Red Pepper » Green Party

Radicals at the table – Natalie Bennett interview

admin — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:00:11 +0000

Natalie Bennett speaks at a pro-choice rally outside parliament in September 2012. Photo: Pete Maclaine
Michael How are you finding the job, now you’re a few weeks into it?
Natalie Oh, it’s very exciting, very busy. One of the things I’ll enjoy is going round the country. Pretty much everywhere I go there’s this real feeling of a democratic deficit, people saying, ‘They’ve come up with this enormously grand scheme to redevelop the area, but no one spoke to us until they just dumped it in our lap, then thought “we have to consult” and asked, “would you like a tree over there or over here instead, or this yellow or that green?”‘
Andrew With two days to respond . . .
Natalie That’s right, exactly. There’s so many things that are bringing democracy into disrepute at the moment, but that’s one thing that really struck me. The word consultation is just becoming a joke.
Michael We’re now seeing the experience of Britain’s first Green-led council in Brighton and Hove, albeit without a majority, so to what extent can the Greens make different choices in power compared to the main parties? Can the Greens offer an anti-cuts alternative at local level?
Natalie Brighton actually is a really good example, because what they did was to come up with a plan that would have ameliorated lots of the cuts with a 3.5 per cent council tax rise. We said, ‘No, we can’t have these cuts, we’ll need to claim more in council tax’, but because we’re in a minority on the council, we couldn’t put that through ourselves as we didn’t have the power to do that, and sadly Labour voted with the Tories. So actually it was Labour and the Tories who made the cuts happen that we were trying to stop as a minority administration. Had we been able to make that council tax rise we would have been able to save lots of things.
Michael Well, your critics on that, including some members of the Green Party, would say there is an alternative. You could have refused point-blank to implement the cuts and set a needs budget, ultimately even pulled out of leading the council to campaign on a very clear anti-cuts basis.
Natalie What you would have done there is to hand over to a Tory council. You have to make a decision in terms of: are you able to ameliorate things? I was only reading this morning about the things the Green council is trying to do in terms of creatively finding ways to raise money – renewable energy projects and the like. We are not just doing things how others would do them. We might not be able to do all the things we’d like, but until we get a Green government in Westminster we have to work within the framework we have. And what I hear on the ground, not just from Green Party people, is that people in Brighton are finding we are making a positive difference.
Michael People will give their verdict on the council in 2015, and given that cuts to central government grants are going to mean things are only going to get more difficult, are you worried that Caroline Lucas, the first Green MP in Britain, is up for re-election at the same time?
Natalie It’s a big challenge, but I think Brighton Greens are making a good fist of it. From what I can see, because we are being very open and very honest and very democratic and saying to people ‘These are what the choices are, help us make the best choices’, people will acknowledge that and respect that.
Michael How closely is the national leadership of the party involved in the local issues of places like Brighton?
Natalie We’re here as a support mechanism any time they want it, but we believe in localism and local parties are sovereign. We don’t tell them what to do, they make their own decisions.
Andrew In terms of coming after Caroline Lucas as leader, who is a very high profile figure, do you think you’ll be able to generate the same kind of awareness, and to what extent do you plan any change of direction?
Natalie It’s not a change of direction. What I will have is the practical possibility of doing more travelling round the country, a lot more than Caroline has chance to do given the role of an MP is so tied to Westminster a lot of the time. And it’s really not a replacement or an exchange, it’s an addition – there’s two faces now instead of one, almost as though we’ve just doubled our number of MPs.
Andrew How far would you say the coalition has lived up to its claim to be the ‘greenest government ever’?
Natalie [Coughs and splutters] You can put that down as ‘Natalie has a little laugh!’ It’s demonstrated that it totally doesn’t get that we are in the middle of a huge environmental crisis, and we desperately need to act fast. They’re both failing to take the whole problem seriously, and also utterly failing at a level of basic competence.
The feed-in tariff is the obvious example of this, where they just made a total balls-up of it. They’re not providing any certainty for the industry to go forward and invest in things, do all of the things we could have in terms of green jobs in onshore or offshore wind, or where you had the insulation industry saying the number of jobs was going to plunge. And that’s a tragedy, because that’s both good jobs lost, and people left in cold homes, elderly people in ill-health who might die this winter, which are problems that Scandinavian countries with worse weather than us don’t have. Government isn’t doing anything right – it doesn’t take the environment seriously and it’s not competent.
Michael Playing devil’s advocate now, how would you respond to the argument that in times of economic hardship and austerity, concern for the environment has to take a backseat to restoring competitiveness?
Natalie The fact is that we have to act. The effect of food price rises is one example where we’re seeing an economic impact of climate change. It’s not an either/or situation. If we invest in renewable energy, insulation, public transport, what we’re doing is creating jobs, reducing people’s fuel bills, reducing fuel poverty. So doing things to deal with their environment can help us tackle our overall economic problems. The whole cuts agenda ignores that we need to invest in our houses, our infrastructure, all of which are economically positive.
Andrew On the climate, to put it starkly, after Copenhagen and Durban, it looks like the momentum on a binding international limit on emissions has gone; opinion polls show that people seem less concerned on climate change than they were previously; and then with the growth of India, China, and now even Germany building coal-fired power stations – how does climate change get put back on the agenda? Or, perhaps alternatively, should the Green Party not put climate so high on the agenda and focus instead more on economic issues along with the apparent mood of the voters?
Natalie As I said these aren’t either/or. Often we will talk about the Arctic sea-ice and say that greater action is needed. Or we can say that to reduce air pollution we need fewer vehicles on the roads. Now, that is fitting with the climate change agenda but it needn’t necessarily always be front and centre. There are many ways of coming at these things and they are all interrelated. That’s what can be difficult about promoting a Green message – all these things are tied up together.
You can go [instead] for the fact we have the longest working hours in Europe. [People] are exhausted, they fall into Tesco Metro on the way home and buy a ready meal, with loads of packaging attached to it; they get home exhausted and don’t take their children out for a walk to get some exercise. So the long-hours culture fits with people feeling they have to use supermarkets, which then push out the local shops, so people find themselves driving more, which means that children get less exercise because the roads are too full of traffic to walk safely . . .
All of these things fit together, and to cure them we need a new kind of society. And the kind of society we need to build to avoid climate change is also a better society to live in, offering a better quality of life.
Andrew I think the kind of economic system you’re talking about there is one with steady or low rates of growth, because you can have a less carbon-intensive lifestyle but if the economy is growing at 3 per cent per year it’s going to be incredibly difficult to bring down the overall emissions level barring some kind of miracle.
Natalie Yes, I’m not a believer in some miracle solution.
Andrew Okay, but making a transition to a zero-growth economy is a hard argument to make, at a time when all the other parties are competing to put forward policies that will drive forward growth, and the media wants to know where growth is going to come from.
Natalie Well, I think most of the other parties are adjusting to the fact we’re heading into a low-growth world, no matter what its environmental and economic framework. We’ve hit economic and environmental limits all around the world. But we’ve argued that GDP is a very poor measure on all kinds of levels, so then basing all your arguments around the very question of growth in GDP makes no intellectual sense.
What I’d rather do is ask what is it that we need in our society and how do need to change the distribution of income and wealth in order to achieve those things? We have to keep reminding ourselves of these things as people have very short historical memories: historically, we now have enormously high levels of inequality in our societies. It’s a question of reshaping the debate, since GDP is a nonsense measure. It’s better to focus on what you’re doing and what you’re achieving, like ‘are you shortening people’s working hours?’, ‘are you improving the distribution of wealth across society?’ These are the things that matter, not focusing on one figure.
Andrew I’d be interested to know if you have an industrial policy, if you have specific policies that would lead to more localisation and more socially useful manufacturing?
Natalie Very much so. In terms of the big picture, what we have to do environmentally is to shorten our supply chains, and stop having huge freighters shipping thousands of tonnes of stuff from China that we could make here. So I’d like to see the boots on my feet made here, the t-shirt made down the road, the jacket made in a little tailor’s shop on the corner, all that kind of thing. We need to relocalise and bring manufacturing back to Britain, and we also need to address the issue of skills, as we’ve almost lost the skills needed for that.
In terms of the framework you need to create, the price of goods that is charged in the shops doesn’t include a huge number of externalised costs, like the environmental damage of getting them here, the fact they are made by some poor woman in a Sri Lankan factory working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. So what the Green Party wants to do is get to a system where all of those costs are re-included in the price of those goods, so you then re-balance.
Some of this is going to happen anyway. I was reading this report about production going back to the US from China, because Chinese wages are going to be going up all the time, as there is pressure for standards to rise, plus the costs of air freight and sea freight is rising all the time. So we’re at the turning point of the whole globalisation super-tanker and it’s starting to turn around anyway. We have to make it turn around much faster to reduce carbon emissions, create jobs here and reshape our economy.
The other important thing is food production. It’s not that long ago that all our major towns and cities were surrounded by a ring of market gardens and orchards, and there were local dairies too. So we need to get back to that in order to secure our local food supply. Only 23 per cent of our fruit and veg comes from the UK, although we have good land, good weather conditions, it’s all perfectly doable. I can’t see we’ll be wanting to ship over beans from Kenya and peas from Peru for much longer anyway. But we’ll need to set up the infrastructure to help that to happen.
Michael How far do you think the green vision, the big picture you’re talking about, is compatible with the vision of a more responsible capitalism, perhaps even compatible with the ‘one nation’ politics Ed Milliband is talking about?
Natalie I think it’s very different, because we’re rejecting neoliberalism and globalisation; we’re rejecting an economic system dominated by multinational companies. Whereas the banking sector has been a large part of Britain’s economy, we’re advocating a localised economy built around cooperatives and small local businesses, not giant multinationals, banking that is based around credit unions and small local banks, and making an economy where, as with the Bristol pound, you see money circulating within local economies. I don’t think that is what Ed Milliband is imagining.
Michael If you got one or more MPs at the next election, could you imagine supporting, formally or informally, a Lib-Lab coalition?
Natalie We have learnt from the experience of previous Greens in this situation, and we’d be extremely unlikely to join a formal coalition. But certainly a confidence and supply type agreement is the kind of thing which gives us the ability to ensure we keep the Tories out but allows us to vote on individual issues according to our beliefs.
Michael Well, people will look at the experiences of the Greens in Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, people might look at you and think when you get in power you’ll conform to a very narrow, mainstream pro-austerity model. You’re in oppositional mode now, but how do we know the Green Party won’t let people down in a similar way to the Lib Dems?
Natalie Those are very different circumstances. We occupy a very different political space to many other Green parties. There are lots of things we have in common with them, but we are very much the radicals at the table at any meeting of European Greens. We have a very democratic structure. Conferences decide national Green Party policies, and our members would never have voted for the kind of deal the Irish Greens took.
Michael Which of your policies do you particularly want to prioritise in getting across to the voters?
Natalie It’s seems obvious but things like the minimum wage being a living wage. If you work 40 hours a week you should have enough to live on. And it is obscene that people have to work two or three jobs and find roundabout ways to get to work because they can’t afford the tube, living in incredibly overcrowded housing.
We are never going to compete on low wages. That is not what we’re competing on. In terms of manufacturing we want to produce things for local markets and for broader markets where we have some kind of specialist skill or competitive advantage.
In terms of the broader issue, if the street cleaner out on the road is on the national minimum wage, they can’t afford to go into the café and buy a cup of tea. If they are paid decently, more money circulates in the economy.

The Brighton debate: Which way for the first Green-led council?

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:53:52 +0000

Brighton and Hove has the first Green-led council in England. In February the minority administration faced the tricky dilemma of setting a budget at a time when government funding is being cut by a third over four years.
What to do and how to make the decision proved controversial both nationally within the Green Party and in Brighton and Hove itself.
Red Pepper brought together leading Green councillors and party members with Green Left activists to debate the issues around the budget and the general dilemmas about being in office with restricted powers and finances under a hostile Conservative/Liberal Democrat government.

Debate participants
Green Left: Romayne Phoenix, Peter Murry and Peter Allen.
Green Party, Brighton and Hove: Councillor Jason Kitcat, Councillor Liz Wakefield, Councillor Phelim MacCafferty and executive member Luke Walter.
Davy Jones (Red Pepper board member) and Tom Robinson (Red Pepper’s student co-ordinator) are both Green Party members in Brighton and Hove and they chaired and recorded the discussion.

Romayne Phoenix What discussion took place about whether to take the council leadership?
Jason Kitcat Constitutionally the largest group on a council always allocates the council leader. So if the other two parties weren’t interested, we were by default the administration whether we wanted it or not. If we had said we were not interested, I don’t think we would have had any credibility. I anticipated some kind of negotiation with Labour for a stable administration. I never thought that we would be running the administration alone. But Labour weren’t interested. For this year, we have to be very clear: it is central government that is cutting us. The vast majority of changes we are proposing in the budget are savings, not cuts in services. So, for example, we propose to save £55k by changing how we contract our youth services – but there is no impact on the service. It’s literally about a procurement change, so that genuinely is a saving, not a cut.
Peter Allen It’s a £17.5 million reduction this year, isn’t it? We have heard about the small cuts in things like the mobile library, toilets etc but they only come to a few million, so where is the rest coming from?
Jason All over the place! For example, we got a fixed-price deal on buses – that’s £400k. We found out that we are able to reclaim VAT on admissions to the Pavilion – that’s half a million. Procurement – there’s several million there. There’s also a value for money programme – that’s about reorganisation. There’s a work styles programme – that’s £2.5 million in savings but cuts our carbon footprint and produces a better working environment.
Peter A What about the cuts to the adult assessment units?
Jason We have changed the system for the care providers. Beforehand if someone visited the client, even if it was only for five minutes, the minimum it would be billed for was half an hour. Now what they do is electronically dial in and out to prove how long they attended, so we are paying only for the time the contractors actually attend, and that alone is a huge saving. These are mostly private contractors.
Peter A Less home care or quicker home care – even less time spent in a vulnerable old persons’ home in order to save a million pounds?
Jason I don’t think so. Overall I really feel that the adult social care budget is well catered for. There are some issues about the repercussions for the external providers and their staff but that is difficult for us to control. Ultimately the ideal would be to bring it in-house but it’s just not affordable overnight. If you look at children’s services and adult social care they are really protected.
Davy Jones Everywhere else in the country there are big campaigns against council cuts. But there isn’t a campaign around changes in our core essential services because no one believes the changes are significant enough.
Romayne But people don’t always know how to speak up for themselves.
Peter A I don’t doubt for one moment that the best job is being done. I would defend Brighton council against other councils. But adult social care in the UK is provided mostly by private providers, usually with women working in appalling conditions and getting paid very little. Private contractors are trying to make a private profit and Brighton and Hove council is squeezing those contractors more, to get a better value for money service.
Jason It’s not perfect but given the scale of the challenge we face, we can’t change the entire scope of the social care system in the UK on our own.
Phelim MacCafferty Fundamentally, what’s behind all this, whether it’s the axing of the EMA or the slashing of legal aid, it’s about the Tories essentially shrinking the state. We are very aware of the pressure on us, not just electorally but politically. I have never seen anything so sombre as the way we have had to deal with this budget. One thing I am very proud of so far – and it is proof of how Greens have done things differently – is that one of the first things we did as a council was to introduce the living wage for the poorest people who work for us.
Peter A Of course it doesn’t apply to all those people we were talking about before – outsourced staff on the minimum wage – because contractors are now getting squeezed further in the interests of efficiency savings.
Liz Wakefield Specifically on that point, when we scrutinise contractors, we are looking at whether they provide the living wage or not, and obviously the preference would go to those that do.
Davy I think all of us are committed to trying to oppose what this government is doing in shrinking the state. We have – almost – survived the first year. So the issue now becomes in the next year or two what is acceptable for us to do and what is not acceptable? And how can we strategically use our position to fight against the cuts?
Peter Murry The Green Left statement about Brighton council was not intended as an attack on the Green council. Green Left has a variety of views. Some feel that you shouldn’t have touched the budget at all but resigned rather than implement it. Others feel you should have only set a needs budget and let it get voted down. Others would support you because you are a Green council, despite the fact you are making some cuts, and would probably accept quite a lot of the arguments you have made today. But people want to know what is the difference between a Green council adopting a humane attitude to cutting and any other council doing it? What else are you doing that makes it worthwhile having a Green council?
Jason We are different because we are doing the least cuts possible; because we rejected [local government secretary] Eric Pickles’ gimmick of a tax freeze [a one-off increase in government grant to local authorities that didn’t increase council tax]; because we actually listen. The local paper reported that West Sussex Council were making cuts to music services and all sorts of things, and they had a two-week consultation period, massive protests and at the end said well, we are doing it anyway. Whereas we have held a very long consultation period where we’ve been able to go through the details with people and have a conversation, and we have amended it as a result.
Liz People voted in a Green council. So we have a duty to those people to be in power and deliver a Green budget in as Green a way as possible. I belong to the anti-cuts movement. I don’t want to make cuts. But if there have to be cuts, and I am cabinet lead for housing, I would rather have the control of any cut in that area because I wouldn’t trust the bloody Tories or Labour. I can’t trust them to care for the people. Whether I should completely step down and not be a councillor is, of course, another dilemma but I was voted in and people wanted me to be their councillor and that’s my responsibility.
Phelim Some people on the left argue that we should just set an illegal budget. Well, we are not allowed to. I was not elected to deliver control over our pot of money to some poxy civil servant sent from Eric Pickles to do the dirty work of his government. I was elected to stand up for my residents, for the vulnerable people I represent. And if we all resigned, it would cost around £230,000 that taxpayers would have to spend on a bunch of Green councillors who found it too hot in the kitchen and had to get out.
Luke Walter The local paper ran an online poll on the proposed council tax increase with heavy campaigning against it. Still, 32 per cent agreed with the Green administration on the council tax rise. Thirty-three per cent voted Green in May. So we are keeping Green voters with us.
Davy We survived our first eight months in office, making very minor cuts in services, and made sure that the first Green council in the country didn’t immediately fall apart. The Green Left statement refers to the danger of the first Green council being ‘nationally discredited, like the Green Party was discredited in Ireland, after implementing an austerity programme’. But, equally, had the first Green council collapsed in chaos and acrimony in the first six months, that too would have discredited the Green Party nationally. We can now play a major role with people in the party to build up the national anti-cuts movement at the same time as we develop a needs budget – with the option that we can stand down if we get defeated and we feel we have to propose a budget that is unacceptable to us.
Romayne You should not make it sound like you are improving a service, if you are not, if it’s really a cut. They are the cuts of a Tory government. Don’t say this is the fairest budget we can make in hard times because that is very de-motivating for anyone who is in the campaigns movement. Would you be prepared to have a conference of councillors – I’m sure the Coalition of Resistance could help – to lead that movement?
Peter A The alternative scenario is that the Greens don’t make these cuts, even if it means losing office. Then we have an election across Britain in a few months time, knocking on doors as the anti-cuts party, with [Brighton’s Green MP] Caroline Lucas in parliament single-handedly doing a better job than the whole of the Labour Party and we also have a council who refused to cut, and a vote for us is a vote against austerity. Some people will say the Greens are not serious, they don’t do proper politics. But others will say yeah, this is a different type of protest politics. Or maybe people who haven’t voted before will say yeah, I’m up for that, they’re right in Brighton. The politicians gave up power because they stand by their principles and I am voting for them so that I can show this government that I am on the side of the people. If the Green Party said we are not doing it in Brighton, it would give us the opportunity to transform our political fortunes across Britain.
Peter M In the elections across the country, in London and elsewhere, we are going to be faced with a contradiction between what Caroline Lucas is saying at a national level and what has happened in Brighton. She is saying no austerity, and presenting anti-cuts literature, then people say well what about Brighton council, they made cuts? At what point do you start saying we can’t do this? I think Liz gave us some indication that there might be a red line for her. I think over the country people would like to know at what point do you say that is enough.
Jason I am very open to having a conference, though it will get the usual suspects. It would be valuable and interesting but it’s not going to build a national movement. If there was a situation with the budget by which we were doing things that were against our values, our answer would be to increase the council tax to offset the cut and have a referendum on it. We would say central government is cutting our funding so dramatically that we have to go to the people and ask for a big council tax increase. We have to go down fighting. People are not going to thank us if we leave Labour or the Tories to run the council. Fundamentally, people recognise there are choices out there and would rather we make the best choice we can. I wouldn’t fancy our chances on winning the referendum but I’d go for it. We also need to re-evaluate what it means for there to be a Green council and say what do we want our council to look like. We have inherited a council that is a product of years of Labour and Tory rule. So what does a Green council really look like? We could shape a new council to meet all the challenges and desires we want to. I don’t know what that looks like but I think that’s a conversation worth having.
Romayne I want to mention UK Uncut and the [Occupy] LSX statement. If you read much of that, it’s so like Green Party policy. We have to encourage them on board. And the fantastic success we have had with getting a minority administration down here in Brighton and Hove, we want all of us to be able to benefit from that for the Green Party of England and Wales.

What happened with the Brighton budget?

Huge government cuts mean that Brighton and Hove faces starkly reduced funding (down by around one third over four years). The reductions in the Greens’ first budget were less damaging than in most other councils around the country. Nevertheless, some proposals were controversial and jobs will be lost.
The Greens were the first to reject the government’s bribe of a one-year subsidy to freeze council tax, which would have led to much bigger cuts in future years – over £5 million in Brighton and Hove. Around 10 per cent of councils eventually followed Brighton and Hove’s lead. However, at the budget council meeting, the local Tories and Labour colluded to take the government money to freeze council tax against the votes of the minority administration Greens. The amendment entailed extra cuts of around £1 million this year and a further £3.6 million next year.
The Greens then faced a difficult dilemma. Should they stand down and let the Tories and Labour form a de facto coalition to run the city? Should they vote against the amended budget, call a recall council meeting and mobilise the community against it? Or should they vote for it, as it was still similar to their original budget?
After much debate in the Green group, with one exception they all eventually voted in favour of the amended budget. There were inevitably different views in the party. The national Green Party conference in Liverpool a day later discussed their stance, with Green Left supporters leading the opposition. Eventually, the conference voted by a two-thirds majority to support the Brighton and Hove Green councillors’ decision.

The Green Party in Brighton and Hove

The Green Party emerged as the largest group on Brighton and Hove Council in May 2011, when it won ten additional seats to make a total of 23 against 18 Tories and 13 Labour. The Greens won 33 per cent of the popular vote across the city (Labour got 32 per cent and the Tories 29 per cent). Previously the Tories ran the council from 2007 to 2011, while Labour ran it from 1996 to 2007. Arguably, it was the worst possible time for the Green Party to lead its first council – with a government making unprecedented cuts to public services, a hostile local Labour Party (although the council unions are sympathetic) and a minority administration of councillors with no previous experience of running a council.

Green Left

Green Left is an association of Green Party members, launched in June 2006, when 36 Green Party members agreed its founding statement (the Headcorn Declaration). As Sarah Farrow, Green Left co-convenor, said then: ‘Activists in the Green Party have founded Green Left because many greens believe the only path to an ecological, economically and socially just and peaceful society has to be based on an anti-capitalist political agenda.’ As well as the Headcorn Declaration, Green Left supports the Ecosocialist Manifesto. Green Left is not a part of the Green Party of England and Wales, it is not funded by the party and does not stand candidates in governmental elections in its own right.
Website http://thewatermelon.wordpress.com
Blog http://greenleftblog.blogspot.com
Facebook www.facebook.com/groups/2333251254

A Brighton shade of Green

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 19:44:31 +0000

Hilary Wainwright How do you explain your victory, beyond extremely hard work and a concentration of Green Party resources?

Caroline Lucas We were building on people’s familiarity with Green policies and politicians after many years of Green councillors Brighton. When they see them in action, they like them and want more. That’s meant we’ve been able to increase our vote year-on-year, including at the European elections last year when the Greens came ahead of every other party not only in Brighton but in Norwich and Oxford too.

Brighton is a very politically savvy place – people here are interested in politics, and they like to be ahead of the curve. This election gave us the opportunity to emphasise not just our environmental policies but our strong policies on social justice and tackling inequality too. With declining support for Labour, we were perceived by many as the party to keep the Conservatives out. The Lib Dems are very weak in Brighton with only two councillors out of 54.

Wainwright And the fall in the Green vote elsewhere?

Lucas The Green vote was squeezed, not least because of our archaic electoral system, the lack of state funding for political parties (we could only afford to field candidates in half the seats), and because of the effect of the TV leader debates, excluding smaller parties. The areas where the three main parties agreed and we had very different views (privatisation, Afghanistan, cuts rather than our programme of £44 billion in investment) were not put under any real examination.

Wainwright Being an MP can isolate people from their base, in spite of good intentions. How will you resist these pressures? How will you use the position to help build progressive alliances and initiatives?

Lucas I’m sure the Green Party will keep me grounded! I intend to be a vigorous constituency MP, engaging with residents with a range of tools: social media, traditional surgeries, open-air ‘street meets’ – of which we’ve had two so far in Brighton. We are also examining how my work can best link up with the party’s wider campaigning efforts. I will be voting on issues on a case-by-case basis, and hope that alliances can be forged on specific issues with more progressive MPs, whatever their party.

Wainwright Obviously the cuts are going to be a key issue. What will be your strategy to defend public services and benefits? What lessons do you draw from the Green Party’s experience in Ireland [where it entered into a government coalition in 2007]?

Lucas I plan to forge links with all those who oppose the cuts, particularly from the unions, and with groups like the Green New Deal group. There are alternatives to public spending cuts. We should be making a strong case for higher taxes for those on higher incomes, together with more imaginative revenue-raising ideas like the Robin Hood tax and cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance. It’s precisely at a time of recession that we need government investment in the green infrastructure, both to cut emissions and – crucially – to create jobs as fast as possible. The lesson from Ireland is not to join coalitions until you are strong enough to have real influence over them.

Wainwright Is there any scope to get half-decent green policies out of the Tory Lib coalition?

Lucas Clearly, we can support some measures the coalition has announced – cancelling runway expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, for example. But this goes nowhere near far enough: we need an end to all airport expansion in the UK. A green investment bank is definitely a positive step forward – but the challenge will be to ensure that all economic activity is put in a context of recognising environmental limits.

An early test of the government will be its position at the European energy ministers’ meeting in Brussels to discuss whether Europe should revise its main climate target upwards – they absolutely must do this. The Conservatives also have to recognise that while ‘localism’ is good, only central government has the big economic levers to drive investment in clean technologies.

Wainwright How can you use your position to go beyond specific issues to develop and project an alternative vision? How do you intend to work with the many people outside the Green Party who broadly share your politics?

Lucas I’m absolutely convinced that the task of developing an alternative vision needs to involve as many groupings, networks and individuals as possible. Greens have a lot to contribute – but it has to be a genuinely grass-roots process, involving all of those who want to see a transformation in our economy and society, so that social and environmental justice is at its heart.

Oh yes, I’ve seen you on Question Time

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:45:01 +0000

Salma Yaqoob’s latest Question Time appearance – filmed in Wootton Bassett in December and centred on Afghanistan, with BBC balance stacking four pro-war panellists to her lone anti-war voice – is having quite an impact. In the slew of admiring email responses, she was declared ‘our English rose’ and even ‘the Susan Boyle of politics’ by an ex-serviceman who, until she opened her mouth, fully expected her to get hammered. And it’s clear, as I traipse after her canvassing, that the programme is a boon on her quest to become Birmingham New Hall’s new MP.

The King’s Heath neighbourhood streets scheduled for today’s outing are mixed: roughly half white, half Asian – Sikh, Hindu and Muslim. She switches neatly between Urdu and English, depending on who comes to the door, but each time her message remains more-or-less the same. She grew up in a house around the corner and so there are a handful of shared school-day anecdotes. But she is surprised at the wider and warm recognition she is getting, with many more people interrupting her doorstep introduction with, ‘Oh yes, I know you; I’ve seen you on Question Time.’

Yaqoob sums up people’s impressions of Respect, the party she has represented as a Birmingham councillor since 2006, as ‘up until recently: George Galloway, Muslims, war’. Ger Francis, her campaign manager, agrees: ‘Everyone knows we’re anti-war, what they don’t know are the other things we support.’ Other than troops out, the policy priorities on today’s leaflets are investment not cuts, a green new deal and anti-racism. Francis explains the major challenge as overcoming people’s misconception of Respect as the party of the Muslim community, a misconception that excludes 84 per cent of Birmingham’s population. The strategy is simply to explain what they stand for.

This is exactly what Yaqoob is doing on the doorsteps (‘We’re against cutting public services – it wasn’t us who caused the recession, it was the bankers, but they’re the ones getting the bonuses!’) and it seems to be working well. One young white man we bump into becomes an instant on-the-street convert: ‘I want a bit of change. I’ll do that, I’ll vote for you, love. Pleasure to meet you!’

Yaqoob’s doorstep sell includes the Green Party endorsement (the Greens stepped down in this constituency to back her), which she hopes will ‘reinforce our progressive message and reassure voters, stop them putting us in a box’.

The Respect canvassers are also making certain they talk about local concerns. Mohammad Ishtiaq, a local councillor, explains: ‘Last time we spoke too much about international issues and got slammed for not talking enough about local issues, so now we’re trying to get the balance of local/global.’ At the top of the leaflets is a declaration against cuts in council jobs and services, to be paid for by a small council tax increase for the richest. The fight to save Sparkhill baths in Springfield ward is going down well – and so too is Yaqoob’s impromptu anti-litter petition after residents of the street we are doorstepping complain about rubbish from the new takeaways.

At the canvassers’ meeting afterwards the volunteers relay their, mostly positive, feedback. Eugene Egan signed up as a volunteer after seeing Yaqoob on the television. ‘I thought she’d done brilliant; this is someone who can change things,’ he says.

‘My mother didn’t like it, because she’s narrow minded,’ he adds, laughing. He is clearly excited to be part of the action. He reports to the room warm response to Yaqoob ‘mostly from what I’d call the white Christian type people’. This aligns with the experience of a young Asian activist who exclaims, ‘The white people were nicer to us than the Asians!’

The other patterns that surprise the canvassers are the almost absolute absence of people professing other party ties, but at the same time voters’ ‘repoliticisation’ – their eagerness to engage with and talk about the issues.

They plan to step up the canvassing; the goal is to knock on every door in the constituency. Yaqoob ‘doesn’t like how other parties in the constituency have operated, leaving out white working class communities that then don’t get heard’. Nor does she have time for the cynicism of politicians who assume the white working class is racist. Her experience, she says, is one of being warmly received by people who ‘just want to be listened to, to know somebody cares’.

Reaching beyond the muesli eaters

Some 200 miles south, Brighton Pavilion, with its bohemian culture and penchant for the alternative, is an obvious choice for Caroline Lucas’s parliamentary bid. A specially commissioned ICM poll in December gave her Green Party an eight-point lead over the Tories and ten over Labour. And when I visit for their weekly action day a couple of months later, the volunteers are quite giddily excited with possibility, chirpily recounting the positive feedback they’ve been getting from voters.

A more recent, controversial poll told a different story, putting the Greens in third place, so unhatched chickens certainly shouldn’t be counted. But there’s a real chance, if the election campaign goes well, that Lucas could be Britain’s first Green MP.

Paul Steedman, a councillor for Brighton’s Queen’s Park ward and the Greens’ general election campaign manager, is keen to emphasise what he calls the ‘Brighton factor’: a sense of independence, a desire to try something fresh and exciting, wanting to be the first. The key to success, though, will be reaching out beyond Brighton’s centre – all quirky, independent shops and middle-class muesli eaters – and mobilising working class support.

Steedman doesn’t see a barrier here. He says the party has shown that it can get support from all sections of society (it now has 13 councillors in Brighton and Hove) once people see that it isn’t just interested in abstract issues, such as peace and the environment, but is ‘delivering real things to real people’.

Lewisham Deptford doesn’t have its equivalent of Steedman’s ‘Brighton factor’ and its demographics are vastly different: it’s a lot more working class, a lot less white. Still, the Greens began to make inroads here by mobilising ‘the white middle-class Guardian readers in the conservation areas,’ as parliamentary candidate Darren Johnson puts it. It took five years for him to become the first Green councillor in the borough and begin to amass support among working class and ethnic minority voters.

‘I’m not from a middle-class Guardian reading household,’ Johnson tells me. ‘I joined the party aged 20 and as a working class boy it was a culture shock. I was intimidated by these well-spoken posh people with very big beards.’

With this in mind, he is meticulous about avoiding ‘high-falutin language and the jargon that has grown up around the green movement’. He’ll often cross words out in drafts of local party literature to make sure it is ‘accessible to everyone – not everyone has had the benefit of university education’. The ‘Green New Deal’ is one phrase he found had ‘no resonance, was just jargonistic waffle. Instead, I’ll explain what it actually means, the types of jobs it would create: plumbers, engineers, care workers.’

As well as jobs, the Greens in Lewisham and in Brighton have been prioritising opposition to public spending cuts and NHS privatisation. They’ve also been demonstrating their social and economic policy credentials on the local level, having helped secure a living wage for everyone employed through Lewisham Council and convince its mayor to overturn some £1.8 million cuts in services for the elderly and disabled.

The response has been positive, sometimes surprisingly so. Johnson tells of Dean Walton, his partner and fellow councillor, remarking of the canvass cards: ‘Was there a mistake filling in the forms? It says all these people on the estates are putting up “Vote Green” posters!’ And as I follow him canvassing council estate blocks in his Brockley ward, we encounter regular and new supporters. One black woman is very pleased to meet him, announcing ‘I always vote Green,’ while a young Muslim mother listens to the manifesto priorities and replies, ‘My auntie votes for you, I’ll definitely do it!’

The simple practice of knocking on doors is key. The Greens have been maximising communication with the Lewisham electorate: sending out regular newsletters and attending all sorts of meetings. They are regulars at tenants’ meetings and later in the evening Johnson is off to a Latin American community event.

In terms of breadth of representation, the Greens have certainly come a long way since Johnson joined, some two decades ago. But they still have some way to go. Johnson concedes that this is especially the case with their members and volunteers, who don’t yet reflect Lewisham’s demography, but he is pleased that they will be fielding ethnic minority candidates in winnable council seats at the local elections on 6 May.

Ultimately, whether the Greens make a breakthrough on polling day will probably come down to the same factor as with Salma Yaqoob and Respect. As one of the residents of Brockley’s Syringa House estate put it, ‘I’ll think about it but I’m Labour born and bred, and it’s hard to kick the habit.’

The rise of European Bobo politics

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:15:16 +0000

The success of Europe Ecologie in France and moderate advances elsewhere in the June European elections have emboldened the green right but disaster in Ireland, where the party was wiped out – and to a lesser extent in the Czech Republic – shows what happens when they abandon their principles for a shot at the big league.

Since the France’s Europe Ecologie triumph in the European elections, the European media have been talking of a Green wave across the continent, with leading member Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s gurning visage nigh on inescapable.

But the effervescent Cohn-Bendit has every right to be in an especially jolly mood – the result was indeed truly spectacular. It saw them soaring from the 7.45 per cent of the French vote in the 2004 EU elections and their embarrassing 1.57 per cent in the 2007 presidential elections.

D-Day of ecological politics

Cohn-Bendit christened the night ‘the D-Day of ecological politics’, leftwing daily Liberation called the result an ‘earthquake’ and saluted the victory of Cohn-Bendit ‘s green dream team alliance – bringing together the former soixante-huitard with, among others, alter-globalisation’s most famous farmer, José Bové. As well as crusading anti-corruption judge Eva Joly and the ex-chief of Greenpeace France, Yannick Jadot. Meanwhile, the Socialists abjectly conceded that the Greens had tapped into something profound among French voters that their own party had entirely missed.

‘The voters wanted to pass on a message,’ said Jean-Marie Le Guen, a
leading Socialist deputy, ‘a real concern for the future of our planet and a protest against the Socialist party for the way we are working today.’

The ecologists are now undoubtedly the third most powerful force in French politics, while on the back of the French results, the European Greens – the sole grouping in the European Parliament to boost their numbers in the election – are a player in EU politics as they’ve never been before.

New alliances

Immediately after the vote, Cohn-Bendit offered to form a domestic
alliance with the Socialists and the centrist Modem to take on French
President Nicholas Sarkozy, ignoring the divided far left, once comrades in arms to Greens and certainly to the mustachioed Bové on many an altermondialiste demo over the last ten years, but who scored far less than expected.

The Belgian co-leader of the European Greens and newly elected MEP,
Philippe Lamberts, said that the French model, which he categorised as
‘being able to link climate change to a credible economic vision and offering solid candidates’ should be emulated elsewhere across Europe and that it was high time for Greens to abandon the leftwing ghetto.

Lamberts, who is also a sales executive for IBM in charge of the automobile, aerospace and arms industries in southwestern Europe said, ‘This was the recipe for success in France. In Italy, it’s very sad that we lost our seats there, but they could not link their green vision with the economy. They couldn’t do this because they allied themselves with the extreme left.

‘They did it this time as they did last time, and the track record shows that when you ally yourselves with the extreme left, you never move beyond three to five per cent.’

But beyond France, the European results for the Greens were uneven. In a number of countries they made slight advances, but, crucially, in two countries where they were in a coalition government, the night was a debacle.

In Denmark, the party upped its representation from one to three MEPs and gained an extra seat in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Finland and Sweden. In Sweden, the Greens became the third-largest party. In the UK, they managed to significantly increase their support to 8.6 per cent. But the party was not able to translate this into any additional seats.

On the European level, the German Greens made only a moderate advance overall – from 11.9 per cent to 12.3, but sharply strengthened their position in urban areas. In Berlin, the party won almost a quarter of votes and in the hipster-friendly district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, the Greens achieved a remarkable 43 percent.

The metropolitan result in Germany has emboldened the more conservative ‘Realo’ wing of the party. In the days after the vote, Boris Palmer, the Green mayor of Tuebingen, said the future was a coalition with the conservatives at a federal level: ‘We must become stronger than the [centrist] Free Democrats, to make us the only alternative for the Christian Democrats to the grand coalition.’

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine asked Cohn-Bendit after the vote to fill in the blanks to the following question: ‘If a partnership with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats makes sense …?’

To which he replied: ‘Then we will do so. Anything else would be nonsense.’

European Greens also lost two seats in Italy, and one in Spain. While Austria’s Die Gruenen held on to their two seats, it dropped from 12.9 to 9.5 percent.

And in Ireland, where the Greens are in government with the centre-right Fianna Fáil, the party was pulverised, winning not a single MEP and losing almost all their council seats in the local elections running on the same day – from 18 down to three. They were also locked out of Dublin city council, long their strongest bastion.

Similarly, many in the European party had expected the Czech Republic to be a beachhead for Greens in Eastern Europe, where it is notoriously difficult for environmentalists to win favour. The party there, Strana zelených, had been in a coalition government as well and had even won the endorsement of anti-Communist hero Vaclav Havel and the outgoing foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Ultimately, the Czech Greens, which have six seats in the current parliament and a single senator, were relegated to the margins. They dropped from 6.3 per cent in the 2006 legislative elections and 3.16 in the 2004 European ballot to just two per cent in 2009, far from enough to win a seat at Strasbourg.

Progress or a step backwards?

But while certain leaders may have thought that a pragmatic participation in right-wing coalitions would lead to a recognition of Greens as a serious party of government, the move has backfired -alienating many of their progressive middle-class supporters and blocking all possible advances among workers and the poor.

In June 2007, in Ireland, the Greens entered a coalition with the centre-right Fianna Fail and the free-market Progressive Democrats. Although it is not fair to say that the Greens have been held as responsible for the economic collapse of the last year as have the senior coalition partners, their abandonment of key pledges and issues that symbolise Green politics is widely agreed as the explanation for their electoral wipe-out.

Ahead of the coalition agreement, the Greens had been outspoken opponents of plans to build the M3 motorway through the Tara Skryne Valley, one of Ireland’s most important archeological landscapes. But since then said next to nothing on the subject as the government moves ahead with its scheme, provoking Save Tara Campaign activists sporting cigars and fat-cat suits to mount a protest outside Green Party headquarters last September.

The party once vocal about plans to construct a Shell gas pipeline and processing plant in Mayo has been equally silent on the matter since joining the government.

In 2007, Green junior minister Trevor Sargent even fudged on the question of genetically modified organisms, saying that the party’s long-standing opposition was in reality ‘not about banning imported GM feed’.

Meanwhile in Dublin, the party that ostensibly is for expanded public
transport has overseen cuts to bus services. And the swingeing cuts to public services and levies on workers that are the government’s response to the economic crisis have provoked some of the largest protests in decades – and cannot have endeared the party to much of society.

But despite their European and local debacle, the party appears to remain committed to staying within the governing coalition rather than withdrawing their support, mainly because this would precipitate a general election in which they are sure to be routed.

Equally, in the Czech Republic, the coalition in which the Greens participated until the collapse of the government in March, two years ago provoked some of the biggest demonstrations in the country since the democracy protests of 1989. Unions, students and pensioners came out en masse against savage cuts to social programmes and tax increases for working people that were to enable business taxes to be cut from 24 per cent to 19 per cent.

The party has also backed plans for the US missile defence system tobe installed in the Czech Republic, despite the effective abandonment of the strategy by Barack Obama. Opponents within the party to such policies, including plans for healthcare privatisation, have been expelled – notably two deputies in the lower house.

Despite the victory in France, the real lesson of the June European ballot lies in the worrying statistic showing these elections to have achieved the worst turnout on record, at 43 per cent on average across the EU. Abstention rates were similar in France and particularly high amongst working class voters. Moreover, while Europe Ecologie did well among the young people who voted, youth as a whole was the second largest category of abstentionists.

According to French pollster TNS-Sofres, 32 per cent of managers and those from the ‘intellectual professions’ (to use the French pollster’s own categorisation), as well as 24 per cent of those in the ‘intermediate professions’ backed Cohn-Bendit’s outfit, while just 13 per cent of workers who voted backed the list. This was particularly pronounced in the industrial north, historically a Communist bastion.

This has led commentators to, perhaps not unfairly, describe the Europe Ecologie voter as essentially ‘bobo’ – bourgois bohemien – the French term for middle-class lefty arty types.

Thus any shift to the right on a European level, naively mimicking the
Irish and Czech trajectory, risks a loss of these core wealthier but progressive voters. At the same time ignoring the great oceans of voters in which they could fish, and increasingly abstain or worse – plumping for the anti-immigrant right – who have been without a voice for decades since social democracy took its neo-liberal turn.

On June 8, social democrats across Europe woke up to an electoral cataclysm largely as a result of their failure to articulate a vision that was in any way markedly different from the market fundamentalists that brought about the crisis.

If Greens follow the same path, they are in peril of unwittingly wandering into the same parliamentary desert.

What’s the deal?

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:23:55 +0000

How do you feel about the fact that everyone now has their own ‘green new deal’, though obviously yours was the first one? How do you differentiate yourself from the others?

Obviously we are delighted that the idea has got some momentum behind it and people are talking about using this opportunity to put serious amounts of money into the economy in a way that would not only create jobs but would also have serious environmental benefits. The downside is that because everyone is now using this language it is very difficult to differentiate between what is a real green new deal and what is not.

Are there plans, then, to revisit the Green New Deal – in the light of everyone else having one now, to go back and review it and produce a real one, more radical than the original?

There are certainly discussions about that but then we are also trying to encourage more people to get involved. The original group of eight to ten of us are not experts in some areas. So, for example, we are working with other specialist organisations to develop groups around issues like transport and agriculture to produce a green new deal for these sectors. We have been talking to the Soil Association and Sustain about what a green new deal for agriculture would look like. We have been meeting with lots of other NGOs too because there is this sense that we want to mainstream this by getting people to look at the Green New Deal through the lens of their own sector or area.

My first impression on reading the Green New Deal was that it was written as a top-down governmental programme. I understand why that was, but it did seem to me that it could also have been written in a way to encourage people to do things locally in their own areas – similarly to how you describe these plans for sectors. I understand things are happening in some areas already on this front. Could we not use the Green New Deal as a way to build a grass-roots movement – hundreds of meetings round the country to generate local enthusiasm and innovation to pressure government?

Yes, you are absolutely right. I was in Norwich yesterday with the Green Party there launching their election manifesto, ‘A green new deal for Norwich’, about what the local authority could and should be doing. We have also been looking at the idea of local bonds, which local authorities could issue as a safe place to put money in these troubled times and whose funds could be used for local renovation programmes and economic activity. The returns might not be as high as in the heyday of the real casino capitalism but people would know that their money was benefiting everyone, local communities and sustainable projects.

How do you think this would link to the ‘transition towns’ movement?

The Green New Deal does have slightly more emphasis, I suppose, on how to get national and local government to help this process more by removing obstacles and roadblocks – EU trade rules, World Trade Organisation rules and so on – which will need governments and local government to be pressurising to remove them.

The transition movement, though, is one of the most inspiring movements around, with ordinary people just getting on and doing things without waiting for national or local government. And it helps create a space by showing that there are people out there willing to go further than politicians think they are. I passionately believe in that bottom-up process, like transition towns, but we do also need the top-down governmental approach, and of course the bottom-up pressure makes that top-down approach more possible anyway, so it is all related.

It is very rare that you have a moment in politics when ordinary people are more radical than the politicians – I think maybe the 1960s was the last time. You have people in the pub wanting to string up bankers while the politicians want to bail them out – it is extraordinary. Is there not a danger of us all self censoring and not being radical enough?

It is a wonderful opportunity in a sense and a huge responsibility on us all to use this moment well. If we had been told five years ago that this moment was going to happen, we would all have got very excited and started preparing for how best to use it. But because it happened so quickly and unexpectedly, I am worried that it won’t last forever. There will be a real movement to go back to business as usual and we might lose this extraordinary opportunity we have to change and reshape a whole range of things from the economic system to the whole way we organise society. We’ve got to seize that moment!

Green jobs to beat recession

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:44:06 +0000

The economy is in turmoil and we are fast reaching the point of no return for catastrophic climate change. There is an opportunity to tackle both of these challenges, by making the necessary shift to a low carbon economy. Yet while efforts are being made to stabilise the economic crisis, the climate package is under threat. Rather than creating another bubble, the Government must invest in a sustainable, low-carbon future for enduring industries and employment.

Green industries have great potential in the UK, but currently, their development is a long way behind the market leaders. Take wind energy for instance. The UK is the windiest country in the European Union with around 40 per cent of the EU’s total wind capacity, yet we produce little more than 4 per cent of the EU’s wind energy. This massive under-utilisation of our renewable resources is reflected in the number of green jobs. According to government-sponsored research, the UK has, at best, 26,000 jobs in renewable energy, whereas Germany has 250,000.

Regrettably, there has been an historic lack of investment and incentives for people to study the subjects required by industry, for example engineering, and this has left our present workforce unprepared. Government research shows that 43,000 new jobs could be created in the wind energy industry, but without the skills and infrastructure to manufacture in the UK, these projections shrink to less than 7,000 jobs.

The EU is pushing the UK to expand its renewable energy capacity, partly as a result of legislation influenced by Green MEPs, and this could create the impetus to kick start the right training programmes. To meet EU targets, the UK must produce 15 per cent of its total energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 and while this has been described as ‘very challenging’ by the government it should be noted that Romania’s target is 24 per cent and Sweden’s is 49 per cent. In fact, most EU member states have higher 2020 renewable energy targets than the UK.

Simply put, progress on the green agenda is being delayed by government timidity and lack of forward thinking. There are other challenges that need to be addressed, for instance in the planning system and the electricity grid itself, but given the right support the wind industry alone could be worth tens of billions of pounds and employ tens of thousands of people.

We currently have a serious green skills deficit. The Government needs to address climate change across sectors and ensure that our workforce has the knowledge to improve performance in their own sector as well as expand new green industries.’

As the green work agenda becomes increasingly relevant, success on green issues will translate into success in terms of sustainable jobs, skills and investment in industry and manufacturing.

Jean Lambert is the Green Party MEP for London and author of the new report \’Green Work – the climate change challenge\’

A Green New Deal

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:41:57 +0000

In the 1930s, the world endured a grim economic depression. In the US, F D Roosevelt pioneered the way out with the New Deal, which helped stabilise the financial system and refloated the economy. We face the same kind of economic problems today but with added ecological threats. The age of cheap, plentiful oil is ending and we cannot simply invest in polluting factories, massive dams, boondoggle transport projects as FDR’s government did then.

If there is to be a new New Deal, it has to be a Green New Deal, which is exactly what a distinguished group of environmentalists and economists, including Andrew Simms, of the New Economics Foundation; Tony Juniper, former director of Friends of the Earth; Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian and Green party leader Caroline Lucas MEP, propose.

Drawing inspiration from Roosevelt, the Green New Deal group calls for:

Capital flows to be regulated. The power to fix interest rates and the exchange rate to be restored to elected, sovereign governments. Crucially, this means exchange controls must return.

Publicly accountable central banks to be free to inject debt-free money into the economy and keep the cost of borrowing low (so that loan expenditure projects can be easily financed).

Resources to create jobs, in part by filling tax loopholes and closing tax havens.

A new global and independent central bank to be established. Based on Keynes’s proposal for a global bank (called the International Clearing Union), it will manage and stabilise trade between countries, create a trading currency and a reserve asset that is neutral between countries (perhaps one based on carbon). In short: We need a new Bretton Woods settlement.

Creating a carbon army

Brown talks of jobs in building a successor to the Trident nuclear missile system. But such jobs would be capital-intensive (not to mention potentially a war-crime), what we now have a ‘glut’ of is labour, not capital.

The first thing that a Green New Deal must mean is good, secure, green jobs (see Jean Lambert’s Green jobs to beat recession). We need a ‘carbon army’ of highly skilled green-collar workers, so money is needed for retraining as well as new tranches of public transport investment and to make working on the land more sustainable and localised. By capitalising on economies of scale, the UK could rapidly become a world leader in cheap, eco-friendly energy – not just wind, but tidal, solar and other forms of renewables.

But can government really lead a relocalisation of our economy and society? Yes – in fact, only government can do this. We can have a centralised drive to create the tools for localised solutions. Micro energy production and decentralised district heating systems make sense but require big investment and co-ordination from the centre.

We should incentivise localities to welcome renewable energy’s gift of greater security of supply – perhaps by reducing tariffs in areas that adopt rather than reject wind, wave or tidal power schemes. This works from both the radical left and any mainstream political perspective. We’d be crazy not to pursue an avenue that can become the political consensus.

Currently British manufacturers produce few if any wind turbines, and planning regulations make the whole process of moving to a low carbon economy unnecessarily expensive and time consuming. Gearing the country towards independence from fossil fuels does two things at once. It helps cut our environmental impact and distances us from the instability of international fuel prices and markets. This will help us become a more sustainable and resilient economy in every sense.

It is imperative to ensure this unexpected, if welcome, Keynesian consensus is not squandered. This requires government intervention, so let’s make sure it’s the right intervention.

No taxation without representation

The globalised finance system that we now have would have been repugnant to Keynes, who wanted finance and capital kept national – and thus under democratic oversight.

We need systemic reform of the banking system but reforms alone will never secure long-term safety, because after a while a privatised banking system will start agitating to strip away and circumvent the protections and regulations. Instead, we need a banking system consisting of a large public sector, democratically directed toward a sustainable economy that supports businesses in the real economy, with low interest rates, plus a large network of co-ops, mutuals and credit unions.

A key principle that must govern any just response to the financial crisis is no taxation without representation. If we the people are to put billions of pounds of our money into guaranteeing the banks, then we need to be able to exert real control over those banks to change their behaviour.

It’s a scandal, for example, that Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are repossessing more homes than their private competitors. If our money is to keep them afloat, let’s demand that that these building societies act for the public good, rather than simply aping commercial concerns. In the longer term, they should be remutualised.

It’s time for a great leap forward in our ability to weather the vast triple threat of dangerous climate change, peak oil and the financial crisis. In our view, putting the banks under public control is a logical conclusion of the urgently needed Green New Deal proposals.

Jim Jepps blogs at the Daily (Maybe) and Rupert Read is one of the 15 Green Party councillors in Norwich and prospective MEP for Eastern Region

Does the Green Party need a leader? The case against

admin — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:41:06 +0000

Shahrar Ali replies to Rupert Read

Dear Rupert,

In Norwich City, over two years, the number of Green councillors has doubled from five to ten. You are one of the councillors who helped make it happen. In the London area last year, we moved from having just one councillor to 12, now with representation across six London boroughs instead of one.

Now for the first time, the Green Party of England and Wales has over 100 councillors. These gains came about with considerable effort on the ground from grassroots activists. These gains came about with political leadership from the local parties themselves.

Some of our influential colleagues in the party believe that to accelerate our progress we need to adopt a figurehead leader. You believe that this will lead to an increased public profile for us and subsequent political gains.

Yet all of us in the Party are impatient for social transformation through green politics. So let me address your concerns by explaining why we need to reaffirm our commitment to a leadership structure that does not adopt a single party leader:

1. Accountability. You say that having a leader makes leadership more accountable. But this consequence isn’t automatic or else doesn’t mean much. Calling for the resignation of a leader, for example, should be based on knowing that he or she is directly or indirectly responsible for some serious mistake, or even that their replacement would help minimise future harm. You may wish to make somebody at the top take responsibility but that isn’t the same as identifying who is responsible. If a leader caved into pressure to resign, without good cause, that could leave the underlying problem unaddressed, only to be repeated. The problem is made worse when a leader cannot be held to account, as in your Tony Blair example, even after he took the country into a disastrous war.

2. Collective leadership. Our party recognises that collective leadership is better than top-down leadership in helping us to progress our radical political agenda. We balance the autonomy of local parties alongside the executive power granted to other bodies elected regionally or nationally. This arrangement encourages, and entrusts, members to take ownership of the party through campaign initiatives or candidate selection – at all levels. Compare this to the alienation suffered by the Southall Tory party when, earlier this year, Cameron imposed his favoured by-election candidate. Moreover, grassroots participation is not an optional add-on to Green politics, but is intrinsic to our joined-up approach. It is precisely this mindset that needs fostering in the wider world; getting people motivated to walk the walk, not simply talk the talk.

So, Rupert, if it’s political transformation you’re after, while recognising the need for more Green politicians, we really are singing off the same hymn sheet. However, this transformation extends to the way we ourselves do politics. Not because we want to be different for the sake of it, but because conventional politics has shown itself to be unfit for purpose.

Yours,
Shahrar

Shahrar Ali is the Green Party London policy coordinator and a candidate for the London Assembly in 2008. Dr Ali teaches moral philosophy and his doctorate addressed lies and deceit in public life

Read Rupert Read\’s case for a leader, join the debate on the Red Pepper Forum and vote in our poll

Does the Green Party need a leader? The case for

admin — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:28:40 +0000

Dear Shahrar,

It is plain obvious that the Green Party would benefit significantly from an increased public profile, if it were to do what both its MEPs and 70 per cent of its councillors want it to do, and have a leader. In the words of the Guardian’s John Vidal: ‘Not having a leader has stopped mainstream political reporting of the Green Party for years. Having a leader would make for a better platform. It would make sense to change.’

It’s a no-brainer. But as a radical democrat, I believe that there’s a deeper reason for change. We need real accountable leadership. We need to know where the buck stops. If the government does something truly appalling, the PM resigns (think Eden, or Blair – well, actually Blair never did resign over Iraq, but you take my point, all the same).

Think the unthinkable: if the Green Party at the highest level did something appalling, who would take responsibility? In those circumstances, our leader or co-leaders should resign … But if we don’t have any such leaders, what is going to happen: will the media and the membership call for our ‘principal speakers’ to resign?! It just doesn’t make any sense.

Without leadership, there can be no genuine accountability. We need to have this referendum go through, not just so that we can reach the public more easily: we also need it, for us.

I imagine that one major objection to all this will be to say that green leftists ought to object on principle to having leaders. But we eco-socialists need to be quite clear that it is a merely individualistic fantasy to think that everyone is equally suited to leading. There are very, very few who are genuinely and consistently capable of leading (as opposed to being tyrants or dictators, which is somewhat easier).

Socialist and communist parties have long known that anti-leadership is not in the slightest radical or left-wing. Anti-leader-ness is in the end as quite literally absurd as ‘the American dream’, the nonsensical notion that everyone can be a millionaire, if only they work hard enough.

Being green is about us acting and living naturally as teams. Not as individuals each with the alleged same capacity to lead. Leaderlessness-advocates claim that all and none of us are leaders – all of us because we can all lead, and none of us because none of us ought to follow. This is the same false fantasy that drives advertising implying that we can all have the best car, the best body … Anti-leadership advocates have bought into a right-wing [liberal, consumerist] fantasy.

Anti-leadership is at best a misguided anarchist ideal: NOT a left or green ideal. And it is certainly a quite hopeless basis on which to run a political party.
It is utter nonsense to pretend that anyone whose door we knock on could, with enough assistance, become the next Caroline Lucas. Such nonsense holds us back, as a party, from achieving what we need to: nothing less than saving the future.

Lacking a leader is getting in the way of this utterly vital ambition.

Real leadership is leading – co-ordinating, inspiring, and strategically spearheading – a team of others who have complementary skills. That is what the Green Party needs.

Yours,
Rupert

Cllr Rupert Read is the lead Green Party candidate in the 2009 Euro-elections for Eastern Region; Dr Read is also reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia (Norwich), where he specialises in political and environmental ethics

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