The ESF UK Assembly met yesterday to plan for the ESF to come to the
UK in November 2004. There was very clear manipulation of the process:

Volunteers who wanted to be involved in planning the meeting were not
contacted; instead the same handful of people organised and chaired
the meeting, which was set up and run in the same undemocratic and
inefficient way as before.

No agenda was circulated, beforehand, or during the meeting.

A document which came out of the process working group, with suggestions
to make the meetings and structures more democratic, respectful and efficient
was totally ignored. At no point was it mentioned or even referred to.

The discussion centred around a proposal to form an organising
committee, which would replace the UK Assembly and be open only to
representatives of organisation which have paid the affiliation fee.

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This proposal, it seemed to me, would exclude:

-organisations unable to pay the fee

-organisations who cannot or will not allow people to make decisions
on their behalf (from what we've seen so far, there is unlikely to
be much provision made for delegates to consult on all issues and
obtain mandates)

-unaffiliated individuals

...which conveniently covers most of the anti-authoritarian left!

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Unsurprisingly, many people had real problems both with the proposal,
and with the way the meeting was being run. Some people suggested
amendments. Others felt they had to make more direct interventions;
most notably one person who, on arriving to find no agenda and the
same illegimate chairpeople, heckled and sat down at the front himself!

While the helpfulness of these various interventions is certainly arguable,
they were a symptom of the undemocratic nature of the meeting, and the
frustration and mistrust it caused. Certainly there comes a point when a
process is so discredited that it cannot no longer be respected.

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The hard truth, though, is that the majority of the people at the meeting
supported the proposal. There were many ways in which this was acheived:

-We were told, that (although none of us had had a chance to look at the
proposal beforehand) it had been discussed by the National Executives of
many of the unions, and that unless it was agreed, there would be no funding
from them.

-It was repeatedly described as 'the only serious proposal' and 'the only
alternative', despite the fact that many of the amendments and concerns were
seemingly quite innocuous and would be unlikely to cause the whole ESF to
instantaneously disintegrate.

-This meant that those who wanted to change the proposal were classified as
opposing it, blocking the ESF from happening at all. We were called 'wreckers'
and accused of trying to 'sabotage' things. There was a lot of hostility towards
us.

-I heard afterwards that people had been 'bussed in' - coerced into attending,
without much knowledge or interest of what was going on - in order to
support the proposal. This may have been a factor, but I have only anecdotal
evidence for it.

-Many people of the people from the more anti-authoritarian, alternative or
grassroots tendencies had already been put off by previous meetings and
experiences, and had decided not to waste their time and breath. Admittedly
there is no way of considering the views of people who don't come to the meeting,
but I think it should be mentioned as a factor.

-In the early part of the meeting, people were allowed to waffle on almost
endlessly, meaning that by the time we really got on to talking about the
proposal, everyone was keen for the meeting to end, and this meant that the
suggestion that amendments should be considered by the organising committee
*itself* was greeted with enthusiasm. In short, concerns were ignored and
the thing rushed through.

-The amendments were summarised by one of the chairs in a very distorted way. He
left many of the amendments out, reworded some drastically and added his own
interpretation.

-The decision was not made on a consensus basis. It was made on the basis of
most of the meeting giving a sudden round of applause, and then breaking up.
The rest us of were left thinking 'WTF?'. In general, there is a problem of
the concept of consensus decision making being hugely misused and misunderstood.

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A few quotes to illustrate the frustration and anger after the end of the meeting:

"That was the most Stalinist meeting I've ever seen."

"Fuckit. Fuckit, fuckit, fuckit."

"If that was meant to be a consensus... ?!"

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So, what was the result? Another step further away from the open and inclusive
processes that we all claim to want, another chunk of power seized by the big
institional organisations with the financial clout. However, the working groups,
still have a large degree of autonomy, and it may be those working groups, email
lists, local social forums etc that the new 'Organising Committee' will turn its
eyes on next.

We haven't yet lost the battle to democratise the ESF.

But at the moment we seem to be losing.