Passing conversations
One slightly uncanny aspect of walking around the social forum has been overhearing people saying things that I’ve been thinking. Standing outside Alexandra Palace, with its soaring views over the rest of London, I heard one girl say to her friend “It’s really good having all the main events under one roof here – much better than in Paris’ as they walked past. Inside, in the main hall, looking at the stalls, the guy next to me was complaining that “it just feels like it’s full of tankies and the hardcore authoritarian left”. There were plenty of opportunities for listening to more inclusive conversations in the main forum (I went to an interesting debate on anti-corporate activism which took in representatives from Spinwatch, Friends of the Earth and a Malaysian anti-corporate activist) but often the main event did feel more red-and-black, more crammed full of the hard left than usual. The multi-coloured designs of the cultural organisation Arci in Florence were conspicuous by their absence. No! I kept thinking, and sometimes saying, whilst walking around Alexandra Palace, I DON”T want to buy a copy of Socialist Worker!
If this partly seemed to be a sorry reflection on the state of the British left, it also seemed to reflect the expansion of the autonomous spaces of the forum, away from the grasp of the SWP and the torturous time- and energy-sapping process of attempting to be included. My partner said ‘it’s like the Edinburgh festival – the main event is increasingly becoming a less relevant kind of a shell, with the more interesting action happening on the fringe’. We would say these kind of things, though, wouldn’t we, as we were involved in the Radical Theory Forum at Leytonstone’s 491 Gallery. This saw a really interesting mix of academics and activists come together to debate a range of topics from post-Marxism to complexity theory. Like the Life Despite Capitalism event at the LSE, it involved some really interesting cross-fertilisation, sometimes inspired, sometimes haphazard. The same type of productive exchanges looked as if they were happening at Mute’s programme at Tottenham and the four-day programme on Tactical Media and Communication Rights.
Jo Littler
If this partly seemed to be a sorry reflection on the state of the British left, it also seemed to reflect the expansion of the autonomous spaces of the forum, away from the grasp of the SWP and the torturous time- and energy-sapping process of attempting to be included. My partner said ‘it’s like the Edinburgh festival – the main event is increasingly becoming a less relevant kind of a shell, with the more interesting action happening on the fringe’. We would say these kind of things, though, wouldn’t we, as we were involved in the Radical Theory Forum at Leytonstone’s 491 Gallery. This saw a really interesting mix of academics and activists come together to debate a range of topics from post-Marxism to complexity theory. Like the Life Despite Capitalism event at the LSE, it involved some really interesting cross-fertilisation, sometimes inspired, sometimes haphazard. The same type of productive exchanges looked as if they were happening at Mute’s programme at Tottenham and the four-day programme on Tactical Media and Communication Rights.
Jo Littler
posted by Red Pepper at 1:29 AM
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