The Awakening of the True Europe

November 24, 2010. A date to remember. A few months after the Greek riots, a few weeks after the French wave of general strikes, Britain, Italy and Portugal synchronized their unrest against the new measures of austerity enforced by their respective governments. While British students descended in mass on the streets, their Italian equivalents attacked the palace of the Senate, before moving to occupy the Coliseum. At the same time, in Portugal, the unions called for a general strike that managed to paralyze the entire country, with peaks of 80% adhesion among the workers of several industries.

Next in line, the people of Ireland are preparing a winter of discontent, after their government accepted to implement a brutal plan of cuts to public spending, following a huge lending by the IMF. Although as yet not fully exploded, the Irish case is maybe the most emblematic of the current European situation. On the one hand, there is the usual collapse of the banking system, which spreads like wildfire throughout the whole country’s economy, leading to a massive bailout by the government (that is, the unwilling taxpayers) and the subsequent take-over of economic policies by organisms such as the IMF. All this, ultimately, is translatable as the umpteenth, neoliberal attempt to strip the State of any other functions but its repressive activities. On the other, for the first time in a decade, we have a spontaneous mass movement that does not fear to use any possible means to oppose their needs and rights to the insatiable appetites of global capital.

It is indeed surprising to witness such a sudden awakening today, after decades of failures of the social movements (most notably, the anti-globalization movement of 2001 and the anti-war movement of 2003). Even more so, considering that the vast majority of today’s civil unrest doesn’t seem to follow the directions of any ‘central committee’ or to belong to any specific flag. Laurie Penny, writing on the Guardian about the protests in London, talked of a ‘children’s crusade’. However appealing this might sound - and despite its beautifully romantic anarchist echoes - such spontaneity is a potential limit for those movements, as well as a tremendous strength.

The best example could come from the recent experience of student protests in London. A massive and colorful demonstration faced the new-style repression of the Metropolitan Police: closed by lines and lines of policemen, the demonstrators were held in a ‘kettle’ (that is, preventively detained on the street without food or water or toilets) for more than eight hours. Despite their number and the intensity of their rage, a complete lack of internal organization stopped them from coming out with solutions to escape the kettle in mass, or even to communicate with the rest of ‘civil society’ with ways which were alternative to the clearly biased accounts of the vast majority of mainstream media. Definitely, the creation of a movement - or the inability to do so - will be the turning point for this new wave of protests in the UK. The same applies to the rest of the unrest exploding day after day everywhere throughout Europe.

It is increasingly clear how at the core of almost all the current European movements (or proto-movements), in Greece as in Italy, France, Portugal and Britain, there is an idea of the State, of redistribution of wealth and of Europe itself, which is opposed to that proposed by the governments, banks and international financial institutions such as the IMF. Yet, this impressive similarity of targets does not seem to be reflected in the creation of links between the different national experiences, nor in the creation of international networks of struggle and solidarity. In other words, despite all the necessary ingredients that seem to be abundantly available (now more than ever, in the age of web 2.0), the powerful magic of the internationalism of struggles has not happened yet.

To be fair, something is already moving towards that direction, although the call for a ‘Europeanization’ of the struggle have only come from few and small groups. On September 29, for example, a number of unions form different European countries called for a simultaneous strike throughout the continent. This plan might not have worked as it was hoped, but nonetheless it was the very first attempt of setting up a coordinated European action of protest. On a more violent note, just a couple of days ago a new guerrilla fighting group in Greece, the Fire Conspiracy Cells, who had sent a number of explosive parcels to many a Prime Minister in Europe, called for their ‘partners and rebel groups’ in Europe to ‘send their own aggressive signal’ to their respective governments. As unlikely and maybe unreasonable as this might sound, it is indeed the sign of a rising acknowledgment of the necessity of going beyond the national level in the struggle for the implementation of just, equitable and progressive social policies.

In order to reach this new level of coordination, though, it necessary first to overcome a complex and fundamental challenge. That is, to be able to provide a shared and unifying answer to the question ‘what is our struggle for?’. Facing the highly ideological plans of action of a transnational alliance of conservative and repressive powers, the European social movements (or soon to be so) will have to create a narrative and ideological discourse which will be able to propagate and maintain the struggle through time and space. This will be the opportunity to expand the targets of the protest, maybe to the point of including environmental movements as well as illegal immigrants, feminist activists and public sector employees, exploited interns and the unions of cleaners. In other words, it will be the shared act of creation of an ideology that does not come from minuscule intellectual vanguards, but that is rather produced by the general intellect and grassroots activists. Clearly, this is not by any means an easy task, and it is probably the most ambitious project that the new and non-parliamentary ‘left’ will have to undertake in order to present itself as a real force of social change. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary. And, anyway, as they say, ‘if it was easy they wouldn’t call it struggle’.

Federico Campagna

 26 November 2010, London