Fightback 2014 summer conference (report)

On the 3rd to the 5th of January in Christchurch, Fightback held our 2014 summer conference. Over the weekend comrades participated in education and decision-making, that will inform our practice over the coming year.

In the 2014 General Elections, Fightback will be supporting the MANA Movement as a progressive, democratic oppositional force, maintaining the link between indigenous sovereignty and the struggle for an egalitarian society.

Fightback resolved to oppose any entry by MANA into a government with Labour. Instead we argue for the formation of a new workers’ organisation fusing MANA with community forces. Fightback also resolved to conduct a wider discussion on the class nature of the Labour Party.

Fightback participates in the global struggle against imperialism. At the 2014 summer conference, Fightback endorsed the global call for boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) on Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

Fightback also developed our industrial perspectives for the coming period. Service-sector unions such as Unite and FIRST Union have waged offensive campaigns against already existing casualisation and flexibilisation. The struggles at the ports and in the meatworks are defensive struggles against casualisation and flexibilisation which the bosses have sought to impose. We believe that to unify the working class in struggle over the next period, fighting unions should adopt a three-pronged slogan along the lines of ‘Secure Work, Secure Hours, Living Wage.’

Fightback endorsed eco-socialism, as defined in the 2008 Belem declaration:

[eco-socialism] aims to stop and to reverse the disastrous process of global warming in particular and of capitalist ecocide in general, and to construct a radical and practical alternative to the capitalist system. Ecosocialism is grounded in a transformed economy founded on the non-monetary values of social justice and ecological balance. It criticizes both capitalist “market ecology” and productivist socialism, which ignored the earth’s equilibrium and limits. It redefines the path and goal of socialism within an ecological and democratic framework.

Fightback is working to challenge rape culture and establish safer spaces on the left, as part of a broader struggle for gender and women’s liberation. To that end we are developing safer spaces guidelines within Fightback, and electing safer spaces contacts at a branch level.

Fightback also resolved to establish a website for publishing discussion documents, which are used to democratically develop perspectives within Fightback.

Fightback maintains our website and monthly publication, to counter capitalist propaganda & propagate our perspectives within wider struggles. In addition to that, Fightback resolved to publish new pamphlets reflecting our revised perspectives, beginning with Mike Kyriazopoulos’ The Treaty, the Foreshore and Seabed and Tino Rangatiratanga.

Finally, Fightback noted the absence and congratulated the work of comrade Mike Kyriazopoulos.