Meeting held on Tuesday 19th March 2024
10 people were present. Three gave their apologies.
We decided that it would be good to review our work in What’s Left to see if there was anything we wanted to change. Several suggestions were made:
The feeling that it wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, ie we should keep things broadly as they are. Conversation should remain open and the notes of the meetings should continue as normal.
It would be valuable, however, if people would more readily circulate the group with information about meetings and events locally and in Sheffield.
We wondered if we should try to introduce more members of the group, but aware that a larger group might not so easily maintain the open conversation that we enjoyed. We were reminded that anyone should feel free to welcome a guest to our meetings who might then wish to join.
We wondered if our conversation is at times in danger of going round in circles. Might this be avoided, and things be discussed in more depth, if someone were to prepare a topic for discussion? It was suggested that one side of A4 on a topic, distributed in advance, and introduced in five minutes at the meeting, be followed by discussion.
If we adopted some such plan, people thought we should nevertheless maintain the opportunity for open discussion of topical issues that arise.
We acknowledged that we don’t have a procedure for making decisions in the group but there appeared to be a general agreement that we should try something along these lines as an ‘experiment’, perhaps with a view to structuring our conversation in this way on occasions rather than at every meeting.
With this in mind, and with some encouragement from others in the group, Trevor offered to provide a topic – education – for our next meeting, emphasising that it was important that we spend a little of the time, immediately afterwards, reviewing the value of this process, and also that we have time for our individual response to topical issues, as usual.
The last part of the meeting was spent expressing some difficult responses we have to the current political situation. There was much disenchantment with Labour’s move to the political right, which was enhanced by Starmer’s support of Israel. Also, in a wider context, ‘the West’ is seen to be supporting genocide in Palestine. In this context some of us think hard about how we would vote in the forthcoming general election and what the consequences might be of any defection from Labour. Differences of view amongst the left, regarding Gaza and Labour, seems to be leading to personal as well as political tensions, stress, and even hostility. This could lead to fragmentation amongst the left with uncertain consequences.
The next meeting will be on 16th April.