Great expectations
Photo: Globalise Resistance ©
It seems quite a huge request to ask for the mistakes and errors we have made over the past ten years. I won’t assume a speaking role for the socialist left, diverse and fragmented as it is, but here are two points to contribute to the group therapy session.
Expectations were certainly very high. When so many people swarmed across the continent from the UK to Genoa, I saw a movement forming that would be greater and more powerful than anything since way before 1968. That was just two months before 9/11, Globalise Resistance was in its infancy and played a role in mobilising the biggest number of people to an overseas demonstration in the UK’s history, followed two years later by the biggest protest ever in the UK. But the move from issue to issue wasn’t as smooth as perhaps it may have been, the explanations we (as a whole movement) offered explaining the link between the corporate take over of the world and militarism weren’t as strong and as clear as they may have been.
The international demonstrations were certainly inspiring and exciting, and they served to invigorate the movement. But I think we concentrated too much on those mobilisations and didn’t build local groups of self-sustaining activists adequately.
Guy Taylor is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party and a founder and spokesperson of Globalise Resistance
This article is part of the t-10 series from Issue 5 of Turbulence asking, ‘What were you wrong about 10 years ago?‘.
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