Yesterday’s conference of Hands Off Venezuela was attended by between two hundred and two hundred and fifty people by my guess. There were lots of speakers. I didn’t bother taking notes of what they said but they included John Mc Donnell, Matt Wrack of the FBU (another Saturday with a member of the Wrack clan), Tony Kearns of the CWU, Jeremy Dear, Alan Woods, the virtually omnipresent Derek Wall and the new Venezuelan ambassador Samuel Moncada. Moncada is a big improvement on his predecessor. You can work out within the first two minutes of his speech that he is in favour of the revolution. Despite listening to the previous ambassador three or four times I was none the wiser whether he was for the revolution,against the revolution or just cheesed off at having to speak at a public meeting. The new man spoke enthusiastically about the new constitution which reduces the working week to thirty six hours and prevents banks and other lenders from re-possessing the homes of people who are unable to pay their mortgage. It also guarantees the right to university education and protects all citizens from discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. For on the spot reports have a look at HOV’s site where Darrell Cozens is reporting and Gringa Diary where an Australian comrade is recording events. You would have to be a rock hard sectarian to see this new constitution, which will be voted on next Sunday, as anything other than a deepening of the revolutionary process.
There were two speakers from Venezuela. Guadalupe Rodrigez, Coordinaadora Simon Bolivar, 23 Enero explained how in that barrio they took over the police station and have replaced it with a community education centre. That is the sort of thing that happens in revolutions. A young man, whose name I’ve forgotten spoke about the factory occupations and how they are training a militia to defend the revolution.
There were four uncontroversial resolutions and then the one that I proposed. The text is below. The uncontroversial ones were on the magazine, organising for next year’s union conferences and so on. The first straw in the wind that my resolution on the environment might be controversial was during the discussion on the magazine. Someone suggested an amendment that it be produced in an environmentally sustainable manner. A large handful voted against this. Perhaps they want it to be printed on the skins of endangered animals or produced by small children using dangerous chemical and flown in from Australia.
The argument hinged around a couple of things. On the one hand there was an amendment, which I argued against, saying that the oil companies should be nationalised under workers’ control. My view is that this is not something that a solidarity organisation needs to, or should, take a position on. Socialist Resistance is all in favour of nationalising industries under workers’ control. Shoehorning this Trotskyist formula into a resolution on developing links with ecologists who are supporting the Bolivarian revolution rather misses the point, in particular when the democratic aspect of development has already been included in the original text.
The other criticism seemed to rather miss the point and seemed to imply that we were asking the Venezuelans to stop exporting oil. That was easy to rebut. It is those of us in the developed world who need to change our system of production and consumption.
It seems to be the special role of SR to provide controversy at HOV’s conference. Last year it was over the organisation’s decision to support John Mc Donnell. We did briefly dally with the idea of putting a resolution asking HOV to take a view on the Respect split but decided to focus on the environment instead.
(By the way, if anyone from the Crown Prosecution Service sees the video of the debate please disregard my comment about shooting Queen Elizabeth. It was a facile attempt to burnish my revolutionary credentials and further proof of my inability to distinguish between exaggerating for comic effect while talking shit in a pub and making a political argument.)
But what the debate did reflect was an underdeveloped approach to the question of the environment among a broad section of socialist opinion. This was borne out by the discussion on twenty first century socialism. The environment was barely mentioned and global warming not at all.
An encouraging aspect of this year’s conference is that HOV, with a lot of support from John Mc Donnell, is to work hard to put an end to the detrimental division between it and the Venezuela Information Centre and an open letter is being circulated.
If anyone who was at the conference wants to chip in please do.
This conference notes that the previous model of economic development in Venezuela has resulted in severe ecological degradation in many parts of the country.
Conference also notes that it is the country’s working class and poor who have been most adversely affected by this disregard for environmental considerations which the race for profits has created.
Conference further notes
- The plan by the Environment and Natural Resource Ministry to reduce the air pollution levels in Caracas by 80 percent in 2007, with the goal of being pollution free by 2010.
- The improved protection of waterways and fishing areas, especially those affected by oil exploration and drilling.
- The protection of unique ecological areas and indigenous lands, such as the 3.6 million-hectare Imataca Forest Reserve.
- The assistance given to thousands of coffee-growing families in the Andes region to establish environmentally sustainable organic coffee and vegetable co-operatives.
- The banning of the cultivation of genetically engineered crops on Venezuelan soil and the establishment of a large seed bank to maintain indigenous seeds for peasant movements around the world.
Conference agrees to show our full support for such important developments by trying to disseminate information about the revolution’s commitment to Venezuela ‘s environment in our publications.
Conference also expresses its concern that a few large mining and energy projects – like the opening of further coal concessions in the Sierra Perija or the plan for a gas pipeline through the Amazon basin to Argentina – appear to repeat the old pattern of disregard for the environment and have brought opposition from indigenous groups and environmentalists in Venezuela and other countries of Latin America.
Conference therefore urges the Bolivarian government to submit all such development plans to the strictest environmental and socio-ecological standards and to direct democratic control by the communities concerned.
Liam redux 
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