Report on the WSM Autumn conference

national | anti-capitalism | press release

Monday October 31, 2005 17:48

by Andrew - Workers Solidarity Movement

The Workers Solidarity Meeting held its Autumn 2005 conference over the October bank holiday weekend. National conference is the decision making body of the WSM – it does everything from agree the collective political positions of the WSM to decide what mechanisms we use to make decisions.

This conference took place in a period of growth in the libertarian movement across Ireland. As part of this the WSM has increased in size over the last couple of years which meant that at this conference we needed to deal with both structural issues arising from this growth and the political direction of the organization.

The conference was held in Dublin and well attended - around 80% of WSM members made at least some of the conference. Some 70 motions covering eight different areas were discussed and voted on over the weekend. Financial and other reports were also presented and questioned/discussed by the membership. The conference ended with elections to the various commissions and editorial groups within the WSM

The full text of the amended WSM position papers will be published next week but here is a summary of the areas discussed.

Trade unions

Eight motions addressed WSM work in the unions and the changing nature of the Irish workplace in particular in relation to the increasing percentage of women and /or migrant workers. The focus of debate was around the Independent Workers Union (IWU)which was singled out as particularly worthy our support because of its work to recruit and organise low paid workers and its anti-partnership stance. After some debate we decided to encourage all of our members to become either full or associate IWU members.

The Partition of Ireland
The debate around the WSM’s position with regards to partition continued at this conference with some 24 individual motions and some 7 amendments to these motions. Individual changes are too many to list here but as a result of this session this position paper will again see very substantial modifications. The paper continues to move towards addressing all aspects of partition rather than just concentrating on the provisional IRA and other republican campaigns against the border. Debate focused around the effects of partition on the south - in particular the reasons for the decline in the percentage of the Protestant population and the true level of state influence and power held by the Catholic Church. The concept of partition as a compromise for some unionists as well as Irish nationalists was also debated (as was much else!).

WSM constitution
The WSM constitution describes how the organisation functions and in particular how it makes decisions. As the WSM has expended in the last couple of years from one branch and a couple of members in Cork to three branches we have learned that what we had worked out in theory in terms of operating as a national organisation, did not work so well in practice. This session concentrated on how we would make decisions between conferences. In total there were 14 motions and 7 amendments to these motions. On the day itself we suspended standing orders for this session in order to allow additional amendments to be put forward as the discussion progressed.

Because internal democracy is so fundamental to anarchism this session was both painstaking and protracted with a lot of intense debate on what would look like minor issues to those with less concern for democratic decision making. After a three-hour debate we have emerged with what should prove to be a workable inter conference national decision-making structure complete with a new name, the ‘Delegate Council’.

One interesting aspect of this debate was the need to deal with situations where there were up to four different amendments to the same motions. We had to resolve how we would decide on which of these four were accepted. After some discussion we went for a system of voting where a hand vote would be taken and the proposal with the lowest number of votes eliminated. The vote would then be retaken and the proposal with the lowest number of votes again eliminated. Once agreed this turned out to be quite a rapid way of conducting a multiway vote so that that the result reflected the views of the majority.

International perspectives
In this session our two old papers ‘International Perspectives’ and ‘Building an anarchist International’ were merged into a single paper. Changes made reflected the increasing role the internet plays in international relations between anarchist groups. We also formalized our agreement with the anakismo.net project which included agreeing a delegate to the anarkismo.net editorial list and a annual donation to the project.

Our Perspectives
There were eight motions on the WSM ‘Our perspectives’ paper. These reaffirmed our commitment to working in mass organizations, set up a group to organize a national speaking tour outside of Dublin and Cork and re-affirmed our commitment to helping to build a broad libertarian movement. We also debated ways to improve the level of political debate within the organization and the agreeing of a collective approach to struggles. A major decision was to retire our position paper ‘State capitalism in Russia’ which was felt to be outdated and largely irrelevant outside of Leninist debates. A working group has been set up to discuss the Russian revolution and its aftermath and to prepare a new draft paper for a future conference.

Other stuff

Other areas there were motions on include WSM administration, practice and publications. This would mostly only be of interest to members although they do include setting up a group to get drafts for a new logo.

The next WSM conference will happen around March of 2006

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Comments (18 of 18)

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Curious?

by golen autonome

Tue Nov 01, 2005 07:54

How many members turned up?

The information is there

by Careful reader

Tue Nov 01, 2005 17:02

"around 80% of WSM members made at least some of the conference"

80%

by Still Curious

Tue Nov 01, 2005 17:06

of how many?

a little birdie told me

by inspector plod

Tue Nov 01, 2005 18:29

that they have 28 members.

Good Report

by Justin Moran - Sinn Féin (personal cap)

Tue Nov 01, 2005 19:51

Good and interesting report.

As an IWU member very pleased to see the union getting that kind of recognition and support. We'll shortly be launching a Dublin bulletin for the membership in the region and our membership is increasing at a steady level.

I'm also looking forward to publication of the revised document on partition, which I always thought was a pretty interesting analysis of the conflict if obviously, as a republican socialist, one I see as deeply flawed. The debate sounds interesting, especially around the impact of partition in the South.

I do think that the post, which was removed (since reinstated after editorial discussion -ed) raised an interesting question. 80% of WSM members attended but it is not indicated how many this constitutes. The report also makes the point that the organisation has gone from one to three branches in a relatively short space of time.

Either Andrew doesn't have the numbers of how many attended or is reluctant to post them because they might appear small. If the former, it would be useful to get them if they were about.

If the latter, I don't think anyone believes the WSM to be a mass movement with thousands of organised workers. But it is a well respected organisation on the Irish left and indicating the numbers who attended will not dilute that respect, arguably it would increase it as the WSM does a huge amount of work with very limited financial resources and personnel.

~20 people

by u75

Tue Nov 01, 2005 20:04

I think that 80% of the wsm means there were about 20 people there.

Thanks for the report

by dot

Tue Nov 01, 2005 21:10

And it's interesting to see the emergence of the IWU as the industrial wing of the anarcho-republican movement ;-)

Likewise it will be interesting to look for the Eire Nua influence on modifications to the position paper on Partition, and to see how the assorted Ogra's will respond

Numbers

by Andrew

Tue Nov 01, 2005 23:13

I didn't think the numbers thing was worth replying to as everyone on the left knows our approx size and I reckoned it was just trolling - I try to avoid feeding them when possible. As already pointed out over on U75 (which is a London based site) some other WSMer did respond.

Hope to have the position papers online towards the weekend and will be very interested in any serious discussion of them.

Numbers Game

by MV

Wed Nov 02, 2005 03:13

From Urban 75:
"there are 26 of us. small. but perfectly formed"
with wespect
Masters Voice

round 25 members

by James - Vorkers Sholidarity

Wed Nov 02, 2005 13:27

Never counted them out. In any case there's a few people out of action at the moment...our branch is down from 11 to 6 members cause some are away, and doing night course after work, spending far too much time as an indymedia editor etc. We will be demanding the transfer of Ant from indymedia to WSM in compensation.

by none of the above.

Wed Nov 02, 2005 13:49

is antonio a member? say it aint so...

here you go

by Sean Mallory - WSM pers. cap.

Wed Nov 02, 2005 13:57

it varied from 16-20 as far as I could tell. .

seriously though it 's pretty worrying that this concerns you. I feel like a i've just given a dog a bone

Is no one excited about us changing logo?

That darn logo

by Cian - WSM (personal cap)

Thu Nov 03, 2005 14:31

The logo change is the best thing to come out of our conference I think. I gather we have a visual artist and a graphic designer making submissions so i look forward seeing what they've come up with. That horrible industrial background is so 18th century, we need to have something that shows we're a forward thinking organisation not something thats mired in the past.

Why leave the existing unions?

by trade unionist

Mon Nov 07, 2005 21:47

So they're all joining the IWU. What about the struggles in the existing unions? Why abandon the unions where 99.999% of organised workers are already in? Are you abandoning them? Why can't you stay in them fight for the grassroots in those unions and try to push the unions to organise migrant, low paid, women and young workers? You would do a greater service to the workers movement by doing so, the unions need left activists to stay in and fight the bureaucrats

Misunderstanding

by Gregor Kerr - WSM - 1st May - pers. cap.

Mon Nov 07, 2005 22:15

kerrgregor at yahoo dot co dot uk

I think trade unionist is misunderstanding the position. We're not all rushing out of the unions we're currently members of. Rather what we are posing as a strategy is that in tandem with the work we have always been doing as grassroots actrivists in the unions of which we are members - and the various anti-partnership campaigns, strike support groups etc that we have been involved in over the years - we have added a couple of new sections to the position paper. These state
"In recent years the Independent Workers Union (IWU) has been formed. It openly declares itself as being anti-social partnership and is actively working to recruit and organise low-paid workers. We welcome this development and will do anything we can to assist them in this work."
"We encourage and support initiatives such as the Get Up Stand Up Campaign which aim to supply workers with information about their rights and encourgae them to become organised."
To the end of our Short Term perspectives we added
"...encouraging the recruitment of low-paid and migrant workers into trade unions and, where possible, assisting them in standing up for their rights"
and also
"That we encourage all WSM members to become either full or associate members of the Independent workers Union with a view to working within and alongside the IWU to further the objectives of our trade Union position paper."
What this will mean in practice will be WSM members continuing the trade union work in our own unions (and the cross-union campaigns )that we have always been doing but in addition working 'within and alongside' the IWU.
Hope this clarifies the position. Maybe whatever WSMer is putting together the amended version of the position paper could post a link here when that is done so that the full paper can be read in context.

Thanks

by Trade unionists

Mon Nov 07, 2005 23:25

Thanks for clarification. I think it would be a serious mistake for left activists to leave the main unions. That is were the workers are and it is there that struggles will take place, its very important that left activists will be there to organise that.

Trade Union position paper

Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:30

The full trade union position paper is online at the link below - the section being discussed is a short section at the end in the 'Short term persepctives' session. The web site is being a bit wonky at the moment so it might take a while to connect through when you click on the link

Update

by Joe

Wed Nov 09, 2005 13:57

The WSM position paper on 'Building an anarchist international' agreed at the Oct 2005 WSM National Conference is online at

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Report on the WSM Autumn conference

Comments (18 of 18)