I criticised the LEPU for not inviting any opponents of workfare to their
seminar on workfare projects. I suggested that they invite a member of the
Haringey Solidarity Group - which has campaigned against a workfare project,
run by one of their speakers.
The LEPU is not prepared to do this, nor lower their seminar fees so that the
workfare victims could present their own view. The LEPU finds it sufficient
that two researchers are speaking, who are 'critics' of workfare.
I still have problems with this. A seminar on workfare should be open to
opponents of workfare, otherwise it is at best a resource for workfare
mangagers, at worst propaganda for the ideology. The two researchers in
question are funded by the British Department for Education and Employment,
and the Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER) program of the Euroepan
Commission, DG XII.
http://www.cordis.lu/tser/home.html
Researchers are the mouthpiece of their financiers. Neither the Labour
government in Britain, nor the 'social-inclusion' lobby which determines EU
social policy, would finance opponents of workfare. Therefore the two
researchers in question are not opponents of workfare. They offer no
counterweight, to the four workfare managers who will speak at the seminar.
Of course I have not read all their work. I am quite prepared to concede,
without reading it, that it contains criticism of workfare projects. See for
instance Anne Gray...
http://www.ulb.ac.be/project/tef/cohsocen.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3843/gray1.html
But then Peter Mandelson was a Young Communist, and Joschka Fischer was a
squatter who beat up a policeman in front of TV cameras. Gerhard Schroeder
once tried to force the gates of the Chancellors residence during a demo, and
later occupied it himself. Past politics are no guide to present position.
This is a more general issue than the politics of the LEPU. A beter example is
research on SE Europe. There are apparently hundreds of academics, in western
and eastern Europe, who are prepared to write propaganda for the values of the
NATO. If research on 'democratising Yugoslavia' is paid for by a NATO fund,
then you know what it will say. If a conference full of such researchers
discusses the future of SE Europe, then you know there will be no opposition
to the market-liberal utopia. So it's a general problem, and the temptation is
to shrug the shoulders.
Nevertheless, I request Peter North and Anne Gray to invite at least one
anti-workfare activist to their seminar.
--
Paul Treanor
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