Home > EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM: Together Under an Iraqi Shadow
Social Forum Wars and conflicts G7 - G8... UK
by Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 12 (IPS) - ’People Power’ had become another of those slogans until the rallies Feb. 15 last year against the imminent invasion of Iraq. Those rallies were not only the biggest Europe has ever seen, but everything since then proves that people were marching on the right path.
The first European Social Forum (ESF) held late 2002 in Florence, Italy, gave birth to those rallies. The success of the rallies, backed by the force of the demonstrations against globalization in Seattle in the United States and in Genoa in Italy is now giving new strength to the social forum.
The ESF has developed as a natural branching out of the Stop the War Coalition and of the protests against a globalization of business power. The groups that came together see the fight against corporate power as only another front in their war.
The Paris ESF had taken some steps last year to channel that power into an institutional force. The annual ESF being held in London this week aims to firm up the ’people force’ that many find blocked by usual democratic channels.
The ESF has emerged as an inevitable regional outgrowth of the World Social Forum (WSF) that brings representatives of people groups together from around the world, timed usually to counter the World Economic Forum held in Davos in Switzerland. The WSF is developing into a significant voice for people representatives whose voice is not heard enough.
But why a European Social Forum, when Europe is the ’North’, the ’West’, the world of ’haves’ rather than ’have-nots’? Surely there is no such thing as an oppressed elite.
The coming together over Iraq partly explains the need for an ESF. Europeans need to speak up when Europe does not.
’’We need to get organised because Europe plays such a crucial role along with America in the justice in the global system,’’ Hilary Wainwright, editor of Red Pepper magazine told IPS. Red Pepper brings together several groups and strands backing European people power.
’’We cannot defeat neo-liberalism without a struggle on the home front,’’ Wainwright said. ’’And we need to come together to watch what the EU (European Union) and individual governments in Europe are doing.’’
But the ESF and its kind of activities are not just ambassadors for the developing world in Europe. ’’It is not as if there is no poverty or oppression within the EU,’’ said Wainwright. ’’Inequality is growing globally, and also within Europe.’’
This is particularly the case in Eastern Europe, which is being ’’ravaged by a deregulated EU and treated almost as a third world country,’’ she said.
The one question that will inevitably arise is whether delegates will do anything more than just talk. Not all the answers to that question need to be cynical.
The rallies against the Iraq war marked a victory of these very groups, and of their natural intelligence over official intelligence. And the protests against globalization have not only forced meetings of the G8 (the eight most industrialized countries: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia) to remote islands but contributed to a rethink within institutions such as the World Bank that corporate globalization is a mantra that will work for development.
Specific steps have been planned for the ESF this week. It will be an opportunity ’’not just to identify areas where we all agree but to find ways of taking that forward,’’ Dave Timms from the World Development Movement (WDM) a non-governmental organization that keeps a sharp eye on development issues told IPS.
The WDM, Timms said, will work with other groups on ’’strategizing, and deciding on getting EU neutrals together on campaigning, especially on trade issues.’’ These, he said, would not just be debates on principles but ’’will aim to draw in new organizations concerned with trade and globalization from the new EU states.’’
This will be the first ESF for a significantly enlarged EU. Groups from several of the new EU member states are expected to develop significant networking with older European groups.
The ESF declares itself ’’a giant gathering for everyone opposed to war, racism and corporate power, everyone who wants to see global justice, workers’ rights and a sustainable society.’’ The aim is nothing less than to make ’’another world possible.’’ (END/2004)