Has the Green Party been Captured by the Left?

Adrian Ramsay, Green MP and former co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, has told the BBC, that the party is at a crossroads, on what kind of party it is to be. He cited the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion adopted at the party’s recent autumn conference, as a break with the traditional philosophy of environmental focus.

Ramsay said "One option is to sort of dig in more down this approach, not only in relation to this motion, but I think that there's a risk it brings with it - a quite divisive, a quite internally focused approach to politics."

Ramsay said this is "perhaps seen from small groups of people on the hard left of politics who go around different parties trying to influence how those parties are run."

As reported by The Guardian, Ramsay went on to say, “There is also a small number of people who have joined, perhaps from the very hard left of politics, who might be more at home in the SWP or with George Galloway or with Your Party. [They] not only want to adopt some very hardline positions on certain issues, but have a very different culture to how they go about it.” Those members were seeking to “seeking to change the direction of the party.”

What is taking place here, is that this is part of an ongoing attempt by the establishment of the party to regain control after Zack Polanski was elected as leader of the party last year. Ramsay, along with Ellie Chowns, another Green MP, stood against Polanski for the leadership, and were endorsed by former leader and former Green MP, Caroline Lucas.

Polanski won with 84% of the vote, a crushing defeat for the party establishment who didn’t want him to become leader, and they were worried about losing their influence in the party. They bided their time and waited for an opportunity to strike back.

The party’s membership shot up from about 60,000 to 230,000 which made it difficult to complain about things not going well, so they needed a cause. Something that would appeal to more traditional type of member and would lead to the newer, suspect members to leave to leave the party.

The ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion passed at autumn conference became the trigger. I think the establishment thought there was a chance it would pass, and started preparing. When the motion did pass, they went into action. What made this an even better vehicle for the fight back was that the Holborn and St Pancras Parliamentary byelection would take place a few days later, where Polanski was the Green party candidate.

On mainstream media, even before the vote was declared, although Lucas probably knew that Labour would retain what is a very safe seat, launched into a speech about how the ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion had cost the party winning the seat. There is no evidence for this, but once she said it, it became a news story in itself for mainstream media. So, the campaign had begun. Ramsay’s latest media intervention is just the campaign moving along.

Mainstream media reports that 18,000 people have left the Green party since Zionism motion was passed. I don’t know if this true, but I have seen a few members saying on social media they have left over the motion, but I’ve also seen some say they left over the pro-nuclear policy passed at the same conference. I’ve also seen some say they have joined the party because of the Zionism motion.

The whole thing has the uncomfortable feeling that this is another right-wing coup, similar to what happened in the Labour party when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Spread smears about antisemitism, demand expulsions of members on spurious grounds for being antisemitic and creating an atmosphere where the newer members will leave the party.

I’m proud to be a Green Lefty or ecosocialist, as we say, and have been a member of the Green party for over twenty years. Our numbers were fairly small, but now many left-wing people see the Green party as the most viable party to deliver any kind of socialism and anti-neoliberalism.

This minority establishment should stop waging this divisive civil war and realise that the party has moved on. Ecological justice cannot be separated from social justice, because the effective cause of both of our ills is the same, capitalism. If we don’t want to challenge this system, the party will remain on the margins of politics and so be completely irrelevant.