Why I resigned from the Green Party

 Written by Andrea Carey-Fuller

It was with great sadness that I resigned my position on the Green Party Regional Council and left the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW), having been a member for 8 years, in May 2021. I come from a human rights background acting as an advocate standing up for the rights of vulnerable groups of people. I had quite a high profile in Lewisham - having worked collaboratively with other groups of people on the Stop TTIP campaign and the Save Tidemill campaign. I stood in Lewisham local elections 3 times, and in the General Election 2019 (Lewisham Deptford). I was the London Federation AGM Coordinator for about 5 years, and worked on education policy for a year. 

Until I stood in the General Election in 2019, I had no idea of the toxicity bubbling underneath the Green Party regarding Trans Rights Activists (TRA's) viewing anyone who stands up for women's rights as being 'Transphobic'. When I pledged my support for A Woman's Place manifesto (among a host of other pledges such as support for the Future Generations Bill etc) in the last General Election I was shocked that people in my own party piled on me on Twitter calling me a bigot and transphobic!  

This harassment and bullying from within then continued and reached epic proportions when I stood for Deputy Leader on a platform of increasing engagement in the party, the need for a Women's Rights policy, and encouraging members to vote in more Greens of Colour. 

When I put myself forward as a candidate for GPRC London Rep, the online abuse started again and the Elections Coordinator for the London Regional Green Party (Stephan Liberadzki, complicit with Colin Boyle the Coordinator)) tried to avoid counting the vote (as I had won by a slim margin) and attempted to re-run the election again to get a different result!  

They both ignored my complaints about lack of due process and had allowed Danny Keeling who identified as a man in the 2019 General Election to put his name forward for the female rep role. I found out shortly after this that Stephan himself had called me transphobic on Twitter during the GPEX Elections 2020 as well! Colin’s view of the abuse and harassment was that it was “fair comment”! 

As a GPRC rep I saw how the complaints system was being abused to continually suspend 'Gender Critical members.' This view that Women's rights is 'Transphobic' is being continually touted by the current leadership of Sian/Jonathan/Ameila/Liz Reason (Green Party Executive Chair) and the CEO Mary Clegg. It was Sian Berry and Caroline Russell who spoke against my motion at Conference to have a women's rights section (supported by Baroness Jenny Jones) put under the Green Party's Rights and Responsibilities, declaring the motion to be "transphobic and trans-exclusionary."   

Following Conference, our Co-Leader Sian Berry, was crowing on Twitter that she had defeated the Women's Rights motion as if this was a good thing! This action on Sian's part was both undignified, and irresponsible. I have known both Sian and Caroline Russell (both of whom I used to have high regard for), for a number of years as I have worked alongside them in London on various campaigns. 

By wrongly repeating 'Trans Activist' rhetoric and mantras about women's rights being transphobic they continue to fuel division, and incite toxicity within our party - making it an unhealthy place for any member who dares to support women's rights as set out in the UN Convention against the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.  (Ratified by the UK Government in 1986 - see: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm) 

It states that parties agree to take all appropriate measures, including legislation and temporary special measures, so that women can enjoy all their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The Convention is the only human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. It affirms women's rights to acquire, change or retain their nationality and the nationality of their children. It also states parties also agree to take appropriate measures against all forms of traffic in women and the exploitation of women." 

I had already raised the issue of increasing levels of harassment and toxicity towards women and anyone who supports women's rights within the Green Party at the GPRC meeting in March saying that we need to have  "a full, frank and open discussion about the ever-increasing levels of intolerance towards Green Party members who speak up for women's rights.” 

This conversation about the divisions and toxicity within our party is long overdue as it is currently tearing the party apart. GPRC, GPEX and the CEO have a shared responsibility to ensure that the Green Party of England and Wales is adhering to UK law - both the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Equality Act 2010 - which sets out protection for sex-based discrimination. 

In these laws, women are defined and are supposed to be protected by their biological sex - hence the term sex-based rights. There is no discrimination against Trans Women - because they have their own protection set out in the Equality Act under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.  

Prior to Conference I alerted members to the LGBTIQA+ group claiming that the Women's Rights motions were against Green Party values - this was untrue, and used as a propaganda tool to create yet more hatred against women's rights whilst gathering support for the E03 Self-ID motion which impedes upon women's rights to single-sex services, and also the E05 Recognise Trans Parents Motion which ignores Article 12 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child which again the UK ratified in 1990. 

Under our Rights and Responsibilities policy RR201 - GPEW states "Accepting interconnectedness means that individuals and groups share rights to equitable status, treatment and freedoms. The Phiilosophical Basis of the party (PB303/304) states that the “legitimate interests of all people are of equal value.” The Green Party rejects all forms of discrimination whether based on race, colour, sex, religion, national origin, social origin or any other prejudice. The Green Party promotes the implementation of policies which protect human rights and rejects all forms of exploitation for any purpose whatsoever.' CEDAW is one of 9 UN Conventions that make up Universal Human Rights. 

Under the Equality Act 2010 there are 9 Protected characteristics and the Green Party only has policies for 8 of them: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; sexual orientation; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief (limited to Traveller's rights), but, nothing on sex (based rights for women linked to CEDAW/or the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against women). 

We all know that women continue to be discriminated against based upon their sex - only 26% of women in the House of Lords & 34% of female MP's (hence the 50:50 campaign to aim to have 50% of female MP's in Parliament: https://5050parliament.co.uk/) which I was the GPEW representative for (and resigned from after the Conference motion fell); 3-4 women are killed by men in the UK every week; 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime; 1 in 5 women will experience sexual assault during her lifetime; in 2018 6,500 women and girls reported FGM; women and girls are subjected to trafficking for sexual exploitation, and there are only 5% of female CEO's in the top 100 UK companies.  

GPRC need to do something about this before more and more women (and men) feel they can no longer in all conscience stay in the party - one of the latest resignations is of Cllr Dom Armstrong who has made this statement on Facebook here: 

https://www.facebook.com/Cllr-Dom-Armstrong-404663170083504/

If you have been sitting on the fence on this issue, or if you have been put under the spell of the Trans Rights Movement (which make no mistake about it is being funded by Big Pharma who have a vested interest in the drugs used as part of the Transition process) then I would urge you to listen to evidence given this week by:

Graham Linehan at the Communications and Digital Committee Tuesday 9 March 2021: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBDcsAzm88s 

I look forward to supporting a kind and open discussion about these issues to try to find some resolve for the party going forward. 

The final straw for me was a report to GPEX by the CEO in May 2021 - stating that "women's rights infringe upon Trans rights." I spoke with a couple of colleagues before the GPEX meeting to bring this to their attention - because even as a GPRC colleague I would have been barred from raising this issue in a GPEX meeting! I emailed Martha James one of the Co-Chairs asking her to question this report which was wrong in law (Equality Act/CEDAW/HRA) and this would have been a valid and objective reason for the intervention given that GPRC have a duty of care to ensure that the `Party is in line with UK Law!  

A couple of GPEX members made representations regarding the invalidity of the statement the CEO had made but Liz Reason allowed it to go to a vote and the majority of people on GPEX voted in favour - against both the law, but primarily as they saw it, against Gender Critical members and in particular women in the Green Party/Green Party Women. 

I left the Green Party because I could not bear to be part of this unjust, punitive system a minute longer! When I didn't agree with the continuation of suspensions and voted against most of these suspensions bar two - one related to harassment and one related to a member using sexually explicit materials at some meeting (both of these in my view are the real kinds of cases which justify suspension), a complaint was put in about me and efforts to get me removed from GPRC.   

I complained to GPRC and the CEO, but nothing much was done and no action has been taken to support Women Rights under the Equality Act either - in fact by letting GPEX hold this 'vote' in support of Mary Clegg's statement GPEX has cemented the Trans Rights focus of the GPEW. 

The Automatic suspension system is not fit for purpose, there is no right to reply, if you make any representations against your suspension your rep can choose whether to speak for you or not!; it is a system that supports injustice and allows prejudice to be supported.  

I will still keep campaigning on the Environment, Climate Change, social justice and women's/children's rights issues which are close to my heart, and I wanted to thank everyone who supported me when I was in the party trying to bring about positive change. 

I can only hope that the new leadership will bring equality and unity to all members in the party. 

Andrea Carey-Fuller is a former member of the Green Party of England and Wales and Green Left.

Remembered - Joel Kovel - A Giant of Ecosocialist Thinking

Three years ago today, Joel Kovel, passed away. Some have said that he was as important to ecosocialism as Karl Marx was to socialism. This is a repost of what I wrote at the time, after hearing of his death.  

Joel Kovel died in New York City on 30 April 2018 at the age of 81. A radical psychiatrist, academic, writer and political activist, he will be best remembered as one of the most influential ecosocialist thinkers of modern times. In 2001 he co-wrote, with Michel Lowy, the first ecosocialist manifesto, a call for an end to the destructive capitalist system and demand it is replaced with ecosocialism, before capitalism completely destroys the planet.

His book The Enemy of Nature first published in 2002, and updated in a second edition in 2007, is a must read for socialists, greens and anyone concerned with environmental degradation. It was this book in particular that brought Joel to my attention in 2004. It is simply brilliant in its line of reasoning, placing the blame for our ecological ills firmly at the door of the dominant world system of endless growth, capitalism.

I had always considered myself to be a socialist, but by the early 2000's I was also becoming increasingly alarmed by environmental problems, especially climate change. Kovel blends a critique of capitalism with both a red and green angle, in the most compelling way I have yet come across. This, despite much fine thinking and writing on the matter, before and since.

Kovel edited the pioneering ecosocialist magazine, Capitalism Nature Socialism, where he worked with another leading ecosocialist from 1980's, James O'Connor. He wrote other books including White Racism, Red Hunting in the Promised Land and Overcoming Zionism.

One stand out thing from The Enemy of Nature is Kovel's use of the term 'usufruct' which Karl Marx had theorised about in the third volume of Capital. The word is from the Latin, and goes back as least as far as the Roman Empire, and is part of many countries law. It refers to the legal right to use and derive benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged.

Kovel highlights Marx's use of the word when he quotes that "human beings are no more than the planet’s usufructaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.” Kovel said in an eco-socialist society, “everyone will have... rights of use and ownership over those means of production necessary to express the creativity of human nature.”

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the US Senate in 1998 from New York and ran again unsuccessfully for the US Green Party presidential nomination in 2000, when he lost out to Ralph Nader. He commented that if he had a dollar for every Green Party member who told him they liked his ideas, but he should drop the socialist tag, he would have been a very rich man. He thought Nader was a populist with no real understanding of ecological matters.

He fell out with Murray Bookchin, the anarchist founder of Social Ecology, though I don't know why, since their ideas were very similar, which was a pity. But they were certainly equals in terms of developing the thinking that links ecological and social exploitation with the capitalist world system. To my mind social ecology and ecosocialism are pretty much the same ideology.

I had the pleasure of meeting Joel when he came to London in 2007 to speak at the London School of Economics, to promote the release of the second edition of The Enemy of Nature and to talk about ecosocialism generally. I was in small group that went to the pub with him afterwards, and he was charming and interesting in equal measure. I did hear that Kovel was planning another visit to London, but I guess he was not well enough to make the journey in the end.

Despite the looming ecological crisis and 'force-field' to use his expression, of global capitalism he remained hopeful, cheerful even, about the prospect of ending capital's rule over humanity. In the afterword to The Enemy of Nature, Kovel writes that when he was asked why he didn't despair about the ecological crisis and all powerful capital, "I do not despair; for whatever reason, I actually find myself in good spirits as I studied the crisis further and devised the ideas that have gone into this work."

Kovel believed that if his logic was wrong, and capitalism managed to reform itself into a truly eco-friendly system, then fine, all will be well. But if he was right, at least his line of reasoning offered hope of overcoming the system and crisis. This perception, Kovel suggested was liberating in itself, and can help us "to meet it actively instead of passively submitting to the terms of understanding dealt out by the dominant system."

I think that kind of sums up Joel’s legacy, as a giant of ecosocialist thinking who will be sorely missed.   

Ecosocialism – A Brief Description

 

This is a write up of a talk I gave to my local Green Party meeting in Haringey, north London, a little while back, on ecosocialism. 

Ecosocialism is a green political philosophy - it is an ecocentric and democratic socialism, not to be confused with social democracy, at least in the longer run.

It is not like twentieth century socialisms, it is more like nineteenth century socialisms and owes a fair amount to anarchist theory. Twentieth century socialisms had, if anything, an even more dismal record than capitalism on ecology.

Ecosocialism is anti-capitalist, and sees the capitalist system as the effective cause of the ecological crisis.

Capitalism commodifies everything and puts a price on it, which is exchange value, and uses the earth as a resource for production and sink for the dumping of toxic waste from the production process, usually free of cost. Climate change is the most spectacular aspect of the ecological crisis, but not the only one. Capitalism releases toxic pollution, into the air, land and sea.

Capitalism is unable to solve the ecological crisis it has set going, because the logic of the system is to ‘grow or die’. Growth that is exponential and the earth is now close to its limit of being able to buffer the damage caused by this required infinite growth, on a finite planet.

I’m going to say something about the historical lineage of the philosophy, threads of which can be traced back for as long as human beings have formed communities, where some elements of ecosocialism can be found in the way people have lived in balance with nature. And today, many indigenous peoples around the world still practice some of these forms of social and economic management.

Karl Marx is somewhat of a controversial figure for ecosocialists, with some believing that he was essentially a ‘productivist.’ For myself, I believe that Marx’s work was of its time, and incomplete, but he certainly had a green side to him. Take this quote for example from the third volume of Capital:

From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition. (Marx 1894: 776). 

In South America ecosocialism has found its way into government. Venezuela, has a Department of Ecosocialism, although the ecosocialism pursued is not the purest in form. Bolivia runs forms of ecosocialism in government and has fought off many capitalist corporations plunder of the country’s natural resources, in mining and gas extraction on common land.

There is an English line too. The first stories to be told about Robin Hood, were of a man fighting against crown enclosures of common land. He has become famous for ‘robbing from the rich to give to the poor’, but in fact what he was doing, was fighting to stop the rich robbing from the poor.

Then there were the Diggers during the English civil war, who set up communes on common land and called for a ‘common treasury of the land.'

And William Morris, the nineteenth century socialist and craft movement champion. If you read his novel News from Nowhere, it describes an ecosocialist utopia.

In the modern age, ecosocialism emerged in the mid 1980s, in the west, in the United States, although you can argue quite convincingly that in the US it goes back to Murray Bookchin’s social ecology movement in the mid 1960s. And in the east, in India, where to a lesser extent ecosocialism emerged but more so in the philosophy of ecofeminism, which is a similar philosophy to ecosocialism. 

For example, ecosocialists agree with ecofeminists that the oppression of women in our society is part and parcel of the system's domination of nature, reproduction in particular. This is done by the capitalist system co-opting the prevailing patriarchal practices, to extract extra surplus value from the workers, in terms of unpaid domestic labour, without which the system could not function. 

And all for free to the system.

Examples of modern day ecosocialism, to an extent, can be found in the Kurdish area of northern Syria called Rojava and the Zapatistas in Chiapas the most southern state in Mexico.

So, what are the component parts of ecosocialism? There are many, but I’ve selected four of the main ones:

Metabolic Rift

Nature contains billions of ecosystems, all connected in a finely balanced way, to form what we might call the ‘ecosphere’. Capitalism disrupts and eventually completely ruptures this balance, setting off chain reactions which cannot be cured easily, if at all. Human beings are ecosystems too, and the way the system forces us to live, causes a rupture between us and nature and leads to illnesses like stress, depression and obesity.

And to those who say the ways of capitalism are ‘human nature’, then if this is true, why have we only been living this way for a few hundred years? The only thing natural about capitalism, is that it was invented by creatures of nature, us. And we can just as easily un-invent it – and we should.

Ecosocialist writer James Bellamy Foster has managed to link this to Karl Marx’s notion of an ‘irreparable rift’ between humans and nature, in volume three of Capital.

The Commons

Historically, in Britain and other western nations, people were forcibly removed from common land as it was enclosed, with violence employed, to drive the people off the land and into the capitalist factories in the towns and cities. And today the same thing is happening in developing countries. By taking away people's alternative way of providing for themselves, they are left with no choice but to move into cities and work often 16 hours a day for meagre pay in factories, where health and safety is non-existent, and female workers are routinely harassed and molested.

When I visited Senegal in west Africa a few years ago, one day I spoke with some fishermen who complained about the factory ships from the European Union, Russia and Japan that were hoovering up all of the fish, so much so, that the local fisherman couldn’t catch enough fish anymore to earn a decent living. Here was a system of managed commons which had fed local people for thousands of years and provided a livelihood for the fishermen, destroyed by the capitalist factory boats. Robbing from the poor - to give to the rich.

You have probably heard of the ‘global commons’ on the internet, peer to peer sharing and free software, which ecosocialists welcome, with the possibilities it provides for living outside of the capitalist system, to some extent anyway.

Ecocentric Production

This is a quote from my favourite ecosocialist writer Joel Kovel describing our vision of ecosocialism: ‘a society in which production is carried out by freely associated labour, and by consciously ecocentric means and ends’.

I think this phrase covers the production process under ecosocialism neatly. The ‘freely associated labour’ bit refers to the absence of surplus value, profit for capital.

Production would be for ‘use-value’, not ‘exchange value'. It will require useful workers only, doctors, nurses, teachers etc. and there will be no need for work such as pushing numbers around on a computer in a bank in the City of London, which is useless to humanity - and indeed harmful.

What is produced will be of the highest quality, and beauty, and made to last and be repairable. My laptop packed up last week and I put it in for repair. But they couldn’t fix it because they couldn’t get the replacement part – this laptop is only a little over a year old, but it is obsolete. Throw it away, and get another was the advice. This is purposefully a planned obsolescence, to drive demand for new production within modern capitalism.

In Green Party circles you hear a lot about sustainability, or sustainable production, but we ecosocialists prefer the word sufficiency, or sufficient production. Only as much as is needed will be produced, and no more. It should go without saying that the production process will be in balance with nature too.

Radical Democracy

Democracy in an ecosocialist society will devolve all decisions down to the lowest possible level. A series of assemblies, local, town, regional and at least at first, national. The assemblies will be freely elected and each assembly will be subject to recall from the level below, and assembly members should serve only one term. Eventually, the central state will be dissolved.

All of this must seem like a million miles away – and it is. But now is not the same thing as the future. The ecological crisis will get worse, if we carry on like we are, and will present opportunities where radical solutions are sought. We must be ready to seize these opportunities.

And where does this all leave the Green Party? Well, interestingly The Guardian newspaper, during the UK 2015 general election campaign, twice, once by one of its columnists and once in an editorial, described the Green Party as ecosocialist.

I think what was meant by this, was concern for the environment and advocating things like nationalising the railways and energy companies – all of which is to the good, but it is not really ecosocialism.

The Green Party seems to have some hazy notions which are heading in the right direction, but for some reason, fails to follow through this thinking to its logical end – ecosocialism.

We in Green Left, try to push it along a bit, so that the Green Party fulfils its radical agenda, which logically means parting company with capitalism and championing ecosocialism.  

Can the Green Party be Saved from its Leadership Clique?

Written by Dee Searle, who is a former member of the Green Party of England and Wales. 

Earlier this month the widely respected campaigning journalist and writer Bea Campbell left the Green Party, citing bullying, authoritarianism and narcissism among radical transgender activists.

Campbell’s description of the impact on the party of what she calls the “extreme trans dogma” that transwomen are women; transmen are men - at the expense of women’s rights and safety - is pretty shocking. Unfortunately, it’s just one aspect of a much wider and deeper crisis in the party. 

The party claims to do politics differently but in practice acts pretty much the same as other political parties. It is riven with internal tribalism; allows key decisions to be taken by small groups of well-connected members; prioritises electoral success over radical environmental campaigning; has a dysfunctional, partisan disciplinary system; engages in some questionable employment practices; and has become a platform for those with political or professional career ambitions and/or who want to advance a particular strand of identity politics. 

Most Green Party members bask in Caroline Lucas’s speeches and/or focus on local activities, oblivious to machinations at national level. However, in my four stints on the Green Party Executive from 2015 to earlier this year, I’ve witnessed the party become more ruthless and less tolerant of genuine discussion. In addition, as an ordinary, elected, Green Party Executive (GPEx) member, I was powerless to make any real difference because the big decisions are taken by the Administration and Finance Committee and/or a group around the leadership and Caroline Lucas’s office. 

This is why I took the sad decision to leave the party in June, after almost seven years of active membership. In addition to GPEx membership and almost daily involvement in national or local organising, I’d spent three years as Chair of Camden Greens, and stood for the party in local council and London Assembly elections, and in Tottenham during the 2015 General Election, when our small, last-minute scratch team achieved our best ever result there. 

Many of the Greens’ troubles stem from the decision taken by the party in early 2016 to prioritise winning local council elections under the Target to Win (TtW) system. The rationale was that we desperately needed a second MP to support Caroline and the way to achieve that was to first win control of a local council as had happened in Brighton. The flaw in this logic is that Brighton is atypical of pretty much anywhere else in England and Wales. Plus, there is only one Caroline Lucas! 

At surface level it makes complete sense for a political party to focus on winning elections. However the underside is that pretty much all of the party’s resources were devoted to developing and maintaining a national election machinery, with no funds left for issue-based campaigning. 

Field offices were established and regular “campaign” schools (in reality elections training) held to enforce the rigour of TtW. Local parties selected to pursue TtW must work only in target wards, with activities limited to door knocking and repeat newsletter deliveries (no street stalls allowed). Newsletters and other publications can only include material on local issues and not cover wider politics, such as the climate emergency or Brexit. 

This concentration of resources on elections goes a long way to explaining why the Green Party is often missing from the big political debates. It’s not just that there are few of us and the media is biased towards the big parties: we actually don’t have much substance to contribute. 

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. 

The creation of the manifesto was a microcosm of so much that is wrong with the party. GPEx Publications Coordinator and Policy Coordinator (both roles elected by the membership) were excluded from substantive input, which is slightly odd for a policy-heavy publication. The manifesto was finalised by the group that had removed the climate policies. Green Party Regional Council (which was the body with official sign-off responsibilities) was given around 24 hours to approve an 88-page document. This enabled the leadership to insert favoured commitments (such as transgender people being able to change their legal gender based on self-identification, which is not Green Party policy) and weaken inconvenient ones. 

The party has not published a full internal review of its 2019 General Election campaign, despite the fact that it spent far more than on any previous election (£409,475, according to the Electoral Commission) but was still way behind its best showing (2.7 per cent of the vote, compared with 3.6 per cent in 2015) and didn’t achieve its stated aim of winning a second seat. 

Of course, it’s not unreasonable for a radical political party to underachieve in elections nor to avoid washing its dirty linen in public. What is more worrying is that these unaccountable actions have become the norm for the Green Party, where even those in elected governance positions are unable to hold the decision-takers to account. Instances where GPEx members have been blocked from raising concerns range from the use of social media election ads quoting comedian Jimmy Carr (notorious for tax evasion and a stage show that includes rape jokes) and a woman posing in bra and knickers, to a staff member being summarily dismissed and denied access to union representation, and a court finding of race discrimination in recruitment practices. 

The Greens are supposed to stand for a better kind of politics, based on transparency, integrity, decency and, above all, selfless campaigning to protect our planet’s natural and human resources. The party has no monopoly over environmental politics. Following success by Europe Ecologie Les Verts (an environmentally-focused green party) in France’s local elections, some Extinction Rebellion groups are looking at setting up their own political wing to fight the London Assembly elections and beyond, and there are rumblings elsewhere of setting up a new ecological party. 

This may all come to naught. But if those taking the decisions at the top of the Greens have misjudged the wider mood, they risk leading the party into oblivion. A salutary thought for candidates in the forthcoming leadership and GPEx elections.

Interview – Shahrar Ali Candidate for Leader of the Green Party

Shahrar Ali the Green Party’s Home Affairs spokesperson talks to Green Left’s Mike Shaughnessy about why he is standing to be Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Tell me a little about your background and why you joined the Green party?

I joined the Greens some 18 years ago now – after doing a stint in the European parliament as a researcher and being mightily impressed with the work of Green Group MEPs. I was drafting briefings on science and technology options for policy and researching into environmental risk of GMOs. I had already been campaigning to halt the spread of GMOs into the environment in the late 90s and it was great to be able to make a small contribution towards adoption of a precautionary principle and successive moratoria across Europe. 

My background is in education and I have been a lifelong advocate of affordable lifelong learning – having taught at WEA, City Lit, Birkbeck and as a founder member of a philosophy school set up to help buck the stem of private HEI colleges. I currently work in medical education and have been part of a team involved in some of the challenges of providing student medic support in COVID environments. 

It’s fair to say I really took to the policy, ethos and campaigns of the party – having stood in some 20 plus local, regional, parliamentary and European elections. I’ve written two popular election books in Green politics and was Deputy Leader of the party 2014-16, at the time of the Green surge. However, I feel deeply frustrated, as I know others do too, at our lack of organisational focus and electoral progress.

If you are elected as Leader, what will be your priorities?

Climate Justice.

Ten years is the time remaining for the Green Party to play a meaningful role in securing the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a net zero carbon economy by our target date of 2030. Globally, it is the poor and those least responsible for climate change who are most suffering their harmful impacts – deforestation, disease, malnutrition, food insecurity – today. 

We should be front and centre of this battle for the future of our country and of our planet and all the beautiful species and nonhuman animals we share it with. Yet our political communications do not convey how we can achieve our own 2030 net zero target and our leadership team appear subdued. 

My priority number one would be to fix this by helping to consolidate and energise the party internally and externally. As the Party’s primary spokesperson I would be bold and unapologetic about our vision and the system change required to do what’s scientifically necessary to avert climate catastrophe. 

Shahrar Launching the UpRising Environmental Leadership programme in 2018

What can the Green party do to get more support from BME communities? 

We need to be reaching out by all necessary means – vocalising and campaigning to combat the daily oppression and lack of opportunity faced by BME communities. I have been campaigning for years for the rights and wellbeing of these communities against successive governments’ hostile environment policies – from Guantanamo, the Windrush scandal and Islamophobic Prevent to stop and search and racist van slogans. 

·       I’m a regular speaker on anti-racism demonstrations for the party, especially against the rising tide of xenophobia. 

·       In 2015, I launched the Party’s first BME manifesto in an attempt to broaden our appeal. 

·       I’m active in building BAME community leaders such as the launch of UpRising’s environment leadership programme. 

As the first BME deputy leader, I well understand the impact that having an ethnic visible face has and can continue to have on the increased credibility of our party. I’ve had many conversations with voters who felt they could vote for us as a result. The single most important thing we could do to reach out to those communities would be to elect a BME leader – now. 

Nor can we be seen going round the media studios singling out Muslims by calling for the banning of halal meat that resulted in public condemnation from the Muslim Council of Britain and our own Greens of Colour, two weeks before the election. 

At a time when Black Lives Matter has taken on momentum and systemic racism is being confronted like never before, it simply is not enough to present our solidarity with a white face. We have to mean it in action, on the ground, in our Local Councils and our neighbourhoods. I believe that local party members should be given the training and support they need to get more involved with the Black Lives Matters movement and mobilise for the delivery of the concrete anti-racist policies BME communities are campaigning for. 

What is your opinion of the electoral pact between the Greens and Lib Dems at last year’s General Election? 

This was a total disaster. If it wasn’t bad enough to cause wholly avoidable conflict internally, we also upset core Green voters, nationally. One of our co-leaders was a benefactor of a pact and this was cited as a reason for “Green Party losing members over their alliance with Lib Dems”. 

Nor can we be proud of an election result in which the Green Party once again failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs, and lost our deposits across vast swathes of the country. Compare and contrast this record to the party’s record when I was last a member of the leadership team. In 2015, the Green Party won over a million votes, and kept our deposits in 123 seats. In 2019 the Green Party won 800,000 votes but only kept our deposits in 31 seats. 

What I really can’t fathom is, how, after the disastrous failed experiment of Progressive Alliances in 2017 we tried a variation on the theme some two years later. Our current leadership supported these initiatives through conference both times; and here’s a reminder of just how badly we managed to squander our hard-won political capital. 

It is likely that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism will brought back to the Green party’s autumn conference for adoption. You have been a vocal critic of this definition, can you explain why? 

Anybody who looks at this definition with intellectual honesty, and studies the history behind it, will see it for what it is: a cynical attempt to restrict legitimate criticism of Israel which would also have a chilling effect on free speech and is actually beginning to succeed in that. 

Greens are anti-racist to their very core, fight anti-Jewish racism to the last, and should have no truck with this definition, especially because of the prevalence of anti-semitism smear campaigns against known lifelong antiracists based on adoption of this definition. 

Our leadership have not exactly covered themselves in glory regarding the means by which they would seek to adopt this definition and I believe that is because the grassroots members understand as I do. You can hear this for yourself if you playback my speech to 2018 conference where we averted a late motion by the leadership to adopt something like the definition. 

The final agenda to the planned Spring 2020 conference, which had to be cancelled due to lockdown, had a motion, to the contrary, which would have seen the Party firmly reject the IHRA definition and another from Les Levidow reaffirming our support for BDS (which the definition would prohibit). The leadership-sponsored motion was ruled out of order, as was a wrecking amendment to my motion. I have already begun the process of submitting my motion to next conference so we can state our opposition to the IHRA and move on. 

I have survived numerous attacks upon my character. Members rightly condemned such attacks at the last leadership election. Still I was subjected to an antisemitism complaint from the CAA sponsored by a party member and that, too, was dismissed. 

We must not repeat the mistake of the Labour Party, either under Corbyn or Starmer, of capitulating to this definition. It has resulted in internal strife then injustice against anti-racist campaigners. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose staff member boasted about destroying Corbyn’s election in the most despicable terms (“slaughtered”), is currently the subject of a Charity Commission investigation referred by myself, “Charity faces election bias investigation”. We must clean up our politics. 

In all my actions around this topic, I’ve been driven by the urgency of wanting to hold Israel to account for its unconscionable actions against the Palestinian people. Year after year Israel has added to its international violations, lately with their annexation plan, and I have seen the Green Party become increasingly timid, or completely silent, on this matter. As Leader, I will continue to speak for the rights of the oppressed against their oppressor in the best tradition of the Green Party.

How do rate the government’s handling of the Covid 19 pandemic? 

Where to begin with the missteps and mishaps? Late lockdown; no PPEs for NHS and Care Homes staff; moving frail elderly into Care Homes without testing them – resulting in 25,000 early deaths. No plans for a safe return to schools; no testing capacity to meet the needs to regularly test all key workers; no Test and Contact Tracing programme at community or local level. 

In other words: criminal negligence on an unprecedented scale. Not to mention misplaced loyalty in Cummings! 

As we know Covid deaths disproportionately impact BME communities and the real issue is structural inequality – see my BAME life chances, inequality and death. 

We should have been far bolder about the opportunity for making system-wide change during lockdown – about our overconsumptive lifestyles, about UBI and economic overhall.

How do you think the Green party should position itself electorally in the immediate future? 

I’ve not seen our report from the last election results to enable us to have a better informed conversation. Why isn’t it published yet? If elected, I will make sure that all our members are sent a copy to discuss and learn from it in their local parties. There is not enough accountability nor transparency in the Green Party and we all deserve better. 

Still our electoral positioning is clear: true Green. With Corbyn gone and Starmer in post, our socialist credentials will shine through more brightly. Our environmental appeal is across the board. Let’s not sell ourselves short. 

On electoral reform, Molly Scott Cato is justifiably furious with Labour’s refusal to consider scrapping FPTP. Local party members can make the case for PR by targeting Labour Party constituencies and affiliated organisations as of priority. Labour will struggle under FPTP as it would need to secure an additional 124 seats – and that is not taking into account any potential boundary changes which will favour the Tories even more than they are now. 

What is your vision for the Green party over the next few years? 

When we are interviewed about the economy we should be talking about an ecosocialist transformation, not simply reform. When we are asked about jobs we should be talking about redeployment of arms manufacturing towards wholesale renewable energy plant production. When we are asked about injustice, we should be making the link to the millions of families in the UK living on the bread line and the starving populations of the world who are dying as we speak, due to agricultural intensification, capitalist injustice and climate degradation. 

As a party of radical and transformational change we are simply not conveying these messages. We have become much too timid and risk averse. I will be bold and unapologetic instead. 

Let’s move beyond our comfort zone and elect the first BME leader of a main UK party, too.

Green party members will be voting from 3-31 August.

Website

www.electshahrar.co.uk

Facebook 

https://www.facebook.com/ShahrarAliGreenParty 

Twitter 

https://twitter.com/ShahrarAli

Interview - Andrea Carey-Fuller Green Party Candidate for Deputy Leader

Andrea Carey of Lewisham Green Party, a Green Left supporter talks to Green Left’s Mike Shaughnessy about why she is standing for Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Tell me a little about your background and why you joined the Green party?

My background is working for charities - e.g The Red Cross & a charity for people with learning disabilities, and working as an advocate for community organisations supporting people to have a voice - advocating for mental health services users, disabled people, older people looked after children, asylum seekers/refugees, and currently empowering Deptford through the creation of a Neighbourhood Plan.

I joined the Green Party because it is the only Party which properly addresses Climate Change, and also because it had the best policies across a whole range of issues which fitted well with my own views on these issues.

Why did you decide to join Green Left?

To join others who support eco-socialism - and push for things like the citizens income.

If you are elected as Deputy Leader, what will be your priorities?

Improving Democracy and Equality issues within the Green Party - particularly supporting disabled people's rights and bringing forward a women's rights policy.

Climate Change cross-party women's event to push the GP Green New Deal across to the other parties.

Get the draft motion to suspend the right to buy in all English Cities put forward by Caroline Lucas or by Natalie Bennett.

What is your opinion of the electoral pact between the Greens and Lib Dems at last year’s General Election?

It didn't help and it didn't work as the Lib Dems position on the EU was too polarised!  The only thing that will help us going forward is a change in the voting system to proportional representation.

It is likely that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism will be brought back to the Green party’s autumn conference for adoption. Do you support this definition?

No - I was a co-proposer of Les Levido's policy motion opposing the IHRA 'definition' of antisemitism and reaffirming BDS (Boycotts Divestment Sanctions against Israel), in January 2016:

"Title: Reaffirm support for BDS and oppose a key IHRA example

Synopsis: The GreenParty reaffirms its long-standing support for the BDS campaign, which aims to end international support for Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid. On those grounds, the phrase ‘apartheid Israel’ is anti-racist – not antisemitic, as falsely implied by an example in the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism.

Text of motion:

1. TheGreen Party reaffirms its commitment to promote active participation in the Palestinian-led campaign for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and companies complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. (See motions passed at the spring2008 and autumn 2014 conferences, ‘Israel’ ground Invasion’ in upper right-hand corner, (https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ip). We further endorse the BDScampaign’s peaceful aim: ‘to pressure Israel to comply with international law and to end international support for Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid’ (https://bdsmovement.net/call) 

2. For several years the UK government has attempted to prohibit public bodies from boycotting Israel and companies complicit in its violations of international law. It now plans new legislation for this purpose, as well as for a reverse boycott: to prohibit local authorities from contracting with companies that divest from Israel. We will work with other groups to oppose such government restrictions on organisations exercising their democratic right and ethical responsibility. 

3. On the website of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA),a Working Definition of Antisemitism includes several examples, e.g. ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour’. This contentious example has been deployed for false accusations of antisemitism against the BDS campaign and its keyphrase ‘apartheid Israel’, especially to deny venues for public events or to restrict speakers. The Green Party asserts that the BDS campaign’s aims are anti-racist and rejects the above example of supposed antisemitism.

How do you rate the government’s handling of the Covid 19 pandemic?

They should be put on trial for corporate manslaughter!  Compare BJ with the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern and you have a complete analysis of everything the UK government did wrong:  We should have closed our airports in February.  Following the Pandemic WHO announcement in January - stocks of PPE should have been ordered and plans drawn up for the closing of schools/businesses and the introduction of social distancing.  

If Airports/bus stations/train stations had been disinfected from the start (early March) and flights stopped or people put in quarantine before 14th March we would have very few deaths just like NZ.  There was a callous and deliberate policy to accept 20K deaths as if this was OK - knowing full well that the brunt of this would be borne by the elderly - hence the Government's total lack of concern with dispatching elderly people from hospitals back into the community without testing them.

It makes me want to scream with rage and cry with sorrow that over 43,000 people have died due to the sheer incompetence and total disregard for the health and well-being of the nation this Government has shown!

How do you think the Green party should position itself electorally in the immediate future?

On the Left - As the only Party promising real action on climate change and offering social justice and a kinder more compassionate society - a society based on collaboration and care of people and planet - the only international party that will do this.

What is your vision for the Green party over the next few years?

Get support for the suspension of the Right to Buy.

Push all the MP's to get the Government to - support the recovery of the economy with the GP Green New Deal - build 250,000 council social homes per year over the next 5 years to meet the demand of the 1.5 million waiting for homes -support Proportional Representation-Introduce a Citizen's income-Stop selling arms around the world and particularly to Israel and holding arms conventions in the UK - Start working towards multi-lateral nuclear disarmament to begin the process of world peace.

Green Party members will be voting throughout August. 

Links

Website:

andreacareyfuller.com

Andrea speaking on Tidemill Garden after Lewisham Council approved the plans to demolish Reginald House (2-30A Reginald Road) and Tidemill Wildlife Garden. Campaigners have asked the Mayor of London to call in the application.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGofuzaVB7Y

Coronavirus – Bored and Locked Down in London

I work in the public services and have been working from home since last Tuesday, which I can do, but have not done for any kind of extended length of time, before. I have been designated as a key worker, category business critical. I am needed to make sure local government gets its funding, which is crucial at this time, as local authorities are to shoulder much of the response to the pandemic. I have been told I will be working from home for 12 weeks, at least.

I live in north London, and the local Tesco has very little in it, a tiny amount of food with no rice or pasta, no toilet rolls or kitchen paper, but if I’m lucky I might get some fresh chicken, or pork, and fruit and vegetables, but precious little else. I have to shop around for what we need, in the small local shops, and have by and large managed to get the items that I can’t get from Tesco. 

I only venture out once a day to get provisions, so I have been following the governments instructions, announced Monday night, already. I'm trying to get hold of an effective face mask, and think we have two coming, but don’t know when.

I live with my partner and we went for a walk on Saturday in a local large park, and it was packed with people. It was difficult to social distance because there were so many other people there, and the grass was muddy, so you really had to stick to the paths. Most people attempted to social distance, but I as I say, it wasn’t easy. It looks as though a total lock-down may be in force soon, but they will need to get the on line shopping sites up and running, we need to eat.

Reports from friends around the country suggests that London and other urban areas have been worst hit in terms of food/provisions shortages and London has the quickest rising cases of people contracting the virus. The worst may be a few weeks away, as the rate of infection in the UK is rising faster than other countries, like Italy, which has been the most badly hit by the pandemic.

Mutual help groups have formed in my area, and have done in some other areas of London that I have heard from. This is a good sign as we will need to help each other if we are get through this in any kind good shape. 

The government at last seems to be getting its act together after delaying measures for too long, probably weeks, and they have announced some sensible things now, so belated credit where it is due. More needs to be done though, especially for those workers not on PAYE and for those on Statutory Sick Pay, benefits and the homeless.

There is a bit of a dystopian feel about things. My local London Underground station is closed and shuttered up. The local pub, which stayed open until Friday, now has all the windows and doors boarded up, there are only the grocery shops open. People seem to be as good humoured as the situation allows, but there is a strange feeling in the air.

The worse thing for those of us feeling fine, is that there is just nothing do after work, except watch TV, listen to the radio or music, and look at things on the web. My partner who is a ferocious reader of novels is beginning to run out of books (even e-books) to read, and this is after only one week. Total boredom is likely quite shortly, but what can you do?

There has never been a time quite like this, but it is similar to the restrictions during World War II, but even then the pubs and entertainments stayed mostly open in Britain. These are unprecedented times that we live in.

I’ll leave you with Buzzcocks ‘Boredom’ from 1976 – it rather sums up my mood at the moment, other than being scared.

Coronavirus - UK Government Bows to the Inevitable After Civil Society Acts

The UK government has announced its latest advice for the public follow, to slow down the rate of coronavirus infection. Now, people should avoid social contact, like in restaurants, cinemas, pubs and the like, and for all those able to work from home, should do so. 

It is hoped that these actions will delay the rate of infection, and so spread the burden on the NHS into the summer, when it is less stretched. There is also evidence that the coronavirus can't survive outside of the body, at temperatures above 27C%. Hopefully a hot summer will do a lot of the work of killing off the virus. 

All of this is very sensible, but it has to be said that these measures should have been taken earlier, as has been suggested by many medical experts, both in the UK and around the world. The move became inevitable once civil society, sporting authorities, employers, religious services and with even the Green party cancelling their spring conference, made these decisions themselves.

This has only a small impact on these organisations (especially large sporting clubs), but the move to discourage attendance in pubs, restaurants etc will have a big impact on these businesses. The government has not ordered this action, which means that insurance claims from businesses cannot be paid, leaving many to go bankrupt. 

Transport for London said on Monday, that passengers on the London Underground were down 20% and 10% on buses, which is explained by many workers working from home, with the blessings of their employers. 

The rush hour London Underground is a perfect vehicle for incubating and spreading infections, and indeed the virus appears to be ahead of the rest of the country in London. Who would have thought it? 

Well, plenty of Londoners, I can tell you. The idea that you put a two meter distance between passengers is risible. If large gatherings of people are to be avoided, then the Underground is an obvious area for reducing infections. This appears to have been totally ignored by the government. 

Many are questioning why schools are still open, when many other countries have closed them. Yes, key workers with children, like those employed in the NHS will need to have some creche type facilities provided, but with other workers working at home, they can easily take care of their children. Workers who cannot work from home, will also need protections, whether that is masks or whatever is effective. How can schools stay open when everywhere else is closed? It makes no sense. 

It looks as though some kind of travel ban to the UK will need to be introduced, as many other countries have already announced. On present form it will be announced by the British government sometime next week, as we are lagging behind events, confirmed by Monday's announced measures. 

All benefit regimes should be relaxed and provision needs to be made for homeless people, as well other vulnerable groups. The social care system, already under strain because of ten years of austerity (with still no proposals for long term funding), needs a significant increase in funding, urgently.   

Last week saw supermarkets run out of stock, although why people need so much toilet paper for an infection that does not affect the digestive system, one can only wonder. But the vacuum left by the government, was filled by panic buying, which tends to happen with emergencies like this.

The assertion by the UK government that these new measures are only now needed, really doesn't wash. Other governments around the world have already taken these actions, and some with lower infection rates than the UK, and seem to have contained the spread of the virus, better than we have. The UK authorities have even stopped testing many people, so how can they really know the true number of people with the virus? 

There has been a complete abdication of responsibility by the UK government, choosing instead a kind of laissez faire approach, in an attempt to build 'herd immunity,' basically do nothing and keep your fingers crossed. This has not been good enough by a long chalk. The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens, and the UK government has failed to do this, whether by incompetence or design, it doesn't really matter. 

These are serious times, when we need a serious government, but unfortunately in the UK we do not have one, led by a prime minister who is a clown. The only mitigating factor is the UK government has handled this better than the US government, whose president's first reaction was to call it fake news then to blame it on foreigners. Thank heavens for small mercies.