Mosul: the centre of two great crises

The most senior British officer involved in planning for post war Iraq, licensed lay reader in the Church of England, Major General Sir Tim Cross told us all on ‘Today’ (BBC Radio 4, 11 June) that he thought ‘they’ (presumably he and his pals) had underestimated the depth of the divisions between Sunni and Shi’a in Iraq, indeed, in the whole of the middle East. Referring to the break up of Iraq and the Syrian civil war, it could all go on for another ten years he sadly suggested.

This particular specimen of the British military perhaps did not realise that in large part that was how the brits and their empire set up the Middle East in the first place – by fomenting these and other useful divisions.  Like Pakistan and India, the modern map of the world owes a great deal to that particular legacy.

But perhaps not surprisingly General Tim misses the point. The move by ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is also known as ISIL, seizing Mosul and dissolving the Iraqi army, together with their previous capture of Ramadi and Falluja, is a major shift in Middle East and world politics. It is nothing less than a signal of the break up of unchallenged western over-lordship in the Middle East. It is also another, decisive door closing on the ‘Arab Spring.’

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar etc., were always nothing other than puppets of the US and remain so. Egypt’s military dictatorship is in new and positive negotiations with the Pentagon about its own status. Israel, because of its endless war with the Palestinians (the traditional, radical enemy of the west) remains the favored regional policeman. The Iranians overthrew both the British and the US empires – but the two progressive forces that might have united the Arab / Palestinian / Iranian cause, socialism and a united Arab/Middle East Federation – based on Arab nationalism - have both been seen to fail. The second Iranian revolution defeated the US but it also opened the door for the current reactionary utopianism and the fantasy unity of the Caliphate.  However, unlike the Arab Spring, many can see Muslim radicalism, at least in the sense of its success in resisting imperialism, to be a realistic template for an independent society. (Although western style capitalist ‘reality’ is already re-growing inside the Islamic Republic of Iran.)

Imperialism (the US and its assorted hangers on) feel the ground shifting from under their feet, after defeat for their new puppet regimes in Iraq and in Afghanistan, despite years of war and trillions of dollars. The tectonic plates are now shifting in the Middle East (and in India and Pakistan.) All that blood and money – for what? The US’s influence and control is weaker than it has ever been.

Here we come to the remorseless logic of the permanent revolution. This grand political insight of the early twentieth century is mostly identified with Trotsky and exemplified in Lenin’s April Theses, the strategic document that led to the successful second Russian revolution. In the case of the new brush fires of revolt, aimed against western influence, across Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Libya, they emerge from the failure of indigenous capitalism to consolidate its independence and a new life for its people. Despite the Arab Spring and its echoes in Iran, the city based classes that capitalism spawned, could not begin to consolidate the re-founding of their societies and the country as a whole in social, economic and political terms, and therefore were unable able to lead the whole nation to its real freedom. The absence of this social and political leadership did not make Imperialist efforts any more successful – given their hopeless wars - instead this lacunae created a different leadership, a different sort of popular mobilisation, inevitably carrying echoes of the old slogans (e.g. for a United Arab federation) and using a distant, reactionary (and fantastical) past as its only available route map to true and free independence.

Mosul expresses both the weakness of Imperialism in the Middle East and beyond, as well as the weakness of the working and other urban classes and socialist politics and its place in these modern struggles in the Middle East. The world’s two great social classes in the world appear empty of any perspective in the current shifts across the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan/India. The cracks in western capitalism continue and so the explosive social and political oppressions that it has contained will vent. In the west we must do what we can to keep our war mongers away from any more of the disasters they have already created. There has to be the maximum space for the people in revolt in the Middle East to find their own way to the answers of the questions they face.

Is British democracy worn out?

 To discuss democracy in light of the UK Coalition’s proposed new law on the replacement of MPs by their constituents, rather than Bashar al-Assad’s and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ‘democratic’ victories in Syria and Egypt, seems to put a very small cart before a very large horse. Nevertheless, the immense disaffection in the west with the available politics and politicians has now apparently surfaced in Egypt, while Syrians, ‘encouraged’ by armed occupation (but without attractive alternatives) voted, in large numbers, for the devil they know. These fake elections represent a turning point in the ‘Arab Spring’ as the counter-revolution gathers force. The new leadership in Egypt has been bought and paid for by the US. Assad is not the west’s first choice by any means, but the Syrian, Iranian alliance appears strong enough to defend itself both from its own internal revolts and the machinations of the west. The ‘democracy’ of the Egyptian and Syrian elections has little to tell us about democracy as such, and much more about global realignments and the growing weakness of the west after defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 economic collapse.

In Britain however, according to some, democracy is making a faltering advance with the new proposal to ‘recall’ MPs. In the event we are told that a parliamentary committee will first decide which particular MPs should be available for 10% of their constituents to bring back to a new election. This safeguard is to prevent ‘populist’ and ‘special interest’ initiatives getting a grip on the process.

The Recall bill may be a non-event although at least it allows the rest of us to see that the political class feels under pressure. But there is more to unravel here. What is the meaning of our democracy implied by the new bill? And in the now decades long detachment of the oppressed and excluded layers of our society from the political system, what alternatives does it suggest?

We have a representative democracy in the west – apparently. But the content of this term had been progressively scooped out and refilled with a calculated alternative. What did representative mean and what does it mean now? When the Labour Party was set up they aimed to get working class men into Parliament – because the working class was not represented there. A representative was someone who shared the key characteristics of those who voted for them; something of their life experiences; their income and conditions; their place in society – and by that means these people would know the interests of their voters. Now a representative, according to the Encarta world English dictionary, means 1. Somebody who votes or speaks on behalf of others. 2. A member of a legislative assembly.

What has shifted? What has changed is that apparently anyone might ‘represent’ me. Indeed they may represent me by expressing their own opinions that might be quite contrary to my own. I voted for their party and my MP can apparently still represent me while in no way sharing my experience or by fighting for my views and beliefs. My representative speaks for me. The accent is normally given to the third word in that sentence but to understand what is happening it should rest on the fourth.

More acutely in the case of the Labour Party we are encouraged to vote for our ‘representatives’ because they are not like us. Candidates are selected by parties on the basis of their success in the institutions of our society. They have been to top schools, universities, are successful in their professions or in business, or, increasingly, in the political bureaucracies. They seek the vote of those who are none of those things ... in order to ‘represent’ them, to speak for them (to substitute for them.)

At the same time a vast bureaucratic state machine tied in innumerable ways to those who pull the economic levers in society manages all of our lives. This, the most powerful aspect of government, represents nobody but itself. It turns out that the civil service leaders, the tops of industry and finance that all these people, are from the same backgrounds as those who we are allowed to vote for. So, what sits at the very centre of our democracy is a corporate, collective, consensual class and its apparatus that makes everything tick. These people are not young, they are not female, not BME, not poor, not insecure, not disabled, not dependent, not wage earners, not single parents, do not live in estates, do not use public transport, are not looking for a house or a flat or a room to stay in. And a few hundred of them out of the many thousands, are elected – their particular aim is to publicly support the consensus.

A democracy gives rule to the majority over the minority. Like the word ‘representative’ that has been hollowed out and refilled with its opposite, so democracy now means the exact opposite of majority rule. It is, as far as can be managed by our movers and shakers, as close to a guarantee that they can get, that the majority will not rule. The minority will rule.

Nothing is static. Great wars and revolutions in the last century created a state in Britain immediately after WW2, which had to balance the ferocious energy and climactic achievements of the working classes here and abroad with the need to maintain capitalism.  Great inroads into capital’s power were achieved. The state did not change its ultimate class character. Its semi-permanent leaders in the great ministries and their networks in the forces and the economy assured that. But the elected component of the state was able, at least partially, to ‘represent’ the mass of the working class and express, at least partially, its interests. Industries were nationalised. The NHS was born. Colonies’ battles for independence were recognised. Full employment was guaranteed and rationing did continue. This was the first and last time the working class in the UK found any expression in the British parliament, or among British mainstream political parties – as a bi-product of its successful participation in a momentous and world changing struggle. It turns out that Parliamentary democracy – at least for the majority in Britain – has not been a success. About the best that could be said for it was that it is more susceptible to pressure than most of its alternatives. After the experience of fascism we are not neutral on that point.

What would a truly representative democracy look like? Or rather what has it looked like? The great movements for emancipation over the last 150 years have given us some basic ideas. In the first place, as the old suffragette slogan has it
‘None so fit to break the chains as those who wear them!’
The representatives of the majority should be from the majority. All parts of the majority. And because they are representing the majority they should be paid the average wage of the majority. Political representation should never be a career move. Second; the decisions of the representatives need to be carried out by the representatives. The representatives need to lead on the changes they call for. They need to set up the plan, organise the work and mobilise and consult those involved, employ the experts. And yes, third, if they cannot do it, or if they go in the wrong direction, they should be recalled, immediately, by those who voted for them.

To imagine such a state of affairs is easy. To drive towards it will quickly encounter the furious opposition of the minority who live off the status quo and that will be very difficult indeed. It would need a revolution! The sooner we get started the better.

What we might learn from the May elections

The European elections merit their own thorough study. What follows does not imply that the British developments are ‘specially’ British. Ultimately they are part of European and global trends but of course those trends combine in unique ways at any given point. The council and European Parliament elections held in Britain have their own characteristics, and they are not the ones that were expressed in Britain’s mainstream media. Indeed the media’s obsession with the rise or otherwise of UKIP, coupled in the broadsheet press and in the musings on Radio 4, with worry about the resurgence of the European right – and how pleased we should all be that we have Farage rather than Le Pen – are classic examples of the appearance of things contradicting the essence of the matter.

What is happening in the UK is a political crisis. The years of Coalition government to an extent have, up to now, covered up this crisis of establishment politics that has been maturing since Blaire’s premiership. It has taken an inordinate amount of time, but Britain’s universally and historically famed political stability – is losing its shape.

Before looking at the precise content of Britain’s current political crisis we might ask the question; what has provoked it? For this will surely give an insight to its specificities.  What has caused Britain’s political instability?

The answer is the deepening economic and political polarisation of society. There is growing disparity between the rich and the rest; between North and South; between London and the rest of Britain; between Scotland and the rest of the UK. (One note should be made regarding Scotland’s September 18 vote on independence in this context. Even if independence loses, the margins will be narrow, having the effect of holing any allegiance in Scotland to Westminster below the waterline.) Britain’s political class has never been more alienated from British society on the ground. And these polarizations work also within our institutions. The Labour Party, run by middle class, professional politicians are on a completely opposite journey to Britain’s rapidly evolving working class.

Turning back to the political character of Britain’s crisis, the focus on the success of UKIP looks at things from the wrong way round. What is interesting from any point of view is that UKIP’s vote was a couple of percentage points less than its equivalent vote which it received during the last council/euro elections. Yet its impact on the system was so much greater. This time for example the UKIP effect appeared to destroy the Liberals. (Not so. The Liberals are the most fragile and accessible and most obvious turncoats in the coalition. They have wiped out their own base in society.) UKIP will not form a government. But this time, because national politics are so brittle, it is likely that they have guaranteed another coalition government after the 2015 election. The general political crisis is so deep that even Britain’s failsafe ‘one past the post’ electoral system cannot hold back the tide. Mainland European coalition governments used to be a byword in British politics for continental instability and the wretched Presidential autocracies that therefore had become essential to run these benighted countries. Not any more.

The collapse of the popular vote in Britain mirrors the rest of Europe in the May elections (with some notable exceptions) and the signs are not good from the point of view of those that would seek some real alternatives to the consensus on austerity that stretches from the saloon bar racists that lead UKIP to Miliband. (Even Cruddas, erstwhile darling of what remains the of the left of the LP is sounding more like Farage on immigration these days.) The LP is committed to the Coalition cuts for the first two years of any new Labour government. The problem with seeing Labour as any kind of ‘alternative’ is that it has rooted itself more and more at the heart of the political and economic consensus that is now in crisis.

There are some serious forces that do face the political (and economic) crisis with a new face. The Green party in Britain have (albeit unevenly) radicalised in Britain. They certainly captured what there was of the radical vote available in the May elections and have advanced their councilors by 23 while increasing their MEPs to double the size of the Liberals. (The largest far left party effort in the council elections, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition – TUSC – scored an average of 116 votes per candidate. And the euro wing, backed among others by the Morning Star and called No2EU, despite its 1980s hip nomenclature got nowhere.)

The national movement against austerity is another sign of an answer emerging to Britain’s political crisis. The Peoples Assembly has achieved its goal of uniting the major actions and campaigns against austerity. It has over 30,000 supporters and 100 branches. Solid Trade Union support has also emerged. A genuine mass movement is being born. Born into a period of significant political instability and change.

The future in revolt

Capitalism did not invent oppression. Some of the most profound and inhuman injustices predate the emergence of capitalism by millennia. The capitalist social system, that overthrew both feudal and Asiatic social relations, often reorganised older oppressions; recreated them; gave them new clothes.

In addition, the accompanying political revolutions intendent on the capitalist social and economic breakthroughs, were often partial, incorporating significant aspects of the old regimes. This compromise over the political dispensation was designed to form a bloc which would counter the emergence of another cycle of revolutionary activity by the plebeian mass of the population.

In sum, the capitalist system (already dominant in key sub-sectors of economic life) was ushered in still wreathed in the old oppressions and with a diluted politics suborned by the new rulers great fear of the revolutions they themselves had previously led.

The most radical capitalist revolution was achieved through the war of Independence and then advanced by the civil war in the USA. This made no political concessions to any 'ancien regime'; there had been none to parley with. And it finally brought to an end modern slavery - at least in the capitalist centres of the west. Nevertheless toilers, women and all peoples of colour remained shackled in the US, albeit in social, economic and cultural chains that were nevertheless reflected in and confirmed by the legal system. So the capitalist essence of society was still obscured by previous traditions of bondage even in the US, let alone in western Europe, and, at the same time, all this (albeit limited) progress in the west stood (and still stands) on the oppression and subjugation of half of the rest of the world through empire. Unemployment, underemployment, subjugation, bond slavery and violence on a mass scale were all 'exported' out of the capitalist centres into the formal or informal dominions of 'the great powers'.

Despite this historical reality, western capitalism has taken on a special if contradictory place today among some radical political movements outside the west. The west's image for example in northern Africa or in Eastern Europe is that western capitalism has produced the most advanced societies in the world. This mirage remains unrelated to history and to the immense burden on the whole of humanity represented by the continued machinations and structures of western Imperialism. In the western countries themselves, the great, indigenous mass struggles for real political democracy, often led by women, the emergence of welfare reform and huge effort, organisation and battles conducted to create more bearable living conditions for those that had to sell their labour, are forgotten in this view. And the fundamental impact on the west of the 20th century popular workers and peasant revolutions, initially in Russia and then expanding across the globe, that threatened revolution at home if there was not reform, is entirely absent from the picture.  

It is not hard to see why this confusion has arisen among some radical forces in North Africa or the Middle East or even in places in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the USSR and the Chinese adoption of 'the capitalist road' implies that only capitalism now has the historical energy to create new societies. Yet here lies a profound contradiction. Egypt is the centre and the fulcrum of the Arab Spring. The radicals in Tahir Square understood perfectly well that capitalism was going through deep crisis in 2008/9. They knew that the US financed the Egyptian Army. They were aware that the west had set up Saddam. And that Qaddafi had recently been laundered by the US and the UK. But they cheered Obama while loathing how big money controlled US elections. What they wanted was a reformed capitalism. Their proposed reforms were radical. They called for a Scandinavian health and welfare service, for an end to the secret police, for 'free' elections. They applauded Edward Snowden's revelations and most of all they wanted a hi tech freedom to move across the globe for their own future. This huge lower middle class layer, represented in all the second rank developing societies where, unlike in the BRIC countries, the factory stage, previously centred between work on the land and service in the cities, has been by-passed, believed it was possible to escape capitalism's ancient horrors, because they had already apparently escaped them for themselves.

Radicals in Egypt linked up with Los Indignatos in Spain and Occupy in New York. All these groups saw themselves as the new global citizens; not least the heroes and heroines in Tahir Square who were risking their lives daily. They imagined a new global reality where space could be wrested from the avaricious market, in city squares or in cyberspace. Modelled on ideas developed by the Zapatistas who took over and successfully defended territory from the Mexican government, and vitalised by the possibilities of instant global communication, they imagined an 'ideal' capitalism, shorn of its political deformities, with space allowed for a world wide 'commons' in which people could develop their own politics and economic activity. (After all were not 35% of the German population producing their own energy?)

The tragedy was that capitalism is going in absolutely the opposite direction. It is ransacking history for models of exploitation and control that might benefit its bloody progression. It is re-imagining and then recreating tyrannies led by autocrats and billionaire gangsters, mass producing new means of oversight and control, throttling the fragile shoots of democracy, creating client political classes and parties, reducing all examples of independent politics, economics, sexual life and even individual imaginations to commodities. And Egypt was and is a key part of the structure that modern capitalism is constantly creating. A partially and unevenly developed country with a military guarantee card for western imperialism in the middle east.

Egypt has 27.2 million in work (2012.) This breaks down into Agriculture (32%), Industry (17%), Services (51%) (2001 figures.) The unemployed are 20.5 million (2012 figures.) Agriculture accounts for 14.7% of Egypt's GDP; industry: 37.4%; services: 47.9% (2012.)

It was this difficult and murky Egyptian reality that was not faced by the bulk of the radicals that bravely made their political revolutions to overthrow Mubarak and then Morsi. Ideal capitalism was not available to them or their country - even via elections. Instead the brutal reality was a society ruled by (often military) millionaires in hock to the US with a vast security apparatus; where the bulk of workers are small farmers; where the unemployed are nearly equal to all those with employment; where a small industrial working class play a large role in the country's GDP and where the obstacles to progress can only be broken at the social and economic as well as the political level.

The bloc that needed to be created was to unify the political rebellion in the city with a social and economic policy for employment, for the land and for industry. In practise, instead of the Tahir radicals dividing their enemies, their enemies divided off the radicals from their essential friends. The army appeared to the radicals as the exact opposite to its essence. Presenting itself as a guardian of modernity and progress the army's actual rule, even at one removed after the coming elections, is the fundamental bloc to any real progress. The army is Imperialism's life breath in Egypt. It is a murder machine that will provide a new platform for millionaires and billionaires to buy up more of Egypt's resources.

For sure a far reaching contest with the Muslim Brotherhood for the leadership of the unemployed, for the allegiance of the rural poor and the industrial workers was needed. But after the fall of Morsi, better the turmoil of a new Constituent Assembly, and immediate elections and of a country thrown into debate and argument than the peace of the graveyard.

Life in the shadows

A friend recently returned from Crete. He had a great time but was a bit depressed by the rash of new casinos and the signs of prostitution that he saw. He was he said reminded of the history of Cuba under Batista, before the 1959 revolution. (Anybody unfamiliar with this period in Cuba could do worse than watch Godfather 2. Cuba was turned into a brothel for the US's 7th Fleet and financed by the Mafia as a playground for the US's super rich.)

Between 1995 and 2006 Crete's authorities estimated that their 'black' (read unregulated, untaxed and super exploited) economy represented about 4.2% of their overall GDP. In 2012 new estimates made by the World Bank gave the equivalent figure as 25.6%. A German report of 2013 stated that unregistered Russian holdings in Cypriot banks amounted to $26 billion. (This was/is Russia's largest foreign capital investment.) The Germans were interested as it looked as though they would have to bail out Cyprian banks.

Processes like this are integral to globalisation. In fact, the unregulated economy is the most dynamic part of the modern capitalist system, with all of its effluent outwash among huge sectors of the world's population.

The UK's 'informal' economy has also grown. The UK's figures for '96 to 2006 are 2% of GDP created by the 'black' economy. By 2012 the UK was admitting to 10.1%. That was the equivalent to £150 billion a year. But the UK has its own particular twist to this picture. It has created a vast 'semi-regulated' economy, which acts as a porous, osmotic and over-inflated superstructure above the unregulated economy. 4.6 million in the UK are now officially self employed. This is the largest part of the 'new jobs' that the government has been announcing since 2010. And among other things the self employed receive on average a 40% lower income than the employed. Even Vince Cable said he was worried. The Guardian reported on the 14 May that he was concerned that employers were taking on these bargain bottom 'outsourced' workers rather than investing to create more productivity in the economy. Capitalism it seems will never do what's right by Vince.

What's happening in Cyprus is one side of an accelerating trend in global capitalism as it detaches itself from any claims that it naturally twins with democratic systems (always laughable), or with welfare, or, in the end, with any sort of social or human responsibility. It is not some moral accident that world slavery involves greater numbers today than those who were were victims of the 18th and 19th century 'slave trade.'A database compiled in the late 1990s put the figure for the transatlantic slave trade at over 11 million people. Siddharth Kara has provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into the following three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). (Columbia Press; 2008.)

The Peoples' Assembly and the 'Great Recession.'

The Peoples' Assembly* held its first interim (between conferences) Assembly delegate meeting yesterday. It was a productive meeting. The movement is growing very fast with 30 thousand supporters and 100 branches already. More importantly it is beginning to make waves in mainstream politics and popular culture.  (For example Russell Brand will be speaking at the PA's national demonstration on 21 June.)

The agenda was packed and a series of solid practical decisions were made - essential against the background of rising militancy and action challenging austerity across the country over the next 6 months. (June 21 PA national demonstration; July 10 huge new wave of one day industrial action; September 18 Scottish referendum; 18 October national TUC demonstration and a possible further industrial day of action.) In national politics this represents the biggest mobilisation yet against austerity in the first sixth months of what will be a year long General Election campaign, following the May 22 European elections.  And the PA are (rightly) front and centre.

It was therefore a shame that there was little time available up to the scheduled end of the meeting to enlarge the discussion on the political context for the PA's work beyond some tangential points made by reporters on business items. Specifically, what has the mainstream discourse about austerity become? Who is leading it? Are there some key messages that the PA and its allies in the unions and other campaigns, need to focus on to become part of that national argument? Such a discussion does not have to mean that factional war has to break out, nor that the priority of agreement on action is disturbed. In a meeting like the Assembly, (political) maturity, the general commitment to action and the achievements of the movement so far, all act as stern reminders that discussion is designed to elaborate on and to build and arm the movement. If the PA is to become the major political actor that it has the potential to be, then it must be able to address the terms of the national debate in the area on which it campaigns.  

From that point of view it is more than interesting to note that Osborne and his Tory allies have begun to insist that we call 2008 plus 'the Great Recession.' This is more than casuistry. Serious and well paid advisers, and other 'thinkers' have worked on this move by the Tory leadership, probably for months. There are obvious advantages that flow from their 'reformulation.'

First, what is being reformulated? Most of us think that 2008 was a banker's crisis and that the Coalition Government (and their friends) decided on a policy of austerity for the vast majority of us as the means to deal with this crisis. Many already understand that austerity means shifting huge amounts of our wealth (including the cost of the services we need) to the super rich (who 'owned' all the debts in the first place). A Great Recession on the other hand does not mention bankers. Rather it is more suggestive of an act of God or nature, something we have noticed in the past, in history; one of those destructive cycles that unseen and unknown forces unleash every generation or so.

Additionally, it avoids austerity as the definition of what is happening now. We are working our way out of 'the Great Recession.' This is not so much a matter of cold and deliberate policy decisions, made by a class in their own interests when faced with a disaster. We do not define what is happening by reference to the living standards and services available to the vat majority. No. That no longer defines our political debate. Instead we can discuss which countries have emerged faster and fitter from the great recession. We get back to a (fictional) place where we can all take pride in the number of billionaires per head that the UK can boast.

Finally Osborne and co have laid a great temptation in front of the Labour leadership. Lose the emphasis on unfairness and inequality and in return we offer you a definition of the crisis which does not (solely) centre on Labour's economic failure. The debate can be about how we think we should get out of the great, global recession. There is no doubt that this shift in accent by the Tories is designed in part at least to provide weapons for the Labour leadership to use to defy Cruddas's self styled 'radical' alternative - which he presents to his party at the end of this month. We are not fighting austerity; we are fighting the great recession.

The Tories' political initiative has significant meaning for the PA. In the run up to the June demonstration, in press releases and in social media, the PA should pick up the Tory's challenge frontally. The PA should call things as they are. We are suffering because bankers nearly destroyed the capitalist system and because the remedy to fix the system that was decided by the super rich and their politicians was austerity for the many. It is quite possible that the majority of the British population believe the same.


*The PA held a founding gathering of 4000 at Westminster and a delegate conference of 700 delegates  last year. The Assembly's aim is to counter austerity. Follow this link. the peoples' assembly