Home > From Italian union COBAS regarding the ESF rally
The closing rally for the European Social Forum in London has been
deeply marred by the intolerable behaviour of the British Organising
Committee, and in particular by the forces that dominate it: the
Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action (the group behind London’s
Mayor Ken Livingstone), and some trade unions. Several hundred young
people coming from the “autonomous spaces†(included in the programme of
the Forum and who the day before had fiercely criticised, although
without violence, the management of the Forum) were coming to the
demonstration when the Police attacked them making four arrests (two
Italians and two Greeks).
Despite the insistent requests from the Italian delegation at the head
of the march to demand their liberation, the British Committee did not
say a word.
At the end of the march, when trying to give news of these events from
the stage, we discovered that access to this was restricted to the
British Committee. Instead of the agreed concert, we had around twenty
speeches monopolised by the English to the exclusion of all other
European delegations.
At this point the young people previously surrounded by Police were
trying to access the stage, upsetting the stewards of the rally, who
called the police provoking further arrests, bringing the number to a
total of nine. Among these was Javier Ruiz, one of the persons
responsible for Indymedia in England.
From COBAS we denounce the grave responsibility of the British Committee
and the organisations involved,who have managed the rally as if it was
their own, and have used the Police to “solve†the conflicts in the
movement. This casts a dark shadow over a Forum that has seen many
thousand people passionately debating, and that started important
mobilisations against the wars in Iraq and Palestine, against the
liberal social policies and in defence of migrants. In it’s conclusive
assembly the Forum argued for a deep modification of its own structures
inadequate for a growth of the organisation to confront liberalism and
war.
We will talk about this, and about how to make sure that events like
those that happened in London are never repeated, in the next European
Assembly in Paris on the 18th and 19th of December.
Piero Bernocchi
Confederazione Cobas
Rome, 18th October 2004
original Italian text: