In compiling a zine about other groups one might start to get the idea that we are the keepers of the truth, and know everything there is to know about social change. We aren’t and we don’t. We have never claimed to. The purpose of this article is to critically reflect on our activism and to discover some of our failings; not only in our organising but to provide reasons why Solidarity have been to some degree successful in their interventions (specifically in the Sydney University Environment Collective), strategically picking off first year activists and integrating them into their structures, often away from the scrutiny of the people they are attempting to illegitimise.
One of the claims consistently made by Solidarity of non-solidarity members of collective is that some people in collective are united as part of a friendship group, rather than being united in political action. There is rarely evidence raised to support this claim. But the claim requires further analysis. By virtue of people’s political solidarity and common experiences, friendships form. It is no doubt that Solidarity would also have friendship groups. The question is, does the process of socialising with one another distract a collective from its goals? I think it can, under certain circumstances. However it seems highly unlikely that a group that has been able to organise and plan campaigns together, conduct high profile non-violent direct actions and work in solidarity with other community campaigns is necessarily hamstrung by the fact that the majority of people are friends with each other.
While friendships form, its important that the group does not appear clique-ish to new folks, that new folks are encouraged to come to meetings and participate and that people are engaged as activists or organisers whether or not we might be interested in a personal friendship with them. It might be worth interrogating our own behaviours in meeting spaces: hugging or catching up on what happened on the weekend may be isolating to a new person sitting alone with no-one to chat to before the meeting.
Membership structures of our groups continue to be poor. It is not exactly clear when someone becomes a member of most groups and what their obligations are. There is the widespread use of participants agreements – but do they go far enough? When key items come up for discussion, and someone is brought along to the meeting to ‘win’ the vote, does their opinion matter? Conventional wisdom sees groups as open, fluid structures with few barriers, but can we leave our groups open to abuse? More consideration is needed on how we can keep our groups open to new people but prevent abuse.
Why is it that we leave deep theoretical discussions to other groups who recruit from collectives? Often whilst getting on top of the week to week discussions of collectives we forget to engage new people out of meetings in deep political discussions that can illuminate them to a diversity of theories. This often leaves more organised forces ready to whisk them away after meetings for theoretical development. Not that there is anything wrong with people exploring their ideas, it is just problematic that the forum in which they explore those ideas is geared towards a particular set of ideas. This space for exploring ideas will never be genuine, because it doesn’t genuinely consider all ideas. Especially if it is dominated by old, rusted-on members of the left.
Often despite good attempts, our meetings are just not well facilitated. We fail to skill people up in the difficult task of effectively mediating competing interests in a way that keeps everyone partially satisfied and comes up with a good outcome. Using instruments of facilitation regularly enough rarely happens. This often allows loud voices to become further entrenched. We must take responsibility for our failures to make sure meetings are well facilitated and provide skillshares and support.
There is also something to be said about our willingness to create good spaces leading us to be nice to everyone most of the time even if we find their behaviour challenging. Anecdotal deconstruction of this reveals that it might be a ‘middle class’ value to be nice to people even when we disagree. The failure of this that we risk not effectively communicating our displeasure with certain people who don’t do activism on that basis. We need to be strong, rather than nice, and recognise that not everyone has to like each other outside of formal meeting spaces, and that some conflict, provided it isn’t distressing, might be required to protect our spaces.
Facing Entryism From Socialist Organisations 