Friday 12th September 2014

4.30pm: UBI: Universal appreciation for a Universal Basic Income?
Critisticuffs

Students and precarious workers protest in Italy to demand a "guaranteed income" photo © Antonio Melita

A Universal Basic Income is appreciated from politically the most diverse kinds of people. We'd like to discuss the premises underlying these different voices of support, in particular:

(1) productivity gains as a rather curious problem in need of addressing,
(2) the rationality of addressing the state to alleviate poverty,
(3) the dispute amongst universal basic income supporters about "incentives" and compulsion to work and
(4) the idea of a "non-reformist reform".

4.30pm: For your safety and security: an open discussion at Fast Forward
Anonymous Refused

The oppressive social relations we struggle against are inevitably reflected in us, individually and collectively. We are scarred, and our relations with each other are scarred, though obviously we are not all scarred in the same way. To fight and organise, together, against the world as it is, we must fight to be together in ways which challenge and subvert, rather than perpetuate, the modes of domination, exploitation and violence which create us as subjects. The language and practices of 'safer spaces' are supposed to embody and support this desire.

In various political scenes, organisations and movements, struggles against oppressive power dynamics and especially against sexual violence within these collectives have led to the development of a set of unevenly defined practices and concepts which, although interconnected, are by no means unified. Nevertheless, they are sometimes grouped together under the heading 'safer spaces'. They include safer spaces policies, accountability panels/processes, exclusion of people from space on the grounds that they make others feel unsafe, use of trigger warnings, use of a certain vocabulary to talk about trauma, use of concepts like apologism etc. To say there are connections between these practices and concepts doesn’t mean that they need to be accepted or rejected wholesale.

Yet conflicts over 'safer spaces' are contributing to the break-down of many of our relationships and organisations, with people on all sides of these conflicts feeling scared, confused, victimised, and silenced. Of course, the very question of who 'we' are, and what kind of 'community', if any, 'we' want to form, is part of what is at issue in these conflicts.

We are not alone in starting to question and think about these issues – many important and difficult conversations about this are already happening. The hope for this workshop is that it will bring some of these conversations together, that sharing experiences and ideas from different standpoints will help us move beyond what can feel like entrenched positions.

Some cans of worms to be opened might include: How are the practices of accountability panels and mandates for social exclusion affecting different individuals, friendships, and possibilities for political organising, both positively and negatively? How has the rise of 'safer spaces' related historically to the rise of security politics in dominant society? How has it disrupted those politics, and how has it reinforced them? To what extent do we need to be critical of medicalised vocabularies of trauma and triggering? How have concepts like 'apologism' and ‘derailing' been operating in the context of disputes over these and other issues?

This discussion starts from the idea that we do not have the answers to these questions, or even to the question of whether these are even the best questions to ask, but that we need to be able to talk openly, to discuss and even disagree about these issues.

4.30pm: Evict the Banks – Protect our Homes
Phil McLeish (Housing Lawyer)

On 24 July this year, 200 people prevented bailiffs repossessing the home of Tom Crawford, a 63 year old cancer sufferer in Nottingham. Meanwhile, since 2009 in Spain, activists have prevented more than 1000 evictions; rehoused more than 1000 homeless persons in vacant bank-owned properties and made significant steps towards changing the law relating to mortgages. As we face the likelihood of a rise in interest rates, what are the prospects of building a popular movement in the UK that can challenge the power of the banks over peoples’ homes? And how might such a movement intersect with the needs and struggles of tenants and squatters?

Saturday 13th September 2014

5pm: Culture, Counter-culture & the Commune
Association of Musical Marxists

The mistake of all hitherto-existing revolutionary lefts was that they believed in theory and practice without poiesis – Dadaist unrespected and disrespectful punk rock-improv productivity i.e. the free exchange of everything happening in our everyday lives and experimental reworking of all tokens. Using the counterculture for what it gives us vs. verdammte ‘heritage’ culture.

5pm: Women, Bodies, Reproduction and the State
Feminist Fightback

This workshop discusses some of the multiple ways in which the state has sought to control women’s bodies and particularly our ability to reproduce, both historically and in the present day. Extending our support for abortion rights to engage with ‘reproductive freedom’ more widely, has also alerted us to the many ways in which the UK state directly disciplines women’s bodies and reproductive choices even after they have given birth. What kinds of demands showed our movement be making around such issues? Should they be directed at the state? What does a ‘in and against the state’ perspective contribute here? How can some of these very concrete examples of state power in practice be used to inform wider struggles against state violence?

Sunday 14th September 2014

2.00pm: Organisation of the Organisationless: Reading group and discussion.

Kier Milburn (Plan C/The Free Association)

What are the organisational lessons of 2011? How do we rethink political organisation now the limits of networks have been recognised? How do we move beyond the open network form without losing the benefits they bring?

A workshop to discuss these issues based on a reading of Rodrigo Nunes’s new book, Organisation of the Organisationless: Collective Action After Networks.
Attendees are encouraged to read the book before coming although this wil not be a requirement of attendance.

The book is free to download here.

2.00pm: The State of Scotland
Tom Coles

What is going on in Scotland? The debate around the creation of a new state, a Scottish state, has largely focused upon issues of protecting welfare, universal benefits, reconfiguring the economy to more evenly distribute wealth and to end the presence of nuclear weapons within what is currently the United Kingdom. However, the leading party of independence, the SNP, are a staunchly 'normal' modern government, believing in the power of markets, the 'neoliberal consensus' and are committed to remaining part of NATO. Left wing voices for independence are convinced that this debate has gone beyond the SNP and that there is an opportunity for a radically new democratic settlement where the progressive will of the Scottish electorate can be released in order turn away from a decrepit British establishment.

What is the reality of this demand? What is going on in Scotland? And what does it tell us about the nature of modern states, of patriotism, of nationalism as a vehicle for progressive politics and of left demands for self-determination?