Leonard Gentle, Co-ordinator of the WEA International Study Circle Development Project, discusses the importance of building regional capacity to respond to globalisation.

The Nature of Globalisation

In 1996 at its Belfast Congress IFWEA identified globalisation as the biggest challenge facing the labour movement. In 1997 IFWEA launched its International Study Circles (ISC) programme as part of its project of understanding globalisation and encouraging international solidarity within the labour movement. The two pilot ISC programmes successfully brought together workers and community activists in a number of different countries.

Since then we have seen the international economic crisis which lead to the collapse of the Asian and Russian economies, the wars of ethnic cleansing and economic conquest in Central Africa and the Balkans and increased onslaughts on social services in Europe and the Americas. Uniting these events is the increased power of neo-liberalism and the attempts of its sponsors to restructure the world in their interests.

Fundamental to this restructuring is the freeing of finance markets and the domination of finance capital over any other human economic activity. As a result public utilities are privatised and social services slashed, work is intensified and workers made dispensable, and governments are reined in to service the financiers. If this is what is meant by globalisation then it is the biggest challenge facing humankind let alone the labour movement.

The challenge cannot of course be taken up by any one organisation within the labour movement or even the labour movement alone. IFWEA itself needs to form part of a number of initiatives and struggles all over the world. But as an international organisation of workers’ education structures, IFWEA can in a very modest way assist in sharing workers’ experiences across the world thereby educating workers and broader communities.

The ISC Development Project

In 1998 the WEA (England and Scotland) affiliate of IFWEA successfully applied for funding from the National Lottery Charities Board in Britain for a one year project called the International Study Circles Development Project.

The project has, amongst other goals, 2 clear objectives :

Regional Seminars will be convened in six regions, namely Asia/Pacific, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Central/Eastern Europe and Western Europe. We are inviting all IFWEA affiliates and other workers’ education organisations to attend in their respective regions and to discuss how to achieve the above goals. Each regional seminar is being convened by a Regional Co-ordinator from an IFWEA affiliate in that region. At the end of the one year project we will have an evaluation Meeting where all the regional co-ordinators, who are IFWEA executive committee members, will assess the success or failure of the project and discuss the way forward.

The project is part of a vision of bringing together organisations active in the labour movement all over the world and contesting the way the world has been constructed under the rubric of globalisation. A world which has seen increased technological innovation, greater internationalisation of everyone’s lives and the increased integration of economies.

Yet instead of these events leading to more human empowerment, better living standards and peace the opposite has happened. Globalisation has been accompanied by poverty, disempowerment and war. Powerful elites, financiers and money mandarins, have been able to shape the world in their own interests. And this construction of the world is presented as liberatory and democratic (provided, of course, that we can pay our way). As a result many movements and organisations who were associated with the poor and the working class have either collapsed or been co-opted into this project.

The Labour Movement and the Potential of IFWEA

The labour movement has become the only social movement capable of contesting the current world order. But to do so we need to develop and extend our traditions of international collaboration and solidarity. Part of such a development is the education agenda of international formations such as IFWEA. The international study circles programme of IFWEA has helped participants to share experiences of globalisation and struggles of workers against its effects. And sharing experiences can be the start of encouraging education programmes which are both global in form as well as in content.

There are a number of useful outcomes that the seminars may have :

• The meetings are an opportunity for organisations to reflect on the challenges of globalisation and its effects in each region. Some of those general problems may manifest themselves in a particular way. For example, for many of the countries of East Asia who have had IMF (International Monetary Fund) austerity programmes imposed on them, globalisation has a particular meaning - the structural adjustment programmes. Struggles against the effects of these structural adjustment programmes in Asia, and in Africa, and for political democracy have intensified and workers’ education organisations are struggling to understand these events and what role they can play. Participants in the Central and Eastern Europe Seminar will almost certainly reflect on the terror of ethnic cleansing and Nato bombing and how solidarity can be built even in the most extreme of circumstances. The seminars will be an opportunity to share our ideas and experiences of these issues.
• Participating organisations can discuss very concretely programmes of collaboration between themselves in the region. Such programmes can range from joint education programmes, to reflecting on political and policy questions facing the labour movement in the region, to looking at assisting one another with funding initiatives.
• The meetings do however require a specific outcome - that participating organisations discuss the practicalities of setting up an international study circle in each region. The seminar will have to discuss the curriculum for such a study circle, the educational outcomes and the kinds of educational materials desired.

A subtext is the question of IFWEA itself and how affiliates in the various regions can benefit from and develop the collaborative work of IFWEA. In the case of organisations who are invited but who are not affiliates of IFWEA the question of their possible affiliation may arise. Building IFWEA by inviting more organisations needs to be complemented however by addressing the question of how IFWEA affiliates in the developing Countries relate to the federation. The form of affiliate involvement in the international body and in the regions may be discussed if desired. Such discussions may take an extended period to address and therefore affiliates may at best wish to plan joint activities rather than discuss organisational questions but it would be important to share perspectives on the future of IFWEA and the regions at the Seminars.