By Pierre Khalfa
AttacNovember 27, 2002
The European Social Forum held in Florence from the 6th to the 10th of November was an unqualified success. There were around 32,000 paying participants, twice as many as at Porto Allegro 1 and more than at Porto Allegro 2 (30,000). There were almost 60,000 participants on the Friday. According to police estimates, around 500,000 people took part in the demonstration, twice as many as at the demonstration organised during the Council of Europe meeting in Barcelona. The presence of delegations from other European countries was not purely symbolic: more than 3,000 from France, 1,500 Spaniards, Greeks, Britons and Germans, 500 Belgians, 300 Hungarians 150 Poles and Swedes, 70 Russians.
Attac was represented at Florence as a European network. The meeting of European delegates of Attac held on the 6th of November showed that coherent ideas were being formulated and traced the directions for future work, in particular on the question of the future of Europe. Several thousand people marched with the Attac group in the demonstration. There was however one negative aspect. Even though the subjects of exclusion and immigration were discussed in the conference and the seminars, there were still too few of the excluded and too few immigrants present.
The Forum's success was a slap in the face for the Berlusconi government, which had organised a high-level political campaign announcing that barbarian hordes were about to sweep down intent on sacking and pillaging the city. The peaceful nature of the ESF and the gigantic demonstration soon gave the lie to this attempt at incrimination. To the astonishment of the media, which had been predicting the worst for weeks preceding the event, there were no incidents.
Its success was due in the first place to the situation in Italy, where people have become highly mobilised over the last few months. Firstly, on a social level, with two general strikes and enormous demonstrations: the one organised in April on the initiative of the CGIL, the largest Italian trade union confederation, and supported by the anti-globalisation movement brought together more than 700,000 people in Rome. Secondly, the campaign against the war had also staged massive demonstrations. Finally, at a democratic level, people had mobilised to stop the subordination of the judicial system. The anti-globalisation movement has succeeded in integrating itself into this context and linking up with the active social forces at ground level. The involvement of the FIOM, the CGIL's metallurgy federation, in the preparation of the ESF, the presence of a procession of Fiat worker at the head of the demonstration, the presence of the CGIL and the massive participation of young people with no visible connection with any organisation, all go to prove that the anti-globalisation campaigners have struck a chord with the concerns of Italian society.
This is the first major lesson of the ESF. The fight against liberal globalisation can only develop if it takes root at a national level in the political and social struggles that endow it with its full meaning.
The Forum's success was also the result of a thorough preparation process that lasted for several months. This enlarged the Forum in two ways. Firstly, it enlarged the ESF geographically, by encouraging the participation of networks in the East and South of Europe. To do this, the preparatory meetings were rotated between large European cities (Vienna, Thessalonica, Barcelona) thus associating them with the project. Secondly, it enlarged the ESF politically by adopting an open and inclusive process that integrated forces which were not present at the start, such as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), but also forged, meeting by meeting, links based on confidence between organisations which were not used to working together, even if bad habits die hard (for example, the announcement for the demonstration in the programme only mentioned the war whereas the European coordinating committee had decided to add a slogan concerning an "alte rnative Europe"). This method is not a magic formula for spiriting away political differences but at least it creates a framework in which to deal with them and achieving the necessary compromises each time. Its use meant that the political spectrum covered by the forces participating in the ESF was extremely large.
This is the second major lesson of the ESF. The movement that we are building is heterogeneous. This is not a weakness but a strength. The effectiveness of the organisational processes must be measured by their ability to get very varied movements to work together, even if it takes considerable effort.
The ESF in Florence also represented progress in the involvement of the Trade Union movement, not only because of the presence of the ETUC as such, but also because of the presence of numerous Trade Union federations. To be sure, suspicions and differences have not disappeared, as the social/trade union movement debate illustrated, but we can consider that we have taken a step forward in this area as well because the large Trade Unions can no longer ignore the strength of the movement. What we still need to do is to translate this progress into practice when mobilising together for major European events.
The Italian left was divided in its reactions to the ESF. Even though part of the DS (social democrats) condemned it, along with their former leader D'Alema, because it opposed liberal globalisation, the mayor of Florence and the president of Tuscany supported it, as did the former general secretary of the CGIL, Coferati, who hopes to play an important role in the party. Furthermore, the Greens and Refondazione, which groups together the communists and part of the far left, supported the ESF. The organisers chose to publicly acknowledge the confrontation between social movements and political parties at a central point in the Forum at the end of the afternoon (Bernard Cassen represented Attac France). The debate took place in front of an enormous audience (proving that this is a crucial subject) but proceeded more like a meeting than a real discussion. In spite of a few slips, in the main reasonable control was exercised over the time taken up by the political parties. But naturally, this did not prevent them mounting publicity seeking operations, the most blatant of which was by Franí§ois Hollande, the first secretary of the French Socialist Party, who did the round trip in twelve hours.
A number of major future events were discussed during the Forum: a European day of demonstrations against the war in all the European capital cities on the 15th of February, the organisation of events (demonstration, counter-summits) when the G8 meeting is held in Evian at the start of June, a European meeting on GATS at the end of March to prepare for the WTO summit in Cancun in September, the European Council meetings in Copenhagen and Thessalonica were highlighted as important occasions for mobilisation and finally the constituent process started with the Convention that should conclude in Rome at the end of 2003. This occasion seemed a particularly suitable time for asserting our demands for an "alternative Europe". Many networks used the seminars to build their own campaigns at European level (the excluded, women, public services), often with set dates for debates and mobilisations.
Building on the mass demonstrations in Genoa and Barcelona, the political success of the ESF indicates that the movement against liberal globalisation is durably and firmly rooted in the European political scene. It marks the fact that the movement is capable of linking together mass mobilisations and debates, actions and the building of alternatives. Within the framework of the general assembly of social movements on Sunday morning, we were able to take decisions on both common actions and campaigns on specific subjects, resulting from the seminars, on the basis of preliminary concrete proposals at European level. Granted, these proposals have not all been worked out to the same extent, but nevertheless a process has been started that will be continued after Florence. To sum up, we have made a qualitative leap forward in the creation of a real European social movement upon which we must build at the next European Social Forum at Paris/Saint-Denis.
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