Mass Mobilisation 2. Democratic Centralism

3. Formal Meetings - A Meeting should be conducted in an orderly and efficient manner and governed according to a set procedure. This set procedure is known as 'parliamentary procedure' (Regardless of whether the meetings are held in parliament or not.) These rules specify that meetings must have a chairperson, a secretarty, minutes, an agenda. The reason for this is not to strangle the NLF in bureacracy but that real politics is a time consuming buisness and and mainly consists of work undertaken to support the conduct of the political party, such as fund raising, the creation and distibution of propaganda and tasks to obtain facilities where the party can do its work i.e. to book a meeting room for a bar for a party assembly. Such bueracratic procedures are put in place to ensure that plans are put in place and then executed and the meeting does not degenerate into a purely social event. This is not to denigrate the value of socialising but it should not get in the way of generating positive activism. Better a meeting passes swifty and all outstanding points are addressed and then the committe members have the rest of the evening to drink and socialise at the bar.

A futher purpose of the formal meeting is to promote openess and accountability, any grievances can be put on the record and be dealt with through legitimate channells and not through gossiping. Having things put on record ensure that goals can be measured and ensure agreements on ideological positions and organisational changes are voted on and put in place. Minutes can also help identify potential trouble makers in the party ranks intent on sowing division in the party. Through evidence of the minutes of meetings a case can be built up
and presented to the party's disciplinary committe and deal with the individual in question. Having a formal disciplinary process is more important for a nationalist orientated party as time and time again Nationalist parties have been infiltrated by hostile elements intent on wrecking these parties. These must be identified early and thrown out of the party before they are able to do any serious damage. It should be pointed out the infiltrator works much better in a cloudy and uncertain party atmosphere where everything from ideological positions, the nature of activism and the vetting of new members is done without reference to a strict and defined process. Finally in any political organisation that handles money financial transparency is essential, every penny must be accounted for and subject to examination by the membership.

It should be pointed out that in keeping these records that security will be paramount. No potential damaging personal information should be released in them and it may also be in the interest of the NLF to keep certain dealings more secret than others. The NLF for instance will not publish the address of a meeting rooms it has organised in advance and will instead inform the relevant members on a one on one basis.