Midsummer’s day saw the first meeting of the All-London Communal Council. Co-operation had built over the months, creating a de facto leadership of various communes, territorial, work and militia based. The communards eventually did the decent thing and gave this working body a name, the Provisional Permanent Council. Many scoffed at the slightly pompous title, but all responded to its call for elections to the first meeting.
The first delegates assembly was so well attended it had to be moved at six hours notice, from Euston Friends Meeting House to, eventually, the old Brixton Academy. It stayed there in daily evening session for the next three months.
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At the time I thought delegation to the city commune was, like, the worst thing ever. It had to be done, but it wasn’t any fun. People, whingers, liked to claim we packed out meetings. We came to meetings, in large numbers, we brought people… supporters; we were disciplined but we never had a raw majority.
We always had to win the argument and we often did. But it had to be done over and over, every night. Any vote we won, any important vote would usually be challenged at least once. There’d be a revote; we’d win by more or less of a margin. Someone, some pissy little group on the right of the hall would threaten to walk out.
Oh, gosh, this one time… The anarchists, bless ‘em, talked up a lot but always voted with the Restoration. They would go on and on, night after night about consensus.
Anyway, this one meeting, the first meeting in fact, I was at was all about re-electing the permanent council, you know, the one that would meet in the day. It was decided it had to be formally re-elected no less once a month or whenever one of its proposals lost by two-thirds margin. Some restoration groups wanted a vote of no confidence after a straight defeat. The anarchists… consensus.
The thing was elected by proportion, different groups put up slates with order of preference; some wanted to stand as individuals, they mostly died on their arse. There was a little debate, a few people proposed each slate, about a dozen or so. It was a bit noisy and leery but nothing terrible. The chair of the meeting explained the voting process.
There was a recess. People put their forms in one of three ballot boxes. We had argued for a hand vote (we always have), but the provisional council decided not.
There was another session after that, I think I remember about relations with other towns and communes and such. The votes were counted and the results were announced halfway through the second session… Root and Branch won two fifths of the seats on the permanent council. Everyone was surprised. I know I was.
But then it kicked off. The anarchists, backed by some of the Restoration groups, demanded to know many R ‘n’ B members there were in the meeting. Who’s checking the credentials? This meeting has been rigged! There was such a ruckus. The meeting couldn’t go on. Meeting adjourned. We had a little caucus, which pissed the anarchists off even more. One of them demanded the rest of the meeting be able to listen in, which was a bit… funny.
We agreed to have everyone’s credentials checked. Then there was a revote, after which our slate now got 55% of the vote. So the anarchists walked out (or so we thought) all twenty of them. Their apparent leader demanded that it their walk out be noted in the records. Some of the Constitutionals made bad noise, threatened to go as well but in the end they stayed put.
So, after all that, the rest of the session was a bit weird. Everyone kind of rushed what they were saying, not disagreeing much. Our surprise new council members, new chair, new convenor, were getting ready to take over for the final session. It was getting on for half ten by this point. There was just this vote to get done on two commissions (which I remember thinking could have just been made composite).
The chair asked the meeting if it wanted a secret ballot or hand count. I’d like to think people were won to a hand vote by that stage but they might have just been tired. The consensus, there’s that word, was for a hand count. Then this guy right up on the top shelf, jumps up very anxious looking, and starts going on about point of order (it wasn’t a point of order).
As a member of the anarchist delegation he wanted to point out that majority voting is a divisive method and, for the benefit of the meeting, each decision should be taken majority then minority.
I think a fair amount of the meeting turned round to this guy and went “haven’t you walked out already?”
So began a long tradition of long nights. It was a rough and ready get up. Most meetings were contested, noisy things, but the job got done. That’s life, I suppose.
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