Unite against fascism - sheffield conference

I went to the unite against fascism conference and there is certainly alot we can learn from their mistakes, the speakers went over their alotted time meaning that there was simply not enough time to do the workshops. There was no in-house catering which mean that there wasnt much continuity and everyone wondered back slowly and aimlessly - which meant that alot more time could have been better used. Also because of the amount of time and people per workshop it was difficult to come back on comments made early on
and there was (on average) one comment per person.

On the conference itself there were a couple of good speakers the "headline speaker" started ok but by the end of the day he had absolutly no credibility, changing his mind repeatedly to suit the argument. Every speaker was party political to an extent and they all blamed someone else for allowing the BNP to get a foot hold in burnley, there was no confession of failiure (i shouldnt have had such high hopes!) and none asked or answered the key questions. The questions they need to ask themselves are:
Who votes BNP? Why do they vote BNP? and What can we do about it?
In the workshops themselves there were some good ideas but the best ideas were not expanded on and instead the short term tactics of the unite against fascism organisation were almost imposed on everyone else. For example someone mentioned tennants associations as a place to send propaganda because these are places that the BNP are targetting but this and other ideas were demoted for the sake of the short term plans like trying to get sean bean to write a statement against the BNP. My point is that although the short term plans are fine for not getting a BNP Mep, in the long term
they will simply return with more ammunition that will include things about the mainstream parties failing people again.
The most worrying part of the conference was when one of the sheffield unite against fascism leaders said that we should motivate blacks, trade unionists, students and those working in the voluntry sector to vote against the BNP - he totally ignored those that are most likely to vote for the BNP and this may come back to haunt him and us when in the local elections areas like handsworth, brightside and shiregreen have been totally and repeatidly ignored by the anti-fascists and anti-racists. It was also worrying when
the headline speakers said that postal ballots help anti-fascists, this is plainly untrue as postal ballots allow vulnerable people to be doorstepped by some smooth politican (BNP or otherwise) to ask themselves in and assist the vulnerable individual to fill out the ballot in favour of their party! This has been done before by the BNP and Lib dems alike.
There was yet more naivety on beharf of the anti-fascists when a well known swp member (gregg) stood up and spewed his normal rhetoric, this time saying that the 'unite against fascism organisation needs to show people the type of racist, criminal thugs that they are' [cue brain dead clapping] the main speaker showed support and said 'to an extent we are already doing that in our campaign'. Fortunatly and quite rightly a member of the jewish community stood up and said 'actually all sorts of people vote for the bnp and stand as bnp candidates and i dont think that it helps our campaign to say those things especially when the potential bnp voter sees that the bnp candidate is actually a 'respetable member of the community'. The swp member quickly had to back peddle as did the headline speaker.
Throughout the day there was continuing references to the nazis and alot of those references were simply not helpfull because I could tell that many of the people making
these comments odviously dont understand the full nature of the NSDAP and its rise to power.
The most interesting part of the day was right at the end of the workshop i was in and the lib dem candidate for our area mentioned her own poll that she carried out and she found out that:
a)most (over 90%) people have never voted in a european election.
b)most people dont know who their european mep is.
c)most people dont know what the european parlament actually does.

She had just finished speaking when i made my one and only imput into the
day by asking her who was to blame for people not knowing, she then reffered
to her poll and quietly muttered the words well the results showed a mixture
between the government, political parties and the media. everyone of those
groups mentioned were at the conference and yet they all blamed someone
else, the member of the nuj blamed the labour party and the government and
the labour party guy blamed the media. But i suppose that is the nature of
politics.
Alot of people present were genuine and made valuable and valid contributions, but it was unfortunate that some of these ideas will not be acted on because of the short term goals of the Unite against fascism campaign.