1. Campaigning Party vs an Election Machine?
Within a flawed electoral system, are we not focusing too much on winning elections with some success in local elections with a few seats gained (but no gains in General Elections) while the planet is burning instead of urgently building a mass movement? One bad election could wipe out gains. Are we running out of time? What is your strategy?
We have to pursue three strategies, but always aware of the accelerating climate danger.
These are campaigning, electoral campaigning, and electoral system campaigning.
In the run up to COP26, around COP26, after COP26 we have to be focussing Green Party messaging on climate change and its consequences, refusing to be led astray by fairy tale solutions, refusing to blame other nations, and taking full responsibility - which includes recognition of the unfairness in the distribution of the consequences and of our role, historical and contemporary, in creating and fuelling that unfairness. Beyond that we need to be campaigning on issues locally that affect community and environment because that is part of electoral campaigning.
Electoral campaigning is largely a local and regional party function, but the leadership can provide support to local and regional parties, they must be on call to support struggling and new parties, they must give credit where it is due – and not to themselves when gains are made. We have to be realistic as well, but the driving force to be that we are working to bring the climate problem under control, and when that happens people will be better off with Green policies locally and nationally, and for that we need to elect Greens.
Which means we also have to campaign for electoral reform, so that a range of voices can be heard – and so we no longer are faced with the prospect of decades of right wing minority government.
2. Removing toxicity and healing splits?
How can the Green Party be an effective healthy political party, with transparent internal democracy and accountability based on fairness and unity? Are members expected to sign up 100% to everything that the leader(s) or the Party is perceived to support at any given time? Is it not the role of a leader to ensure that party members rights to disagree are protected? Be it the rights of women, transrights, the IHRA or the failed holistic review. What will you do to heal division?
One of the phrases used in the Holistic Review report was that of ‘servant-leadership’. Whatever the views on that report and the developments around constitutional change, that term is important and one that should be central to the behaviour of Green Party leaders. We do not think that by being elected as leaders we will be invested with any overriding wisdom – we are there to serve the Party and its members.
The question of party unity was one of the prime factors motivating us to stand, and the role of leaders has to be to seek ways to promote that unity in the service of both members and Party. It is very unlikely that members of the Green Party are anti-Semitic – prejudiced against people because of that identity; it is very unlikely that members of the Green Party are transphobic – prejudiced against people because of that identity. What we have is definitional anti-semitism, and definitional transphobia. We have to be careful about the definitions we use.
We are supporting the inclusion of the Jerusalem Declaration on anti-semitism rather than the IHRA definition. The JDAS offer a more nuanced approach as to when criticism of the actions of the state of Israel is anti-Semitic. On the gender issue that is causing such division we are proposing a members assembly to explore the implications of the general party policy statemen we havet, and what views we want to take on those implications.
3. A party that understands working-class communities
Many people still see the green movement and GPEW as being well meaning but not relevant to the everyday struggles of working people and working-class communities. How can we challenge that idea?
We are perceived in this way but a lot of our elected members represent wards that have deprivation on various measures; very often we are an alternative to ineffective Labour councillors. Councillors in these wards do what councillors everywhere do – work for their local residents, but even here it may be individuals with greater access, and issues of more middle class concern that are heard.
As part of winning elections we need to be involved in local campaigning in support of communities, campaigning for social justice and building resilience in communities stressed by a history of poverty that has been worsened by decades of austerity; by uncertainty, even about the next meal; by poor housing, by fear, by lack of facilities. Part of this has to include welcoming members from these communities and accepting that histories and priorities are different, accepting, for example, that people voted for Brexit without shunning them, recognising the reasons underlying that choice.
We need to be supporting those initiatives that are outside the Party but that work to support communities, work to bring change that responds to those everyday struggles and needs, those in the ‘Feed Leeds’ umbrella for example. Above all we need to recognise that we are there to learn and to work, not to lead.
4. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future
What do you know of the Trade Union backed Campaign Against Climate Change, Lucas Plan, The Million Green Jobs campaign and the Greener Jobs Alliance of trade unions? How would you work with these campaigns and ensure all parts of the party are engaging with these groups? Do you understand Just Transition and support it? Does the Green Party have a distinct action plan for COP 26?
To start at the end, the effective work being done on COP26 seems to be through the COP26 coalition, a TU initiative; we are both involved in the regional ones. The GPEW should be doing more but we have lost focus on our core concerns, and now in the run up to the meeting we are being distracted by this Leadership contest.
In the 2009 Euro campaign one of us (Martin) focussed on the Green New Deal with its promise of worthwhile jobs in building a greener future.
“GND was easy to argue for, I was aware of the work of the Lucas Aerospace Combine forty years ago, and had read their report when it came out. The focus was then on moving away from arms production towards worthwhile production, as well as the protection of workers rights while this transition took place – the ‘just transition’.”
Workers need to work – Martin was faced with union attacks while Chair of UK Nuclear Free Authorities by workers concerned about employment. But there will be more jobs in dealing with the legacy of nuclear power.
We have to work with those campaigns that are working to diversify jobs away from those that damage the health of people, society and the planet, and towards those set upon healing. This requires active involvement, speaking to the same ends, campaigning to the same ends.
5. Are you an Eco-socialist?
What does eco-socialism mean to you? What links do you see between climate change and the need for social, economic and democratic change?
Capitalism and the military-industrial complex that it supports create inequality, rewarding a few while condemning many to poverty, and depending on the service of workers paid the minimum. It sees the planet, including the biosphere and humanity, as just a resource to be exploited for the materials it needs, and a place to dump the waste that it produces. Globalisation has accelerated the process and the demands of capitalism fuel war and encourage corruption.
Oil firms were aware enough of the climate risks of their activities to be working on counter publicity as early as the 1950’s. Their reach has been enabled by political systems weighted towards the established interests of the ruling classes. Short term rewards for a few have been prioritised over the health of people, society and planet.
The needs of the planet demand an end to economic ‘growth’, even an economics of de-growth; it needs a recognition that the world we live in is part of the commons, and just as groups manage commons fairly and sustainably – as Ostrom has shown – so we need to manage our commons, including through common ownership of the bases of production – beginning with the land, the waters and the air above.
So yes, we are eco-socialists.
6. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority
It’s clear the electoral system is holding back Green Party advance at local and parliamentary elections. How can we campaign to convince members of the Labour Party, Trade Unions and Labour MPs to support this democratic change to bring English elections in line with other parts of the UK? Do you see this as a priority for the Green Party in the next period?
Without PR we are condemned to a two party system, with an absence of views from a range of other constituencies – some of which we would embrace, and some oppose.
We need to recognise that there are voices within the Labour Party supportive of PR – when Martin spoke at a Make Votes Matter meeting in Hebden Bridge, the other speaker was Alex Sobel, Labour MP for Leeds North West he had stood against in the General Election. We need to be working with these sympathisers.
The strongest argument to use with Labour Party members is to point to the current government – a large majority, but a minority vote. Under the current system we have had decades of increasingly right wing Conservative governments, and a Labour Party that seems happy with the current system so long as they get an occasional (increasingly right wing) turn. Whether an election centred on reform of the voting system to be followed by an immediate general election under the new rules would be attractive to a public used to one system is an uncertainty.
The Labour party is distancing itself from the more left wing unions (like the Bakers). But the Union movement needs to recognise that the long term interests of workers, especially those that need to unionise in the gig economy as the Bakers are trying to do, is best served by having government that is not dominated by the right, and that coalitions required by PR are the best way forward for them.
This must be part of our campaigning.