The People's Assembly, June 2013
Comments on socialistresistance.org2010sA comment by Alan in the thread under “People's Assembly - success, challenges and politics” on socialistresistance.org.
The publication's own web text.
Editor's note. Posted under Liam Mac Uaid's report of the People's Assembly Against Austerity, held in London on 22 June 2013. “CoR” is the Coalition of Resistance; “GL” is Green Left.
Good report from Liam. The Peoples Assembly was indeed a huge success. The workshops I went to were lively and inclusive with lots of activists engaging with them. The climate change workshop was excellent, dealing with a range of issues from the science of climate change to raising the issue in the unions. Caroline Lucas (who made a good speech) used the occasion to announce her private members bill on the renationalisation of rail. Of course climate change should have been more central to the event, but it was the best and best attended workshop I have seen at an anti-austerity event of this kind. The GL Ecosocialist paper was widely distributed at it.
The issue which overhung the event was that of political representation to the left of Labour. Ken Loach raised it strongly in his workshop on welfare which was attended by around 700 people. He showed a clip from Spirit of 45, which was again enthusiastically received and when he spoke he insisted that the issue of political representation should be on the agenda of the left. Mark Serwotka also raised it in the final plenary which backed this up. Left Unity had a good profile at the event with a busy stall and a well distributed and received broadsheet.
A weakness of the event, my view, was the lack of an international/European dimension – particularly given the current situation. As I understand it this was discuss at organising meetings but not agreed. There was a European forum the next day organised by CoR at the Unite office which brought together organisations from across Europe to discuss the European dimension. This was very useful and informative but it also served as a reminder that it had been absent the previous day. There were speakers at it from Turkey, Spain, and Germany, Belgium (on the Alter Summit)as well as from CoR and the Greece solidarity campaign from Britain, and a speaker from Brazil (who was an IF comrade). The speaker from Syriza (secretariate member Ynnis Backosos) outlined the latest (remarkable) situation in Greece around the closure of the state TV service and the resulting crisis of the coalition government, with the resignation from it of the Democractic Left. He said not only did they expect the government to fall but they expected to win the resulting election when it came!