The purpose of this anecdote is to highlight the destructiveness of egos within the movement. Throughout all described here the egoic players were likely working with goodwill, and at the time bill saw the interplays as concerned with compromise and the system. Whilst compromise was always true and inevitable if you have a role as paid activist, the real issue concerned ego - sadly in this case bill’s bulldozing ego was most significant.
This was perhaps the best and worst of bill's time in the grassroots movement, but it was definitely his most egoic. It was his piece celebre but in terms of the long-term movement totally insignificant.
It was early on in his activism – just after the alienation from the grassroots movement by the SWP egos at his first school and yet just after his education in internationalism from the African comrades he met through Young Journal. His work began with a small group of World Development Movement; these people were concerned and Christian. It is difficult to describe then as activists because they did little. In the context of long-term awareness and activism the movement needs to be working with these people but the way things were then – now? – that is not likely to happen because they were part of the two-sided alienation between the movement and religion. Yet the movement and these Christians had a clear united identity within the 99%. bill started with them because of their commitment to the international. Whilst maintaining links with these people he moved onto the LADC – Labour Aid & Development Committee in his local area. Within this Labour group (national Labour party group at the time) bill began developing an interest in Trade Union solidarity – looking at examples of Trade Union solidarity across borders. To get closer to the trade unionism he used his NUT membership to join the local Trades Council to facilitate their involvement in this. Everyone was interested in international work but not committed to it, bill's own commitment came from a recognition of anti-colonialism from the African comrades and seeing the inner colonialism of British society.
His own local area was close to London so bill attended national meetings of LADC – these were no bigger than his local meetings, and the national committee was kept running by a hard-working LADC Secretary. Not long after attending the national committee she ceded secretaryship to bill, his being the only person who chose to do the work. He spent a long time doing bureaucracy to maintain the organisation of 300 national members. Soon after the conference – la piece celebre, this function ended as he clashed with the national Labour party about LADC representation on a committee. He phoned up Labour admin, and they told me that bill did not merit a representative position as LADC was so small. At that time he had no factional allegiance but they were quite right, he was trying to get personal recognition within the Labour party – they probably suspected he was using the divisive Trots tactics discussed in addon P3. When his ego lost out to the Labour party, there was no-one else willing to do the bureaucracy and the non-activist group within the movement became non-existent.
By this time bill had lost interest in the Labour party, and had become committed to trade union activism; la piece celebre had happened, and this ego event was part of his legacy – admittedly his egoic legacy. So to the event itself, it was bill's event – or rather it was his ego’s event. He did everything by the representative book. It became an event run by the local LADC, backed by the national LADC, supported by the WDM – World Development Movement, and supported by the local Trades Council – by this time he was on Trades Council Exec in a created position of international officer. Sounds good backing but in fact it was just his pointless hard work. Except for the fact that it was an event bill is proud to have organised.
Basically his ego bulldozed through everything. It was not a collective movement event, it ws an event run by bill through the local area LADC. As part of a long-term movement it was nothing but as a one-off event it was a success. The event was a conference on international trade union solidarity - becoming letters for bill ITUS. It was organised in a local church centre that he had accessed through the Christians of WDM. It was a bog standard conference – choice of workshops and a plenary. Through the national LADC some good comrades facilitated the workshops, and the plenary was well participated in. And then there were the Sisters of the Long March!
As part of the organising there was a dance in the evening to get some money, and the big attraction were the Sisters of the Long March – South African comrades who were in the UK promoting the anti-apartheid struggle. bill thinks the dance was fine, the local LADC made some money and people enjoyed themselves – not interested himself just there as organiser. But the Sisters of the Long March made his conference because at the end of the plenary they jumped out of the audience (unbeknownst to bill beforehand) and gave a song. Their jumping-up made the conference memorable – as he has said a success as a one-off event.
But by this time his ego, primarily, had destroyed any movement benefit. At that time he saw the event as more important than movement-building – in fact at the time he did not understand the destructive nature of his own behaviour. But he did not bulldoze his way through activists, he bulldozed his way through liberals who had a very limited connection to activism through these various groups. There is a place for such token involvement but that place is not at the activists’ table. To his mind then and now his behaviour highlighted that the people on these various liberal groups were not serious. However it is equally clear that if there is ever going to be real change these people need to be a part of it. They had suitable ideals but their awareness was limited meaning that they were not actively committed to the movement and change. For most of the liberals they were content to be associated with the conference.
However one liberal of the small group of liberals associated with the organisation got angry with bill's bulldozing. One of the organisations that had given nominal support to the conference was Oxfam – Oxfam recognised the importance of trade union solidarity in international development but they spend much of their constructive life trying to expose the exploitation of the societal infrastructure whilst maintaining charitable status. This compromise limits their truth greatly.
But to be fair it was not this compromise that ended their support, it was bill's bulldozing ego, the disturbed individual liberal ego, and the ego of an Oxfam organiser. To be quite honest bill should not have wasted his time on this organising. The event could have established the local area LADC as an active group but these few liberals were not interested in that. As a committed activist he finds it difficult to understand why they turn up to such meetings - maybe liberal guilt that they feel they should be doing something. But when the event came along – an event they supported idealistically, they were not active in organising. As time went on it became quite clear to bill that the event would not happen if he waited for their commitment.
Meanwhile one of the liberals had complained to Oxfam about of his bulldozing. The complaint was peevish. Because of their inactivity the local group had lost control of the conference. They did not want the conference stopped but it was bill's ego and hard work keeping it going – and not this group of liberals. The other liberals accepted this within their guilty limitations but one person’s guilt could not accept it and she became destructive. The group were willing to let bill continue organising so she could not destroy through the democracy of the group meeting. She did not want to participate in the organising, to bill it was never clear what this person wanted – other than she wanted to be destructive in some way. What was clear was that bill did not attempt to massage her ego but she did not want to participate in organising – bill would have loved help in line with what was agreed by the group, that by this time he had overtaken. It was quite simply an ego clash.
She got the ear of the local Oxfam person who then withdrew Oxfam’s support for the conference. In retrospect what practically that withdrawal meant bill cannot recall – mainly he wanted access to their mailing list in the hope of invvolving them in the conference - as well possibly as the use of office facilities. Again there was a huge ego clash between bill and this Oxfam person. bill accepted he was bulldozing, was definitely willing to have this liberal shoulder some of the work, and he did want Oxfam’s support. But bill could not find out what these egos wanted other than to stop the conference. The Oxfam organiser wanted to see organising from others in the group but he knew that was an impossible request - there was nominal support but no active support as the disgruntled individual had said. The full-time organiser was being unreasonable, and he argued round in circles with bulldozing bill. In hindsight there might have been Oxfam management pressure but the organiser gave no indications of that. So bill took Oxfam's name off any publicity, the individual member never helped - he cannot recall if she attended the conference although other group members did.
You cannot activate those whose priority is not activism. It was/is common within the movement for nominal support to be given with the tacit assumption that no work was required. As for the Oxfam guy bill thinks it was a personality clash more than anything else, but who knows?? There are no great lessons to be learnt from this. A committed activist can always find ways of getting these things done but in terms of the movement is it worth it?
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