London is taking on the air of a medieval village with an epidemic of the Black Death. It hasn’t stopped raining in three months and travelling again has the frisson given by the prospect of instant obliteration at the hands of a misogynistic god-botherer. Did I let that stop me from going to Permanent Revolution’s weekend event? Certainly not. But I do lack the stamina of the the PR comrades and skipped the Friday night artistic bit and Sunday’s sessions.

I missed the introduction to the first session on Bolivia, arriving in time for the discussion. Some of this erred on the side of “if only they would take advice from proper Trotskyists.” Though if Dave who introduced is to be believed Trotskyist groups are as abundant as coca leaves in Bolivia. The issue was correctly identified as an extremely sectarian practice developed by these groups. My impression was that PR has a more negative assessment of the potentialites of the Venezuealan and Bolivian processes than is warranted by the levels of mobilisation and in Venezuela’s case, the rapid political development of the Chavez leadeership.

The major session was described as the state of the British working class though as Richard of Labour Briefing pointed out it had more to do with the condition of the trade unions. There were introductions from activists in the PCS, NUT and CWU. CWU member Pete was justifiably buoyant having been on strike the previous days but observed that the union leadership, like every other union leadership, does not seem too interested in keeping up the momentum.

Comic relief was provided by the admirably named INTERNATIONAL BOLSHEVIK TENDENCY. A name like that implies that you think everyone else on the left is a wretched, social imperialist, reformist Mensehvik waste of space. And they do. Having just listened to a PR supporter describe how she’d help organise illegal action in support of another group of workers, a Labour Party member talk about a major strike in a very important union the IBT more or less denounce them as labour aristocrats for being in unionised workplace and taking industrial action. His call centre isn’t unionised and he seemed to think it was a badge of honour before droning on about how shameful it was that PR had supported John Mc Donnell.

This seemed to prove the point made by Stuart from PR in the closing session that the British left looks weird to most people. To be frank this was not the session I expected it to be. In fact I asked comrade Kate for my tenner back. She gave me an apple instead. Entitled What is the future for the left? it should have been called Why we think Permanent Revolution is pretty good. From the title one would have expected a discussion on Labour after Blair, the options for Marxists, an assessment of the opportunities for new parties and so on. Instead it was a quick tour of the weakness and isolation of the Marxist left, a couple of jokes at Respect’s expense (which sounded like they’d been nicked from me) and a very honest judgement of how awful life was in Workers Power before the split.

For a group as new and as small as PR to have got sixty plus people to the event on the Saturday was quite a success. As is their custom debate was honest and comradely. The discussion was on a pretty high level throughout and they understand that most important thing about socialist democracy that pluralism, disagreement and honesty are strengths.