Bristol Convention of the Left, 13th March
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=302907136405&ref=ts
Bristol Convention of the Left welcomes you to a day of decentralised discussion in Easton Community Centre.
The Convention will be about participation not top-down platforms, and hopes to develop agreement on the Left about policies around which we can all unite.
We will be holding workshops on:
-War and Peace - Palestine, Afghanistan and Iran
-Defending Public Services
-Solidarity with Latin America
-The Environment and Climate Change
-Fascism, Racism and Islamophobia
-Defending Civil Liberties
-Gender Equality
-Unemployment and the Economic Crisis
-Electoral Strategy- Builiding a Movement
These workshops will be about creating agreement on campaign strategies across the Left and will be co-run by groups within the movement.
Our Sponsors So far:
In Personal Capacity:
Tim Lezard (NUJ)
Jerry Hicks (UNITE)
Katie Buse (Bristol Green Party)
Jeremy Clarke (Bristol Stop the War)
Steve Mills (UNISON)
Paulette North (NUT)
Jo Benefield (Bristol Respect Party)
Mark Baker (PCS)
Tom Baldwin (Socialist Party)
Paul Smith (Labour Party)
Julie Boston (Campaign for Free Public Transport)
Ed Hill (Bristol Computers for Palestine)
Dave Chapple (CWU)
Karina Watkins (People and Planet- Bristol)
Paul Saville (People and Planet- UWE)
Dan Iles (Bristol Left)
Gus Baker (Bristol Labour Students)
Sophie Bennett (Bristol Uni Feminist Society)
and Ken Loach - International Film Maker!
Party, Union Branch and Campaign group Sponsors:
-UNISON UWE Branch
-CWU Bristol Branch
-Socialist Worker Party
-Bristol Stop the War
-Bristol Unite Against Fascism
-Youth Fight For Jobs
-Green Left
-Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign
-Bristol Defend the Asylum Seekers Campaign
-plus more to be confirmed
If you or your group also wants to sponsor this exciting event, contact us on leftconvention@gmail.com
**********************************************
Please invite all who you think will be interested!!
*************************************************
Easton Community Centre
Kilburn St
Easton
BS5 6AW
http://www.eastoncommunitycentre.org.uk/p_Contact_Us.ikml
Thanks for posting it Derek, should be a good day, we are expecting it to be very busy.
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 11 March, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
Im sorry i wont be able to make this but i wish you every success.
Comment by eamonn wright — 12 March, 2010 @ 2:39 am
Nice work everyone ,hope it going well
Comment by steelcityred — 12 March, 2010 @ 7:05 am
Socialist Worker Party.
I know the SWP has lost some members recently, but all but 1 worker?
Comment by anticapitalista — 12 March, 2010 @ 9:46 am
Great to see Labour’s Bristol West PPC Paul Smith attending. One of the better new candidates from the Labour Party anywhere in the country - hope he gets in, along with people like John Cryer and Ian Lavery.
Paul’s publicly stated his commitment to defending public services, investing in renewable energy and ditching any new runways to serve Greater London, scrapping Trident and a scaling back of our military commitments.
Comment by B — 12 March, 2010 @ 11:38 am
We will be holding workshops on:
-War and Peace - Palestine, Afghanistan and Iran
No where else matters of course..
Comment by JB Sayles — 12 March, 2010 @ 11:47 am
@6
Don’t forget Latin America comrade, it’s obvious the left shouldn’t ignore that!
Comment by Johnny Wonble — 12 March, 2010 @ 6:06 pm
Ricky Knight from the Green Party will be there as well, he is a great anti-war and anti nuclear campaigner and is standing against Paul Smith in Bristol West.
Bristol Labour’s recent alliance with the Tories has put most of the left vote off Labour, although Paul Smith is a decent bloke.
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 12 March, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
It seems rather weird that two political opponents, in the form of Paul Smith of New Labour and Ricky Knight from the Green party who are fighting eachother in the same seat should be talking at a Left conference, which is being promoted to be about ” creating agreement on campaign strategies across the Left ….”.
Please note that also this weekend is the:
13 Mar 2010, 11:00 am
Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union conference 2010
13 Mar 2010, 11:00 am
South Camden Community School, London NW1 1RG
Speakers will include Tony Kearns (CWU), Manuel Cortes (TSSA), Chris Baugh (PCS), Prof. Barbara Harriss-White, Jonathan Neale (Million Green Jobs Commission, CCC), John Stewart (HACAN), Graham Petersen (UCU), and Larry Lohman (Cornerhouse).
The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union conferences have brought together hundreds of Trade Unionists to discuss the role that the Trade Union movement can play in the fight against Climate Change.
Our previous conferences have been a great success, but our third occurs against a backdrop that is even more urgent. Working people face the twin threat of economic recession and climate disaster. The failure to agree a serious strategy for dealing with climate change at the Copenhagen Climate Conference underlines this problem.
Registration is £10 (waged) £5 (low-paid, unemployed).
For more information, please visit the CCCTU Wordpress blog.
Comment by Donkey — 12 March, 2010 @ 9:00 pm
That conference looks good as well, I agree there is a long way to go vis a vis left unity, at least we are talking.
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 12 March, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
9.It seems rather weird that two political opponents, in the form of Paul Smith of New Labour and Ricky Knight from the Green party who are fighting eachother in the same seat should be talking at a Left conference, which is being promoted to be about ” creating agreement on campaign strategies across the Left ….”.
Paul and Ricky will both be taking part in a wide ranging discussion on electoral strategy for the left along with another PPc Tom Baldwin from the Socialist Party and TUSC and representatives of Respect and the SWP who are not standing parliamentary candidates in Bristol. Actually we think that we can both discuss and agree on joint action on the 90% that we a agree on and have a comradely and constructive discussion on the 10% we disagree on…
Do you think that’s impossible, Donkey?
Comment by paulm — 12 March, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
That one looks very good as well Donkey, sadly i wont be able to make this but i wish it every success.
Comment by eamonn wright — 13 March, 2010 @ 7:57 am
Good event, very well attended and pretty well organised. As a Labour party member I did think the Electoral Strategy workshop was just a bit too much about Labour-bashing and not enough constructive work. But everything else was good - there’s lots of good ideas from the less partisan workshops. A good deal of thanks are due to Dan Iles for getting the idea off the ground and hopefully there’ll be another one soon.
Comment by DM Andy — 13 March, 2010 @ 8:46 pm
I’d echo that, but Labour do have a lot to be bashed about don’t they?
Iraq, Afghanistan, PFI’s, ID cards, screwing the working classes, Rupert Murdoch, bending over backwards for big capital, cash for honours, the pandering to racism of many MP’s (why do you think Griffin picked Hodge as an opponent)
We need an alternative to neo Liberal Politics and its not coming from the Labour Party is it?
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 13 March, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
Ecolefty, would agree with you, but those Labour Party members going to a Convention of the Left are at least willing to be part of the solution. As for Griffin, isn’t it because there’s more BNP councillors in Barking than any other constituency in the country?
Comment by DM Andy — 13 March, 2010 @ 10:25 pm
#15 “least willing to be part of the solution.” in which way ? Sorry to be so negative but we hear this before
Comment by steelcityred — 13 March, 2010 @ 10:34 pm
I also found it a very positive day of discussion. I think the Labour party members who spoke in the sessions I attended were divided roughly equally between those who:
1) Have for the past few years remained in the Labour party for the lack of a conviction that there was a realistic alternative but may well be be prepared to play a role in building that alternative after the next election — and thus be part of the solution
2) Those who are quite happy to play the role of a left cover for neo-liberalism and are part of no solution.
As far as I could see, almsot all the Labour Party members present were from Bristol West, which I suspect has far more members than the rest of the constituencies in Bristol put together, and is quite frankly a statistical and political outlier.
Comment by paulm — 13 March, 2010 @ 10:48 pm
Fair point paulm, I would class myself as #1, I did leave the Labour Party in 2001, joined the Greens for a while, didn’t fit with them (though that might have been the very odd bunch locally) and drifted out of politics altogether before being persuaded to rejoin Labour in 2003. Currently I feel that I’m doing some good in the Labour Party compared to the nothing I would probably be doing if I wasn’t in Labour. If I was actually in Bristol then there’s more alternatives and I would probably feel differently.
I think that the strategy workshop would have been more constructive had it not turned into a sort of semi-hustings, maybe Jerry Hicks’ idea of a post-election meetup will be more likely to lead to something concrete.
Comment by DM Andy — 13 March, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
Andy,
Well we should keep talking as there are many things we can work together on I hope. The real test we will face is how we resist the attacks and cuts that will come, whoever wins the election.
If you think you can help from within the Labour then good luck to you. None of us are saying that there aren’t decent people left in the labour party, we just think you give unwarranted credibility to the likes of Brown and Blair.
Nick
(wonder if I’m an odd or normal Green?)
Comment by ECOLEFTY — 14 March, 2010 @ 9:21 am
Perhaps you’re a normally odd Nick, though I’ve heard you get the odd normal Green, so maybe your one of those…
Comment by paulm — 14 March, 2010 @ 11:41 am
Nick, you seemed perfectly normal.
Comment by DM Andy — 14 March, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
Glad to hear that the conference went well and was by all accounts so far considered to be constructive.
Such conventions of the Left “should” be taking place throughout the country to clarify the various electoral strategies at play between left and left of centre parties standing in the forthcoming General elections and all the more plans need to be afoot for creating and consolidating broad Left unity alliances and developing viable green socialist alternatives for the future once the smoke has risen from the ashes after the elections….
Hopefully by then the present political dynamics and tectonic plates will have shifted such that a multitude of people will by then be well poised and ready to make serious moves and hold creative discussions about the formation of a new broad Left party which clearly is needed to bring organisation and solidarity, strength and unity, hope and vision to rooting out this roting rotten corrupt capitalist system,fighting the ongoing neo-liberal cuts and ever looming jobs onslaught, the on-going very bloody imperialist wars and the fascist and racist BNP to boot.
Comment by MP3 PLAYER — 14 March, 2010 @ 9:32 pm