By Eva Cheng
COLOGNE — The mobilisations for a new round of Euromarches against crushing unemployment and other attacks of the ruling classes against working people were kicked off here by a well-attended preparatory conference of close to 640 activists representing a broad range of groups in social struggles from all over Europe.
The January 23-24 conference decided on a series of broad mobilisations in Cologne — featuring marches and a counter-summit — starting from May 29, to coincide with and oppose the June 3-4 summit of the European Union governments and the June 19 summit of the Group of Eight governments here in this west German city.
To ensure the broadest and strongest possible grassroots mobilisations (involving all those struggling against ruling class attacks), local initiatives of many forms will take place all over Europe prior to the May-June main actions. This will include local marches, some assisted partially by other means of transport, all to converge in Cologne for the biggest central march on May 29.
This will be followed immediately by a counter-summit. It has been billed the "Parliament of the Unemployed", but is aimed to assert the aspirations and demands of the many people pauperised and marginalised by the neo-liberal attacks of the various European governments.
The Cologne marches are built on the significant gains achieved by the 50,000 Euromarchers in Amsterdam in June 1997. But there is potential for even more solid gains this time, according to Euromarch initiator Angela Klein.
Klein told Green Left Weekly that the serious participation of a number of important trade unions at this conference and their related action plans, as well as a recent revival of the mobilisations of the unemployed in Europe, offer a basis for optimism.
"The representation of the trade unions this time has been the strongest ever", said Klein.
Official senior delegations had come from the Confederation of Trade Unions in Greece as well as many key trade unions in France (including the teachers', which led militant struggles recently). Also represented were different left currents in the main trade unions in Italy, and from Germany the food workers' union, workers from a number of big industrial plants and, unofficially but significantly, a leader of the influential union IG Metall.
A revival of mobilisations of the unemployed in Europe — most notably in France (the last few months), in Germany (repeatedly last year) and in Italy — was also significant and had prepared the ground well for the Cologne marches, Klein noted.
Klein acknowledged that there were gaps in the representation at the Cologne conference, but stressed the significance of the forces already represented as well as the potential impact of their mobilisation plan. The participating unions have arrived at a draft appeal addressed to other unions in Europe, urging them to take an active part in the Cologne marches.
"This means that the Euromarches were able to create for the first time a practical trade union initiative on the European level ... This would be a real step forward", Klein stressed.
On the gaps in representation, Klein noted the persisting apathy from the left in IG Metall, a poor representation from Britain, a much smaller than expected delegation from Belgium and no representation from eastern Europe. However, the Euromarches' orientation to strengthen mobilisations in eastern Europe was strongly affirmed.
The involvement of a range of social struggles, including from outside Europe, should add real strength to the Cologne actions.
The organisers' conscious efforts to draw in the victims of racism and others socially excluded by the neo-liberal offensives have paid off. Refugees and migrants groups are planning mobilisations to coincide with the Cologne marches. People's Global Action is planning to organise 500 landless people from India and Brazil to join the marches.
Women's groups at the conference also decided to use the marches as a launching pad for a European march for women's rights in the year 2000.
Limited by resources, inadequate consciousness and other constraints, most social struggles in Europe have thus far been confined within national boundaries, but the Euromarches have opened the possibility of a united struggle as well as strengthening the component movements.
"The Euromarches become a point of reference not only for the unemployed to act on an international level, but also for the left trade unionists, refugees and other initiatives against 'globalisation'", said Klein.
Reviewing the gains since Amsterdam, Klein said the last Euromarch was to a big extent a call for the social movements in Europe to wake up to the fact that their ruling classes are building a European Union without them and against them.
A network of social movements has been taking shape since then, consolidated through continuing mobilisations to protest against the periodical EU summits — since Amsterdam held in Luxembourg, Cardiff and Vienna.
This, in Klein's view, has paved way for the beginning of a European social movement, supported by real forces.
She said the rising concentration of European capital through large mergers and the initial circulation of the euro from January 1 had helped to wake up more people to the reality of the European capitalists' anti-people project.
Klein, an experienced German Marxist, is not aware of any other pan-European network that is close to matching the mobilisation and coordination capability of the Euromarches. Though Klein is a leader of the United Socialist Party (VSP), a socialist organisation which is in friendly relationship to the Fourth International, and is playing a central role in organising the Cologne Euromarches, she said the dominant perspective of the core supporters of this project was to strengthen it as a social movement, rather than to develop it into a political organisation.
Debates raged during the conference on a range of tactical questions, including whether the main demand against unemployment and for the redistribution of wealth should be a campaign for work or for a guaranteed living income.
Also debated were the ways and means to get the central message of the marches across to the biggest possible number of people. Various creative actions were examined, including widespread train occupations, not only to maximise publicity but to assert the rights of the marginalised and the unemployed to mobility, to take into their hands what's needed to carve out an alternative future for the benefit of the majority.
While many such differences remain to be resolved, a central resolution stood out: Forward to Cologne, whatever the means!