“People’s Assembly” (London – from 9.00am – June 22nd)
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Venue: Westminster Central Hall, Storeys Gate, London SW1H 9NH
Directions: About four minutes walk from St.James Park tube on the District and Circle lines and about six minutes walk from Westminster tube on the District, Circle and Jubilee lines
Volunteers welcome to hand out Party literature at the ‘Peoples Assembly’, Westminster Central Hall, 0930 to 1700
We are assembling outside the venue at 0900…
Why will others be meeting at Embankment tube? That's miles away and there'll be nothing happening there:http://thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/schedule/Any chance of stopping members and sympathisers going there and coming instead (at 11am if they want) to Central Hall, Westminster?
ALB wrote:Why will others be meeting at Embankment tube? That's miles away and there'll be nothing happening there:http://thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/schedule/Any chance of stopping members and sympathisers going there and coming instead (at 11am if they want) to Central Hall, Westminster?My sentiment entirely. However, North London Branch have decided to meet at Embankment tube but a word in the branch Secretary's shell-like ear might abort the process. At least one of their members doesn't favour the earlier start but there's no reason why they can't come along later to Central Hall as you suggest.
Quote:Proposed actions:The People’s Assembly will support every genuine movement and action taken against any and all of the cuts. We support all current industrial actions by the unions. We encourage and will help to organise the maximum solidarity action with the PCS and teaching union members taking strike action the week after the People’s Assembly, as well as with other action by unions planned for the autumn.Peoples Assemblies against the cuts should be organised in towns and cities across our nations, bringing all those fighting the cuts together into a broad democratic alliance on a local basis.The national and the local Assemblies, in partnership with Trades Unions, Trades Councils, campaigning and community groups, can unite our movement and strengthen our campaigns. Local Assemblies will help us to organise a recalled National Assembly to review our work in the early spring of 2014.We will work together with leading experts and campaigners both here and abroad, and friendly think tanks, to develop rapidly key policies and an alternative programme for a new anti-austerity government. We will continue to welcome support from all who fight the cuts.We will call a national day of civil disobedience and direct action against austerity.We will call a day of co-ordinated local demonstrations in the early autumn.We will work with the trade unions and others to call a national demonstration in November.And for those who want some fun as well there’s this going on outside.More to the point, this is what The Socialist Party has to say about the 'People's Assembly' against austerity:
Quote:On 22 June a People’s Assembly Against Austerity is being held in central London, with the support of various leftwing groups, trade unions, and Labour and Green Party politicians. Its aim is to ‘mobilise’ people to oppose the present government’s austerity policies. But to what end? To get the government to change them? To elect a government that would reverse them? Or to get rid of the system which, when in an economic downturn, requires the government to impose austerity?Given that we are living in a period of capitalist crisis, what are the chances of any government being able to abandon austerity? Some of those present seem to think that this is feasible. The Communist Party of Britain, for instance, are proposing a ‘people’s budget’ to ‘stimulate economic growth and reduce growing social inequality,’ involving such measures as ‘invest in health, education, housing, public transport and the environment,’ ‘launch a massive public sector house-building programme,’ ‘nationalise the banks and direct funds into manufacturing, small businesses, cooperatives and housing,’ as well as renationalising the railways and utilities and increasing pensions and state benefits.This assumes that capitalism can be reformed into a system responding to people’s needs instead of a system geared to accumulating capital out of profits. That they are thinking in terms of capitalism, even in its private form, can be seen from the answer they give to the question they themselves pose of ‘where would the money come from?’‘Introduce a 2 per cent Wealth Tax on the super-rich’; ‘Reverse the recent cuts in corporation tax for the biggest companies’; ‘Impose a financial transaction tax on the City bankers and speculators.’ So, the super-rich, profit-seeking big companies and City financiers are to continue to exist but be taxed more.This is pie-in-the-sky reformism. It’s not going to happen and wouldn’t work anyway. Any government which tried it would, by putting profits and profit-making under pressure, provoke an even bigger economic crisis. If you accept to work within capitalism (as does the ‘People’s Budget’ and similar proposals to ‘Tax the Rich’ and ‘Make the Bosses Pay’) then you have to accept that profits have to be made and capital accumulated (with its by-product, the rich getting richer). You can’t make the capitalist leopard change its spots and it is futile – in fact counter-productive – to try.The main problem with such proposals is not that they are not going to work, but that they spread the view that they could work and so reinforce reformist illusions about capitalism being able to be reformed to function other than as a profit-driven system where profits have to be put before people. What this does is delay people coming to understand that capitalism can’t be reformed in these sorts of ways and that the only way forward is socialism. It helps prolong capitalism.As socialism will be based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources there will be no obstacles, as there are under capitalism, preventing production being oriented towards satisfying people’s needs, as for housing, healthcare, education , transport and other services.It is all very well being ‘against austerity’ but the cruel fact is that, when capitalism is going through one of its recurring crises, there is no alternative within the system to austerity. It is not the government that is to blame but the capitalist system. In imposing austerity all that governments are doing is what is required by the way capitalism works.Of course austerity should be resisted to the extent that it can be – that’s what trade unions and such organisations are for – but without illusions. The most that can be achieved is a few mitigations here and there or a different distribution of the cuts, but they cannot be avoided.This is not defeatism. It is realism. The only alternative to the present austerity is neither a change of economic policy nor a change of government. It is a change of system, from minority ownership and production for profit to common ownership and production directly to meet people’s needs, in a word, to socialism.Socialism is, quite literally, the only realistic alternative to the present austerity. That’s what those who call themselves socialists should be advocating. Enough of ‘People’s Budgets,’ ‘Tax the Rich,’ ‘Make the Bosses Pay’ and other such reformist nostrums. Let’s campaign for socialism.Eight comrades and friends handed out over 500 copies of the 'Socialism is the only alternative' leaflet (see above) at this event.Well done!
We actually had a presence there from 9am to 4pm (not the same comrades all the time of course). Plenty of Trotskyist and Maoist groups but also some genuine trade unionists. The Green Party were there too, including their MP Caroline Lucas. The only unifying factor seems to be opposition to austerity and vague (and dubious) statements such as "debts can be dropped", "A living wage can begin to combat poverty", "Strong trade unions can help redistribute profit". Regional "People's Assemblies" will be held and "a national day of civil disobedience and direct action" is called for 5 November, a Tuesday, so we'll see what happens then (if anything).Ian Bone's "Peoples Assembly Against Hot Air" took the form of him and three other anarchists speaking to people outside the hall through a megaphone for 10-15 minutes. There weren't many more of them than us.. As opposed to the Trot's call for the TUC to call a general strike to oppose austerity, they called for people to follow the examples of those in Turkey and Brazil to take to the streets. They forgot to mention the abolition of the wages system, but some of the comrades still went for a drink with them.
Went for a drink with Ian Bone and anarchists from Anarchist Federation.I think of 1994 Summer School talk at Ruskin College 'When Marx met Kropotkin'. We in the SPGB and Anarchist Commnists share the same goal of a moneyless stateless egalitarian society of communal ownership with free access to the earth's treasury. Marx wrote in 1872: “All socialists understand this by Anarchy: once the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes has been attained, the state power which serves to keep the great productive majority under the yoke of an exploiting minority small in numbers, disappears, and the governmental functions are transformed into simple administrative functions”. At the conclusion of the Proudhon critique 'The Poverty of Philosophy', Marx writes: “there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society”.
"Went for a drink with Ian Bone and anarchists from Anarchist Federation…We in the SPGB and Anarchist Commnists share the same goal of a …egalitarian society" – steve Who bought the rounds? Was there a commonly owned kitty for the bevy? Some anarchists used to have a round for absent" friends but they called it something else…each put the price of a drink into a collection for Anarchist Black Cross…i wonder if they still do that."There weren't many more of them than us." – adamI have mentioned in a few recent blogs that the popular put down against ourselves on numbers simply is irrelevant when compared with the members of other parties and groups, including those of the left sponsoring this assembly…just what is the membership of ISN or Counterfire? As for the anarchist alternative leaflet/meeting…didn't i suggest a sarky leaflet like theirs and also an alternative outside forum with megaphones? Great minds think alike…Pity we never managed to get access to the Anarchist mega-phones for a few minutes…i'm sure we could of if we asked nicely…and if Steve offered to buy them all a pint later on…..But excellent that 8 members distributed hundreds of leaflets and i second that "well done"I will be interested in reading the WW and other lefty reports on the proceedings of the Assembly…if it matched expectations
alanjjohnstone wrote:Pity we never managed to get access to the Anarchist mega-phones for a few minutes…i'm sure we could of if we asked nicely…Actually, at the end Ian Bone did ask if anyone else wanted to say anything and the thought of taking up his offer did cross my mind. I don't think he'd have said no but, quite apart from not liking to use a megaphone (they're not allowed in Hyde Park), we have our differences as well as points of agreement with anarchist-communists and its was their meeting. Ian Bone is a good bloke and has a soft spot for us (since his student days in Swansea) . He was also a witty opponent when we debated him 4 or 5 years ago. I'd have gone for a drink with him and the others too if the pub hadn't been so crowded. I'm sure the craic was better than if we gone for a one with a group of trots (bored with discussing the Russian revolution).
Good work. I think there were a couple of other left events which clashed (AWL's Ideas for Freedom, ICC day of discussion) but this sounds like the best attended.
ALB wrote:I'm sure the craic was better than if we gone for a one with a group of trots (bored with discussing the Russian revolution).There be an opportunity to discuss the Russian revolution once again on the occasion of a talk being given by guest speaker Simon Pirani at HO on Sunday, 21st July at 3.00pm.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/russian-revolution-retreat-1920-1924-clapham
jondwhite wrote:Good work. I think there were a couple of other left events which clashed (AWL's Ideas for Freedom, ICC day of discussion) but this sounds like the best attended.Actually, two other members (and one ex-member) went to the ICC event, so proving that we have enough members to engage in two different political activities in the same town on the same day….Here's Ian Bone's confirmation of the number of anarchists who turned up for his People's Assembly Against Hot Air (can you spot the two Party members in the second photo?). Apparently, no anarchists attended the ICC thing. Meanwhile some wit has suggested that the other People's Assembly should be called the People's Ass for short.
ALB wrote:Here's Ian Bone's confirmation of the number of anarchists who turned up for his People's Assembly Against Hot Air (can you spot the two Party members in the second photo?).SC and you?
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