An exclusive guest post today from Natalie Bennett. Natalie has announced she is standing to be leader of the Green Party following Caroline Lucas’s decision not to restand in September. Her website is here: http://www.natalie4leader.org/
In the 2001 general election, having just moved to Walthamstow, east London, I went to the polling station to vote Green. I was surprised, and disappointed, to find that there wasn’t a Green Party candidate. The moment came back to me five years later, when I decided it was past time to make doing something about the state of the world a personal priority.
Joining the Green Party of England and Wales – helping it stand in places like Walthamstow – seemed the natural step, but if you’d told me then that six and a half years later I would be standing for the leadership of the party south of the border, I would certainly have thought you’d been looking at the carbon emissions graphs for too long.
Yet in a way the path from Walthamstow to here is clear enough when I look back.
I’ve been through some great highs with the Green Party, and some pretty tough lows – a high in 2006 in the central London borough of Camden when we won our first two councillors, and a low in 2010 when we lost two of by then three councillors to the general election Labour swing.
I’ve learnt a lot about the party, and politics, since 2006. As an activist, candidate, and now chair, of Camden Green Party, and as founding chair of Green Party Women, I’ve seen how much there is to do, and how difficult it can be to shape lots of enthusiastic volunteers and minimal financial and physical resources into a high-functioning whole.
I’ve become utterly convinced that a Green political approach is the only appropriate response to the current economic and ecological crisis. It’s so screamingly obvious that we can’t continue to treat the world as a combined mine/rubbish tip, and can’t keep discarding to a life of poverty and fear millions of people, whether they are trapped in low-wage jobs or on inadequate benefit payments.
Yet it’s also clear that the Green Party itself is at a critical point. We’ve made the huge leap to our first MP. We’re now identifiably the third party in London following the mayoral/Assembly elections.
But still, for many people up and down the country who might like to vote Green – and we know that when presented with our policies, unbranded, they’re the most popular with voters — there’s no sunflower logo on their ballot paper. And for many others, the Greens have yet to establish themselves sufficiently locally to look like a viable choice.
This needs to change. Fast.
We need to work to ensure that by the end of the decade everyone has at least one Green rep, an MEP. We can certainly treble our number of MEPS in 2014 as a starting point, covering six regions.
Over the next decade we can put at least one local councillor in every major town and city around the country and have a spread of serious Westminster target seats around the country.
To do that, we have to transform how our party works. The Green Party believes in localism; we have local parties, not branches, who decide their own activities and direction. Lots of good in that – just look at the dreadful results of centralised diktats from other parties, from Tony Blair’s pager MPs downwards.
But we’ve also in general interpreted that as leaving local parties to their own devices, to sink or swim. Some have powered on confidently – Brighton, Norwich, Lancaster, more recently Solihull – but many, without targeted, organised support, have not. Under a first-past-the-post electoral system, it is hard to get a real foothold.
Local parties need to work together as teams. Regions need to act as a coordinated unit. The national party needs to bring it all together into a supportive, coherent whole.
And we need to stand up proudly with the courage of our convictions. We have a model for an entirely different kind of economy and society that the public is crying out for, yet we haven’t done enough to develop it and to put it into ordinary language, in mass circulation news outlets.
On many policies – drugs, nuclear weapons and prostitution to name just three — we have what the Daily Mail would call shocking ideas. Yet these are ideas that the majority of the public actually back – and sometimes we’re not brave enough in proclaiming them.
Neither of those points is a criticism of Greens working hard up and down the country. We don’t need them to work even harder – that would hardly be possible. But we do need to work smarter, and in a more coordinated way. And we need to make sure we’re telling the public about what we’re doing, convincing them to vote for us, to support us, to join us.
Then we can ensure that everyone not only has the chance to vote Green, but the opportunity to contact an elected Green rep with their concerns, at every level of government. And we can move confidently on to be the third party in the country, then beyond. And in doing that we’ll not only elect more Greens, but start to pull the centre of political gravity in Britain back from the hyper-capitalist neoliberalism that’s nearly shredded our economy and society.
#1 by Stephen Gray on June 12, 2012 - 4:53 pm
So, will there be guest posts on here from the other candidates for Green Party leader?
Incidentally, I’ll chuck in a point of fact. Green successes in Solihull have not, as Natalie says, been a result of a local party going it alone. They’ve actually been part of a joined-up regional strategy.
#2 by James on June 12, 2012 - 4:57 pm
Subject to our usual consideration – i.e. is it interesting and well-written enough for the editorial team to approve it – sure, why not? But we’re not an official organ of GPEW (I’m pretty sure I’m the only member now) and we aren’t required to achieve balance unless we feel like it. Who are you supporting, Stephen?
#3 by Stephen Gray on June 13, 2012 - 4:44 pm
Fair enough. Whilst I’m open to persuasion, I’m currently strongly inclined to give my first preference to Peter Cranie.
#4 by MH on June 12, 2012 - 4:56 pm
If I might make one rather obvious recommendation, it would be for the Green Party of England and Wales to reconstitute itself as separate Green Parties for Wales and England. A Green Party of Wales would better reflect the fact that the current devolution settlement for Wales has changed and is constantly advancing, and this therefore requires different policies for implementing the Green agenda in Wales than in England.
I would also hope that it would support independence for Wales in the same way as the Scottish Green Party does for Scotland.
#5 by anon on June 12, 2012 - 5:59 pm
That is an interesting proposal and I am unsure of what its implications would be for the Greens in Wales in a party system where Plaid Cymru, especially with Leanne Wood a leader, have a strong environmental and social conscience. Of course we can have a debate over the philosophical and ideological foundations of our policies but does it make that much of a difference to the ends which is what most voters care about?
#6 by MH on June 13, 2012 - 6:46 pm
Anon, I think there’s a tendency for all other parties to see themselves as green, and to some extent they are. But there’s all the difference in the world between adding on some green policies and making it a central plank of what you do. I think green issues are much more central to Plaid Cymru’s way of thinking than for the other main parties, and the Greens are our natural allies both in Europe with the Green-EFA alliance and even in Westminster, where Caroline Lucas works closely with us and the SNP.
The question from a Plaid perspective (and I speak as a member who is definitely on the “organic Plaid” side of the party) is whether there is room for a Green Party in Wales or whether we try and squeeze them out. Opinion is divided, but I take the view that it is better to have allies, and that will certainly be the case when we get a fair voting system. There are some people who simply won’t vote for Plaid in any circumstances, and I would rather they voted for a strong Green Party than for any of the other alternatives.
#7 by Stephen Gray on June 13, 2012 - 4:59 pm
That’s a decision that’s entirely up to the Welsh Greens. At the moment they seem to have no desire to become a fully independent party. Their status as a semi-autonomous region within the England/Wales Green Party probably already gives them the ability to outline Wales-specific policies, although they clearly haven’t done so to date. I suspect they won’t see the need for either until some point after they’ve won their first Assembly seat.
As for their position on Welsh independence, it’s worth noting that there isn’t anywhere near as much appetite for independence amongst the Welsh as there is amongst the Scots. Wales is far more dependant on the rest of the UK than Scotland is, and also has a much higher proportion of people who would identify as English. There’s a very long way to go before Welsh independence can be anything more than a pipe dream.
#8 by MH on June 13, 2012 - 6:53 pm
Of course it’s their decision, SG. Yet it is a little disconcerting that you say they clearly haven’t developed Wales-specific policies to date. I would say that it isn’t a question of waiting until they get their first seat, but of developing Wales-specific policies in order to get their first seat. Even so, I thought their manifestos for the 2007 and 2011 Assembly elections were pretty good, they just didn’t get any sort of public airing.
So it’s almost a case of doing something which will force themselves into the public eye. I think that setting themselves up as a separate party in Wales is exactly the sort of thing that would put them into the Welsh public eye. I can’t see that they have anything to lose by it, but they have a lot to gain.
If they do so, coming out in favour of very much more autonomy for Wales (even if it falls short of independence) is really the only constitutional policy that is consistent with their values. If we look only at energy policy, nuclear is only being pushed because England needs the power, for Wales (like Scotland) can easily produce more than all the electricity we need through renewables. Likewise, a Wales in control of its own energy policy would almost certainly develop tidal range, our largest untapped energy resource; something that “Englandandwales” has shown no sign at all of wanting to develop, precisely because it has been flirting with nuclear power instead.
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Policies need to be formed from your principles, not their popularity. The arguments for Welsh independence are not exactly the same as those for Scotland. Playing devil’s advocate, I could say that Scotland does very well out of being part of the UK, therefore there is no economic imperative for them to leave. For us, on the other hand, it is a case of being poor because we are part of the UK, and that it is only with independence that we will be able to tailor our economy to suit us. So it’s not a question of whether we can afford to leave, or waiting until we can. It’s more a question of independence being the only way to bring us to parity with the RUK … and move on ahead of it.
You also seem to think that national identity is a deciding factor. My answer is that it is for some, and is a particular strong theme for Welsh and Scottish nationalists … after all, that’s why we call ourselves nationalists! But this, as I touched on in my reply to Anon, is probably why some people in Wales will never vote Plaid, even though Plaid’s reasons for wanting independence are every bit as much to do with prosperity, fairness and social justice, and quality of life in a fragile world. That’s why we could do with political allies like the Greens, who want those other things as much as us and believe (irrespective of any national feeling or identity) that independence is the best way of achieving them in our small corner of the planet.
#9 by Welshguy on June 13, 2012 - 6:16 pm
“it’s worth noting that there isn’t anywhere near as much appetite for independence amongst the Welsh as there is amongst the Scots.”
Surely this shouldn’t be relevant – unless you’re implying that the Greens should only be advocating popular policies, and by extension suggesting that the Scottish Green party have adopted independence as a policy merely in order to gain votes rather than because they genuinely want it!
If Welsh independence (or any other standpoint on constitutional matters) squares with the values and priorities of a political party then they should support it irrespective of its popularity. Political parties should be about leading public opinion, not merely following it.