La Fête de Lutte Ouvrière, near Paris 2013
- This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 11 years, 3 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Alliance for Workers' Liberty report
Quote:Lutte Ouvriere fete 2013
Submitted on
The fete organised by the French revolutionary socialist group Lutte Ouvriere every year at the Whit holiday weekend (18-20 May) in countryside in Presles, near Paris, was hard hit this year by rain.
In the forty years that the fete has been run and AWL and its forerunners have taken up the invitation which LO extends to left groups across Europe to run stalls at it, I can remember only one year when the rain and the mud were so unremitting.
It was still a valuable weekend for the AWL team who went.
Comrades new to the fete saw what can be done by a well-organised revolutionary socialist group which sets out to organise an event where large numbers of working-class people will get a chance to check out Marxist ideas in an accessible, undemanding fashion.
We ran a forum on the case of our Australian comrade Bob Carnegie, facing a possible jail sentence for his work helping construction workers in dispute at the Queensland Children's Hospital site in August-October 2012.
We listened to the debate between Lutte Ouvriere and the other main revolutionary socialist group in France, the NPA. Such debates have been run every year (before the NPA, with the NPA's forerunner, the LCR). We observed that, contrary to what many on the British left think, it is possible for revolutionary socialist groups to have big political differences and yet conduct rational debate between themselves.
We met comrades from the Greek revolutionary socialist group Okde again, and found out from them how things are going in the labour movement in Greece.
We talked with many French activists, from tendencies with which the AWL has long had discussions – Le Militant, L'Etincelle, NPA, Lutte Ouvriere itself – and heard about the struggles and the trends in the labour movement in France. Generally, it is a difficult period, with workers on the back foot, but car workers at PSA Aulnay have been on strike against the closure of the factory for 16 weeks.
We also talked with activists from Tunisia and from Turkey, and enjoyed the variety of stalls at the fete offering food, entertainment, and instruction.
There is a 95%-plus chance that the weather will be much better for the 2014 fete, on 7-9 June. Make your plans now!
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.