[JNV] Iraq Strategy Day

[JNV]

1) Ending the Occupation of Iraq: Strategy Day
2) Turning the World Upside Down by Milan Rai 
3) Strategy Gathering Discussion Documents

Dear friends

JNV is sponsoring the Iraq Occupation Focus national strategy day in London this Saturday (details below), and we are encouraging anti-war activists from around the UK to participate.

There is a discussion sheet already up on the IOF and JNV websites with pre-conference proposals and suggestions, including some from me. 

I'm including in this email a piece I wrote for the Z Sessions on Vision and Strategy this June, which suggests a bigger framework for these discussions, the initial discussion document circulated by Iraq Occupation Focus, and a thoughtful contribution from Kate Page of Watching the Warmakers.

Earlier this year, there was a very interesting debate in the US about strategy, and before the weekend I hope to add some contributions to that discussion to the JNV website.

Best wishes

Milan Rai
JNV

 

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1) Ending the Occupation of Iraq: Strategy Day
 
11am-5pm, Saturday 18th November
Friends Meeting House
173 Euston Road, London NW1
(tubes: Euston, Euston Square)
 
Registration from 10.30am – Entry by donation (£2/£5 suggested)
Email iraqfocus@riseup.net to book a place.
 
A rare opportunity for anti-war campaigners from across the UK to share
their experiences of campaigning, their ideas and proposals for action,
and to discuss strategies for ending the occupation.
 
Participants include: Sami Ramadani, Iraqi academic and columnist, Iraqi
Democrats Against the Occupation, Ewa Jasiewicz, Naftana, UK support
committee for the General Union of Oil Employees, Milan Rai, Justice Not
Vengeance, author of 7-7: The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War,
Greg Muttit, Platform, author of ‘Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s
Oil Wealth’, Justin Alexander, Co-ordinator, Jubilee Iraq, Haifa
Zangana, Iraqi writer and activist, Act Together, Gabriel Carlyle,
Voices UK, Andreas Speck, War Resisters International
 
Following the Lancet’s estimate of 655,000 Iraqi deaths since the
invasion, the Head of the UK Army speaking out, and the massive anti-war
vote in the US, now is a vital time for anti-occupation campaigners in
the UK to plan how we can step up our efforts – and our effectiveness –
in 2007.
 
Discussions have already started on the IOF website – download a 4-page
discussion sheet, plus further contributions from activists around the
country, at: http://www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk/strategyday.htm
 
 
Strategy Day Agenda
 
10.30am Registration
 
11.00am Opening speaker: Sami Ramadani on why we need to end the
occupation
 
11.30am Strategy review: Ewa Jasiewicz, Milan Rai and others on key
strategic questions
 
Discussion groups taking stock of anti-occupation work to date and where
we need to go in 2007
 
1.00pm Lunch
 
2.00pm Workshops
 
Getting MPs to oppose the occupation
Oil and corporations in Iraq
Developing a counter-recruitment network
Raising the profile of the movement
Next steps for direct action
Local anti-war organising
 
3.30pm Break
 
3.45pm Future plans: Putting our ideas into practice, where do we want
to be in six months?
 
Reports back from workshops, proposals and discussion
 
4.30pm Closing speaker: Haifa Zangana
 
5pm: Finish
 
 
Full details and discussion sheet at
http://www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
To book a place in advance email iraqfocus@riseup.net


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2) Turning the World Upside Down

A paper for the Z Sessions on Vision and Strategy
by Milan Rai

The present world order is based on immense inequalities in wealth and power. In opposition to the present order are various popular movements - which are for the most part tending to converge in their thinking and their goals.

The question before us at ZSVS is what the international order might look like, and how we might get there, if the values which we who are gathering together share were to be expressed in both our ends and our means.

The dimensions of the global crisis are many. Three overarching human crises are problems of survival: the challenge of surviving human-induced environmental rupture; the challenge of surviving suicidal militarism; and the challenge of global poverty and hunger.

It is easy to say that the end-state we desire is a world in which we enjoy a sustainable planetary economy, a world of peaceful relations between co-operative societies, a world in which hunger and avoidable disease have been abolished.

It is no less easy to say that the primary obstacle to achieving this desired end-state is the system of transnational corporations, and the powerful states which defend and extend the control of these corporations; and furthermore that these corporations and states must be abolished.

In one formula, this would mean that the productive resources of each society should be under the direct control of those who carry out productive work. Economic and other relations between societies would, we expect, become less violent and confrontational, and less threatening to human survival.

It is more challenging and perhaps more humanly significant to try to define some of the major staging posts on the way to this utopia.

In the terms of another piece, it is more difficult - and may be more useful in making strategy - to define what world society might look like _on_ the political horizon, rather than beyond it.

In one widely-discussed and thoughtful contribution to these kinds of debates (The Age of Consent), George Monbiot suggested that the key issue was democracy (in the mainstream sense of 'representative democracy in the civil but not the economic sphere'). The key intermediate goal he suggested we should aim towards was a world parliament.

This would make sense if the end state we were aiming for was a globalization of the Western model of capitalist democracy.

If, however, we are convinced that transnational corporations are a key obstacle to needed changes, and their abolition is necessary to secure a just and sustainable world, then some other medium-term goal is going to be more useful to us, and another definition of the kind of 'global democracy' we are aiming for.

What restraints on transnational capitalism can we imagine being imposed within basically the present structure of power? Where might these restraints come from?

On the political horizon, it seems clear that there are only three possible sources of restraint: grassroots movements; nation-states; and transnational authorities deriving their power and authority from both states and grassroots movements.

By 'grassroots movements' I mean here all sorts of popular associations, trade unions and other forms of 'civil society'. It is likely that the restraining influence exerted by nation-states, and by global authorities created by nation-states, will be initiated by, and proportional to the combined strength of, grassroots movements and those states which are either oppressed by the present order or willing to challenge it for other reasons.

What kinds of restraint are we talking about?

We are talking about restraints on war, state terrorism, nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction, military production and exports.

We are talking about restraints on the use of economic sanctions, international debt, monopoly power over economic markets, aid, unfair trade rules, restrictive patent laws and other forms of intimidation and exploitation.

We are talking about restraints on the destructive flight of capital through financial markets and national industries, and the dumping of environmental and social costs on powerless communities.

How could these kinds of restraints be exercised? By international institutions supported by the collective strength of the more pacific and poorer countries, and by grassroots mobilization both inside and outside the 'great powers'.

What we need are international organizations, at both the state level and at the popular level, that are committed to combat domination whether by regional bullies, superpower hegemons, or transnational corporations.

These international organisations need to be as democratic as possible, perhaps based on some international economic/financial burden-sharing according to ability to pay, with the greatest degree possible of popular communication, oversight and accountability across national boundaries.

There are old traditions that may be useful here. The election of delegates who do not 'represent', but who are faithful conduits for information and opinion between their electors and the discussion/decision-making forums they attend on behalf of their communities. The right to recall delegates at will; fixed terms of office; requirements for rotation of office-holders; and so on.

To these we might add new ideas, which are often elaborations of older principles, familiar from the 'parecon' literature.

International grassroots organisations can only be as strong and democratic as the national and local organisations they are built on. (I mean here something fairly loose - organisations spanning a recognised grouping (self-)defined by geography, ethnicity, language or other marker of (self-defined) significance.)

One major goal on the horizon therefore is to build grassroots organisations that are strong and democratic internally (free from sexism, racism, homophobia, classism and other forms of division); free of 'vanguardism' and authoritarian control; able to cooperate effectively across language and national boundaries; committed to the radical reform (or abolition) of institutions such as the transnational corporation and the imperial state; and willing and able to make sacrifices in the battle to restrain these disruptive and destructive entities.

At the international level, there is something like the kind of coalition described above regarding trade justice (though not to the same degree in relation to war or environmental crisis, as far as I am aware). Currently, as I understand it, NGOs, foundations and trade unions all play a leading and vitally important role in these coalitions.

Going by the above analysis, two goals for the future would be, on the one hand, to reform these institutions (NGOs, foundations, trade unions and so on) to make them more transparent, democratic and empowering, and, on the other, to build up other independent national and international grassroots organisations that can complement them and perhaps eventually replace them or merge with them.

I think it is also safe to propose strong roots in the organized labour movements, made up of revitalised and militant labour organizations, will be critical to the success of our movements for radical social change.

It goes without saying (I assume) that, from the point of view of workers'  rights at least, the power of transnational corporations can only be countered effectively by transnational unions or coalitions of unions.

So the broad brush picture here would be of a basket of particular restrictive measures which we might describe as 'Tobin Plus' or 'UN Charter Plus), which can exert a restraining influence on the major corporations and on violent states; and international institutions, increasingly grassroots-influenced and -dominated, which are committed to justice and survival and therefore to the reform (and eventual replacement) of the transnational corporation and the imperial state.

In the absence of real equality, the global majority can check the excesses of the powerful, institutionalize those restraints, and form watchdog institutions that pose a significant countervailing influence.

These new organizations and institutions - whether at the state level, the NGO/trade union level or the grassroots level must increasingly embody the values of the future world society we are building.


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3) Strategy Gathering Discussion Documents


Contents

• Targeting the mainstream 
• Opposing the occupation: what are the blockages?
• Choosing a mix of tactics
• Time for a counter-recruitment network?
• Changing the mood in parliament
• Civil disobedience in Westminster
• The oil rip-off is coming
• Reports from the US
• Additional contribution: Anti-war campaigning – how can we do it better?


Introduction

This discussion sheet collates some initial thoughts from several anti-war campaigners in answer to the question: ‘What will it take for us to end the occupation of Iraq?’ It is intended as a starting point to help campaigners prepare for the strategy gathering IOF is organising on 18th November. We would like to be able to circulate as many contributions as possible in advance of the gathering concerning your local experiences of anti-war activism, your ideas and proposals for action, and thoughts on what the anti-war movement should (or shouldn’t!) be doing to end the occupation. So, if you or your group has written something – or would like to write something – about these topics, please send it to iraqfocus@riseup.net, so that we can make it available to other campaigners.

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Targeting the mainstream

Alex Pilcher, Iraq Occupation Focus

The occupation of Iraq must be brought to an end without delay if there is to be any chance of the Iraqi people finding peace, stability, democracy and prosperity. The devastation caused by the US/UK presence is obvious to much of the public, despite the endless denials from Tony Blair. Yet the anti-war movement that generated such a dynamic and vocal campaign to oppose the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has not managed to build a forceful campaign to end the ensuing occupation. Activists have not been idle. There have been countless vigils, die-ins and direct action protests, public meetings, street stalls, petitions and so forth. But there is a weakness in the very diversity of these activities. All our anti-occupation work, apart from the national demonstrations, has been fragmented, localised, small in scale, occasional and unsustained. If we continue in the same vein for another three and half years we can hardly hope to see a change in government policy through our efforts.

It is time to rethink our approach and learn from past campaigns that have used durable mass participation to raise the profile of a political demand and to force the hand of governments. 

Models ranging from the South Africa boycott and the Poll Tax non-payment campaign to the AIDS red ribbon and Make Poverty History wristbands all show, in their different ways, the power of a simple tactic when it is adopted and sustained over time by a sizeable section of the public. We need to be encouraging as many people as possible to display their opposition to the occupation in a similarly routine, everyday fashion. 

One of greatest hurdles we face is the pervasive myth that “nobody seriously suggests we should leave Iraq now”. Yet this hurdle is also one of the simplest to overcome. By developing a channel for the expression of anti-occupation opinion that enables it to steadily amplify from one week to the next and reverberate across the country, we can demonstrate that there are actually millions of people who think we should get out of Iraq right away. 

Shifting the terms of mainstream debate is vital if we are to see any serious political pressure on the government. We will not see MPs stepping forward to call for an end to the occupation while that option is so routinely marginalised as to ‘cut and run’, ‘abandon the Iraqi people’ and ‘surrender to terrorists’. By proving that mainstream public opinion recognises the occupation is a disaster for Iraqis, we can sway even more people to this view and at last legitimate public debate about ending it. 

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Opposing the occupation: what are the blockages?

Milan Rai, Justice Not Vengeance

Our main challenge is to ask the right question. Why is do we have public opinion poll numbers similar to those we had before the invasion, and daily reports of horror in Iraq, but such a low level of activity? The majority of people oppose the war, but they aren’t active. If we can identify what is blocking them from taking action, we can liberate that energy into the movement. I’m sure there are lots of factors, including simple despair. My own feeling is that the central blockage for most people who oppose the war, but who do nothing, is their fear for the Iraqi people in the event of immediate and unconditional Western withdrawal. (Iraqis themselves seem to share that fear, hence the lack of majority support in Iraq for instant withdrawal. See the September 2006 PIPA poll.) How can the anti-war movement overcome this blockage? Yes, by demonstrating that the occupation forces are increasing violence in Iraq, but crucially, in my view, by offering the option – if
acceptable to Iraqi opinion – of replacement international forces independent of the US and UK. Such an option has had the support of Sunni and Shia insurgents in the past.

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Choosing a mix of tactics

Milan Rai, Justice Not Vengeance

It’s not just about being effective, we also need to feel effective. Keeping morale up means choosing a mix of tactics that provides us with satisfaction as well as impact. It also means choosing a mix of goals: long-range and shorter-term. Our overall goal is to end the occupation. But we all know that to force the US out of Iraq, which has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, is way beyond forcing the US to get out of, say, Vietnam. Vietnam was peripheral to the US. Iraq is _central_. This will take a very long time. We also need smaller goals that (a) make a difference to the lives of ordinary families in Iraq, and (b) that are winnable. That’s good for Iraqis, and also good for activist morale. For example, supporting trade unions. Or changing the rules of engagement for US soldiers, so they don’t use lethal force as soon as they feel threatened (there were some changes this summer in this direction). Or reversing the erosion of fuel subsidies
and the state food ration. All these things have a measurable impact on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they are all ‘winnable’.

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Time for a counter-recruitment network?

Ippy, Peace News

In Britain there are a number of groups and campaigns working both with soldiers and prospective soldiers. However most are specialising in particular areas and most are not coming from a clear antimilitarist position. 

Therefore we have groups like Military Families Against War who are campaigning against the current war on Iraq and for justice for their own relatives, and counselling services like At Ease and Combat Stress who provide a kind of “social services” for serving and ex military personnel.

Each year however, there are also small-scale counter-recruitment actions taking place in towns and cities across Britain. These are often the initiative of local groups and networks who hear that the military are coming to their neighbourhood to try to capture kids with their glossy brochures and exciting promo films, and decide to do something to counter the military’s lies about the real experience of war.

Here’s some examples of actions that have taken place over the past few years: 

In 2002, the d10 Group visited “Army 2002” an unofficial recruitment event held on Salisbury Plane and disrupted the “family” entertainment with a banner action during the Apache helicopter display; in 2003 an army display event in Watford was disrupted in a hail of paint-filled eggs; in Oxford and Bristol activists have managed to chase the army out of town when they’ve tried to set up shop in the high street and at festivals; earlier this year Wrexham Peace and Justice Group held three days of actions and information-giving inside and outside the army’s “Dragon’s March” recruitment fair in Chirk North Wales; the Belfast peace network picketed the British army’s Kinnegar base during a recruitment day in May; London antimilitarists have held protests at the annual London Soldier event at the army’s Chelsea barracks.

The issue however, is that while there’s obviously energy and enthusiasm for countering the military’s lies about warfare and military life, at the moment it is a disparate set of groups and individuals working on this issue and there is no “joined-up” campaigning to tackle the forces’ massive propaganda machine.

Ironically perhaps, experience suggests that the military are very vulnerable to counter-recruitment activity in that they cannot really cope with people standing up and telling the truth about their recruitment tactics, military life, and combat itself. All the more reason to try to build a national network of groups and individuals who can share information and resources on this issue and make sure that every time the military go walkabouts to kidnap kids, they get the opportunity to hear another voice.

If you are interested in working to develop a national campaign, come along to the Counter-recruitment workshop at the strategy gathering, or email iraqfocus@riseup.net and ask to be kept in touch with what comes out of it.

Further information about some of the actions mentioned above can be found via www.peacenews.info.

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Changing the mood in Parliament

Gabriel Carlyle, Voices in the Wilderness

According to a recent opinion poll 71% of the UK public think that “the presence of British forces in Iraq” is either making the situation worse (36%) or making no difference (35%). Sixty-two percent want to see a timetable for withdrawal and yet there has been little work done to put sustained and effective pressure on MPs to support withdrawal. 

Indeed, as of September 2006 there wasn’t even an Early Day Motion to this effect – and hadn’t been for the past 15 months.

In contrast to the current situation in which a handful of anti-war activists occasionally visit their MP to argue with him about Iraq to little or no effect – or the lone activist writes a brilliantly argued letter to John Reid and receives a form reply – a serious grassroots campaign, combining constituency-based petition drives (going door-to-door if necessary), effective local media work, public accountability sessions with the MP and activities to raise the political costs for those who won’t support withdrawal (eg. by creating negative publicity for them in the local paper or leafleting door-to-door) could yield real results.

Media workshops could be run for those activists with little or no experience in this area, powerful displays produced for use in local petition drives, and activists from different areas could hone their efforts – and support one another - by sharing experiences of what does and doesn’t work in practice.

Many of the resources to run such a campaign already exist so what are we waiting for?

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Civil disobedience in Westminster

Jonathan Stevenson, Mass Action Group

An ad hoc collection of anti-war activists meeting in London have organised two “unauthorised” demonstrations in Parliament Square in 2006 against the occupation. The first, ‘Naming the Dead’ in April, saw several hundred people including Joanna Lumley take part in a four-hour name reading ceremony under the banner ‘Who Lies? Who Dies? Who Profits?’ The second, ‘No More Fallujahs’, takes place at the end of this month in an attempted 24-hour anti-occupation camp in the square, with Milan Rai and Maya Evans repeating their unauthorsed name readings from October 2005. As well as resisting the no protest laws around Parliament and expressing solidarity with Brian Haw’s continuing vigil, the actions indicate the growing number of anti-war activists who are not only willng to do more than march but who see direct action and civil disobedience as a necessary part of a successful movement against the occupation.

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The oil rip-off is coming

Notes from a talk by Greg Muttitt from Platform

Western oil companies will be moving in for the kill in early 2007 if a new oil law scheduled to be shown to Iraq’s parliament in December is successfully rubber-stamped. The US has been heavily involved in drafting the law, with Energy Secretary Bodman visiting Iraq in July to look at a draft and Iraqi Oil Minister Husayn al-Shahristani meeting executives from nine major oil companies on his return visit to Washington DC. While the IMF has also been involved in drafting the law, an official from the Oil Ministry has stated that Iraqi civil society and the general public will not be consulted at all.

Iraqi oil workers in particularly are busy resisting the passage of the new law and there is some prospect of at least delaying its introduction into 2007. If and when it passes, though, there will be substantial scope for solidarity campaigning in the UK and elsewhere to prevent Big Oil from grabbing the next 30 years of Iraq’s oil revenue by signing up to Production Sharing Agreements. UK-based Shell has put itself in a prime position to do just that, with consistent support from Downing St. But it may find that the anti-war movement has other ideas.

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Reports from the US

A report in the New York Times on 13 October revealed the extent to which anti-war protests in the US have been monitored by the Department of Defense. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union warned of the threat posed by counter-recruitment activities, including an investigation in May 2005 into the Students for Peace and Justice group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, following protests at recruitment fairs by several hundred students. “The clear purpose of these civil disobedience actions was to disrupt the recruiting mission of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command by blocking
the entrance to the recruiting station and causing the stations to shut down early,” it said.

An email from United for Peace and Justice on 2 October reported on the ‘Declaration of Peace’ campaign over the summer, which called for Congress to produce a plan for the withdrawal of US troops by 21 September. If that did not happen, then a new round of antiwar protests and events would unfold, including greater use of nonviolent civil resistance and civil disobedience around the nation. From September 21-28, people in over 150 cities and towns organised and participated in a wide range of actions: vigils, peace concerts, marches, parades, readings of the Iraqi and US war dead, interfaith services, and acts of nonviolent resistance. “The Declaration of Peace campaign has inspired new activists, re-energized folks working against this war for years, and helped expand the tools our movement is using,” it said. “In the coming weeks organizers at both the local and national level will be evaluating the campaign’s work so far and planning for the
next steps.”

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ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTION:

Anti-war campaigning – how can we do it better?
Thoughts on the anti-war movement by Kate Page, October 2006

My involvement in the anti-war movement has left me with lots of thoughts and questions about how we
organised, and how we could have been more effective. This is an attempt to get some of these down on paper,
with the hope of starting some discussion.

Whatever successes we might have had, the anti-war movement has failed to achieve two crucial things. Firstly,
stopping Britain going to war in Iraq, and secondly maintaining an effective opposition to the on-going occupation.
There are many factors affecting this, a lot of them outside the control of campaigners. In this paper I’m looking at
just one aspect of this, the aspect that we have responsibility for and can do something about – how can we
organise more effectively?

I was involved for about 3 years in Sussex Action for Peace (SAfP), the anti-war group in Brighton. This was one
of the most exciting, but also most frustrating campaigns I’ve been part of in over 28 years of political activity.
Exciting because of the huge opposition to the war and unprecedented interest in the campaign; frustrating as it
became increasingly clear that we were failing to translate this opposition into ongoing, focused political pressure.

Turning opposition into political pressure
Many campaigns face a difficult initial task of informing people about their cause and convincing them it’s worth
supporting. The anti-war movement was unusual, in that huge numbers of people already opposed the war, and it
was an issue everyone knew about. The huge turnout on the Feb 14th demo indicated this, and thousands of those
attending must have come from Brighton.

What we needed to do was turn this opposition into sustained political pressure. In theory, SAfP should have
been able to build on the opposition already there in the town, focus it and develop it. In practise, we weren’t able
to do this with more than a fraction of the people who opposed the war. In fact, we didn’t manage to use the skills
and enthusiasm of a lot of the people who actually made the effort to come along to our meetings. Worse still, in
some cases our activities and meetings clearly put off people who were keen to get involved.

I’m not suggesting involving people is an easy thing to do. My criticism is not that we didn’t come up with all the
right answers, but that we were failing to recognise there was a problem.

Organisation is important
A central problem for SAfP was our inability to take organising structures and systems seriously. This is
fundamentally a political, not a practical problem. As a group, we didn’t have any collective responsibility to,
agreement on, or recognition of, the importance of good organisation.

Organisational tasks and structure were consistently de-prioritised and not considered important. In fact,
there was a line of political argument explicitly opposed to strengthening the organisational aspects of the
campaign.

The left in Britain has a raft of bad practices and ingrained habits which activists tend to accept as just the
way things are, but which make involvement difficult for newcomers (and drive some old hands away). There
is a consistently failure to take organisation seriously on the left, and, not surprisingly, this was reflected in
anti-war activity.

In SAfP, some of our organisational failures were quite basic. Tasks such as booking rooms, putting up
notices to direct people to a meeting, bringing leaflets and information to the meeting or circulating a contact
list would happen in a haphazard way, dependent on one or two individuals taking it upon themselves.

Meetings are a central working tool of a campaign, and these were a problem in SAfP. All too often, we
treated them as if they’d sort themselves out, when they actually require a lot of work and organisation if they
are going to be effective and facilitate participation from everybody. An unprepared meeting that lacks focus
and direction will alienate people, who’ll start to wonder why they didn’t stay at home and do one of the million
other things pressing on their time.

At its best, our meetings shambled along and more or less sorted things out. At its worst, they were horrible
experiences where people felt silenced, intimidated and bullied.

I think some of the fundamentals we missed were:

· Starting and finishing on time. People have work and child care commitments, and making the time to
get to a meeting is difficult. If you find you’re hanging around for half an hour (having missed your tea to
get there) and you’ve got no guarantee of when the meeting will end, it’s going to put you off.

· Welcoming new people. If you arrive at a meeting where everyone seems to know each other, but no
one speaks to you, most people will feel awkward and unwelcome. One or two people in SAfP used to
talk to newcomers, but this was very much an individual responsibility they took on. This was particularly
true if the newcomer seemed to be a different type of person from the majority at the meeting. Inevitably,
this creates an atmosphere more like a social club than a campaign serious about its aims and eager to
include everyone.

· Having some ground rules: A set of basic agreements about how the meetings will be run is
enormously helpful. You need to go through this briefly at the start of every meeting, so new people are
put in the picture, and others reminded. It helps the Chair to do a decent job, and facilitates contributions.

· Introducing the group and the discussion: there needed to be a basic description of SAfP and its aims
at the start of every meeting. This is essential for newcomers and a useful reminder for others.

· Prepare an agenda: if you want to get the most out of the brief time in a meeting, you need to have
thought about it beforehand, worked out what the important issues are to cover, whether items need
introductions from other people, thought through how much you’re likely to cover in the available time.

· Having a clear role for the Chair: the task of chairing a meeting well needs some thought and preparation,
particularly if the meetings are large. You also need a clear idea of what you’re expected to do as the Chair
and the support of the meeting when you try to do this.

· Agreeing the Chair in advance: In SAfP we didn’t have a fixed person as the Chair. Sometimes we agreed
the chair of the next meeting from the previous meeting, and sometimes it was open to offer at the meeting. In
practice, the same few people often chaired, because they were the ones willing to take this on, but there was
still the idea that this was a rotating, open job. This meant there wasn’t the opportunity to organise the
chairing properly, but it wasn’t actually about opening up this role either.

· Have a minute taker: not someone reluctantly dragooned into the task at the last minute, but someone
you know will actually write up the tasks and decisions that came out of the meeting, and make sure
these are passed on to other people.

There are a whole range of other organisational tasks that were crucial to building an effective campaign. For
example:

· Developing and involving new people – building our contacts
· Keeping people in touch with our activities – e mails and postal mailings
· Fundraising and finances
· Maintaining the website
· Providing good up to date flyers & information
· Providing ‘how to’ information and support

Any one of these areas is a big bit of work. They require committed, on-going, hard slog. It takes time and
energy to build this infra-structure, but it’s not frills around the edges, a side-line to the main event of
organising street activity. It’s essential to achieving our aims.

Without this crucial organisational infra-structure we can’t develop or maintain people’s involvement. We also
aren’t able to use the interest and energy that might be sparked by some of our activities, which will dissipate
or fade away.

The fact that the group overall doesn’t take organisational tasks seriously means some things won’t happen.
But for the group to exist at all, someone will be doing the basics. If there is no collective responsibility for
these tasks, then a few exhausted individuals will end up bearing the organisational weight of the group. This
isn’t good for them, or the long-term sustaining of the campaign.

People who are consistently paying attention to and putting time into the organisational tasks can find
themselves in quite central roles without this having been acknowledged or agreed by the group, a position
which isn’t good for the individuals or the group. It leaves individuals unaccountable, and without any
guidance, support or legitimacy.

Thinking about things
One of my major frustrations with the campaign was our inability to think about why we were doing
something. There are questions we always need to ask ourselves (and know the answers to) before we do
anything:-

· What are we trying to achieve?
· Who is it aimed at?
· What action will be most effective in this particular situation?
· Who is going to organise it?
· Who is going to participate in it?
· How will we follow it up?

There was a general impatience at any attempt to do this, and a desire to get straight on with the activity –
“people are dying while we’re sitting here talking”. This meant that action was always prioritised over
planning - and the actions therefore less effective.

Evaluating what you’ve done
As well as thinking about what we’re going to do, we need to evaluate what we have done. How effective
was it? Did we achieve what we set out to do? How can we do it better next time?

This should be totally integrated into the action – it’s the only way we can develop and become more
effective. Generally, though, evaluation was seen as an optional extra rather than a politically important task.
When we did manage to have some feed-back on events, SAfP tended not to be very rigorous in our
analysis, wanting to reassure each other that we’ve done well rather than investigate how we could have
done it better. Raising constructive criticism takes practice, and confidence in the group you’re working with.

Tactics and strategy
Tactics are the specific actions - circulating petitions, writing letters, staging a protest - which you use to
achieve you goal. A decent campaign would use a wide range of different tactics, depending on its
judgement of what would be most effective in any particular situation.

Strategy is something larger, an overall map that guides the use of these tools toward clear goals. Strategy is
a hard-nosed assessment of where you are, where you want to go, and how you can get there.

In SAfP we spent a lot of time discussing tactics as if they were political principles set in stone. Divisions and
tensions arose around issues such as whether or not to get police permission for a protest, or whether the
weight of the organisation should be put behind protests outside army bases rather than demos.

I always struggled with these discussions, as it seemed to me they were purely tactical questions, totally
dependent on what it was you were trying to achieve. I don’t think that, in themselves, demos are more
effective than candle-lit vigils, or writing letters to MPs better than sitting down in the street. It depends on
what you are trying to do, and the specific situation you are in. These are tactics, not political principles.

We never had any discussion of our overall strategy, so it was impossible to reach a meaningful conclusion
about what tactic was most appropriate. Instead, we’d get bogged down in circular and irresolvable
discussions, with people labelled as having ‘reformist’ or ‘revolutionary’ positions. Meanwhile, we never
addressed the central political questions of how you get people to engage in sustained political action, and
what the activities are that will put pressure on the Government.

A broad based movement?
In theory, SAfP aimed to be a broad-based movement. To be part of it, the only thing that mattered was your
opposition to the war.

In practise, SAfP struggled to determine what this meant. As the campaign developed, it became
increasingly clear that a lot of people involved were actively opposed to the idea of a broad-based movement,
and (not surprisingly) other people were unclear what was meant by a broad-based movement.

This created a number of problems which were never clearly addressed. There was a lot of hostility to views
that were labelled as liberal or reformist. This put off people who didn’t see themselves as revolutionaries.
But it also missed the central point of a broad based organisation – that we wanted people with different ideas
about the world, this was a good thing. The whole point of a broad based organisation is that you don’t need
to hold a particular political world view in order to be in it. All that matters is your opposition to the war, and
the pressure we can collectively bring to bear on the Government.

If you didn’t believe this, then really a broad-based campaign wasn’t the best place to be.

Central agreements
One of the central problems for SAfP was that we didn’t have a clear idea of our aims or overall structure. We
didn’t have any written agreements about the campaign’s aims, any basic ground rules about how meetings
would run, or any agreement about how the organisation would be structured.

Questions of democracy and decision making processes are complicated and I don’t claim to have all the
answers. However, I’m sure that agreement about a campaign’s aims is a base line for any effective activity.
Without this it’ll take an unagreed (and undemocratic) direction, generally determined by a vocal minority, or
fizzle out in confusion and frustration.

Did we need an organising group/committee?
There was a strong strand of political thought in SAfP that was opposed to any structure or organisation. One
manifestation of this was over whether or not to have a smaller organising group.

I think that a campaign the size of SAfP (we had around 80 people turning up to meetings at some points)
needed some level of organisation by a smaller group. This needed to be consistent, have openly
acknowledged roles that people committed to for a period of time and meet regularly outside of general
meetings.

A very loosely structured, open organising group was set up at one point. However, there was such a lack of
clarity about its role, and people were so suspicious of the concept, that it was pretty much ham-strung from
the start.

I think the fear was that any organising group or committee that met outside the general meetings would
become a closed group of people who imposed their politics on the campaign overall, and dictated to
everyone else. The thinking being that structure = hierarchy = undemocratic campaign.

These are legitimate concerns, and do present problems for any organisation. The history of the British left
isn’t great, and doesn’t give us good models. Resolving these issues would be a work in progress for any
campaign, and require different solutions for different situations. I certainly don’t have a game plan for all
occasions, or a definitive model of what would have been the best structure for SAfP.

What I am sure about is that abandoning any organisational structures at all isn’t the answer. Hierarchies will
still develop, but will be unacknowledged and unaccountable. Structures will still be there, but will be by
default not agreement. Lack of structure doesn’t equal democracy or participation.

Conclusion
Generally people are looking to a campaign to provide some structure and direction. They don’t want to
come along to a meeting to find nothing is organised and no one is clear or agrees about what should be
done. They don’t want to have to take on all the organisation themselves before anything happens.

They do want to find some way of channelling their anger and disagreement into effective, collective political
action. Facilitating this isn’t an easy task for any campaign – and wont emerge without thought, hard work,
and, I believe, structure and good organisation.

The challenge for us, as activists, is how we do this. The first step is recognising that it is necessary.