Green Party Conference

The Green Party Conference was held 2nd - 4th September in Birmingham (my old university) and I was there - it was my first conference. At first it was deeply interesting. I went to a talk on the Green party philosophy which was very inspiring but I was late as I had just arrived. One of the many interesting things he said was that electoral success is not the only way to change policy - lifestyle changes are also really important, and we can persuade people to behave differently. In fact, the influence of the Green movement has been far-reaching.

Our new leaders gave their speeches - Johnathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas taking turns at delivering their message. She talked about the "heartbreak" of 24th June and I thought - that's how I felt, and I was grateful to her for not making light of it. The Greens want another referendum, this time when our government has made terms with the EU for our continued relationship, to vote on the new deal. Don't know if we'll get that but I think it would be far more democratic and meaningful than voting for a pig in a poke (a sack). Caroline reminded us that this year was the hottest ever and it is even more important to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

I then went to a fringe meeting on Further Education and Higher Education. We talked about the new Education bill which seeks to deregulate Further Ed. We are very radical on further ed. we want to end tuition fees and achieve social mobility. We believe that Higher Ed and F. E. are not markets. We believe in evening classes and lifelong learning. We don't believe that employers should dictate the content of education, or that it's all about money. We wondered how we could get the students to take more interest in these matters politically. We wondered if colleges could start by campaigning about young people's living/working conditions - low pay, etc. Area Reviews - mergers - very demoralizing - but Local Councils can reject the Area Review - e.g. Manchester did just that.

I also went to a panel debate on the Progressive Alliances which have been mooted by the people at Westminster. Zoe Williams of the Guardian chaired this debate. Caroline spoke in favour of the alliance. She said that if we had Proportional Rep we wouldn't need to do it and the goal is to get the progressive parties into power so that we can vote in Proportional Rep. She pointed out that when the voters go to the polls the progressive parties are fighting each other over small differences, and where we can co-operate locally, to get a Tory out of an unsafe seat, we should do so. Caroline pointed out that time is short for our planet but progressives are fighting each other over small differences. Fighting over the deckchairs on the Titanic, really. She did say that the Green Party doesn't impose from the centre but the idea is to allow for arrangements to be made locally. However, the view from the floor was against this as there are grass roots activists who do not think strategically. They dream of winning an overall majority!

The next day I went to a talk about creating teams that work at local level. The Snowflake model. They stressed that the Greens should do fun things together. I thought that this was very much what volunteers wanted. When I, with my local party, put forward ideas about catering for an event my ideas were so shot down in flames that I have not yet gone back! I felt that the members were hostile to me because I was new, which of course was probably true and the only solution is to wait for 6 months or so before you offer any opinion whatsoever.

The next thing I went to was in the Great Hall - it was called a plenary, and we discussed motions for changing our policy documents. All motions were followed by amendments to the motions, which were both friendly and unfriendly. We voted firstly on the amendments and then on the motions. I was very interested in the procedure as much as the motions ,and I was also pleased to discover that my ideas are pretty mainstream in the Greens.


I went to a talk by Baroness Jenny Jones on what she has been up to in the House of Lords - this was very interesting. She wants to reform the House of Lords but she also said "It's riven with rules and idiocy but it works" which is what I feel about the H o L, that it is the only effective opposition to the government and therefore we should treasure it! She wrote a paper on her Bill to reform the HoL over 10 years - giving representatives long terms of service in which to gain expertise - trying to keep what she values in the HoL and yet move towards full democracy. I recommend that the noble Lords support it!

A formidable woman

I also went to a talk on the Northern Ireland border Post Brexit which has clearly never been thought through and clearly it will have to be a "hard" border if we are to stop unlimited immigration from Europe and this will be very divisive to the people of Ireland who were beginning to feel like one nation, two governments. Now they will be riven again.

Post Brexit - what now? This was the last thing on which I took notes because I was there for 2 days and a half and I was pretty tired by the end. These are the things which the Greens want:

1. to win the right for EU nationalities to remain here.
2. The Young Greens want freedom of movement (they will get this: if they think they will be able to live and work in Europe that is another matter).
3. We want to keep the Human Rights Act.
4. We want the 16+ age group to have the right to vote.

I also went to 2 more plenaries and at the last I despaired of the Green Party for their pettiness and, in some cases, their desire to be Alternative rather than electable. It's a question of identity. Sadly, identifying yourself as Alternative is unlikely to make a party electable, or even have a coherent sense of what kind of Alternative you are. Are we hippies, punks or radical liberals? One lobby keeps us busy altering the wording of all our literature to make it gender non-binary and when we have done that, that particular ginger group will probably leave, its mission accomplished.

Post Paris: The Greens are disappointed by the government's Energy Bill

Caroline Lucas, M.P. for the Greens, says:

 

"It’s difficult to think of a piece of legislation that is less fit-for-purpose, if the Government were serious about turning warm words in the Paris climate agreement into action.

Perhaps it’s little wonder that the Government decided to delay the Bill’s second reading in the Commons until after the Paris climate talks were over. 

 

Yes, the UK’s coal fired power stations must be phased out – but they must be replaced with renewable energy - not gas. That means rethinking the raft of mind-bogglingly backward policy decisions we’ve seen since the election – reversing solar subsidy cuts and reinstating the zero carbon homes policy for starters.

 

That should be the focus of any Energy Bill in 2016. The Paris climate agreement provides an even stronger case for MPs to refuse to give the Bill a second reading, reject it in its entirety, and demand the Government goes back to the drawing board.

 

Looking ahead to 2016, we’ve got some big fights to come. The climate movement will have a key role to play in holding politicians to account.

 

The Paris climate talks failed in part because of the influence of fossil fuel corporations over government. Those same oil and gas companies have a death grip on the UK’s democratic decision making too. Nowhere is this more obvious than the trade deals being struck, which threaten to undermine efforts to cut carbon emissions as well as our democracy.

 

But the strength and breadth of the mobilisation across civil society we are seeing is more powerful than corporations and their friends in Government realise.

 

Unusually, a similar sentiment was to be found in the Economist, with their verdict on Paris concluding:

 “Genuine concern about the climate, public opinion and international pressure produced the pledges that were made for Paris. The hope is that similar bottom-up processes, rather than unenforceable UN mandates, will drive up the level of action in decades to come.”

With the Green Party in Brighton

I can't exactly remember why I joined the Green Party. Maybe the change was caused by weeks of listening to "Costing the Earth" on Radio 4 when I drove home from yoga. Maybe it was a terror at the threatening loss of bees. Maybe it was because I miss the sparrows that were 2 a penny when I was a kid. And now if you see one it's something special. Maybe it's because I often watch Russell Brand and his True News (Trews) on Youtube and I felt that I too, wanted to be engaged with politics. I can't remember a specific moment when I felt pushed to do it, but I became part of the Green Surge earlier this year, (when the membership of the Greens suddenly rose) and I'm glad I did.

This weekend is a 3-day weekend so I thought I would spend one day campaigning for Caroline Lucas, our one and only Green M.P., who is standing for re-election down on the South coast.

The Greens email you with notifications about meetings and involvement and as soon as you say you will go they send you instructions. It was quite a cold morning when I arrived at Brighton station rather later than the specified 10 a.m. and I found the "Eco-centre" (a run-down-looking shop with an intercom door) opposite the station after looking for it all round the block, because it doesn't look like anything much. But the girl inside was really friendly, took my details, said I would need some training and then she would put me in a team and send me to a ward.

I was lucky because I was given a lift with 3 other people to Sue Shanks' house out in the Preston Park area of Brighton (this is actually 1 station back from the town centre on the train line). Mike was a very handsome young man from Dulwich, his friend Minnie from Queen's Park, and John, a Maths teacher, was a very experienced canvasser from Brighton. I asked to team up with John as he know what he was doing and was keen to get on with it, and we were given a canvasser's pack and off we went to find the streets. So I didn't get any training, but I had John. John knew the way.

At this stage in the campaign all the streets have already been canvassed. Our role was to knock on houses whose residents had been out last time canvassers called, and try to find out which way they would vote. The role of a canvasser is to gain information and only partly to engage people in conversation about why they will/won't be supporting your candidate. So where we encountered people who said they would support Caroline we took their email address and checked their phone number, in case they don't vote on the day and we can persuade them at the last minute to go to the polling station and cast their Green Vote.

We had a code for how keen/not keen each voter was on voting Green. We also had a code for people who were rude, etc. Where people were out we put a card through the door with the voter's name on. where our information about the household was wrong we updated it. It was clearly a busy Saturday in Brighton and many people were out doing things with their children and riding bikes and all the usual things people do on a Saturday, but we had enough conversations for me to get to know some of the issues in Brighton.

With some people the Green Party is very unpopular because of its stance on cars. Parking spaces are at a premium and therefore parking is expensive. Some people even have to pay £100 a year to park on the street outside their houses. In some places traffic speed has been limited to 20 miles an hour - this is actually where the residents voted for the change, (according to the leaflet) - but some voters have really hated these changes and are also angry because of spending on cycle lanes.

Another cause of rage and frustration is industrial action by the bin men. The Green Party had to implement a law on equality of pay for men and women and have done this in such a way as to enrage those who drive the refuse lorries. They haven't been on strike for a while but they sometimes work to rule in such a way as to leave certain streets out of the collection.

Any problem that people have is amplified by the local press, which is virulently anti-Green. So complaints make headlines: "Greens are ruining our City" type of thing.

All local councils have had to implement cuts because of funding slashes from central government which is on an austerity mission, and in Brighton these cuts are blamed on the Greens even though Tory-run councils are just the same. In fact, the Greens have done well to protect children's services such as Sure Start centres, which in some areas of the country (probably the most needy) have been closed down.

The Green supporter is usually better-off and able to see the bigger picture, and likes its stance on Trident (scrap it), the railways (re-nationalise), fracking (leave it in the ground), social care (improve it) and the NHS (no privatization whatsoever).

In the afternoon John, whose company I had enjoyed and with whom I had much in common, had to go and do something else, so we said goodbye back at Sue's house and I stayed there to eat. Sue (a Councillor in Brighton and fantastically energetic and brisk, also has a lovely house) and her assistant Carly(?) had provided loaves of bread, butter, cheese, salad, and biscuits. So we sat around the big dining table in the front room and ate, and the young people (they were all in their 20s) all discussed actions they had been on. They were very friendly and intelligent, I enjoyed meeting them all.

 Then I had a coffee (I was pretty tired) and then walked with a young man to the Park for a rally. I had never been to a rally. There was a green bus, from which Caroline Lucas made a speech, and another speaker Mark Thomas, made another speech, and I squeezed into a group photo. Afterwards we milled around and chatted. I took a leaflet for another action for Keep it in the Ground and had a good chat with that young man. Caroline Lucas was there and I asked her for a photo. (She is very nice and obliging).

Then I walked back to the house, got another partner and another couple of roads to canvas and off we went again, but this time we were in a Tory area! You can tell Tory areas by their tidy gardens (mostly paved) which give pride of place to the driveway and car - always a newish, shiny, look-at-my-status sort of car, sometimes a 4 x 4. There is almost no point in talking to the owners of Gas Guzzlers about voting Green. They are almost hilariously short-sighted about all issues, ending and beginning with their own standard of living. They vote by post as they don't like to mix with other people down at the polling station. They are essentially private people, very reluctant to tell you which way they'll vote. We also talked to some very old ladies who told us they would vote Tory because their fathers had. Apparently there is no likelihood of a Tory M.P. down there in Brighton, but Labour may well swing things around. So I wore myself out on this ghastly Toryland but I enjoyed getting to know my new partner Hywel. And then we got lifts back to town, (Hywel was staying in a Green member's spare room in Brighton) and I eventually got home but I HAD NEVER BEEN SO TIRED!

Meanwhile, I was pleased to hear of the founding of the Women's Equality Party until I realised that it will, one day, split the Green Vote, and but they have no policies, apart from thinking that women must have a louder voice in politics. What exactly do they want to do?  all very vague.