Mobilising for the European Social Forum

Brett Hennig | 02.09.2003 10:04 | Cambridge

On Sunday 31st August the UK
Mobilisation for the European
Social Forum(ESF) met to discuss and coordinate actions to
motivate as many UK activists as possible to go to Paris in November
for the second ESF.

After an introduction the 50-100 strong meeting split into three
groups to plan programming details, to extend the network of
attendees, and to sort out practicalities (including the train that is
booked: return tickets, including ESF registration, are about 100 quid).

For further details visit the sites above, or to help mobilise
Cambridge people to go, email Brett.

Brett Hennig

Comments

Hide the following 15 comments

sorry - lost the links

02.09.2003 10:21

i thought i could put links in the newswire - here they are:
ESF: www.fse-esf.org
UK mobilisation: www.mobilise.org.uk

Brett
mail e-mail: bretthennig@yahoo.com.au

beware

02.09.2003 20:20

Beware that the mobilisation is controlled by the SWP under the guise of Globalise Resistance who claim to be the sole Social Forum reps in UK. Strange since none of them are involved in the Sheffield Social Forum.

Will there be any action at this event? To generate such a huge amount of energy into this obviously big event and then do nothing seems wasteful to me. Still I guess thats what the SWP have been good at for years.

steve

SWP Ripp Off

03.09.2003 00:03

Beware! The SWP are charging £80 on the Eurosatar to take you to the Paris ESF.
Book it yourself on the Eurostar web-site and it only costs £59.

And you wont have to be intimidated by all those papers sellers and touts trying to sell you an SWP membership card.

Modus

Aren't political parties banned from the ESF, and WSF?

03.09.2003 06:07

Globalasise Resistance was founded by an SWP member and is nothing more than a front. The SWP are thus being a little naughty. How is that the ESF organiser allow them to control the English mobilisation? Why dont they apply the rules and reject the SWP's programme for the Paris, ESF.

Are the ESF organisers in France also members of the French SWP? If not why do they not ban the SWP, by simply applying the rules.

What the SWP is doing is preventing an open democratic space in which individual activists, social movements and NGO's can get together to exchange ideas and challenge neoliberal globalisation.

The SWP will just bring their parties mix of authoritarian, reationary marxist dogma and confused strategy to what is a very important european-wide project to create an open and democratic space in which individuals feel free to express themselves without having dogma thrust upon them.

The SWP should not be allowed to destroy this important new European-wide project.

Whitefrair

BEWARE

03.09.2003 08:18

The SWP held my mother hostage and killed my bunny rabbit!

M Python

Those swappies stole my lunch

03.09.2003 08:48

Sorry to hear about your mother
the swp got me to "i had prearranged a time with my boss for lunch,that time being 12;30 to 1;30 and what a shock it was the swp had taken over my picnic spot in the town square and even worse they had bused in people from other areas and taken over my little area .BASTURDS SELLING THERE WARES AND STARTING A LUNCH TIME RESISTANCE GROUP(CLEARLY A SWP FRONT).
To make matters worse when i got home they had taken over my lawn with a obvious swp lawn front.
These clearly middle class paper sellers need stopped i propose a march and demo be arranged where we meet up at trafalger sq and march to swp hq .

chuckie finster

Quite right

03.09.2003 09:10

In this era of rampaging gangster capitalism, famine and war, lets remember who the real enemies of the left are, the left!

Sonic

SWP Infiltrate lolly pop ladies (and gentlemen)

03.09.2003 09:20

I picked up the following report from the Daily Star

"Official" : The majority of the lolly pop ladies in my area are in the SWP, but typically they are denying it.

"Fact": They are members of Globalise Resisitance too (another is definitely in Stop the War - very promiscuous!) The tall with glasses eventually admitted everthing after I threatened to report her to the highway authorities for not using the green cross code correctly.

Although they are escorting children safely across the roads they encouraging them to participate in a general strike. This is thought to be a liitle premature by the reat of "the movement" who claim: "We should have the general strike in 2005 during the G8 is taking place in Britain." The SWP are threatenning to call there own general strike in Edinburgh on the same day; accusations of sectarianism have been uttered.

In typically fashion these peolple deny everything, and live a lie. They will even call the police if you insist on having a long democratic discussion with them in the streets. This is not revolutionary - it's revolting. They should be banned from the streets.

Please call the MI5 hotline and report these commie double-entry infiltrators.

020 7930 9000

Latest!!!!! There is talk that Osma Bin Lardin is a Lolly man in Peckam. There has been one siting so far, and one false alarm - keep them peeled and phone in any sitings to the above number -

MI5 Official public relations press release.

Hamlet

the chealsa rummor

03.09.2003 15:08

I hear that the russian investor roman abrimovich is nothing more than a
front for the swp and is part of a secret plan to revolutionise english football
and they the swp have a secret plan to rename the club workers united.
The also have plans to do the same to other league clubs one is to take over man utd and man city and rename them red city this must be stopped ,wheres me whiskey fecking pony tailed big girls blouse beckam just wait till me meet in europe ill give him swp plots .

alex ferguson
mail e-mail: fergie@manu.com

I dare you; I've installed infra red CCTV

03.09.2003 19:49

sorry about the rabbit... oh and that guy's mum! but ...

The SWP have been nicking socks of me washing line, leaving me with odd ones. it's one way they try and get at you if you criticise them publically.

Why dont they do it at 10 Downing and destabilise Tony Blair's feet - the real enemy!

andy

The SWP were unkind to my hamster, really

03.09.2003 20:46

The SWP were unkind to my hamster, they offered him big placard on the STW demo and his paws were too small to carry it, It did nothing for his self esteem and made him feel inadequate. I would expect better from a serious revolutionary organisation.

Bil bo bolshevik

All very funny but...

04.09.2003 10:22

I've just spent the last 10 minutes or so laughing about the comments here. All very witty but does'n really count as 'News'.

I guess the point everyone's making is that the ESF mobilisation in the UK is dominated by the SWP (in most other countries it is dominated by affiliated groups, or ones with similar left/liberal or Lenninist ideas: Attak in France and Germany, Riffodizione Communisit (splet very! wrong) and Disobedienti in Italy etc...) and that we should therefore be sceptical, but that the hysterical reaction of many on the UK Indymedia newswire to the SWP (and the spread of rumours and conspiracy theories about their politics, tactics etc...) is a little over-the-top and tedious.

Isn't it the case that Indymedia moderators should hide comments that aren't news?

On the German Indymedia site the moderators post all the comments (except those with reactionary content) to articles, but with a section at the end where they post together comments that 'Unfortunately have little relevant content'. Maybe this would be a good policy for UK Indymedia. But maybe there wouldn't be many comments left over.

AND PLEASE HIDE THE BULLSHIT SEXIST COMMENT FROM HAMLET! THERE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY NO PLACE FOR SUCH SHIT ON INDYMEDIA! THANX.

bored

Comment hidden

04.09.2003 11:50

I've hidden the sexist comment from Hamlet in line with Cambridge IMC editorial policy. As for the rest of it, well, most of the comments here are pretty useless in my opinion but there's always the chance that someone will post something intelligent.

As for our editorial policies compared to those of IMC Germany, there has been a lot of debate within UK Indymedia about the way we moderate article postings and comments, but it's difficult to adopt the German model at the moment as we just don't have enough people to do moderation before articles go up and still have things happen in approximately real-time. Anyone who wants to help out local IMCs should email

imc-uk-contact@lists.indymedia.org to find the nearest local IMC. In Cambridge, we meet on Monday nights at 7:30, Clowns' Cafe on King Street - all are welcome.

Y

yossarian

all funny

04.09.2003 15:09

I think people myself included are responding to the constant swp stuff
by posting peices in a hummorist style exactly because they are bored by
people constantly posting so called news with there personal axe to grind
against the swappies virtualy every other day .They should be kept as the show
what people are thinking on the subject though i agree that sexist/racist comments
should be banned there should always be a place for hummor.

alex ferguson

Reflexive Re-entrism

04.09.2003 15:30

The SWP have reflexively-infiltrated and taken over themselves. This is explained in my new book:-

Reflexive Re-entrism - Gerbals, Hamsters, and the SWP.(£13.99 - Headcase, A; Uranus Press, 2003)

Dr. Headcase