Organising a day school – trickier than it looks

The Venezuelan masses armed Arrangements for the day school on Latin America are proceeding but there are always unexpected complications. There’s the usual stuff about leaflets arriving late and working out who is going to do what. More unusually a bizarre Stalinist sect contacted the Cuban government saying that the event is being organised by…

Liam

June 13, 2006

1–2 minutes

The Venezuelan masses armed

Arrangements for the day school on Latin America are proceeding but there are always unexpected complications. There’s the usual stuff about leaflets arriving late and working out who is going to do what. More unusually a bizarre Stalinist sect contacted the Cuban government saying that the event is being organised by supporters of Lech Walesa and tried to prevent Celia from getting an exit visa. One can but hope they don’t up on the day, especially since we declined their request for a stall.

Our friends from the AWL are being very supportive of the event and have bought several tickets. I imagine that they’ll try and explain that Chávez is very right wing, Castro is the principal enemy of the Latin American masses and that imperialism, especially British imperialism, is given too bad a press by the far left.

In addition to the advertised speakers we’ll be having a French comrade who has been living in Venezuela for several months. His time there was much more fulfilling than my week and a half of revolutionary tourism and reports from people on the spot do clarify many of the political questions. The big points of discussion I think are going to be around whether revolution is imminently possible in Venezuela and Bolivia and the relationships between the governments and the mass movements.

The piece in the June issue of SR by Phil is a shorter version of a text that is endorsed by the event organisers and we’ll be circulating some more reading material in the next few days. In the meantime some of the articles on the International Viewpoint website cover some of the ground.

6 responses to “Organising a day school – trickier than it looks”

Mark P

June 14, 2006 at 8:41 am

Which Stalinist group tried to sabotage your event? Calling them “bizarre” doesn’t really narrow down the field.As far as the AWL are concerned, I’m not quite sure why you feel the need to so obviously distort their positions. Their views are quite foolish enough as it stands without attributing ideas to them that they don’t actually hold.

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Liam Mac Uaid

June 14, 2006 at 11:16 am

Even by the standards of most Stalinists Fight Racism Fight Imperialism are an odd bunch. They have this habit of holding their own mini demos inside larger ones. It’s one way of not engaging with the outide world. A very long time ago they used to send me a bundle of their papers to sell in Belfast. I was younger and even more naive then.As for the AWL they tack so far to the right on most things that I don’t have the will power to avoid caricature. On an individual level their comrades are sophisticated and well informed and their presence will help raise the level of discussion. This is a good thing.

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Mark P

June 14, 2006 at 11:26 am

The RCG? Yes, a particularly nutty bunch of Stalinists. I’m a bit surprised to hear that you got mixed up with them for a bit though! I also didn’t realise that you were from Ireland (your name is obviously Irish, but I had been vaguely assuming that you were descended from Irish migrants to Britain). Were you involved with the USFI grouplet in Belfast before you moved? They have the distinction of being the grumpiest, moaniest bunch I’ve ever met on the left, if I can be entirely apolitical in my characterisations for a moment.

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Liam Mac Uaid

June 15, 2006 at 9:10 pm

Really Mark! The dour Ulsterman is such a Free State stereotype.

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Chris Brooks

June 18, 2006 at 8:17 pm

I think you’re quite on the mark about the AWL though. Given the choice between the maintainance of Communist party power in Cuba and the restoration of capitalism, they would support the former. That was their line on the USSR: they supported Yeltin’s counter-revolution and his banning of the Communist party.

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Mark P

June 19, 2006 at 1:18 pm

I don’t find Northerners particularly dour in general. There’s just something so grumpy and basically disappointed about Socialist Democracy in Ireland. They don’t actually seem to do anything except show up to other people’s meetings and say “you don’t want to do that. you should organise a picket of a trade union headquarters instead”, no matter what the meeting is about. At least they aren’t still calling themselves the Irish Committee for a Marxist Programme though.

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Liam redux