Barry: The Leeds Summat Gathering on 26^th November attracted over 1,300 participants and included a myriad of activities. I thought it was a great success and would like to congratulate you. What were the highlights for you as the one of the key organisers?

Ed: I think the process of organising what was a fairly complex and challenging event was, in many ways, full of highlights.

We set out to make the gathering as participatory and contributory as possible, to involve diverse people in its development and delivery. That meant our core partners and others co-delivering it with us.  Seeing how those efforts and resources flowed together was really positive. It meant the event really did embody, with some integrity, what we were seeking.

Within that, we also managed to organise it on a reasonably low budget primarily by blagging and borrowing equipment and resources. We delivered the first Summat for £12,000 or £13,000, and this one we did for £7,500. So we really were learning from our earlier experience which itself is positive. At no point did I feel that we were pushing against closed doors.

Two things about the event itself. First, it met our expectations in terms of our overarching themes, and probably met our best expectations. We wanted it to be a day that was serious and meaty but also fun and socially warm.

Secondly, we aimed to attract up to 1,300 people which we managed. What was interesting in looking through the list of the 800 or so people who pre-registered online, as well as the 500 who came on the day, was that I knew fewer than 10 per cent of them. It was not only the ‘paid-up activists’ who came, who we already know, people I see every week. It was not just my mates who rocked up. It drew in a whole bunch of new people and it’s partly a mystery just who they all were. So it will be interesting to use the feedback to find out more about them.

From the written evaluations and from people telling us about their experiences, people met and encountered other people. They also felt energised. These are summed up in two of the strap lines for the Gathering: ‘Get Connected’ and ‘Be Inspired’.

The third strap line is the interesting one: ‘Join in Action for Change’. We are going to try tracking and evaluating whether this is taking place. Will what was a fun and successful event lead to enduring change? It’s too early to say.

What were the original ideas behind the Summat initiative? How did it come about and in what ways have these ideas developed?

The story of the Summat goes back to the formation of Together For Peace (T4P) in 2003. T4P was created to arrange a 10-day festival of events across Leeds. Initially it was to encourage people to engage in peace and justice issues but this broadened out to looking at the big issues of our time. And it was very much about using creative means also used in later Summats – film, theatre, food, music and drama.

Because T4P has always been a low budget affair, we did not have the capacity to deliver the festival ourselves. So we sought collaboration with about 30 organisations. People enjoyed the festival, although some of it was a bit shambolic behind the schemes. We also held festivals in 2005 and 2007.

The reason we stopped was that people told us, very legitimately, that, while they liked what we were doing, they did not have the time to attend every day. Instead they looked for parts of the programme that already interested them. This meant we weren’t really enabling a general fusion of different people and ideas.

Some fusions did follow: for example, individual refugees began to volunteer for Oxfam which itself began working with the Catholic diocese. The most meaty and meaningful actions were being undertaken through such collaborations and we wanted to find ways to develop this further.

At the same time, from 2006 onwards, we were particularly inspired by the work of north American writer, John Paul Lederach. He has written some great books, including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Social Peace. In it he calls for “web weaving”, enabling diverse people to connect and collaborate in their social spaces, be it a community, a city or a nation. This means making those spaces more resilient, more able to deal creatively with difficult things.

So we stopped doing festivals and condensed them into one-day events. These could then be more about enabling people to connect and collaborate and about integration and action.

Is if fair to say that Together for Peace and the events you organised come from faith-based initiatives, and I don’t mean that pejoratively?

Yes and no. The three original founders of T4P, who were amazing activists, were Christians. But as they handed over the organising, it became increasingly apparent that it was not appropriate to make it overly faith-based because it does not resonate with lots of people. We feel slightly misconstrued as an organisation in this respect but it happens less and less.

That does not mean that we don’t do such work. One member of the team who is Christian has been active for many years in facilitating a Jewish-Muslim dialogue and this is now gathering momentum.

What is it that you are hoping people take with them when they leave, given that the day’s activities begin with breakfast at 9am and continue into the evening with social events?

Our strap line ‘Get Connected, Be Inspired & Join in Action for Change’ encapsulates it. We hope people will take away with them a sense of the need for a better connected yet diverse Leeds, a better connected Yorkshire and a better connected north of England. This amounts to having a healthier place where ideas can flow between different interest groups, across different generations, ethnicities and movements.

For the more engaged activists, we wanted them to feel re-energised by participating, because many go through phases of being tired and fed up, feeling that nobody else seems to be bothering. To be in a space with a whole bunch of other people getting involved really helps.

And finally, while there is nothing wrong with talking shops, projects like Summat do need to hold a mirror up to ourselves. Are we just putting on interesting events or can our activities lead to different forms of action? Sometimes these might be short term, like joining an organisation such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace. But others will hopefully encourage medium or long term change engendered by a stronger community spirit.

As someone else put it, we hope to try to raise the temperature around issues of social change, perhaps even by half a degree, so that progressive social movements become possible.

When you talk about seeking change, what is the change you envisage?

As Lederach argues, you can’t force change, you can only develop the potential for change.

There is very much a resonance, or oneness, between personal change and macro-change or structural change. We want to enable people to make micro changes in their lives all the way to engaging in more significant activities and issues.

If they begin to wrestle with the idea that environmental, social, political and economic issues are inter-connected then that’s progress. We want people to almost intuitively start to grasp that sense of what a huge job is needed; to begin to be able to re-imagine our world. It’s fairly big stuff.

When I hear you speak, I hear echoes of what I would call ethical socialism, and what you do at one level helps to prefigure how you achieve your wider ambitions.

But how would you respond to the kind of criticism that says all this touchy-feely stuff is fine but what about fighting the system, opposing the cuts, tackling the hard issues, and not just sitting round feeling good about ourselves?

That question has to be asked. It’s far too easy for us to construct cosy spaces for ourselves, which we all do to a certain extent.

First, the Summat creates space for groups who want to tackle the big issues. We provide platforms for people to run their own workshops or stalls. This gives them the opportunity to engage with a whole bunch of new people. While Summat is designed to be mainstream and to have a broad appeal, we also want to create space for those wider ideas to be heard.

However, that cannot be the whole response. If that’s all we focus on we are hugely disempowering ourselves. We would be accepting the terms of the struggle defined by pre-established centres of power, by the economic and political system as it is.

Valerie Fournier, who talks a lot about social movements, argues that really crucial steps for developing social change are cultivating outrage. We need to be shining a torch on the centres of power and injustice but this has to be accompanied by creative alternatives.

That’s why the BBC reporter, Justin Rowlett, gave a deliberately provocative talk on the green movement, which he says should be a success but is failing. This, he says, is partly because it is too concerned with being negative (“anti-nuclear, anti-GM, anti-capitalist”) instead of offering creative alternatives. Cultural creativity has to be at the heart of social movements.

What plans do you have for the future?

Over the next few months, I want to research the participants’ responses to the Summat. In particular, it will be interesting to see whether we have encouraged any changes, whether individually or organisationally. If not, it will be useful to consider what the barriers to change are.

In this respect, we were particularly heartened by the comments of two of our leading participants, Maurice Glasman and Peter Tatchell, who were both very positive about the day.

We also have to weigh things up, look at whether the outcomes justify the all-consuming effort of putting on such an event. It will probably take us another six months to decide when and whether to hold it again.

If we go for it, then it will probably be during the summer so more of it can be outdoors. I’m intrigued by the idea of a 36-hour Summat, possibly over a summer bank holiday. We tried a little tester in May with a couple of hundred people, and it was good little event. We are also keen to have even stronger partnerships so we can take our messages to wider audiences.

–

More information from the Summat website: www.summat.org
You can also download the programme: www.t4p.org.uk/summat2011brochure

More about Together for Peace here.

Information about Paul Lederach’s book, The Moral Imagination, is here.

In London, a 30,000-strong march and rally heard Labour’s London Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone, who argued: ‘There is still time for the government to adopt a more constructive position and enter into genuine talks. That would be the responsible course of action and I urge them to think again and act in the interests of public servants and Londoners.’

Livingstone claimed that for all the talk of ‘gilt-edged pensions’ for public sector workers, it is MPs who get the best pension deal among public servants having voted to award themselves a guaranteed two-thirds final salary pension after just 20 years service that ensures at least £40,000 a year. Two days later a health worker calling BBC’s Radio 5 Live pointed out that after 42 years service she will receive a pension of £7,500 – and that’s before the government’s reforms.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber accused the government of scrapping a tax on bankers in favour of a tax on nurses, teachers and lollipop ladies, while PCS general secretary Mark Serowtka vowed to strike again and again until the government agree to proper negotiations – a pledge greeted by whoops and cheers from the crowd along London’s Embankment.

The lack of decent pensions in the private sector, he said, was no good reason to cut pensions for the public sector workers. It was a result of Thatcher’s anti-union policies which stripped private sector workers of their rights and protection.

In other cities, 20,000 gathered in Manchester, 10,000 in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Sheffield city centre (see pic below). John Stevenson, from the GMB in Sheffield, directed some predictable ire at local MP Nick Clegg: ‘Nick Clegg accuses everyone involved with the trade union movement of telling porkies. But remember what Mr Clegg said to the students? He is the expert in telling lies – not us.”

The numbers striking and turnouts at rallies belied Tory efforts to portray the day as simultaneously damaging and a ‘damp squib’. And despite failing (to the annoyance of many) to back the strikes, Ed Miliband still managed some to express some genuine anger on behalf of ‘the dinner lady, the cleaner, the nurse who earns less in a week than George Osborne spends on his skiing holiday’.

The aim, according to the foundation’s driving force, Paul Salveson, is to create a northern-based ‘think tank’ which will build an evidence-based lobby for directly-elected regional government for the north.

“After a fair bit of debate we agreed a strap-line of ‘an ethical socialist approach to regional government for the north’,” reports Salveson in his Weekly Salvo blog.

“It boils down to celebrating the north’s distinctive socialist heritage, expressed through Chartism, co-operation, the women’s suffrage movement and the decidedly ‘northern’ culture of the Independent Labour Party (formed in Bradford in 1893).

“But it’s not a history society – it’s about making some of that relevant to the present day.”

Hannah Mitchell is not a hugely well-known name from Labour history, says Salveson, but “she encapsulates a lot of the things the Foundation is hoping to be about”.

Born in 1871 on a farm in North Derbyshire, she lived for a while in Glossop before moving to Bolton in the 1890s where she became involved in the socialist movement and an avid reader of Robert Blatchford’s Clarion newspaper. She married a fellow socialist and moved to Ashton-under-Lyne where she became active in the ILP and Labour Church, and was elected to the Board of Guardians, responsible for poor relief.

When the women’s suffrage movement took off in the early 1900s she became a well-known activist in the northern industrial towns, campaigning in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the north-east. She supported the pro-women’s rights Victor Grayson in his epoch-making 1907 election campaign in Colne Valley. She opposed the First World War, regarding war as ‘the worst possible way of settling disputes’.

She was elected onto Manchester City Council and was an outstanding champion of working people’s interests, both in her own ward and across the city, with particular interest in libraries and public baths. She was a talented writer, penning a regular column in the ILP’s Labour’s Northern Voice, often contributing dialect sketches about working class life as ‘Daisy Nook’.

“When we debated a suitable name for the foundation Hannah seemed a good choice,” says Salveson. “She was ‘northern’ to her core, politically and culturally, a working class socialist and feminist with a down-to-earth approach to getting things done.

“The fact she is not well known isn’t a problem; a more famous figure always carries ‘baggage’ and the idea isn’t to slavishly copy all her political interests but use her as an inspiration for our work.”

Hannah Mitchell’s autobiography, The Hard Way Up, is long out of print but if you’re lucky you can find it in second-hand bookshops.

More about the Northern Socialist Network and Hannah Mitchell Foundation can be found on Salveson’s website at www.paulsalveson.org.uk/northern-socialist-network/

The Leeds Summat Gathering 2011 is a free, all-day event for people from all walks of life across Leeds and the North – to get connected, be inspired, and work out how we can change our communities, our city, and our world for a better future.

Building on the success of the first Summat in 2009, it will feature special guest speakers and performers, workshops, food, music, arts, film, conversation, and much much more. Speakers include Peter Tatchell, activists from Egypt and Greece, and Lord Maurice Glasman.

It’s on Saturday 26th November 2011, from 9am until late, at Leeds University Union and Notre Dame College LS2. Book your free place and/or get full info at www.summat.org.

Downloadable flyers at www.t4p.org.uk/summat2011-finalflyer. Or find them on Facebook.

Unite, the UK’s largest union, has repeatedly warned that that the youth service is vanishing fast in the face of massive budget cuts, the biggest to any public service. This summer saw strike action in the prime minister’s Oxfordshire constituency to defend a service lauded by him but now facing the axe.

One in five councils are reporting that ‘services for young people’ are bearing a proportionally larger share of the cuts in 2011/12.

With one million young people languishing on the dole queue, the union says that young people need more, not less, assistance to find jobs, to seek out further educational opportunities, to avoid gang culture, and to feel they have a future stake in society.

The day will include a diverse programme of speakers including young people who will travel to London from as far a field as Devon and the North West in order to lobby their MPs.

Choose Youth is an alliance of over 30 national youth sector organisations and trade unions, including Unite.

More information from Unite.

Information on Choose Youth here.

On 4 October 1936 the Jewish community of east London came together with community organisations, trade unionists, communists and socialists – including many members of the ILP – to stop Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists from marching through the east end. The fascists were sent packing and Cable Street forever became associated with a victory for Britain’s anti-fascist forces.

Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate, one of the supporting organisations, said: “While our methods might have evolved since then, the dedication and commitment to opposing fascism and hatred remain the same, and it is vital we celebrate our own history.”

Assemble: 11.30am at Aldgate East (Junction of Braham Street and Leman Street)

Rally: 1pm at St George in the East Gardens, Canon Street, off Cable Street (http://g.co/maps/mnppe)

The march and rally is just one of several events taking place on 2 October. Others include:

• Protest and Survive – a photography and poster exhibition
• Grand Union Orchestra of East London (www.grandunionyouth.org.uk)
• Book launch – five new publications about the Battle of Cable Street
• ‘They Shall Not Pass’ – an evening of celebration and entertainment at Wilton’s Music Hall, including Billy Bragg, Michael Rosen, Shappi Khorsandi and The Men They Couldn’t Hang (www.battleofcablestreet.org.uk)

Hope not Hate have also produced a special Cable Street pamphlet, sponsored by Unison, to mark the 75th anniversary. The 28-page full-colour magazine includes maps, rare photos and stories from the day.
£4 (including p&p) from www.hopenothate.org.uk/shop/cablest or by sending cheque or postal order for £4 to:
Searchlight Educational Trust
PO Box 67502
London NW3 9RE.

Full details of all events can be found at: www.hopenothate.org.uk or cablestreet75.org.uk

“Because the proposed legislation covers a wide area, the issue of the massive cuts in legal aid is in danger of failing to get a full and fair hearing in the Commons,” writes the former MP. “There is a need for all of us to do whatever we can to block the measure.”

Read more.

Also see: Sound Off For Justice and Justice For All.

Saturday’s TUC march against government cuts exceeded most expectations in terms of size and the good nature of the protest. Giving a proverbial two fingers to smug media cynics like the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins, well over 250,000 attended the March for the Alternative.

In evidence among the placards, banners and hand-painted signs were an inspiring range of causes. This was clearly a gathering of people, not just from across the public sector, but beyond, including many thousands who were roused to hit the streets to demonstrate their opposition to the socially-destructive programme being unleashed by Cameron’s government of millionaires.

To his credit, and taking something of a political risk, Labour leader Ed Miliband spoke to the rally and gave a competent speech, reclaiming the ‘big society’ mantle for the hundreds of thousands who had turned out to defend their communities (Miliband’s speech is available here). Despite rather luke-warm backing from the Labour Party until very shortly before the march, other Labour front-benchers such as Yvette Cooper, Harriet Harman and Hilary Benn were also present.

While not surprising, it was still galling that media reports concentrated overwhelmingly on the vandalism caused by small groups of anarchists. The ‘trouble’ was relatively minor, with only just over 200 arrests made, yet it seemed our public service broadcasters were happy to give some eighty per cent of their coverage to 0.1 per cent of the people.

Far be it for them to let political speeches, debate, or views critical of the government get in the way of more ‘news-worthy’ pictures showing the odd window being broken or photo-friendly paint balls hitting bank walls. (The web site Labour List is encouraging complaints to the BBC and Sky News over their routine bias in reporting anti-cuts demonstrations, see here.) .

Welcome though it was to have a chance to say ‘no’ to the Con Dems, the protest amounted to little more than a good start in a campaign that needs to become more cohesive, more broadly supported, and more popular as we seek to fight spending cuts and the destruction of the NHS.

Such a campaign requires much more work, especially in fashioning an alternative programme, and that’s a task requiring Labour’s front bench to play a much more forthright and critical role.

Saturday 12^th March was billed as ‘Sheffield’s day of rage’ – an opportunity to vent our anger and opposition to the Lib Dems who were holding their spring conference in Sheffield. In the event, a lively, good natured but disappointingly small protest took place. Instead of the billed ‘10,000 plus’ there were maybe 4-5,000, a rare occasion when police estimates were near the mark.

Indeed, this was no doubt much to the chagrin of the South Yorkshire force who had gone to extraordinary lengths to prepare for the occasion, running up a bill of £2m, including a 8ft high ‘ring of steel’ round City Hall, the conference venue. They were ready for trouble, though, in the event, little of the massed back-up was needed.

In my estimation – I’m happy to be corrected here – the turnout relied heavily on the older left, small far-left parties and the trade unions. Particularly noticeable was what seemed to be a small showing from the city’s students. Given the fury over Clegg’s betrayal on student fees and the fact that there are over 40,000 students in the city (an estimated 10,000 in Clegg’s own constituency) this is a worrying sign that the force has gone out of student opposition.

Indeed, the protest showed above all that the anti-cuts movement needs to find some coherence, leadership and popular appeal, and fast. If this protest was anything to go by, the trade unions are doing some important work but it’s not apparent that they are reaching out beyond their traditional areas of support. Certainly, there was no groundswell of popular support for this demonstration. If opposition to the ConDem coalition is to exert real leverage, it will have to start to mobilise those in Tory and Liberal constituencies like Clegg’s Sheffield base.

Unite’s Len McCluskey acknowledged as much, calling on Liberal Democrat supporters and members – even MPs! – to come out against the cuts and the privatisation of the NHS. If the London demonstration on 26^th March fails to mobilise this kind of broad popular opposition, then the momentum will really be lost from anti-government forces. A start would be for the Labour Party and its leadership to get behind the 26^th March demonstration, backing it as a key moment from which opposition to the coalition can be built.

Why the Labour leadership should back the TUC’s ‘March for the Alternative’.

Click here for more information on the TUC’s March for the Alternative.

In under a week, the union’s petition demanding that David Cameron stops the blood money was signed by 25,000 people (go to http://action.unitetheunion.com/page/s/BloodMoney?source=UniteTwitter to add your name).

The petition was launched last Friday 3rd March and the Twitter campaign (#bloodmoney) began yesterday 9 March . In just one day almost 10,000 signed up .

On 16 February, the Health Service Journal learned that the Department of Health’s commercial directorate held talks with private providers about running parts of the NHS Blood and Transplant service. Capita and DHL are understood to be interested in taking over parts of the service (see http://www.hsj.co.uk/5025793.article).

The campaign has struck a chord with the general public who have been signing up at record speed for a Unite union petition. The public are right to be concerned, a study conducted in New Zealand found that there was opposition to profit being made from blood, with 52% of donors unlikely to continue donating if this occurred (see http://www.bmj.com/content/312/7039/1131.full) .

Unite assistant general secretary, Jennie Bremner said:

“In under a week 25,000 people have signed the petition opposing privatisation of the NHS Blood service . Yesterday alone 7000 people signed the petition and we expect the numbers of people joining our campaign to grow. Men and women, young and old alike are really angry about the government’s plans.

“Donors help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year including cancer patients, accident victims and women giving birth who develop complications. Anyone who can see the clear moral contradiction in giving blood freely to help others for it then to be used for profit by the private sector should get behind Unite’s campaign to urge David Cameron to stop the blood money.

“The message is getting louder by the hour as more people join the campaign – our blood is not for sale.”

The NHS Blood and Transplant Service is a success story. Its specialist nurses collect blood from volunteer donors and then the service ensures it reaches the patients that need it. Donors help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year. Cancer patients, accident victims and women giving birth who develop complications. It also co-ordinates the 24-hour organ matching and allocation service which arranges our much needed organ transplant service.

And it is not the case that the NHSBT is ‘ineffective’ or ‘inefficient’. Their last annual report showed the service: “met more than 99.9% of all product requests” and they have “implemented efficiencies which helped to reduce the cost of a unit of red cells from £140 to £130” – this is a fall in cost of over 7%.

The NHSBT had undertaken in increasing the number of organ donations the total number of organ transplants carried out in the period April 2009 to March 2010 was the highest ever seen.

Sign the Unite petition: http://action.unitetheunion.com/page/s/BloodMoney?source=UniteTwitter
Health Service Journal: http://www.hsj.co.uk/5025793.article