vertical nightmares

just been reading an article that will be of interest to those who attended the esf in london last year. written by emma dowling who was (reluctantly) part of the organising process it details some of the shameful tactics indulged in by the 'vertical' camp (swp, gla, unions) in order to control the organisation of the event, and ignore the demands of the 'horizontals'.

this is the kind of thing that makes me question whether any broad left coalition will ever be able to work, given the huge divides between the authoritarian and libertarian camps. it had been suggested at meetings of the lenton anarchist forum that we attempt to engage in dialogue with socialists, and hold some kind of conference where we could organise around issues that we held mutual positions on. however, i've always been suspicious of the tactics and party-sheep arrangement of hierarchical socialist groups, and this article reinforced these suspicions. of course, it could work out very differently on a local level, but it's certainly something to be cautious about.

a nottingham social forum has previously been attempted, without much success. its demise came about, in my opinion, due to the lack of clarity about the purpose of the forum. this was partly due to a divergence of approaches (wannabe maoist guerillas sitting down with trade justice campaigners and academic liberational pedagogists was never going to be conducive to agreement) and partly due to the fact that we were stuck with two different (and irreconcilable) structures: world social forum ("big bang" type event) and sheffield social forum (ongoing community talking space).

another world is possible, but perhaps ultimately we all want one that's slightly different...