Get Up Stand Up

by curious Tue Jun 21, 2005 13:47

how is this considered a news item? would the swp, or the socialist party, be allowed to post minutes of a very small meeting?
how about the greens, labour, progressive democrats, etc.?

I merely ask...

by Joe Tue Jun 21, 2005 13:56

Whatever the size of the event I think a report on it qualifies as news. I'm not very keen on the minutes format of the reports but I guess thats probably down to time constrants. I think its a pity there are not more reports like this, including from the groups you mention.

by Minute Man Tue Jun 21, 2005 14:49

Do you really think the SWP/SP would post up the minutes of any meeting they dominated? The practise of the SWP is not to keep any minutes at all in their front organisations, so that no one can bring them to heel when they ignore decisions they dont like or simply lie about what they did or said at a previous meeting. Have you ever seen minutes of the IAWM steering committee posted up here or distributed in a public forum?

I would guess that the reason these minutes are posted is that the groups (WSM, IWU, ISN) and individuals involved are committed to transparent and democratic forms of organisation.

So, yes please, by all means encourage your Trotskyist comrades to post up minutes of their meetings!! I await with bated breath.

by David Tue Jun 21, 2005 17:01

The more posts like this the better... gives a feel for what's going on.

Admittedly the post above is dull as ditchwater but its good to be tranparent, accountable, factual.

.

by Mark P - Socialist Party (personal cap) Tue Jun 21, 2005 17:02

with minutes like this being posted up. Yes a better report format could be used but even in this format they give a flavour of what a small but useful campaign is doing on the ground. That's much better than yet another article about how some left wing group other is actually evil beyond belief.

On the general issue of the campaign, I know that ISR (the equivalent of Socialist Youth in Britain) have produced a campaign pack aimed at organising young workers. They've also distributed huge numbers of shorter leaflets . This has led them directly into helping to organise a number of workplaces. The campaign pack might be worth raiding for ideas even if the information in it deals with the situation in Britain. It's available online here:

http://www.anticapitalism.org.uk/document/fight%20for%20your%20rights%20at%20work/contents%20page.html

by Gregor Kerr - WSM - 1st May - pers. cap. Tue Jun 21, 2005 20:31 kerrgregor at yahoo dot co dot uk 086-1501151

Good info on that link. Thanks. On the question of why I decided to post the minutes of the meetings on indymedia - two reasons
1. To let people know what's going on. OK the style of simply posting them as minutes ain't the most exciting in the world but at least it's clear who was/wasn't at the meeting, what was/wasn't decided to do etc.
2 - and more importantly - in the hope that someone who reads them will decide to get involved. A campaign like this will be successful if we involve people who haven't been involved in stuff before. I hope that if we regularly post the minutes people who might be mistrustful of so many ' campaigns' which are seen as fronts for one or other political organisation will see that all involved are making a genuine effort to be as open and welcoming as possible.
Anyone who gets a leaflet and realises - Shit I'm not getting what I'm entitled to! - is a success for the campaign.
Anyone who subsequently rings the IWU, ATGWU, SIPTU or Mandate and takes a step towards standing up for his/her rights is an even greater success.
Likewise anyone who reads the minutes of the meetings here and decides to either come along to the next meeting or to get involved in the next leafletting session or even to just take a few leaflets and hand them to the workers in his/her local shop - that's another success.
I suppose I could re-write the minutes in the form of a report on the meeting but that just seems like more work to give the same information.
This issue of casualisation and precarity of labour is getting a resonance all across Europe as it's THE major issue facing huge numbers of workers. I'd love to see some discussion here of how we can move from simply dishing out leaflets to actually helping people to organise in a real sense. Any ideas out there???

by Mark P - Socialist Party (personal cap) Tue Jun 21, 2005 22:46

I've seen one of your leaflets but I can't really remember too much about it, so you may already be doing this...

Anyway, I know that ISR in Britain include advice about how exactly to go about organising your workplace in their material and explain that they will help if they are contacted. As a result they gradually got people contacting them looking for assistance and advice. I think to work it has to go this way around - you get the information out and eventually workers will contact you for advice.

Their focus, as a youth organisation, is almost entirely on young workers and they have found that a lot of people who are most keen on organising their workplaces after hearing about unions previously knew almost nothing about trade unions previously. As a result some of the most basic stuff about talking to workmates you trust, arranging a meeting away from the premises and that kind of thing was the most important information they could provide. It wasn't enough to just give the arguments about why workers should join a union, information about how exactly to do it and how exactly to spread the idea was just as important.

They also made contact with people through End Low Pay stalls with name and shame boards - people who come over to give out about their pay levels are normally both angry and not in a union. The stall gives you a chance to bring up the idea of unionisation in a context where they aren't actually at work. I think that Socialist Youth in the North have used them in their campaigning work (the examples and legal issues are UK ones) during their very long running End Low Pay campaign.

The packs themselves strike a very careful balance politically. They are overwhelmingly about why you should join a union, but they also explain in a very basic way what is wrong with the unions at the moment and what the unions should be like.

by curious Wed Jun 22, 2005 14:39

Many thanks for some of the more rational replies, which I’ll get to in a minute. My question probably should have been sent to the editors, but some of the feedback here provided some insight. I’d like to first discuss one of the questionable responses.

From “Minute Man”
“So, yes please, by all means encourage your Trotskyist comrades to post up minutes of their meetings!! I await with bated breath.”

Do public debate a favour, and bate not just your breath, but your knee jerk responses as well. I merely put forward a question, and you spit out nonsense. Truly remarkable. “Minute man” is probably appropriate for many reasons.

To be honest, I don’t know why groups like SWP/SP/PD’s, etc. don’t post their minutes, which is why I merely asked if they would be allowed to do so. Amazing how one question can provoke such an irrational response.

As to the other replies, thanks, I think understand a little bit better now. I honestly wasn’t aware that campaigns/organisations could merely post up minutes of their meetings. This is probably due to how infrequently I now check this site. And I agree that it is a worthwhile practice, and I don’t think it’s necessary to write up a report. Also, I was unaware of this campaign, and I’ll be sure to pass on the information.

I did ask about other groups posting up their minutes because when I used to check this site more regularly, other groups faced an onslaught of abuse for everything from their surnames to their personal habits. There was also a positive mantra repeated for other groups, such as:

“I would guess that the reason these minutes are posted is that the groups (WSM, IWU, ISN) and individuals involved are committed to transparent and democratic forms of organisation.”

I saw this to be a pattern, not just a few individuals trying to distort debate. I’ll try to check in over the next few weeks to see if this has changed in any way.

by Terry Wed Jun 22, 2005 15:59

Ideally the minutes and other discussion should have been added to the original event for this meeting.

If the event is a week or two old, then people might not notice additional info was added unless they look at the latest comments.

Perhaps this needs a small change in the code to highlight events for which comments have been added.

by ISNer (pers cap) Tue Jul 05, 2005 18:22

On Saturday morning 2nd July six members of the ISN circulated the Get Up - Stand Up information leaflet in Finglas Village and its environs.
This included all the shops in the Village, Aldi & Lidl on the outskirts and the shops in the Clearwater shopping centre.
Once again there was a great response from those who received the leaflet.