla; they are currently on the southern route through Split.
Other lorries have unloaded in refugee camps and returned to Britain.
These political successes are threatened by the WRP highjack of the campaign.
The Saturday conference of the British campaign was a sectarian jamboree from the start.
Dot Gibson from the WRP, who gave the opening convoy report, abused her position by immediately stressing that she was speaking a member of the WRP's 'Workers International'.
She used her report, 57-minutes long, to attack sections of the campaign not controlled by the WRP – especially those from parts of Europe in which the Fourth International has been involved.
Her practical proposal for the future of the campaign was a 'massive campaign to open the northern route into Bosnia'.
There would be a 'massive convoy' – some WRP speakers said 1,000 lorries – which would arrive in ex-Yugoslavia in March.
Gibson slandered the convoy still on the road (which has no WRP members on it) as 'only interested in humanitarian aid and not in the political campaign'.
Steve Myers, the elected international coordinator of the campaign, presented a very different report, effectively counterposed to Dot Gibson's report.
He supported the call for a big convoy in March but argued that everything should not be left until then.
He proposed a number of smaller convoys between now and then given the overwhelming need which now exists.
It does not make sense, he argued, to hold back lorries, like those in Scandinavia, which are ready to go. There are lorries in London not being used and aid which can be taken.
Union links
He called for continuing to build the links with the trade unions in Croatia and Slovenia, and projects around education, women's groups, refugees, and a campaign around asylum laws which prevent Bosnian refugees entering other European countries.
The one-dimensional concentration of the WRP on the northern route was supported by the speaker from the Tuzla centre in Zagreb, who addressed the conference.
It is, however, extremely controversial. It is militarily the most dangerous route (it is only 70 kilometres but it runs through hostile Bosnian Serb territory with irregular armed militia and two active front lines) and it was not clear how it could be 'forced open by the working class of Europe'.
Catherine Samary from France pointed to the contradiction in the position of the WRP in relation to the UN.
The slogan of the campaign is for 'UN out of ex-Yugoslavia', but the WRP were actually calling for it to open the northern route. The answer was given by Jackie Vance, of the WRP, who actually called for the UN to open the route by force of arms - tantamount to a call for western intervention!
Samary also called for all routes to be opened but stressed the importance of a campaign for the opening of Tuzla airport, which she said was actually the most important single decision which could be taken to get aid into Bosnia.
The other crucial issue was the democracy of the campaign. Up until now the campaign has been dogged by the lack of elected structures.
The ad-hoc committee which has run the campaign has been a bear-garden with a different composition from week to week and decisions disregarded by the WRP.
To get away from this anarchy Socialist Outlook proposed to the conference the election of a steering committee - 12 from the floor of the conference plus one from each local group and sponsoring organisation to be elected later.
This was opposed by the WRP who argued for a non-elected committee open to anyone – just as it had been before the conference.
The majority of the international delegations - there were delegations or representatives from France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia – announced that they would not be voting on resolutions, since it was clearly a conference of the British campaign.
The WRP proposals were then carried on both counts - for the northern route campaign and for no elected steering committee.
The large delegation present from the Manchester Bosnian community were persuaded by the call for a 1,000 lorries. In the end they were the decisive vote in the conference.
Elections rejected
The decision to reject elected structures for the campaign was in reality a formula for total control by the WRP over the campaign. The demagogic claim that this will empower large numbers of people is nonsense.
The lack of elected structures is always in fact a formula for control by an unelected minority who control the apparatus - the office, the bank account, the telephone number, the addresses and the knowledge of what is going on. It is a typical unaccountable bureaucracy.
Instead of seeing the campaigns in other European countries as a big extension to the campaign the WRP saw them as a threat to their own control.
Worse, they then claimed that the Saturday conference, one third of which was made up of people from Manchester, was in fact the 'international' body, making the Sunday international meeting irrelevant.
The international delegations refused to accept this British chauvinist attitude and refused to steamrollered by an unrepresentative British conference.