Interview with Alain Krivine MEP
Left MEPs will reach out for mass support
Alain Krivine, newly elected as an MEP in France on the joint LO/LCR* left slate, draws a balance sheet of the electoral campaign. He also discusses the plans of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire over the coming months in relation to the left within the European Parliament.
Rouge : What is your assessment of the LCR’s campaign?
Krivine : This was the first time that we led a mass campaign with such appeal and resonance.
We learnt a great deal from it. On TV we addressed millions of people, and tens of thousands in meetings. The campaign’s credibility was a valuable tool for our activists to talk to people at work.
The whole Ligue was mobilised not just to organise joint meetings with Arlette and Lutte Ouvrière, but also in their other political work, and was able to break new ground.
Over the course of several months, many new people discovered the Ligue and we set up a number of new branches around the country. The general impression is that the LCR made a big impact on the political landscape.
Finally, the joint meetings with Lutte Ouvrière allowed us to reach a different audience, who do not usually meet together. This reciprocal discovery benefited everyone.
Rouge : What will be the axes of intervention for the Ligue now?
Krivine : I would define four which go hand in hand.
First, we will seek to have debates and organise joint work with LO wherever possible, particularly in campaigns around the joint platform in Europe.
For example, in the last few days we have worked with Lutte Ouvrière in supporting the "sans-papiers" [people without papers] and the homeless. I hope we can carry on working together on the question of the 35 hour week or for example.
Second, we must use this lever to address all those on the left and ecologists who want to change the politics of government, and reach out to mobilise them into united action.
Third, we must continue to build a new political movement, a new party that is not simply a fusion between the LCR and LO – that is not on the agenda today.
There are many activists in left parties, in the trade unions and in various organisation such as Ras l’front (an anti racist organisation), DAL and AC! etc, who feel like orphans of a political crisis and wish to direct their activities towards building an anticapitalist alternative.
These activists, from different backgrounds and traditions, are ready to get together in a common project of social transformation, on condition that there is a real unifying dynamic and genuine need for this.
Certainly our success in the last elections was not strong enough to push forward this recomposition quickly. Again, it is difficult to foresee, for example, what splits may develop in the PCF [French Communist Party] or among the Greens.
So events in the period ahead of us may or may not accelerate the development of class struggle. But it is important to start to popularise the project of a new party as an indispensable element to avoid all the phenomena of demoralisation.
Finally, we must now more than ever continue the battle begun at our last congress to develop the LCR, to open it up, to rejuvenate and feminise it.
Rouge : What work is possible in the European Parliament?
Krivine : We are going to intervene first and foremost as militants, with an extra place to intervene in. We need to know how to cross the street after the demo of unemployed people to make their demands heard in the belly of the parliament, and then to come back into the street with the political means to build a better basis for the next demo.
In this parliament we will try to draw out information which will interest the social movements, and : we will also put forward proposals putting every MEP and every party on the spot.
We will use every means at our disposal to advance the social movements and assist the development of these mobilisations on a Europe-wide level. With a regular bulletin, we will be accountable for our actions.
Whatever our status, as an independent group or part of an existing group, we will do all we can to maintain the unity and identity of the LO-LCR bloc.
* LO - Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle); LCR - Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League); the two largest far-left organisations in France. Rouge is the weekly paper of the LCR - for more information (in French) visit http://www.lcr-rouge.org/