{news} Fw: [usgp-dx] Red Pepper - Greens on trial (London Greens)

[Tim McKee]

----- Original Message -----

From: "Ben Manski"
To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
Subject: [usgp-dx] Red Pepper - Greens on trial
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:36:28 -0500


>From my friends at Red Pepper in the UK . . . this piece has some
relevance and may seem familiar to those on the independent left
and/or in the Greens in the U.S.A. . . . .

- Ben Manski


http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article1168.html


Greens on trial


The Greens can justifiably claim to be the largest progressive
party in the UK, but often meet with suspicion from the left. Are
they given a fair hearing ? Alex Nunns weighs the evidence

There is a party, ostensibly of the left, that has more than 100
councillors (and rising), holds seats in the European Parliament
and London Assembly, and might just drop an electoral bombshell by
securing its first MP in the next general election. It's called the
Green Party. But for reasons either of jealousy or good socialist
sense, it is regularly hauled up before the Court of Left Opinion,
suspected of being overly electoralist, unduly white, middle class,
and Not Sufficiently Left. It doesn't even have factions that hate
each other.

Confusingly for the presiding judges of the court, none of this
seems to matter too much to the public jury, who are giving
favourable verdicts to the Greens in growing numbers. Quietly,
unassumingly, the Green Party of England and Wales has been making
strides over the past few years, propelled by the ever-increasing
urgency of the climate catastrophe.

Nevertheless, Red Pepper proposes a retrial -- a trial by media,
after a fashion.

*A party of the left ?*

One of the main reasons why the left is suspicious as to whether
the Greens _ can be counted among its number is that it contains
many people who simply do not associate themselves with the British
left and its glorious history of defeat.

One such man is Chris Rose, the party's national election agent,
who points out that 'many Green Party members wouldn't like to
describe themselves as left. If we positioned ourselves as
explicitly left it would be dangerous, with no guarantee of
success. We need to keep our reputation on the environment.'

But London Assembly member Darren Johnson, who is not on the left
of the party, takes a different view : 'I'm not a socialist but I
feel comfortable about being on the progressive left. Not the far
left -- we never will be. But we're the serious party of the left
and a potential power broker working with centre left parties, like
the SNP in Scotland and Labour in some areas.'

One thing is beyond doubt. Whether or not they see themselves as
left, the Greens have a manifesto as radical as any other, based on
sustainability and equality, which if implemented would constitute
nothing short of a revolution. Their espousal of an end to economic
growth is unique, and has resulted in attacks from parties who
believe in either capitalism or the traditional Marxist model of
growth leading to a world of plenty. Instead, the Greens promote
economic localisation, and say wealth should be measured not in GDP
but in overall wellbeing.

And the party's policies stretch far wider than the environment.
They would (if they could) make income tax more progressive ;
replace VAT with eco-taxes ; replace benefits with a non-means
tested citizens' income for everyone ; increase the pension ;
nationalise the railways ; welcome asylum seekers ; stop the
privatisation of council housing ; reverse the privatisation of
health and education ; scrap PFI ; scrap prescription charges ;
scrap tuition fees ; scrap ID cards ; scrap nuclear weapons and
scrap wars.

*Coalitions*

So far so good. But other leftists squeal that when it comes down
to electoral politics the Greens can be bloody uncooperative, as
when they refused to make a pact with Respect before the last
general election. Darren Johnson is defiant : 'We often get
criticised by left groups for standing against them, but they can't
even sustain coalitions with each other ! It would have been a
disaster if we had had a coalition with Respect -- look where they
are now.'

But hang on. The Greens do form alliances on councils -- and have
even been known to work with Tories. Most controversial was a
coalition with the Conservatives and Lib Dems on Leeds City
Council. The Greens eventually pulled out over plans for a new
waste incinerator in 2006, after two years, but in many other
places the Greens co-operate informally with other parties,
including Tories.

Chris Rose doesn't care : 'We say none of the mainstream parties
are worth anything. So, if the situation demands it, it doesn't
really matter which one we work with, just what the outcome is. We
can't sit on the sidelines forever.' Others on the left of the
party, like the party's male principal speaker Derek Wall, are much
less keen on such arrangements and are clearly embarrassed by the
Leeds example, but in a decentralised party they have had to learn
to live with it.

The potential for such unholy alliances goes further than just the
council level. In December David Cameron announced that he wanted a
'progressive alliance' with the Lib Dems and the Greens to push for
decentralisation. They rejected the offer as a publicity stunt, but
it pointed to a new and unexpected problem for the Greens --
they're suddenly very popular with the other parties.

For Caroline Lucas, MEP for South-East England and the party's
female principal speaker, this is a double-edged sword : 'If the
mainstream parties really were going green we'd react with delight,
but there are no signs that it's anything more than words. In fact
it's dangerous that they are using the rhetoric without taking
action -- just look at Labour with coal-fired power stations.'

'But on the other hand, look at how our vote has gone up since
Cameron started talking green,' she says. 'I think people are
savvy, they see through the empty words, but they are alerted to
the issues and go looking for the real Greens.'

Darren Johnson believes the existence of the Green Party over the
years has contributed to people taking the environment seriously,
but that this is not enough. 'We have put pressure on the other
parties to green up their act,' he says, 'but we aren't just a
pressure group. In terms of making things happen you need Greens
elected -- not necessarily in government but in a position to
really push the agenda.'

*Concrete green advances*

For Chris Rose, what matters is the outcome -- the 'need to make
concrete green advances'. He points to Kirklees and London as
examples.

Five per cent of all the solar energy generated in the UK is
concentrated in Kirklees, the west Yorkshire borough that includes
Huddersfield. The Greens hold four of the 69 seats on the council,
which is under no overall control. This position has been
sufficient to put some of their ideas into practice. Their latest
success is a scheme for 30,000 homes to receive free cavity wall
and loft insulation. The policy was voted through on a combined
Green, Conservative and Lib Dem motion and means households will
receive £400 of insulation measures free of charge. The project is
funded jointly by the council and private company Scottish Power --
something that might alarm many on the left, but which most Greens
seem comfortable with.

In London, the Greens' two Assembly members have found themselves
in a pivotal position. Since Labour lost four seats in 2004, mayor
Ken Livingstone has had to rely on the Greens to get his budgets
through each year, giving Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones great
bargaining power. They claim the credit for tripling the cycling
budget from £21 million to £62 million and increasing the climate
change budget for greener homes from just £100,000 to £12 million
in four years.

*Electoralist ?*

So the Defence can present the court with evidence of creditable
achievement. But now the Prosecution brings a new charge :
electoralism. Chris Rose still doesn't care : 'We need to ensure
that in everything we do we make the maximum electoral advantage.
I've been on plenty of demos but I'd rather put people in power who
don't need to be demonstrated against.'

Even some on the left of the party, like health spokesman Stuart
Jeffery, would prefer more electoralism : 'I do a shed-load at
grass-roots level in Maidstone, like Keep Our NHS Public and
community groups. We're not wholly electoralist. We're probably not
electoralist enough. We should be more targeted and systematic.'

Perhaps one of the reasons why many Greens aren't too bothered
about being called electoralist is that they're getting pretty good
at it. In last year's local elections the party increased its
number of councillors by 20 per cent to 110. This year, in May, the
party expects a further 10 per cent boost to that number, and is
looking to increase its London Assembly representation from two
seats to three.

But what the Greens are most excited about is the prospect of their
first MP. Their sights are set on Norwich, where they are likely to
be the second biggest party on the council after May ; Oxford,
where uber-activist Peter Tatchell will stand as a Green candidate
in the next general election ; and most importantly Brighton, where
Caroline Lucas stands a real chance of winning.

In the Brighton Pavilion constituency at the last general election,
Keith Taylor finished third for the Greens with 22 per cent of the
vote, only marginally less than the second-placed Conservatives.
Support in the city has been increasing ever since -- 27 per cent
in the European elections ; 30 per cent in the locals ; and 41 per
cent in the last council by-election before Christmas. Added to
that, the incumbent Labour MP is standing down.

'In theory 26 per cent would win it,' says Chris Rose, who really
does care about this. 'The big worry is that the Tories will come
through. So we need to convince progressive people in Brighton to
vote Green not Labour.'

Greens hope the Brighton electorate will be inspired by the
significance of the choice before them. On Caroline Lucas's
election leaflets the appeal 'Help us make history' is emblazoned
across a picture of the Houses of Parliament. 'All the evidence
suggests that once you get the first Green elected to a council or
authority, you break the credibility barrier and more follow,'
Lucas comments. 'Remember Labour's first MP was elected in 1900,
and by 1924 they were forming a government.'

*First past the post*

One of the reasons why the Greens have so far failed to break
through that credibility barrier at the national level is the
first-past-the-post voting system. In Germany, and more recently in
Ireland and Scotland since devolution (where there is a separate
Green Party), the Greens have fared well under proportional
representation. Ironically, the experience of these successes
suggests that the barriers erected by the electoral rules might be
one reason why the English and Welsh Green Party tends to be more
left than its European cousins, which have often been sucked into
the prevailing system.

But ideological purity has limited appeal against success, so in
Brighton the Greens are thinking tactics. The obvious response is
to throw resources at the city. This will happen, but the Green
version of targeting is less severe than that practised by, for
example, Respect, which focuses relentlessly on a few core areas.
At the last general election the Greens stood candidates in more
than 200 constituencies.

Part of the reason is that the Green Party is more decentralised.
Its 170 branches all sign up to national policy but retain a high
degree of autonomy. But it is also a deliberate decision. Chris
Rose explains : 'In the British political system you'll be laughed
at if you only stand ten candidates. Unlike Respect we're a proper
national party.'

The first-past-the-post system is also forcing the Greens to tailor
their political message. 'The threshold is so much higher that we
have to think about how we appeal to people who don't see
themselves as Greens,' Caroline Lucas says. 'We need to be far more
creative in the way we communicate to win in a first-past-the-post
election.'

But does this mean a compromise with electoralism, that the
programme will be sanitised and weakened in the fashion perfected
by New Labour ? Lucas claims not : 'Our roots are so strong in the
social movements that there is no risk that our policies will be
watered down. We offer integrity in our policy package, which is
entirely decided at party conference. That's what people buy into
when they join the Greens. It's just about how to communicate those
policies.'

*Leadership*

This feeling that the Greens need to communicate better with the
public and the media was the main factor behind an upheaval in
autumn last year. In a referendum the party decided by 73 to 27 per
cent to change its structure and adopt a leader, replacing the
strictly non-hierarchical system of two principal speakers.

The debate echoed previous divisions between 'fundis'
(fundamentalists) and 'realos' (realists), terms first coined in
relation to splits in the German Green Party in the 1980s which
have since been used to describe similar conflicts elsewhere. On
the 'fundi' side was one principal speaker, Wall, and on the
'realo' side was the other, Lucas. 'The leadership question was
simply about how we get the message across,' Lucas says. 'Social
change is still also about building on the ground outside
parliament, but having a leader, a recognisable figure to
articulate our views to the public, is not in any way incompatible
with that.'

But others saw the move as substituting 'the "eco" of serious
ecological commitment with the dreary "ego" of conventional,
shallow, careerist British politics,' as Green Party London
Assembly member Jenny Jones put it in the heat of the leadership
battle.

In response Lucas insists that the Greens 'should always be
involved in non-violent direct action and consciousness-raising'.
This, she says, is not in conflict with her own aspiration to be an
MP. 'Having a Green MP would scale up the impact of what the social
movements and campaigns do outside parliament. It would be an
incredible breakthrough. It would send shockwaves through the
political establishment.'

*Factions ?*

In any other left party such a fundamental question as whether to
adopt a leader would have been marked by fierce faction fighting.
But the Green Party is curiously lacking in this department. It has
survived for more than 30 years without splitting up into five
different sets of acronyms.

The closest thing to a faction in the Green Party today is a group
called the Green Left. Conceived by, amongst others, Derek Wall,
Peter Tatchell and Green mayoral candidate Sian Berry in 2006, the
group's job is to reach out to the wider left and link up with
other socialists, with the added hope of bringing more left
activists into the Green Party.

Through its email list the Green Left also loosely coordinates
action in the party. It comprises hundreds of eco-socialist
activists, but represents nowhere near a majority in a party of
7,500 members. Nevertheless, as Wall points out, he has been
elected to the principal speaker position twice on a platform of
'eco-socialism without apology', suggesting that the group does
have some organisational strength.

On a practical level Wall believes that Green Left has been 'very
successful in bringing through policies and bringing socialists
into the party'. He believes passionately in forging links with
committed activists of the Labour left, Respect (both versions),
the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Party, and beyond to
what he sees as the eco-socialist movements of Latin America,
especially in Venezuela and Bolivia.

The unions are a particular focus. In February, Wall and Green MEPs
Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert addressed a trade union conference
on climate change. The Green Party supports the TUC's proposed
trade union freedom bill, which would roll back Thatcher's
anti-union laws. And unions that are not affiliated to Labour, like
the FBU and the RMT, have already funded Green Party activities.
But Wall aspires to the example of Australia where Green-union
links are far more developed, to the extent that construction
unions have imposed 'green bans' and refused to work on certain
developments on environmental grounds.

*White, middle class academics*

One obstacle to closer relations is the suspicion in the trade
union and labour movements that the Greens are just a bunch of
white, middle class academics. A cursory glance around the Green
Party's conference in Reading in February revealed that delegates
were indeed overwhelmingly white and well-spoken ; many of them
boasted a Dr before their name ; and an improbably high proportion
of members seemed to have a perfect grasp of the most intricate
details of green energy technologies.

But this is unfair. Something similar is true of most party
conferences (with the exception of Respect), and the Greens had a
higher proportion of women than is usually seen.

Away from conference, Greens insist they have been picking up
support in ethnic minority and working class areas. The best
example of this is Lewisham in south-east London where the Greens
occupy six of 54 seats on the council. Darren Johnson, who has been
a Lewisham councillor since 2002, as well as a London Assembly
member, tells how he 'started campaigning in Lewisham in the
mid-1990s. By 1998 we got 30 per cent in my ward. That was the
Guardian-reading middle classes, but it proved enough of a base to
then widen our support. The big difference now is that we're
getting votes on the council estates, which make up about a quarter
of the ward. You can't get 50 per cent in Lewisham without
significant support from ethnic minorities and the working class.'

Meanwhile, Stuart Jeffery thinks the class accusation is
outrageous. 'We're not middle class idiots,' he barks (as your
intrepid questioner ducks for cover). 'That's quite offensive. I
don't mind being called an idiot but don't call me middle class.'

*The verdict*

Back in the courthouse both sides have finished presenting their
arguments. The judge bangs his gavel and addresses the court.
'Members of the jury, it would be difficult for any leftist to read
the Greens' last election manifesto (Exhibit A) and not agree with
the vast majority of it. At the heart of the party's policies is a
desire to stop all exploitation, not only of the planet but of the
people too.

'Yet the Greens will clearly never satisfy some on the left. They
do have an electoral slant, they do encompass a range of political
traditions and they do take a pragmatic attitude that, while
refreshing, can lead to alliances with Tories.'

The jury retires. In the public gallery, Derek Wall looks nervous.
Chris Rose still doesn't care. In the visitors' section, a fight
breaks out between a member of Respect and someone from Respect
Renewal.

The jury returns -- it has failed to reach a verdict. The judge
declares a retrial ... by you, the readers.

Let us know what you think in our forums

_______________________________________________
Natlcomaffairs mailing list
To send a message to the list, write to:
Natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
To unsubscribe or change your list options, go to:
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/natlcomaffairs

You must know your password to do this.

If you can't figure out how to
unsubscribe, as a last resort only,
send a message OFF LIST to
steveh at olypen.com

If your state delegation changes, please see:
http://gp.org/committees/nc/documents/delegate_change.html

To report violations of listserv protocol, write to
forummanagers at lists.gp-us.org

For other information about the National Committee, see:
http://gp.org/committees/nc/



Green Party of CT, National Committee
860-643-2282


-- 
Want an e-mail address like mine?
Get a free e-mail account today at www.mail.com!

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20080402/dc39c3f5/attachment.html>