Green Party Refuses to Publish its Own Election Report

Green Left, the ecosocialist grouping in the Green Party of England and Wales, has issued a statement calling on the party to publish it’s own report into the unsuccessful ‘Unite to Remain’ electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats at the 2019 General election.

London Green Left reported at the time that members were Green Party Members Dismayed with Lib Dem Election Pact not happy about it. We also reported that consultation with at least one local party was scant, Green / Lib Dem Electoral Pact was a Mistake that Shouldn’t be Repeated.

We further revealed last year, the likely reason that, the party leadership are demonstrating once again, how a clique runs the party, Can the Green Party be Saved from its Leadership Clique?

Is it just Green Left that are concerned about this? Green party members should raise the issue with their local parties. Surely, we want transparency in the party?

What, one wonders, are they trying to hide?

The statement is reproduced below:

Green Left Statement on the Green Party’s Failure to Publish its Report into the 2019 General Election Strategy

Green Left is seriously concerned that the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) has failed to publish its report on the party’s General Election strategy. The GPEW cannot credibly criticise other parties if it fails to be open about its own shortcomings, especially when the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have openly assessed their own performance.

The Brexit electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats was not debated or agreed by the party as a whole and its controversial adoption is an issue deserving robust discussion so that lessons can be learnt for future decision making.

The party’s failure to respond to Green Left and GPEW members’ repeated requests (including at the last Conference) to publish the report shows contempt for both Green Left and the wider party membership. Furthermore, non-publication undermines the party’s promotion of its own transparency and accountability as well as its demands for wider democracy in society,

Green Left calls on the GPEW to immediately publish the report and circulate it to local parties and recognised party groups.

Contact – ukgreenleft@gmail.com

The Climate Crisis – What do I tell my Grandchildren?

 

Written by Allan Todd 

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

Euripides

For several decades - through the years of Cold War, the start of neoliberalism, the collapse of the degenerated and deformed workers’ states of the Eastern bloc into rampant capitalism, and the growing signs of environmental and ecological degredation - I’ve always tried to follow Antonio Gramsci’s maxim: “Pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.”  

Farewell Gramsci 

But, right now, I have to confess: that increasingly-fragile ‘optimism of the will’ has just about gone. What has prompted this collapse in optimism is news about recent developments in the Green Party’s Climate Campaign Committee. 

In 2017, whilst still a member of the Green Party, I was co-opted onto the Green Party’s national Climate Campaign Committee. The aim of those of us on it was to prepare the launch of a national Green Party campaign on the Climate Crisis. However, after several months of growing awareness that the leadership were not that keen on a radical national campaign on the climate, I gradually stepped back, and instead put all my efforts into continuing the organisation of the anti-fracking Green Mondays at Preston New Road in Lancashire. 

In the meantime, whilst the Green Party remained largely inactive on the Climate, Extinction Rebellion came along the following year - and really brought the Climate Crisis to the media’s attention, thus pushing it up the political agenda. Something the Green Party could have done, almost a year earlier. 

Nonetheless, as one always to have doubts about whether I’m doing the right thing, I occasionally wondered if I should have remained active on that Climate Campaign Committee. But, just recently, I learnt that one of the main co-leaders of that Committee has decided to step down, because of…growing frustration at the way in which radical suggestions for climate campaigns were regularly blocked or watered down by the leadership and the executive. 

This, of course, chimes with recent posts on London Green Left’s Blog about developments within the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW). In particular, the news reminded me of a post by Dee Searle in July, in which she commented on how the leadership had prioritised: 

“…electoral success over radical environmental campaigning… At an internal review of the 2019 snap General Election manifesto, it was revealed that genuinely radical climate mitigation policies developed by the party’s Climate Change Policy Working Group had been removed by a small group around the leadership team and Caroline Lucas’s office because they weren’t vote winners. Yet the election was being held against a background of almost daily revelations about the gathering pace of climate-related environmental calamity. A squandered opportunity to step up campaigning pressure if ever there was one.”  

However, what for me has pushed sadness into despair are the group discussions amongst members of the Climate Campaign Committee that have taken place around the decision by that leading Committee member to step down. 

Trimming to the right 

The most depressing contribution was one that seemed to suggest that, given that most voters are currently voting Tory, any radical left-sounding parties or policies have “no chance of influencing or getting momentum” from voters. To argue that nothing radical can be elected now - or can manage to push changes through by pressure from social movements from below - is defeatist. But even to hint that we should tail-end any Tory/rightwing political trend in order to be more 'successful’ with voters is far worse than defeatist - it is downright dangerous. 

Given that Boris Johnson successfully pushed for Brexit, does that mean parties such as the Greens should have abandoned Remain and backed Brexit instead, in order to get ‘momentum'? And, given the current level of xenophobia and out-right racism over refugees, which seems to resonate with so many Tory voters, should the Greens now join the calls for ‘taking back control of our borders’? There was even a dismissive suggestion that issues such as feminism (and presumably racism?) were “big turnoffs” as regards voters.  Words failed me.

This idea of ‘trimming’ to fit in more with a temporary Tory majority reminds me of why I left the Green Party. It wasn’t just over the ‘Unite to Remain’ pact with the LibDems - a party so clearly on the other side of the barricades - but much more to do with the growing rightward drift within the Green Party: which is, it seems, precisely why Climate policies have been watered down or vetoed. 

Arguments that radical policies for social and economic justice should be ditched were very much to the fore on the GPEW Members’ on-line discussion site before and after GE2017 - often, from the right, put forward in a personally-abusive way. In case it has been forgotten, the early origins of what eventually became the Green Party - first the People’s Party & then the Ecology Party - were from the centre-right, and it seems that things are returning to that position. 

And, in case this too has been forgotten, that right-of-centre approach did NOT result in a massive growth in membership or in elected representatives. That all came AFTER the Green Party - recognising, with the help of members of Green Left, that environmental destruction and the Climate Crisis AND growing social and economic inequalities were BOTH the results of the same ‘System’ - had made a conscious decision to move to a more leftwing position. 

That drift to the right within the Green Party has led to the stance amongst many members that ‘Labour has to be hurt to make it see sense’ over the issues of making election pacts and supporting Proportional Representation (PR), by standing Greens in every seat - including in those key marginals Labour needed to hold or win in order to defeat the Tories. 

Though, of course, the only people who are really hurt by a Labour loss/Tory win are those who’ve already been ‘hurting’ since at least 2010: those forced into food banks and/or onto the streets, the growing number of children living in poverty, and those whose life-expectancy has either stalled or even declined. Prof King of Cambridge University, one of those involved in a recent study that concluded there had been at least 120,000 austerity-related deaths, referred to this as “economic murder”.  

This rightwards drift was particularly typified most recently by last year's ‘Unite to Remain’ pact with the LibDems. Just because Labour - wrong-headedly - remains against electoral pacts and PR is no reason to go holding hands in a pact with a party like the LibDems which is still led by unrepentant neoliberals. Amongst other things, that ‘Unite to Remain’ pact - essentially pushed by the leadership - was so unprincipled. 

It was made with a party that had (a) blocked an opposition attempt to get a Vote of No Confidence in Johnson and to have a People’s Vote with ‘Remain’ as an option; (b) abstained on an Opposition amendment to stop further privatisation of NHS services; (c) been the first opposition party to give Johnson and Cummings the pre-Brexit election they’d always wanted; (d) totally abandoned the idea of a People’s Vote; and (e) a leader who even said she’d press the nuclear button. 

That’s where ‘accommodating right-of-centre views’ takes you. What was particularly criminal about this ‘Unite to Remain’ pact was that 10 of its 60 seats actually targeted sitting PRO-REMAIN Labour MPs in key marginals - such as Stroud and Warrington South, both of which saw Tories replace those Labour MPs. 

Radicalism isn’t finished 

In fact, claims that radical politics now have no appeal, so the Greens should go more centre-right, do not stand up to any serious examination. In case it’s been forgotten, in GE2017, Corbyn-led Labour got 12.9m votes and 40% of the votes - almost beating May’s Tories, who got 13.6m votes. And that was after 2 years of open sabotage from rightwing Labour MPs and, as we now know from the leaked Labour internal report, of secret sabotage from rightwing Labour officials as well; never mind the hostile mainstream media reporting.   

To put that GE2017 vote into some historical context, Corbyn’s vote then was BIGGER than that achieved by (a) the more ‘centrist’ Miliband in GE2015 (9.3m and 30% of the vote); (b) the even more ‘centrist’ Brown in GE2010 (8.6m and 29%); & (c) the much more ‘centrist’ Blair in GE2005 (9.5m and 35%) AND in GE2001 (10.7m and 40%). And, as we all know, GE2019 was not a normal general election but basically a one-issue election over Brexit.  

What is most saddening is the existence of what could be called the ‘People’s Front of Judea’ syndrome, as the right of the Greens rule out any co-operation with any radical party or group, in order, instead, to appeal to ‘soft’ Tories. Though, to be fair, this PFJ syndrome is one that is also still very prevalent on our centre-left side of the barricades - whether it’s Labour, or many of the smaller groups to the left of them. The idea that any one group or party has all the answers was always wrong-headed - but, in the midst of an ever-worsening Climate Crisis, it is nothing short of criminal lunacy. 

It reminds me of what the comedian Mark Steel said at the launch of the People’s Assembly in 2013: 

“I don’t know what it is with the left. They say: ‘You know, I agree with 99.9% of what you say - but that f-ing 0.1%? I’m having absolutely nothing to do with you!’"

The main thing right now is for all those who see the Climate Emergency as the number one priority to stop slagging off every other group and, instead, to join hands in a broad Red-Green United Front. 

Yet what we currently have are at least three different schemes to set up new parties to the left of the current Starmer-led Labour Party, and now the suggestion from mostly centre-right Greens to set up a separate Climate Party. This at a time when it looks almost certain that 2020 will be the hottest year since recordings began in the 19thC - with the 5 hottest years ever being since 2015:

Quite frankly, as the risks of catastrophic Climate Breakdown increase, we don’t have time to waste building yet more parties or groups from scratch - instead, we need to be using the next few years building bridges to get a broad movement for immediate climate action. 

So what do I tell my grandchildren?

I have just had my first ‘social bubble’ - with my grandchildren, who I hadn’t seen since 11 March, because of lockdown. They have already experienced at first-hand, 5 years ago, the devastation of Climate Crisis flooding.  

So what do I say to them as their world really starts to burn and drown in worsening ‘Hothouse Earth’ conditions? How can I even begin to explain to them how so many people, parties and groups that claim to ‘get’ the Climate Crisis, and who should have known better, insisted instead on ‘doing their own thing’ and stayed sitting in their separate camps, preferring to ‘hang separately rather than stand together’? 

Other than saying it really was ‘The Age of Stupid’, I haven’t the faintest idea - beyond “I’m so sorry”.

Allan Todd is an ecosocialist/environmental and anti-fascist activist, and author of Revolutions 1789-1917

Book Review - Climate Strike by Derek Wall

 

Written by Allan Todd. A version of this piece was also published at Left Unity.

“Cometh the [midnight] hour, cometh the book!” 

Derek Wall’s latest book, Climate Strike: the practical politics of the climate crisis, ‘had me’ from its very first page, with this well-chosen quotation: 

“We are at the midnight hour, and it’s eco-socialism or death.”

Kali Akuno (2019).

Derek is a long-standing and committed environmental activist who, for many years, held leading positions within the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW), first as Principal Speaker and then as International Co-ordinator. My review copy of his book arrived just as I’d finished the 5C chapter Mark Lynas’s Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency - which makes painfully clear why drastic climate action is needed right now. 

And that is precisely what Derek’s book also does in its first two chapters - but what makes Climate Strike so timely and useful is that, in the remaining eight chapters, it also analyses various attempts to build pressure for change, and suggests practical ways in which, via open debate, analysis and increased co-operation, we can try to achieve those changes. 

Before moving on to examine some of the important issues raised and examined by the book, one general strength should be pointed out early on: other than Alan Thornett’s comprehensive Facing the Apocalypse: Arguments for Ecosocialism (2019), you will not find another book on the current Climate Emergency that introduces you to so many valuable thinkers and positive initiatives on all the most critical issues. It is this aspect makes Derek’s latest book such an incredibly rich - and important - book to read. 

As a companion piece to it, I would also highly recommend reading his Elinor Ostrom’s Rules For Radicals (2017) - particularly useful for considering possible ways in which to organise a post-capitalist future that is based on co-operation, and doesn’t depend on either markets or state structures. 

As the book makes clear, the central dilemma for climate and environmental organisations and activists today is that we need both immediate emergency action to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stop the ecological devastation of the natural world, along with a longer-term strategy to create a world that is ecologically sustainable. 

One problem for environmental movements, explored in Chapter 8, is the difficulty in persuading enough people of the seriousness of the Climate Crisis, because of the ability of many individuals to banish worrying or unpleasant things - including the Climate Crisis - from their minds. Derek cites George Marshall’s Don’t Even Think About It (2014), which deals with this phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. 

Another book which explores this is Stanley Cohen’s States of Denial (2001), which explains how not acknowledging (as opposed to simply knowing) a threat or an injustice allows people to avoid the need to take action. 

Although Derek argues that the ever-worsening Climate Emergency the planet is facing stems from capitalism’s entire economic and social system - based on unsustainable continuous and ever-increasing production, consumption and capital accumulation - he does so in way that is free from any narrow dogmatism. 

What this book does do, exceptionally well, is to analyse, in a balanced way, where we are now, and how successful/unsuccessful the various climate campaigns and organisations have been so far. In particular, as regards the UK, there are useful examinations of the roles of the GPEW, the trade union/labour movement, and of social movements like Extinction Rebellion and the YouthStrike4Climate. 

But first - a digression!

Derek’s chapter on Green parties, in the UK and elsewhere, was of particular personal interest to me, as someone who - reluctantly - resigned from Grenn Party of England and Wales (GPEW) (and, consequently, as a Green town councillor) last December. So, before dealing with Derek’s observations, I will make some of my own. Now seems an especially good time to do so, with internal elections currently taking place within the GPEW. 

As Derek points out, during the late 1990s, the GPEW seemed to be moving towards a more radical ‘left’ position, combining strong environmental and climate policies along with calls for social and economic justice. A further step in that direction was signalled by the formation of Green Left in 2006, which operated as an explicitly ecosocialist and anti-capitalist network within the GPEW. 

So, in 2012 - after having voted Green in several elections - I joined the GPEW precisely because of these two developments. Consequently, I was proud to be the Green Party candidate for Copeland (Cumbria) in GE2015. Especially as parts of Copeland were suffering badly as a result of the austerity being enforced by the Tories and the LibDem Coalition - in GE2015, the GPEW (unlike the Labour Party at the time) was the only mainstream party which was calling for a complete end to austerity. 

Although, in the end, I resigned because of the unprincipled ‘Unite to Remain’ pact with the neoliberal LibDems - and the way it was ‘pushed’ by the leadership - in GE2019, I’d begun to have misgivings as early as 2016. This was over the large-scale overspending by the Tories in 33 key marginal seats in GE2015 - as exposed, at length, by Channel 4 News. These accounting ‘errors/oversights’ resulted in the Tories gaining a 12-seat majority - with 26 of their MPs having won in those key marginals where it was alleged that they had overspent.

 Channel 4 News’ take on the Tory Party’s election expenses issue in GE2015.

The GPEW’s Spring Conference in 2016 took place just after the Electoral Commission had fined the Tory Party a record amount for what they said were “multiple offences.” This seemed to me to be a dangerous development as regards UK democracy, so I moved an Emergency Motion, calling on the leadership to mount campaigns for by-elections in all those seats where there were serious concerns about overspending. 

However, although this EM was overwhelmingly passed by Conference, the leadership - which I know was not happy with the EM - said and did nothing. It’s worth recalling that Cameron’s government then went on to call the referendum on UK membership of the EU - with all the unpleasant consequences which have already flowed from that, with others still to come. 

The next serious concerns came with the internal members’ on-line discussions which took place before and after GE2017, over whether or not the GPEW should stand candidates in the key marginal seats that Labour either needed to hold or win, in order for them to replace the Tories as the next government. Those on the right of the party argued vociferously (and one or two, unpleasantly) that the “leftwing stuff” (ie. questions of social and economic justice) should be left to the Labour Party, and for the GPEW to focus instead on environmental issues only. 

For me, all these concerns came to a head last December, with the deeply-unprincipled pact with the LibDems - a party which by then, it should be remembered, had:

·   along with the Tories, imposed austerity for 5 years, & continued to refuse to apologise for doing so

· blocked an opposition attempt to get a VONC in Johnson

·  abstained on an opposition amendment to the Queens’ Speech to stop further privatisations of NHS services

·  been the first ‘opposition’ party to give Johnson and Cummings the pre-Brexit election they’d always wanted

·  a leader who said she would press the nuclear button

·   reneged on holding a People’s Vote, with ‘Remain’ as an option 

So, yes - a deeply unprincipled pact, with possible electoral gains the main reason for it; gains which Prof. John Curtice was proved right for saying that the Greens would not obtain even one extra seat. 

After I’d made the decision to resign, I became aware that other GPEW members had done the same - or were seriously thinking of doing so. More recently, several articles on London Green Left’s Blog have shown that many members have a variety of concerns about the direction in which the GPEW now seems to be drifting. 

Last month, Dee Searle - who resigned from GPEW in June this year, after 4 spells as a member of the Green Party Executive (GPEX) - identified  what she called the ‘Leadership Clique’ as one of the main problems, questioning whether the GPEW will be able to be saved from it: 

A more recent article from David Taylor asks the question whether the Green Party change tack to become a real force for change: 

I would strongly recommend that these 2 articles should be read, before people read Derek’s chapter on Green parties.

Green parties 

And now - back to Derek’s book! It is in Chapter 4 that he deals with Green parties: in particular, arguing that there exists a conflict between the (often, but not in all cases, right-of-centre) origins of many Green parties - which were initially concerned with mainly ecological and environmentalist issues, with little or no focus on questions of social and economic justice - and the need for a fundamental political critique of the capitalist system itself. 

More recently however, the GPEW (as with several other Green European parties) seems to be moving back somewhat to its more rightwing/conservative origins, rather than moving on to develop a class analysis of the Climate Crisis, to or build strong links with the labour movement. 

More significantly, the GPEW’s Climate Campaign Committee, of which I was a member in the early stages - despite its members’ great efforts - failed to shift the party into launching a strong national campaign over the Climate Emergency. As a consequence, in 2018, it was Extinction Rebellion that really raised public awareness about the crisis the planet was facing - although, to be fair, several local Green parties and councillors had made significant progress in getting local Climate Emergencies declared. 

In fact, typical of Derek’s fair and balanced approach throughout this book, as well as making criticisms, he also points out that the GPEW, and other Green parties, can still have positive impacts - for instance, by continuing to help raise awareness of the Climate Crisis, and by proposing some useful structural changes. However, at present, the GPEW still fails to support the fundamental transformation of the mode of production which, ultimately, is vital to stopping Climate Breakdown. 

Extinction Rebellion 

As Derek makes clear from the start, Extinction Rebellion (XR)’s main weakness is that, at present, it still frames the Climate Emergency as more of a moral issue, rather than the political and economic one which, at heart, it is.  Consequently, its main focus is on influencing public opinion, so that politicians and governments will then be put under pressure to act. 

Whilst XR’s initial actions (along with the school climate strikes) certainly - and spectacularly - helped push the Climate Crisis up the political agenda as regards the general public, some of XR’s continuing actions have also resulted in the loss of a degree of sympathy (especially amongst sections of the working class). 

XR’s ultimate problem, though, is that it fails to really consider power relations, or to adequately consider the different impacts of the Climate Crisis on different - often marginalised - social groups. As pointed out, XRUK really needs to develop ties with and connections to much wider networks and identities - rather as Earth First! did. 

Several XR activists have been considering/calling for such steps, especially since the Autumn Uprising in October 2019 - including the development of a precise political and economic examination of what is meant by the slogan ‘System Change - Not Climate Change’.  In particular, what ‘System’, and what ‘Change’? 

Encouragingly, XR Scotland is currently considering a Reflection Piece (which apparently originated with XR Edinburgh), with the view to reaching out in precisely the way recommended by Derek’s book. Covid-19 permitting, the plan is to discuss and reach consensus on these issues at a Scottish People’s Assembly, to be held this October: 

In fact, XR Scotland has already made a public announcement in solidarity the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and is aware how the climate and ecological emergencies have been caused, and are still bing driven, by specific capitalist-linked aspects such as colonialism and white supremacy, as well as by capitalism’s ‘normal’ production/consumption/accumulation cycle per se.   

Base-building 

As Derek makes clear in his final chapter, in order to build the momentum needed to force though the changes that need to happen, a range of strategies are required - including the central one of base-building. As the ultimate aim has to be moves to ecosocialism, he highlights the importance of Marxism in understanding today’s global heating crisis created by capitalism. 

Amongst the strategies considered for achieving this are steps for greater co-operation between Marxist groups which recognise the need for ecosocialism. In particular, Derek mentions the work being done by Kali Akuno and others in the US, around Cooperation Jackson (Mississippi), and by People’s Strike, with which Kali Akuno is also involved: 

As many ecosocialists will already know, several books are useful in developing a Marxist understanding of what Marx called the dangerous “metabolic rift” between humans and the natural world which the ‘logic’ of capitalism creates. One which Derek examines is Andreas Malm’s The Progress of This Storm, (2018), which provides a readable survey of the main Marxist attempts to theorise the ecological crisis. Other important Marxist contributions to this debate include both John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology (2000) and Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism (2017). 

In fact, there are already early signs of this kind of base-building happening in the UK, with Socialist Resistance and Mutiny currently working together to create Anti-Capitalist Resistance (ACR)- a new revolutionary Marxist organisation, based on the need for ecosocialism:  

Anti-Capitalist Resistance

Plans have just been finalised for an ACR weekend school, from 12 -13 September, on the theme of Ecosocialism or Disaster Capitalism: 

Conclusion 

Derek’s well-argued case is that, ultimately, we need a post-capitalist ecosocialist society. From the most recent developments - XR Scotland’s Reflection Piece, moves to create a new revolutionary Marxist organisation based on ecosocialism, and Left Unity’s recent adoption of an explicitly ecosocialist position, it seems that Derek clearly has his finger on the pulse of the environmental movement. This is most definitely a book to read, to discuss and - most of all, to act on. 

The clock IS ticking!

Allan Todd is a member of Left Unity, an ecosocialist/environmental and anti-fascist activist, and author of Revolutions 1789-1917

Can the Green Party change tack to become a real force for change?

Written by David Taylor

There are any number of nautical cliches to describe the present position of the Green Party – becalmed, all at sea, in the doldrums, rudderless etc – as the present leadership seem to have learnt nothing from the missteps and strategic errors of the recent past. 

These include losing members over the alliance with the Lib Dems, supporting adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) antisemitism definition, failing to defend party democracy in the face of attacks by extreme transgender activists and presiding over the Holistic Review which has centralised control so a small group make all the key party decisions. This is by no means a complete list !

The 2019 General Election result caused despair amongst progressives. A triple whammy – Johnson won, Corbyn gone, Brexit done. But morale now seems to be on the rise and the widespread lethargy and indifference fading away. There is even a glimmer of hope in the Green Party as from 3rd - 31st August the leading positions in the party are up for election so party members will have the chance to vote for change. Another bright note could be that the Greens have become the leading party on Brighton Council. But Oh, the irony !

The prize comes due to Labour councillors being suspended or resigning the whip after allegations of antisemitism, such as condemning the oppression of Palestinians or stating the obvious - that Jeremy Corbyn was the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign. If the Green Party leadership had had their way at the 2018 conference, the IHRA definition of anti-semitism would have been adopted by the party and it would be the Green councillors who would have to keep silent on the actions of the Israeli state or be suspended.

In the event the leadership panicked when they saw the way the wind was blowing and remitted their motion. Loud applause from conference for speakers opposing the motion, mainly Jewish members, was followed by a standing ovation for Shahrar Ali after his blockbuster of a speech. A link to his speech can be found here.

The Labour Party experience shows that this issue cannot be dodged. No amount of concessions were ever going to stop the attacks on Corbyn as the object was simply to get rid of him. When he did apologise the apology itself was taken as an outrageous affront and further proof of his pandering to his antisemitic supporters. 

Shahrar Ali says that Israel must “be held to account for its unconscionable actions against the Palestinian people”. He has seen the Green Party become increasingly timid, or completely silent, on the matter while he himself has been subjected to racist slurs and malicious attacks.

Shahrar is standing in the election and says if elected as Green Party Leader he will continue to “speak for the rights of the oppressed against their oppressor in the best tradition of the Green Party” Shahrar looked back to 2015 when he was last a member of the Green Party leadership team and the party won a million and a quarter votes - because it had a vision. He says we need to be bold and unapologetic in talking, not just about reform, but about an ecosocialist transformation of the economy including redeployment of arms manufacturing towards wholesale renewable energy infrastructure.

Shahrar has been working to build solidarity on the ground in minority communities and for Green supporters to get more involved with Black Lives Matter. So the question is – can we move beyond our comfort zone and elect the first BAME leader of a main UK party ?

Theo Simon is standing as Trade Union Liaison Officer (TULO), a post which the GP leadership proposes to abolish. Theo says “the proposal to get rid of the TULO post is a huge political and tactical mistake. Our connection with organised Labour has probably never been more important to build on than it is now, as I believe will become apparent over the coming months. We need to leave our comfort zone and engage with the daily reality of people`s workplace struggles and the rapidly increasing membership base of our unions. We have a dog in this fight ! 

At the 2018 Green Party conference Theo proposed the motion “for a renewal of GPEW`s democratic structure” to address concerns that a unhealthy culture had arisen within the party. He was able to rally co-proposers from every side of the opinion spectrum in the Green Party including Dr Rupert Read, Shahrar Ali, Beatrix Campbell, Judy Maciejowski, long time GP exec member Dee Searle, veteran anti-nuke campaigners Linda & Brig Oubridge, Land magazine editor Dr Mike Hannis and over 60 others.

The motion was prompted by the actions of extreme transgender activists, which have caused many decent and tolerant members to leave the Green Party and has been a toxic distraction from more important matters. It was high time that the problem was addressed before even more harm was done and Theo Simon deserves our thanks for stepping up to the task despite the atmosphere of legal threats and intimidation surrounding the issue.

Theo is described as “a folk musician and general election candidate” - a rather understated summary ! As the 2015 General Election candidate for Somerton & Frome he said he was aiming for a 10% share of the vote. As the previous Green vote was zero this was thought to be just talk but, after a brilliant campaign, he walked the walk and secured over 9% ! I first met Theo when I was involved in booking groups for gigs and we were always guaranteed a sell out with his group Seize the Day.

They would have risen to great heights by now if Theo hadn`t been so committed to the planet and to Social Justice. Whether standing with Palestinians and Jews in Ramallah resisting Israeli occupation, being arrested at Hinkley C protests or dashing down to the Isle of Wight to back the Vestas workers who were occupying the site against the UK`s only wind turbine factory being moved to the USA - he always put the fight first. As for the music – you can hear it on https://seizetheday.org/.

There is precious little time left for the changes needed if humanity is to survive on the planet. This election may be the last chance to put the Green Party back in the game, able to play a significant part in the fight for radical change. If we take this opportunity to elect Shahrar Ali as leader, Andrea Carey-Fuller as deputy leader with proven campaigners like Theo Simon on the team, we may just be able get the Green Party back on track.

David Taylor is a Green Party activist, former election candidate and a branch chair of Unite the union, and a Green Left Supporter

Vote for Change in the Green Party Leadership Contest

I joined the Green party in early 2006, a former Labour party voter and supporter, though never a member, disillusioned with the decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq, and much else that New Labour represented. I had also become increasingly alarmed by climate change, and had discovered ecosocialism, which I thought the Green party was best placed to promote. What I found was, although somewhat disorganised, a decent party, which genuinely seemed to want to do politics differently, ethically and democratically. A sharp contrast to Labour, for sure.

Over the years though the party has embarked on journey away from the principles that I found so attractive. It probably began with the move from principle speakers to leader (or co-leaders) in 2008. I voted against the move, but accepted the result, seeing that it might get us more media attention, which was largely how it was sold to the membership. But the party did seem to be heading off on a different trajectory though, from that point.

In more recent years I started to hear more and more disturbing stories about the inner workings at the top of the party. In 2016, reports emerged of local Green parties being leaned on by the leaders, Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley, at that stage, to stand down from a by-election in Richmond, in favour of the Lib Dem candidate. The chair of one of the local parties involved, Kingston, was forced to resign after he revealed details about a £250,000 donation made to the Green party on the condition they did not stand in Richmond. This was used to pile pressure on the local parties.

In 2018, a story was published on the Left Foot Forward website, accusing Shahrar Ali, a former co deputy leader of the party, and a candidate at the time for leader, of antisemitism. The piece was written by the new editor of the site, and recently resigned Green party member, Josiah Mortimer. It featured a selectively edited video of a speech made by Shahrar Ali, which was eventually restored to its full, complete length. Was this an attempt to smear Shahrar Ali? It certainly looked like it.

In 2019, I was shocked to hear that a senior member of the Green party, at the behest of the Campaign Against Antisemitism group, had used the party’s internal complaints procedure, against Shahrar Ali. The complaint was eventually dismissed, but why did this prominent member use the internal complaints system like this? A question unfortunately never answered by the member concerned.

I got to thinking that something wasn’t really right with what was going on and started to dig deeper into things as best I could. I found that people who knew about the machinations of the party’s leadership, were only willing to speak to me about it anonymously or privately. 

I contacted a former employee of the Green party, about the antisemitism complaint brought against Shahrar Ali. She did not want to go public with what she knew, but agreed with me privately when I suggested to her that ‘there is something rotten at the top of the party.’

Later in 2019, a member of one of the local parties involved in the disastrous Unite to Remain electoral pact with the Lib Dems (and Plaid Cymru) I was in touch with, told me that the national party had side-lined their party from the decision to not stand. The local party did not want to be associated by the Unite to Remain pact. Shades of the Richmond by-election.

I watched with dismay as Natalie Bennett in 2019, was given a peerage, as part of Theresa May’s resignation honours. The decision was made by the small group around leadership, with no say from the wider membership. If I’d had a vote, I probably would have voted for Natalie, but that is not point, this is all part of the undemocratic nature of the party’s hierarchy. 

London Green Left blog has also learned that Rashid Nix, the equalities and diversity co-ordinator on the Green party executive (GPex), is taking two senior London Green party members to an Employment Tribunal for racial discrimination. As well as an internal victimisation case. This after the two members concerned walked out of a judicial mediation meeting between both sides of the dispute.

Whilst waiting for the internal process to begin, a story was published on, yes you guessed it, Left Foot Forward, written by Joe Lo. Both Lo and Mortimer were writers for the Bright Green website prior to Left Foot Forward. The piece looks like a crude attempt to smear Nix’s name. A tactic we have seen before used against Shahrar Ali by the same website.

Finally, someone did go public. Dee Searle, a former GPex member, who has now left the party, wrote a piece for this blog which sheds a shocking light on what goes on at the top of the Green party. It says that a small clique around the leaders and Caroline Lucas’s office, take all the decisions, are democratically unaccountable and has ‘become more ruthless and less tolerant of genuine discussion.’ I urge you to read this post, and also the comments below it where others corroborate what Dee Searle has written from their own personal experiences.

It saddens me deeply, that this is what the party has come to, but members have perhaps one more opportunity to free the party from its controlling clique, and put the party back on a decent pathway. This year’s leadership and deputy leadership elections are that opportunity. Please use your vote wisely.

I will be first preferencing Shahrar Ali for leader, and Andrea Carey-Fuller for deputy leader, who I know to be decent people, and great campaigners, but whoever members decide to vote for, please do not vote for the incumbents. The Green party needs to change, and it is in your hands if we are to have a party we can be proud of, once again.  

Voting is from 3 to 31 August.

Green / Lib Dem Electoral Pact was a Mistake that Shouldn’t be Repeated

As the full implications of last Thursday’s general election result sinks in, with five more long years of Tory rule, and a hard right Tory government at that, what lessons can be learnt from the election by the Green party?

The Greens did stand in some marginal constituencies where in the end Labour lost out to the Tories, like Kensington and Bury North, where the size of the Tory majority was less than the Green vote. These were outside of the pact with Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru and where Labour had refused to enter into any electoral arrangements, but may well have damaged the Greens reputationally. But it was the pact, with its high profile story at the beginning of the election campaign, that may do more lasting damage.  

The electoral pact with the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru failed to deliver any wins for any of the parties involved, so must be judged a failure all round. But what the pact may have achieved is making Labour’s defeat even heavier than it might otherwise have been. Constituencies like Stroud where the Lib Dems stood down in favour of the Greens, the Green vote was more than the majority that the Tories attained. Likewise, Warrington South, where the Greens stood down in favour of the Lib Dems, the Lib Dem vote was larger than the Tory majority.

Of course, there is no guarantee that had the pact not existed, voters would have backed Labour, but in marginal constituencies like these, which neither the Lib Dems or Greens could have won anyway, the risk was clear. Considering that the pact was organised via the Unite to Remain (UTR) campaign group, and Labour were offering a second referendum on Brexit, this pact made it more likely that we would be leaving the European Union (EU), rather than getting an opportunity to remain. It was counter-productive, to say the least.

Furthermore, the Greens initial objective of making this the ‘climate election’ was undermined and played into the Tory narrative of it being the ‘Brexit election.’ The pact probably didn’t lead to the Greens losing many votes, although perhaps some, as most Green voters are remainers. The modest increase of 1.1% for the Greens in the overall result of the election, as against 2017, appears to show this, but given the way climate change and environmental matters more widely have risen up the political agenda recently, it could well be argued that the Greens should have done much better.

The pact wasn’t universally popular amongst the Green party membership either, with many resigning from the party, and other activists were demotivated at the very beginning of the election campaign. And with all of this for no electoral benefit to the Greens, despite claims by the party’s leadership before the election. It was all wishful thinking.

The Green Party conference motion which allowed the leadership to indulge in electoral pacts, was fairly vague, but did stipulate that the final decision on any pacts would be left to local parties, but this doesn’t appear to have been the case everywhere. Sources from inside one of the local parties involved in the pact has told London Green Left blog that their opinion wasn't sought. 

The Brecon and Radnorshire constituency where the byelection in August was a proto-type for the eventual pact, albeit without the local party's consent, when they were not planning to stand anyway. The leadership of the Welsh party knew that they rejected any notion of a pact at the byelection, and that their officers were not in favour of any association with UTR. The pact was announced, before the end of nominations, so their choice then became to either not stand and become part of the pact they hadn't consented to or attempt to stand and severely embarrass the national party.

There was no contact between the local party and the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru, all of this was done by the national party. Radnorshire Greens were not even aware their constituency was being included in the discussions with other parties. The local party had also taken a democratic vote which rejected entering into any pacts at the general election.    

There is the feeling that discussion was stifled and the local party kept in the dark as to what was going on, until it was too late to change the leaderships' decision. This does not sound like leaving the final say on any pacts to local parties, rather the reverse.  

The risk for the Green party was that this pact with the neo-liberal Lib Dems, with a leader seemingly keen to launch a nuclear war, would tarnish the Green brand and conversely would allow the Lib Dems to paint themselves as ‘green,’ which they are not. I’ve always been of the opinion that in some places, local circumstances might make standing or not standing Green candidates, a legitimate course of action. But this should be a genuinely local decision, and not be manipulated by the leadership of the national party at all.

We perhaps became too blindsided by the desire to remain in the EU too, and this led to poor judgement at the top of the party. I hope the party can discuss all of this in the coming months so as we don’t take such amateur decisions in the future.

Leaving the Greens – A Pact Too Far

Written by Allan Todd

“Labour really need to get their act together and I would like to see them announce at the general election that they will go into coalition with the Greens and Caroline Lucas will be their environment secretary.”

George Monbiot, Viva! Life, Issue 72, Winter 2019, p.9

Sadly, life - especially political life - sometimes springs surprises on us all: some of which are good, but also some which are totally unforeseen and very bad.

Last Friday, I regretfully felt it necessary to resign from the Green Party - and from my role as Membership Secretary of Allerdale and Copeland Green Party, my local Green party. As a consequence of that decision, I have also decided that I should stand down as a Green Party councillor in Keswick. I am under no illusion that those who voted for me in June did so because of who I am - the votes I received were simply because I was representing the Green Party. As I am no longer a member of the Green Party, I feel that - morally - I have no option now but to stand down from Keswick Town Council.

I was proud to join the Green Party in 2012, proud to stand as their candidate in Copeland for the 2015 General Election, proud to stand for various local elections as a Green Party candidate - and proud to be elected this June to Keswick Town Council as its only Green Party councillor.

In addition, I have been very proud, as a Green Party member, to have organised the anti-fracking ‘Green Monday’ protests at Preston New Road over the past 2 and a half years.

And, finally, I was proud to be a member of Green Left, the small but influential ecosocialist group within the Green Party.

Down the Yellow-Tory Brick Road?

Though very disappointed by the decision of my local Green party to stand in both the marginal seats of Copeland and Workington, I could have lived with that - and was prepared to do so. 

Sadly, my pride in being associated with the Green Party began to erode on Thursday 7 November, when the ‘Unite to Remain’ pact with the neoliberal Lib Dems was first announced.

This is a party which has yet to apologise for its part in causing over 120,000 austerity-related deaths since 2010 - Professor King of Cambridge University, one of the authors of the 2017 Report in question, described those deaths as “economic murder”.

Of course, I’m fully aware that it’s always possible to argue that different analyses are more correct than others - & I really hope my fears are unfounded. But, given that John Curtice (one of the UK’s top election experts) thinks the pact will yield the Greens not a single extra seat, it seems immoral to gamble - on the lives of the most deprived - that he’s wrong; or that Greens standing in the 80+ key marginals that Labour need to win/hold to prevent Johnson returning as PM on 13 December, won’t make any difference to the national outcome. It’s ok to gamble with our own lives - but gambling with the lives of others seems to me to be incredibly wrong.

In particular, the push for Bristol West, Stroud & Warrington South as target seats threatens to see Labour MPs replaced by Tories. The latest YouGov poll for Stroud sees Molly Scott Cato increasing the Green vote in this extremely marginal seat - but the Tories taking it from the sitting Labour MP.

The more I’ve examined this pact, the more it appears to be a short-sighted, opportunistic and unprincipled pact: 10 of the 60 ‘target’ seats actually target pro-Remain Labour MPs!

In fact, on 19 November, The Guardian ran an OpEd from Tom Meadowcroft, who had been the Green Party parliamentary candidate for the Bristol seat of Filton and Bradley Stoke, in which he explained why he had withdrawn from the election: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/unite-to-remain-anti-brexit-labour-green-party-seat 

Describing the pact as “rank opportunism”, he stated his main reason for resigning was because:

“The obvious problem, to me, was that the [Unite to Remain] alliance could end up hurting the Remain cause as much as helping it. Polling expert John Curtice predicted immediately after details were released that there were ‘probably five or six seats’ that might be turned over by the pact - but rather counterproductively, it targets 10 pro-Remain Labour MPs…. As a prospective Green Party MP, I would have taken crucial votes from Labour - but its Brexit policy is [now] the closest to ours."

But when the leader of the LibDems - in the ‘other’ Leaders’ Debate on ITV - announced her willingness to unleash the horrors of nuclear warfare on civilians - something so much in conflict with Green Party policy and values - I really expected our leaders to say that was a step too far and that they were therefore withdrawing from the pact. It has been their deafening silence on this that finally drove me to resign. 

On my Todd? 

To be honest, I was expecting a lot of very angry reactions to my decision to resign - instead, the opposite has been true: only one negative/hostile one (so far!) & LOADS of sympathetic responses (it would be big-headed to say how many - but it’s taking me ages to reply!). Quite a few have told me that they also have resigned from the Green Party over the LibDem pact issue. Which seems to confirm that the pact is a BIG mistake.

The saddest thing for me is that, as regards both policies & core values, the Green Party is by far and away the only party I want to belong to - I most categorically WON’T be joining Labour. 

I’ve supported Proportional Representation (PR) for almost 50 years, and fully get that the whole ‘No PR' thing makes a mockery of real democracy - Labour really need to commit to that, AND to forming a pact with the Greens. In virtually every other European country, this happens - & results in a significantly increased vote for radical policies. 

But Labour’s policy weaknesses are no excuse for holding hands with an unrepentant neoliberal party.

In fact, with less than a week to go to the election - and with opinion polls predicting a Tory victory - it is not too late for the Green and Labour Parties to come to their senses and act like they really mean their respective straplines: 

For The Common Good - For The Many, Not The Few  

What Labour needs to do now - before it is too late - is to ask the Greens to join them in a truly radical pact. This would include getting their candidate in Caroline Lucas’s Brighton seat to stop campaigning and instead to ask all Labour voters there to vote Green. They should also do the same in the Isle of Wight. Ideally, they should also commit - at long last - to the much-needed democratic reform of PR.  

In return, the Greens should end their toxic pact with the neoliberal LibDems and, instead, join with Labour in a radical anti-Tory pact. In addition, they should get all their candidates in the 80+ crucial marginals - that Labour need to win/hold in order to stop Johnson returning as Prime Minister - to cease campaigning and, instead, call on all Green voters in those seats to vote Labour.

Caroline Lucas (Green Party) & Clive Lewis (Labour Party)

The 99% need - and deserve - to have both parties behaving in such a principled political way in such a crucial general election as this one. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath - both seem determined to continue behaving like squabbling children in the playground. 

Both parties need to realise that politics isn’t some comfortable Sixth Form Debating society for the relatively well-off, who won’t pay a price if their various ‘guesstimates’ prove to be mistaken - instead, it’s an arena in which the wrong decisions can, quite literally, spell death-by-austerity for yet more members of the precariat. 

What now? 

What I have been doing in my marginal seat of Copeland (Tory MP) - and in our adjoining marginal seat of Workington (where pro-Remain Labour MP Sue Hayman is under serious pressure from the ex-UKIP Tory candidate) - is campaigning for both the Labour candidates.  

Although I’m voting for Labour in Copeland, I will be arranging for a much more effective Green vote (and one which doesn’t risk helping the Tories MP gain another seat!) in the Isle of Wight, via Swap My Vote: https://www.swapmyvote.uk/ 

I urge all Green voters in key Labour marginals to vote Labour and then, via Swap My Vote, get a Labour supporter in the Isle of Wight to cast an effective vote for the Green Party candidate there, who stands a real chance of defeating the sitting Tory MP. 

At the end of the day, I don’t want to wake up on 13 December & find Johnson has just managed to get one more MP than the Labour Party. 

I remain an ecosocialist, & will still be voting Green in local and European elections (if we ever have another one!) - and am more than willing to help my former local party members & supporters with such election campaigns (assuming they’d want my help). 

In the interim, I’ve signed up to DiEM25: its political position - in what they correctly call “This once-in-a-lifetime election” - is to campaign for Labour; or, in those seats where the Greens, SNP or Plaid Cymru have a greater chance of defeating the Tories, to campaign for them. SIGNIFICANTLY, they are NOT doing so for the neoliberal Lib Dems - which is yet another indication that we/the Greens have made a HUGE strategic & political mistake by signing up to this ‘Unite to Remain’ pact with the Lib Dems. 

Pessimism - a sin? 

I first became involved in politics in 1963, when I was 14, thanks to Shelley’s Collected Prose & Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring - and my first political ‘act’ was to join CND (though living in the rural depths of South Norfolk at the time, my parents wouldn’t let me join the CND marches!). And ever since first coming across his Prison Notebooks in 1977, I’ve always tried to follow Antonio Gramsci’s maxim: “Pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will!”  

But I have never been so pessimistic/depressed about how things, across the board (but especially the Climate and Ecological Crisis), are going. 

Quite frankly, I have to say I’m dreading the results of this election - both locally & nationally. To be blunt, I think we’ll be f**ked for decades to come. 

Allan Todd is anti-fracking and Extinction Rebellion activist and an ecosocialist campaigner