Here’s what Hugh Jones thought of the event…

Where do I begin? There was SO much going on I can’t possibly describe it all. But here is a selection of my experiences, observations, thoughts and feelings at this year’s European Social Forum.

I chose some events for the prominent speakers such as George Monbiot, John Pilger, Susan George, and Walden Bello. I like reading their books so I wanted to hear them speak. But I also wanted to learn from grass-roots initiatives organised by people I’d never heard of.

One of my favourites was the one on land-rights.

This was in two halves. First we had a couple of economists talking about the economics of land, natural resources, seeds, open-source software and how - not just for the sake of equality but even from a purely efficiency-oriented utilitarian perspective - all these things which come from the commons should remain in the commons. And they talked about how common resources are ‘enclosed’ / ‘appropriated’ / ‘privatised’ . Biopiracy was mentioned. And so was what is perhaps a lesser known idea - that we are PAYING FOR EVERTYING TWICE! How does that one work? Well, the first speaker told lots of good stories / scenarios / analogies to illustrate what would otherwise be quite abstract economic theory, and in the case of the idea I just mentioned here is the story:

A small businessperson wants to build a factory. She asks a local property owner for some land. He says yeah I’ve got a piece that’s exactly the right size for your factory. He shows her the land. It costs £10k. It’s way out of town. They have to walk through forests and marshes to get to this land. There are no facilities there. She says. “Don’t worry”, he says, “I’ve got another piece of land, exactly the same size. It’s closer to town, it’s got good roads - maintained by the local council, it’s got a big housing estate, there’s a brilliant school - people want to move into the catchment area so their kids can go t here…” Great, she says, exactly the same size you say - I’ll give you £10k for it then . “Oh no, not for this one, this one costs £110 grand - sure it’s the same size but look at all the facilities!”. OK fair enough, she says, so to whom shall I pay the extra £100k, the hospital board?, the school?, the people who maintain the roads?… “No, you pay me” says the landlord.

Some readers may think well bugger that, she’s a petty bourgious petty capitalist so it serves her right she’s getting ripped off by the bigger badder capitalist. But that’s not the point - sure there is a debate to be had about whether small business can be more benign than big business and whether it should be considered more acceptable by ‘anti-capitalists’ and others in the global justice movement. But the point this speaker was trying to make was that you pay twice in our society because when land is privately owned, the landlord gets to charge you for ‘added value’ of land that happens to fall in an area that has benefits which have been provided not by the landlord but by nature and / or by the society.

This private ownership of land might not be such a problem if private ownership was more fairly distributed among the people but it’s not and when you’ve got that advantage you can pass it on to your kids so that “my kid’s will be paying rent to your kids and so on”. It’s like feudalism in a way.

He talked about how this kind of economics applies not just to land but to natural resources and seeds and intellectual property and all kinds of things which start off in the commons and end up as private property.

So… reclaiming the commons is what we need to be doing. But how do we do that? Some would suggest socialism, some would suggest anarchism, some would suggest something else. But that’s another debate.

The second half of this session was given over to two female ‘campesinas’ from Galicia and Brazil. They were talking about landle ss peasants and the lack of access to land for those who want to farm it because of legal problems, the ever-increasing concentration of good land in the hands of big-agribusiness and in the case of women, the institutional patriachy in their society and culture. And there was a woman from some NGO that campaigns for small farmer’s rights in Latin America. All of which was fascinating. After the ‘theory’ of the economists’ talks, this was the practical side of stuff. These women talked about their personal experiences and what I found most interesting was their description of the emergence of a feminist movement (particularly noteable in the rather patriarchal society of Latin America)… a feminist movement emerging within and as a result of the struggle for land. It often seems to me that when people get radicalised fighting one sort of oppression they start to get radicalised against other forms as well, generalising their struggles from single issues to a wider goal for building a better world. Which can only be a good thing!

Other seminars, plenaries and workshops I attended included those on Palestine, Iraq, corporate power (some truly shocking facts about lobbyists and the PR industry!), climate change (good relatively grass-roots groups plus good discussion from the floor), debt and the G8, “Aid for Privitisation”, social/solidarity-based finance and various other odds and ends.

The latter was quite interesting. There was a bloke from the Triodos bank which invests in supporting co-operatives and small local enterprises and social, environmental (eg wind farms) or cultural projects, whilst avoiding funding the big corporations. It provides a (hopefully!) ethical (ie avoiding unethical investments) banking service to account-holders, while using the money account-holders deposit to finance socially useful initiatives. So it’s not just about avoiding bad stuff, it’s also about positively promoting good s tuff and it provides credit, including mircocredit to the kind of people who are excluded by the mainstream banks. Instead of making a profit it focuses on the role banks are arguably *supposed* to play in a proper economy. This event was called a “workshop” rather than a seminar and I was impressed that it really did live up to that name insomuch as that instead of sitting there listening to people give speeches (and there’s a place for speeches but there’s a place for this too) we were all sat around in chairs in an informal circle and spent most of the time asking questions and having discussions as a whole group.

Social finance probably won’t solve all the world’s problems but don’t knock it . In my opinion it is yet another weapon in the fight for a better world. As long as we’re going to have a market economy it’s good that there are some banks who want to make a contribution to doing positive things rather than being profiteering parasites. So… NUFF RESPECT to the Triodos Bank. Good workshop .

What else…. George Monbiot tells us that unfair trade rules and international debt are killing even more people (actually quite a lot more people) than the Iraq war and that we must stop politicians from speaking and make their lives a big hassle until they drop the debt and replace global free trade with global fair trade. Sounds pretty good to me. I would add that such reforms will lead to fair-er trade but there will still be a long way to go before we have real fairness. So it’s not a complete solution but I believe such campaigning will make a real difference and will be a step on the way to a better world, in the same way that the abolishion of slavery was. Walden Bello (of Focus On The Global South) says he’ll be extremely disappointed if the G8 protests in Gleneagles are not the biggest demo against the G8 ever. We cheered.

A bloke from Ghana (I think) made the case that the real debt is not the one owed by the south to the west but the one owed by the west to the south. He made a strong case for reparations for slavery and colonialism.

There was an event in the culture tent with Asher D (from So Solid Crew?) and various other representatives of the UK hip-hop / urban scene. They talked about fighting racism and discussed stuff with people in the audience. It was good to hear them explicitly denouncing “neo-liberalism”, “Bush and Blair” and the war on Iraq - in other words, it’s good to see that the anti-racist movement is linking up with the wider movement against corporate globalisation and imperialism. The speakers went on to do some live performances.

I didn’t go to much of the cultural stuff but I liked all the exhibitions of art and photography and subvertising and all the rest of it. And it was good going around all the stalls talking to all the different groups, picking up leaflets and maybe buying a t-shirt (didn’t in the end, got quite a few already).

The demonstration was big (and clever) and colourful. A sea of placards and banners and giant puppets flooded the streets which became a carpet of fliers and leaflets.

Now for some constructive criticism. There were a few things I was a bit concerned about. Firstly the catering. All the food seemed to be provided by corporate canteens and vans - not exactly KFC but corporate nonetheless. Indeed the staff were overworked and underpaid and apparently were not unionised. I would have liked to see fair-trade, organic nutritious food provided with adequate provisions for vegetarians and vegans. Food stalls could have been provided by participants like they were in the WSF. I would similarly question the use of corporate, out-sourced security, and on the green side of things, the conspicuous lack of recycling bins for all those discarded (hopefully having been read!) leaflets. I would also urge in future that the organising process be even more open, transparent, accountable and democratic. And why did the website cost £40k when there were volunteers with experience willing to do it for free? I also, without seeking to place blame on either side, reckon it’s a shame that the horizontals / autonomous / anarchists (who are an important part of the movement) vs the others in the ESF process were not more able to reconcile their differences and I hope it will be possible for everyone to work together next time round.

But this is not in any way to dismiss the huge amount of work and effort that has gone into making this year’s ESF such a phenomenal success.

My feeling about the event is overwhelmingly positive. I found it hugely inspiring to see such an enormous coming together of progressive movements. There’s a lot of ‘cross-polination’ at these gatherings, people learning about eachother’s campaigns and struggles and linking them together in solidarity as we develop a common understanding of the neo-liberal system that underpins so many apparently unconnected global and local issues, problems and catastrophes.

See you all in Greece, in the spring of 2006!