Having recently created a membership system, the left-wing anti-Brexit campaign Another Europe is Possible held its first members’ conference on 8 December, with about 200 people in attendance.
We hope to find a more interesting way of covering the issues of importance and controversy raised at and by the conference soon, but meanwhile here is a brief factual report. You can read the brief official AEIP report here and the agenda and documents of the conference here.
The conference featured a number of workshops for political discussion of various issues, caucuses including on Labour Party work and work in the unions, elections for (part of) a new AEIP national committee, and debate and voting on a strategy document, a new constitution and amendments to both.
The eight comrades elected to serve on the AEIP committee are Kelly Rogers, Marina Prentoulis, Ana Oppenheim, Mary Kaldor, Hilary Wainwright, Luke Cooper, Ben Towse and Nadia Whittome. You will recognise the names of Kelly, Ben, Ana and Nadia as people who have all written for The Clarion previously (and we have interviewed Marina); Ana is, of course, a member of our Editorial Board.
There will now be an online ballot of members for another eight places. These sixteen will sit alongside reps of affiliates (whose votes, however, cannot outnumber those of elected members). The current affiliates are the Green Party, the small socialist network Left Unity, ‘civil society organisation’ European Alternatives and left-wing NGO Global Justice Now.
As you might have guessed, The Clarion was present at the conference, but we did not promote any particular positions or amendments to the documents as such. However, there were a number of amendments submitted by comrades who are involved with or support us, generally angling the documents in a sharper and more radical direction. Some of these were passed (eg setting up a Labour-specific anti-Brexit initiative, firming up AEIP’s stance on alliances in a second referendum campaign, learning the lessons of Syriza’s debacle in Greece), while others were defeated (eg campaigning for public ownership of the banks).
More on the political issues soon.
• You can join Another Europe is Possible here.
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