Yesterday was the second HOV conference and the second that I’ve attended. It really is a breath of fresh air when contrasted to the highly stage-managed events that are all the rage on the British left. There are no speaker slips to weed out dissenting voices and political arguments are replied to in a political manner rather than by distorting them or making sneering remarks about the motives of the proposers.
There were about two hundred delegates, roughly the same size as last year but I thought a rather younger age profile. There has just been a tour of some universities and this seems to have gone well.
Diana Raby from Liverpool University was an interesting speaker. She observed that this is the first experience in the post-Stalinist period which shows that the left can come to power and that the Chávez regime has been progressively taking control over sectors of the state apparatus from the bourgeoisie, in particular the army, the judiciary and to some extent the police. This in contrast to other Latin American countries where guerrilla movements have either been defeated or, like Colombia, have contributed to decades of misery. She was very clear on the distinction between office and power. The other interesting comparison she made was with Chile, pointing out that Chávez’s popular support is between 50-80% of the popular vote and that he has much deeper support in the armed forces than Allende had.
Alan Woods began by defending the thesis that what is happening in Venezuela is really a revolution citing Lenin’s quote about whoever wants to see an absolutely pure socialist revolution never will and reminding us of Trotsky’s description of revolution as working people and the poor trying to take their destiny into their own hands and change their conditions of life. He added the essential qualification that the revolution has not yet been completed and its fate is still in the balance. The powers of the old state apparatus has still to be decisively broken and that sooner or later a showdown with the old ruling class is inevitable and must be prepared for. I agree with this.
Supporters of Socialist Resistance continued our gallant tradition of being on the losing side in the major political debate, though here at least it was a real debate. Supporters of Socialist Appeal consistently make the point that the best way to defend the Venezuelan revolution is to fight for socialism in Britain. This is true and that’s what socialist organisations are supposed to be for. However supporting the theory of permanent revolution should not be a requirement for membership of a solidarity organisation and the line was becoming very blurred between the two things. This was expressed in the discussion around the motion that HOV support John Mc Donnell’s campaign. SR supports it. I’d love to see him win. It would mean that we are in a pre-revolutionary situation. The trouble is that it’s not the function of solidarity organisations to take sides in internal debates in political parties. Most Brownites will be hostile to the Venezuelan revolution and virtually every Mc Donnell supporter will defend it. That’s not the point. The only requirement for being in a solidarity organisation is a desire to solidarise with the revolution or an objection to imperialist interference. We lost the vote by a large margin with some surprising people not agreeing with us but I still got elected onto the HOV steering committee.
I lost the race to publish the first account of the conference to Louise at Stroppyblog by allowing my social life to get in the way.
Liam redux 
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