We asked a few people for their impressions. Here’s Noel Douglas’s thoughts

Well phew, it’s over, nearly a year of hard work and certainly a crazy last few months to prepare the cultural programme…these thoughts are necessarily impressionistic as often i was running around trying to sort this or that out!

Firstly it lived up to expectations, we knew it was never going to be as big as Florence or Paris, our movement is a lot weaker, it was harder and more expensive for us to put on here in the home of privatised neo-liberal Europe, oh for the budget of Paris! The atmosphere in Ally Pally, was great, mad, chaotic at times but a real babble of different voices, the culture space started to work once people realised that you could do spontaneous performances there as well as chat to the various art groups like the ‘transnational republic’ issuing there own passports and money for a world without borders.

Caught a few of the major debates, particularly the ones on strategy and the G8, which was remarkable for the unity expressed by all the different groups, despite differences of tactics, to not let the state divide us come the protests, long may this continue and this was definately one of the more positive results from the forum. I did a workshop on culture jamming down in one of the tiny rooms at the Diaorama, in Bloomsbury (which I’m pleased to say was buzzing too) which was great, the level of debate around real aesthetic/political questions was amazing considering there were a random bunch of strangers from across Europe in the room!

The screening of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ with Ben Bella was very moving and powerful - one scene where the French capture one of the leaders of the resistance and put him in front of a press conference where he is asked “did he not think it was amoral to use baskets to bomb women and children in cafes” drew the response “I think it is more immoral to drop napalm from airplanes on us, give us the bombers and we’ll give you the baskets!” this drew loud applause and the parallels with Iraq were there for all to see. Nearly all of the audience was French and many attacked those of us who clapped for celebrating violence, but as Ben Bella said in the Q and A after, they did not want to be violent but the French forced them to be…a fantastic example I thought of the way culture can lead to talking about the big issues, and one where you could see the movement that many laud for it’s newness (and by association it’s seperateness from the past) learning from the movements of the past.

On Sunday morning I read out the results from the cultural working group/seminars to the Assembly of Social Movements and we hope to instigate with all our european partners a cultural network that can further increase the visibility of politics of culture within the forum process and draw new and old artists alike into the movement to enrich it further.

People have mentioned the food, and it was definately for me the biggest mistake in the actual event, but again maybe we need to get Confederation Paysanne and others to become the movement caterers! Now that would be a solution!

People have criticised the organising, but I think this is in some ways inevitable the movement is expanding and bringing much wider forces, with all the inevitable culture clashes, but the forum has been a real step forward for the movement in the UK to bring together all the major trade unions, NGO’s and various activist groups will hopefully help us all to leap out of our ghettos and see amongst other things, the biggest protest ever seen against the G8 next year in Scotland…

Noel Douglas