By Bob Whitehead
The second national conference of the Coalition of Resistance was held last Saturday in London. The total attendance of three hundred was made up of 80% delegates and 20% visitors. There was a very good turnout of about ten travelling down from the Birmingham area; mainly people who have been active around “Birmingham against the Cuts”. The Green Left was also in evidence, and jointly proposed the resolution on climate change with Socialist Resistance.
As it was a delegate conference, it took on a different character than the much larger founding conference/rally that was held last year. It heard a wide range of inspirational speakers, such as John McDonnell MP, Wendy Savage (Keep our NHS public), Zita Holbourne (BARAC), Ben Hassa Mokhtar from Tunisia, Ted Knight, Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman), Dot Gibson (National Pensioners Convention), Alex Kenny (NUT), Barnaby Raine (School students against the cuts), Katy Clark MP, Paul Brandon (Right to Work) and Joe Malone (FBU). Other speakers introduced the discussions at the five workshops. Apologies were given from Tony Benn, who was at the Durham miners’ gala, Mark Serwotka, who was taking a breather from weeks of rubbishing Tory media spokesmen on pension cuts and from Caroline Lucas MP. A huge round of applause was given for the late Alf Filer, who made an inspirational fundraising speech at the initial conference last year, but who tragically died a short time ago.
Although the speakers were all good to listen to, it may, as so often happens, have been overdone. It was a democratic conference, where resolutions were tabled on request and debated fairly, but a bit more time could have been allowed to argue out some of the differences.
Yet this is not to carp too much. It was a good day; inspiring, informative, well worth travelling down for and a day that established the Coalition of Resistance as an on-going campaigning body. Fifteen resolutions were submitted, debated and voted upon and a new National Council of 50 was elected. Not bad when you consider the time given to speakers, workshops, breaks, and registration.
One of the burning issues of the movement is the need for unity against the ConDems. There are five national anti-cuts bodies in existence at present. How can this be justified? Talks are on-going with the People’s Charter and others about increasing coordination, yet a grand fusion does not seem on the agenda. A resolution calling for a unifying conference before the end of this year was defeated as premature. So, in a spirit of cooperation, time was given to the Right to Work speaker to explain why they were ploughing their lonely furrow. The explanation was unconvincing. Differences of emphasis were mentioned, but nothing that could not be contained within one campaigning body. Who benefits from this division on the left?
There was a division within the conference on whether to call for a General strike as the next step of escalation after the big successes of March 26th and June 30th. Two resolutions on this, from the SWP and Workers Power, were heavily defeated. It was felt that coordinated action across the public sector was within reach, but no more at this stage. We face the block on unity and breakthrough from the Labour Party dominated UNISON, UNITE and GMB.
The main resolution from the Steering Committee re-committed the COR to ‘opposing all cuts and privatisation of public services, the welfare state and the NHS’. This serves as a correct and welcome riposte to the “too deep – too fast”, pro-cuts position of the Labour Party. No one is against working with disaffected LP members where we can, but we must be clear what we stand for, otherwise how do you try and convince others?
The main resolution stressed that the ConDems had no democratic mandate for their attacks and this was forcefully echoed by Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman. It also agreed to support; a second national demonstration against the cuts, a lobby and fringe meeting at the TUC, the national demonstrations at the Tory and Lib Dem conferences, the European Conference against Austerity and Privatisation on the 1st October (initiated by COR), the 8th October mass assembly in Trafalgar Square organised by Stop the War under the slogan “Welfare not Warfare” and to work with the People’s Charter to build a festival of resistance in the summer of 2012.
Other resolutions were passed on; how to work with the Trades Unions, against the Afghan war, how to elect the National Council (50 from conference + one delegate from each local and national anti-cuts affiliated organisation), supporting the campaign for one million climate jobs, opposition to nuclear power, for a youth specific COR conference, supporting the Bombardier demonstration in Derby on July 23rd and supporting a summit on the corporate media this summer. A resolution to base the COR purely on the local and regional network of anti-cuts groups was defeated.
The workshops were on; Crisis in the Eurozone, Unions and the Anti-cuts Movement, Fighting Privatisation, The Hardest Hit and Greening the Economy. The one on the Eurozone heard James Meadway from Counterfire claim that we are in an existential crisis of the Eurozone; it was all starting to fall apart, but we should respond with an internationalist, not a nationalist programme.
Some other points that were highlighted by the speakers included; September 2008 should be our constant reference point in a similar way that 9/11 has been theirs, the existence of a “Fair Pension for All” petition, the government had lost the argument over the affordability of public pensions, we were fighting to retain what our parents established, we should give full solidarity to all those sentenced over the last period for protesting and, in a concluding speech from John McDonell that brought many delegates to their feet, we should also aim to “destroy the system”.
Firstly, it helps to say that you are actually against them. And that immediately casts doubt that the Labour leadership, nationally and locally, could be part of the solution. Their “too deep too fast” attitude towards the ConDem cuts gives most of the ground away in advance. If they had been re-elected in 2010, they would have carried out a similar onslaught on the welfare state, but presumably, not-so-deep and not-so fast. “In his last budget before leaving the Treasury, Alistair Darling said a Labour government would halve the deficit by 2014, which would have meant cuts of 20% to those spending areas not protected – policing, schools and hospitals” (The Guardian 12/7/10). It is easy for Ed Balls in opposition to say that the target was too stringent, but we have to go on what they said before the election on the presumption of victory.
Socialist Resistance: Birmingham Group 
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