‘We don’t have a blueprint’

As the extent of the coalition government’s attack on public services becomes more evident, thousands have signed up for a ‘Coalition of Resistance’ (CoR). But how will it be organised? What can be learnt from past campaigns? I recently interviewed Paul Mackney, a driving spirit behind the new group, for Red Pepper magazine

How did you get involved in the anti-cuts campaign?

I spoke at a meeting on solidarity with Greece where I said we needed a coalition of resistance in this country.  A number of us, including many campaigners from the Stop the War Coalition, then formed the Coalition of Resistance Steering Committee. In early August, we issued a statement with 74 signatories and headed up by Tony Benn.

Greece has been inspirational because it has shown that hundreds of thousands of people can organise and fight back.  It was a picture of a big banner with 'Resistance' in five languages, draped in front of the Acropolis in December 2008, that spurred me to action. 

What can we learn from previous campaigns, like Stop the War and the anti-poll tax protests?

We will need to be as colourful as those campaigns, involving all generations and all walks of life. There is a danger of being overtaken by gloom when faced with such policies as the imposition of academies and the privatisation of the Post Office. But, provided we are non-sectarian, facilitating and encouraging rather than commanding, resistance can be fun - with well-developed warm relationships based on solidarity. We need to nurture maximum local activity either through existing campaigns or, where they don’t exist, as 'badged' CoR events.

Whilst local focus is of critical importance, it is not enough.  A Haringey councillor was asked recently what would persuade him to do more to fight the cuts and he said "200,000 people outside Downing Street".  That doesn't justify his inertia, but he is right. We saw off the poll tax by many acts of resistance and organising on the streets. And the internet and social media provide us with far greater organisational opportunities than were open to the poll tax protestors.

Is there any debate about what kind of organisational model CoR should follow? And how will its November conference be organised?

Currently the work is organised by a Steering Committee which has emerged from meetings of activists. It meets once a week at Houseman's bookshop in Kings Cross. Clearly the conference will have to determine a more democratic, but hopefully not sclerotic, structure with an elected national committee and so on.

It is planned, within the limitations of the Camden Centre venue, to organise breakout groups at the 27 November conference to enable people to connect with others from their area or sector and to join up existing or spawn new campaigns of resistance.

Many activists became disillusioned with the role of the SWP in the anti-war movement, feeling they were too intent on controlling it. Is there scope for the anti-cuts movement to become more pluralistic?

I'm not happy singling anyone out. Many retreated into their organisational shell or inactivity after the forming of the ConDem government. But we should not forget the essential role the SWP played early on in building a genuine united front in Stop the War which organised the UK's largest ever demonstration in 2003. 

I don’t think we can predict exactly what a vibrant anti-cuts movement will look like. The Steering Committee neither had, nor has, a blueprint.  The task is huge.  Already we are bringing together pensioners, students, community campaigns and trade unionists.  A new campaign, BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts) has affiliated to CoR because it sees the danger of obliteration for poor Black urban communities. 

How can the campaign reach out beyond the "usual suspects" of committed left and union activists?

Firstly the usual suspects include six million public sector workers, the majority of them women, who will be questioning the neo-liberal agenda of the ConDem government. People are much less deferential to a political elite which is seen as self-serving, close to the bankers and tinged with corruption.

The CoR statement stresses that “an alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear ‘deterrent’, cancelling the Trident replacement.” 

There is a hunger for these arguments as evidenced by those who have taken the Statement to street stalls and tube stations and enjoyed the spectacle of queues to sign ‘Tony Benn’s statement against cuts and privatisation’.

Fact sheets, of the sort prepared by Red Pepper demolishing the myths about the ‘necessity’ for cuts will encourage the grass roots, persuading  those fighting for their own local services that they are part of a bigger movement for a caring civil society,  in the same way as people in 1945 (when the country was far ‘broker’ than now) had the political will to demand a better society, the NHS and full employment.

On the CoR Steering Committee there has been a degree of humility about grand design and a lot of ‘learning by doing’. Nobody can be sure where this struggle will end up but we know that there is nothing to be lost by developing the resistance.

In calling on people to join CoR, we have drawn inspiration from Alice Walker’s message of hope that ‘resistance is the secret of joy’.

• Paul Mackney is a former general secretary of NATFHE (later the UCU). The full version of this interview is at http://www.redpepper.org.uk/We-don-t-have-a-blueprint

www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk

Posted by Clifford Singer at 10:19am on 5 October 2010
Tags: Campaigning, Cuts

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