In this guest post, Duncan Chapel shares some personal reflections on the Counterforum, the first major event of the ex-SWP Counterfire organisation.
Two days. Two events. The orientations. Two futures to choose between.
On Sunday and Monday Counterfire’s first national event, the
Counterforum, showed the organisation and its friends the choices
before it. Either the organisation mimics the SWP’s practices of
building, rather autonomously from the existing struggle, movements it controls inside which it makes abstract propaganda to illustrate that capitalism is the ultimate enemy, or it integrates itself into the
existing activist layer of the working class and the social movements
in order to develop broader revolutionary consciousness.
On the Sunday, around 70 people came to the first part of the
Counterforum to discuss the feminist manifesto. It was largely a rerun of a meeting at Housman’s a few weeks ago, but the introductions by Lindsey German and Nina Power were less politically interesting, rather low level and untheoretical. The traditional SWP line on feminism was in more evidence – that is only working class women are really oppressed – and an underplaying of the achievements of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. But three-quarters of those on Sunday were students and young feminists, which will have found it curious when Lindsey announced towards the end that she wouldn’t describe herself as a feminist.
The smaller Monday session has some more interesting sessions, but the 44 people who attended the closing plenary would have heard few new answers for how to rearm the left. Summing up the event, two comrades involved in climate campaigning (Henry Parkyn-Smith and Elaine Graham-Leigh) stressed the need to connect up climate change to the capitalist market, as if propaganda could in some way change the consciousness of the broad masses drawn to the movements against climate change. Claire Solomon discussed the new wave of student struggles, the success of the Mutiny project, and the opportunity presented by the solidarity struggles with the Greek movement against austerity. Lindsey German said there was a huge crisis of politics in Britain and that the cuts means that preconditions were appearing for
revolutionary crises – that the masses cannot live in the old way and
that the rich cannot rule in the old way. While much of the left is
demoralised, in German’s opinion, it’s a good time for Counterfire to make an impact on British politics.
Some things were not mentioned by the plenary speakers. The fact that Britain already has an established and fragmented left, which is
standing more than 100 candidates in the general elections. The
reality that, while trade unionists will be challenged by the
austerity, the brunt of the recession will fall on ununionised women,
on migrants and on the developing world. The possibility to start now to accelerate the resistance by coordinating and regrouping the left, as exemplified by the statement of 34 anti-capitalist organisations across Europe in solidarity with the Greek struggle.
Many comrades speaking from the floor had the same approach: stressing the catastrophic nature of the crisis, underestimating the potential of the existing left, stressing the need for socialist propaganda, suggesting that left unity needs to await future dynamic mass movements. I felt that Chris Nineham and John Rees had more balanced perspectives: explaining why many workers will still vote Labour, and stressing the possibilities for militant unity in action today alongside building the social movements.
The meeting closed with stressing a series of initiatives inside
Counterfire’s own orbit: the campaigns against university cuts, a
public meeting in solidarity with Greece and building up the work on
Islamophobia already started by STWC. The possibility should be
examined for socialists to work together on the key issues facing the working class as a while – such as recession, war and the
electoral front – rather than simply staying inside the comfort zone
each group has built for itself.
Liam redux 
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