SWPAPCDA (PS)

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The Socialist Worker's Party Annual Pre-Conference District Aggregate Meeting for Portsmouth and Southampton. Which is a little more interesting that it sounds, and happened tonight.

Aside from the usual telling each other what we already know (it's difficult juggling several campaigns simultaneously, the imperialist project in the middle east is ongoing, and recruiting young people is important), there was also discussion of work in trade unions, and the climate change movement.

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The party line on the environmentalist movement is that it's too fragmented, too nebulous, and most importantly too small to be worth diverting more resources into working with. It's also too...well, silly - or if you prefer: politically naive, unsophisticated, not well thought out. If that changes, so will our involvement.

Iraq (plus Afghanistan) is still the major issue in the public mind, and in spite of the US plan to slowly withdraw from Iraq, there's no plans to leave Afghanistan and there's still the wish to attack Iran - even while negotiating with Iran and Syria to mend Iraq.

I'm not sure. I suspect the will is draining out of the antiwar movement (and thus the Stop The War Coalition) now that the war feels like it's "over, bar the shooting". Occupation and killing are still happening of course, but large antiwar demos may have gone the way of the blind patriotism they opposed.

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On the one hand, the future of the planet is too important an issue for us to sit and wait for a mass movement to appear that we can try to influence. On the other, we can't create such a movement out of thin air just by getting involved, however much energy we put into it.

In fact, pulling out all the stops might actually damage the movement, by driving away the fluffy people and single-issue campaigners - i.e the sympathetic but soft general public.

So, it looks like we've just got to wait and hope. Even though time and hope aren't things the world has much of.

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