After two years of preparation the fifteenth youth camp in solidarity with the Fourth International finally arrived in Denmark. Intensive propaganda work by the Danish comrades to convince those from the South that Denmark was not (quite)
Internation
Arctic conditions paid off as almost five hundred young people converged on West
Jutland for a week of politics and partying, from Moscow and the Canary Islands, from Poland and Portugal, and all points nearer. After many years work in Inter-
Socialist national Workers Aid participants were particularly pleased to welcome a delegation from Bosnia.
Under the slogan "Reclaim freedom" the different forums and workshops explored the ways in which the freedoms of young people, of women, of gays and lesbians, of immigrants and the peoples of the Third World are restricted and eliminated in the name of the "freedoms" of the capitalist world, the free market, free trade, individual freedoms against collective rights for workers, for students, for the unemployed.
Prepared, as every year, by a meeting of representatives of the participating youth organisations, the political programme combines contributions by older comrades of many years experience with contributions by the young comrades, who both reflect the activity of their own organisations on their own themes, and tackle new questions specific to their generation, such as the role of music in creating youth identity.
Specific questions are taken up and discussed in depth in particular ways, in the women's only discussions in the women's space, the debates organised in the gay and lesbian space, or the permanent commissions which work on ongoing aspects of common activity. The permanent commission on student struggles was able to come to the camp this year with a brochure including contributions from Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, France and Belgium on the educational system in their countries and the recent student fights. (To obtain a copy of this brochure contact International Viewpoint
To mark the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International the camp invited Charlie van Gelderen, sole surviving militant of the twenty-two delegates present at the founding confe36 International Viewpoint #303 rence in 1938. The warm and appreciative welcome given to Charlie was returned in kind as he assured the evening rally:
"Your enthusiasm has relit the flame that was kindled at the historic Founding Conference, sixty years ago when, like many of you, I was in my twenties.
"Don't be disheartened by defeats and set-backs. Don't be dismayed because we are still small in numbers...
"Yours is the future. Stay true to your revolutionary spirit. You must win where my generation failed."
At the same rally, Tatau Godinho, member of the executive of the Brazilian PT and of the Fourth International leaders-
Yout
Cam
hip, spoke for the generation that came into politics in the context of the worldwide youth radicalisation following 1968 and outlined the fight to build a broad inclusive revolutionary movement.
Andrea Peniche from Portugal spoke for the young people present in asserting their commitment to the fight for revolutionary transformation.
Soren Sondergard, member of the Danish parliament for the Red-Green Alliance in which the SAP, Danish section of the Fourth International, participates, spoke of the anti-racist fight, one of the major campaigning themes of the youth comrades.
This annual initiative, successfully organised now for fifteen years, is consi dered indispensable by the delegations as a moment of national and international exchange in a context removed from the pressures of day to day activity. Next year the delegations look forward to meeting again, perhaps in rather a sunnier spot! *
151 N INSU
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