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BRUSSELS - For a workers' Europe
Behind closed doors big business suits and the Eurocrats are constructing a bosses’ Europe, of poverty, racism and attacks on our civil liberties. Plans on the Euro-politicians’ table at Laeken included proposals to privatise all of Europe’s transport systems, and starting the process of writing a new EU constitution that would pare down democracy and welfare rights even further. They push arms and war around the world, such as the imperialist war in Afghanistan, and push the neoliberal agenda on the third world. The demonstrations from December 13-15 were organised to expose this agenda to the world. Revo members at SOAS went with the Stop the War coach that we helped organise to Brussels, and about 40 people in all went in the end. We arrived early on the morning of the 13th to meet up with other Revolution members from Germany, Austria, France, and a contingent that flew in from Sweden. Revolution is an international group, and many of us had met before and grown used to working together – often in pretty hairy situations such as police attacks and tear gas bombardments! – at anti-capitalist demonstrations in Prague, Nice and Genoa, so there was a lot of hugs & kisses & camaraderie as old comrades and mates met up once more to take to the streets. A demonstration was called for that day by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) under the slogan "Europe is us", to demand that the EU bureaucrats make room at the negotiating table for the trade union tops. The demo couldn’t be less of a challenge: it went nowhere near the conference, at the Belgian King’s palace at Laeken in North Brussels. It a short walk up the road to a stadium and a rally, then all the workers were to be put on their buses and go home – the Belgian union leaders said that this was done intentionally to keep workers off the anti-capitalist demo the next day on D14 Yet it was massive, with over 100,000 workers coming from all over Europe. Many groups of workers used their imagination, with one contingent pulling a prisoner in a huge privatisation cage, others dressed up, and the French railworkers letting off flares. A whole contingent went by with hundreds of public sector workers pulling boxes on a string – who knows what it meant but it was a change from the small, dour trade union demos you get here in Britain! The police were nowhere to be seen - no doubt it was partly due to the huge size and fact that it went nowhere near the summit, but many contingents were militan, well-organised and kitted out with heavy flag poles, flares, etc so the cops would have been mad to attack it, as they did on the next two days’ demos. Some workers were loud and angry, such as Sabena strikers from the Belgian airline who face thousands of redundancies in the post September 11th recession. Dockworkers booed and threw beer cans at the bureaucrats speaking at the rally at the end – and got the support of many workers. We all slept in a warehouse-type university building packed with demonstrators from all over Europe, and got up to face –10 celsius temperatures for the anticapitalist demo the next day. There is a myth about the end of the anticap movement after the police repression of the Genoa demo in July, and the patriotism post-S11. It just ain’t so, and the numbers prove it: 25,000 people filled the streets to protest, 5 times the number at the anticap demo of the Nice EU summit the year before. This was led by the ATTAC, the campaign group against financial speculation, and Oxfam, the radical Belgian NGO, under the pretty wet slogan "Another Europe and another world" – this demo also went nowhere near the summit, dropping the confrontation of the Nice demos the year before which tried to march to the conference centre. But the Sabena airlline workers marched at the front pushing a model of a huge defunct plane, along with the left and thousands of youth and students who chanted slogans such as "one solution, revolution!" along with antiwar and other anti-capitalist slogans. At the head of it Oxfam had a huge globe being rolled along by a samba band, with people popping out of holes in the top and sort of trying to dance, while some of the contingents had sound systems banging out hiphop or techno, so along with the chanting it was well noisy and militant. At the end of the demo we all ended up at the convergence centre set up, where hot food and music and meetings were going on. Lines of riotcops ringed the convergence centre to stop people getting out, effectively punishing people for demonstrating, water-cannoning people on the streets in the subzero weather. About 30 were arrested, and another 160 later on that night when activists tried to do a sit-down protest outside the police station to get the prisoners released. The next day a pacifist demo against the war and an anarchist demo marched and came together in a street party against capitalism. The police went in heavy on it as at least one bank was trashed and the summit continued as before, unchallenged. No serious attempt was made to go to the summit, and no self-defense was organised. Everyone got safely back to SOAS. Ov erall Brussels was brilliant though the challenge to the Eurocrats wasn’t as militant as it could be, especially from Britain: the British trade union movement sent barely more than 50 people, mostly officials and including only 10 from Unison, the biggest union in Britain and Europe, with over a million members! Unions from faraway Portugal and Poland sent more. So it was awesome seeing the European movement which hasn’t gone through the defeats that the unions suffered in Britain in the 80’s under Thatcher. But even so these much stronger unions still lacked young workers, and clearly hadn’t broken free of the control of the bureaucracy. On the other hand the anti-capitalist demo was led by the NGO’s like ATTAC and Oxfam which aren’t very radical either, nor democratic. We need to bring the anti-capitalist spirit of confrontation and activism into the trade union movement and shake them up from the inside. That’s the job of the anti-capitalist youth, not the liberals and bureaucrats of the NGO’s or trade union apparatus. |
NEW YORK - Jan 31 - Feb 3, 2002 |
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Ah Brussels: home of fine chocolates, monks making beer…and now massive demonstrations, as over 100,000 protestors from all over Europe descended on the EU summit last December, held at the King of Belgium’s Laeken palace at in Brussels (what a great symbol of democracy and progress!).