More thoughts on Left Unity’s second meeting

Christina Vona

At the heart of this new political project is the realisation that it is necessary to build a European-wide movement. We need co-ordinated action with others fighting capitalism across the continent. We saw the beginning of this when millions took strike action across Europe on November 14th last year. We were very pleased that there were comrades at the meeting from Greece and Italy.

Christina Vona is an archeologist from Greece who is here studying for a PhD in Museum Studies at UCL and working part-time at the British Museum. She says of the meeting,

‘I count my participation in the last Left Unity’s meeting as positive one, since I got the chance to interact and discuss with people from the wide spectrum of the Left i.e. socialists, communists, anarchists, independent activists etc. Despite these ideological differences all the 25 comrades agreed on the importance of taking action towards a unity of the British Left to respond to the demands of reforming the society based on the ideals of socialism. I look forward to the next meeting where we can start constituting our strategies and set workable goals. Amongst my visions for our movement is to include, embrace and voice people from various communities and cultural backgrounds and give them the space to fightback for their rights.’

Gioia Coppola, a communist from Italy, writes

‘This meeting is the expression of the real need and will of different parts of the anticapitalist working class and of its activists to unite to fight the war against capitalism. Of course this is a fundamental point and it reveals the maturity of the actual movement. I think this is happening for 2 main reasons: the living conditions of the working class have become more similar; the class war imposed by capitalists.

The first reason, the changes in the composition of the working class and of its activists, has produced the splits in the left. We can’t ascribe this responsibility just to the leaders, although they have often showed not to be able to understand the changing reality. But it also pushes to unity, as

Gioia Coppola

we are experiencing now.

Unity doesn’t mean to put aside the different visions about reality but the abstract positions about it. It means the analysis of reality from the social, economic and political working class point of view as base for actions. The results of actions as guide of rightness or wrongness of the political position taken by the majority. We can implement the good practice only through democracy that to me means open debate and individual voting on different platforms.

We need to use all the weapons we have to fight capitalism, their use and role depending on the real conditions of the struggle.

It’s very important that this debate takes place in every part of the country, from tiny villages to big cities, wherever there are people willing to do so, as stressed by Stephen Hall.

To the last I agree with John Keeley about his stress to the word anticapitalist, which put the political boundaries of this unity, this point was also touched on in the meeting.

We have started this work and I think that, united, we have the skills and the counsciousness to reach our goal, thebuilding of a classless society, what we are lacking is the strength.
Strenght is unity.

7 February 2013

1 comment

One response to “More thoughts on Left Unity’s second meeting”

Gioia says:

February 7, 2013 at 11:28 am

I’d like to amend the end of my opinions. We have the skills and the counsciousness to reach our goal, we miss strenght.
Strenght is unity.