On Saturday the 29th of March the Socialist Youth Network
(SYN) held its 3rd annual conference at the ULU building near
Euston.
Unfortunately the conference was rather poorly attended with only 30 –
35 people turning up; clearly expectations had been higher as the room had been
set up with 100+ chairs. This was in part due to the previous years turn out
when the John4Leader campaign had been in full force in order to try to mount
an effective Labour leadership bid that was eventually sold out by careerist
Labour MP’s.
The meeting began with the news that Bob Crow would not be able to
attend as he was in a meeting with Ken Livingston regarding the proposed RMT
and TSSA tube strike. Thus the morning session was somewhat disrupted, the
first six motions were rapidly and unanimously passed and we moved on to a
discussion about equality and the lack there of. Nothing especially ground
breaking emerged from this, just discussion about capitalism and its direct and
inevitable links towards inequality within societies the world over. The
conference then broke for a (slightly) early lunch.
After the break things began to pick up tempo. John McDonnell talked
frankly about the previously mentioned leadership campaign discussing its
successes and failings. He addressed three key issues that eventually derailed
the campaign: the media blackout, the lack of support from the trade union
bureaucracies and eventually the selling out of the MP’s who had pledged to
support him under pressure from Brown and co. He finished by making the point
that although there are a variety of issues that may divide the left there are
many issues that unite the working class of Britain and worldwide and that it
should be the focus of the SYN and the LRC to act on these issues immediately
in order to gain recognition for the organisation.
After this followed another discussion as to the future orientation of
SYN and the various campaigns it is involved in. To this end John McDonnell
wrote in his blog the next day: “It came across very
clearly that the politics of today and tomorrow for these young people are
based upon mobilising for direct action, linking up with a wide variety of
social movements, maximising creativity in protest but also engendering
understanding by discussion, study and theory. The word praxis, the combination
of theory and practice, was revisited and revitalised in our discussion at the
SYN conference.” The debates at this point were still generally of a
constructive nature and largely bypassed sectarian politics.
As we moved onto the final group
of motions, after a speech by an RMT representative, the question of tactics
was raised with regards to supporting independent candidates against Labour
candidates. Although the motion was defeated (eleven votes to six) it was done
so seemingly as now ‘was not the time’ for such actions. Worryingly this motion
also included the possibility of splitting away from Labour and this was also
disregarded with the same ‘now is not the time’ attitude rather than a rational
answer. Socialist Appeal put forward a motion lending continued support to the Venezuelan revolution. This was opposed by the AWL, who take the position that there is no
revolution occurring, and that this was enough to not pass a motion of
solidarity with those struggling in Venezuela (they failed as it was passed by
a single vote with two abstentions – a slimmer margin they we would have hoped
for).
This position led the AWL to put forward a motion named ‘Defend Orlando Chirino!’, the UNT leader sacked from his job at the state-owned PDVSA. The motion was a veiled attack on the Venezuelan revolution. While we oppose the sacking of trade union activists, we must ask the question why was it that the UNT was not organising itself as a real fighting trade union should do – drawing its financial support from the members it represents. The UNT collects no subs. That the AWL called for workers’ organisations to be independent from the state is correct in this respect – the unions representatives should work on the same average wage as the members it represents, financed by the labour movement. Trade unions should not be financed by the state! But the way the motion was posed was a deliberate attempt to characterise the Chavez government as an enemy of the workers when it is Chirinos who has stopped the UNT entering the PSUV, appeared on platforms with the CTV (the bosses union) and called for an abstention in the 2007 referendum, effectively placing himself in the camp of the bourgeoisie. An amendment moved by Socialist Appeal that differentiated between the progressive and bureaucratic elements within the Bolivarian movement was defeated however.
In general the
conference was a worthwhile affair and should be attended again in the future. While attendance was low, particularly
disappointing considering the meeting took place just a few weeks after the
fifth year anti-war demonstration and John McDonnell being an anti-war MP, we
did manage to sell a few books and journals early in the morning which was a
small bonus to the days work.
Thanks to comrades Seamus Flaherty, Hamish
McLaren, Pat MacDonald, Pablo Roldan, Abner Wilders,
Martin Hall and Niklas Svensson who attended the conference and helped put
forward motions, intervene, sell journals and man the stalls.
