Next month’s Autumn Conference could solidify the Greens’ place on the left
The 13th-16th September will see hundreds of Greens from across the country descend on Brighton for the party’s Autumn Conference. And from the look of what’s made the final agenda, it’s shaping up to be an interesting and radical one, further entrenching the party’s position as a significant force for progress in British politics.
For those who aren’t involved with the Green Party of England and Wales, the party’s holds its conferences every six months, a necessity given that members make the entirety of policy from the conference floor – one member, one vote – and any member can turn up.
Members also vote on what makes the conference floor itself, unlike the usual mainstream-party stitch-up with executives deciding what will be given time (and what won’t). For this conference, nearly 200 people voted in the ‘prioritisation ballot’, almost double the usual average of just over 100. A small proportion of the overall party perhaps, but a sizable chunk of those who will actually be there in Brighton.
And in a city with some of the highest train fares in the country, the motion which came out on top may prove to be very popular. In time for Caroline Lucas MP’s new Private Members Bill on rail renationalisation, the item which tops the agenda, ‘C01 – Rail and Public Ownership’, reiterates the party’s ‘long-standing commitment to bringing our rail system, including track and operators, back into public ownership’ and ‘recognises the need to ensure our rail services are more democratically accountable at local and regional levels’. Proposed by London Assembly members Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones, the motion focuses on London’s local commuter services and calls on them to be handed over to Transport for London (which already runs much of the London Overground network).
Hot on its heels after being voted second on the agenda is ‘C02 – Keep the East Coast rail franchise in the public sector’. No prizes for guessing what it might be. The policy puts it simply – ‘The government proposes to re-privatise this franchise before the next general election. The Green Party opposes this and believes that the East Coast rail franchise should be kept in the public sector’, noting that the publicly-owned East Coast service has contributed £640m to the exchequer over the past three years. Pretty uncontroversial stuff.
Not everything to hit the conference floor will be entirely uncontroversial however. Monetary policy, as dull as it sounds, has for some time been an ideological pivot-point within the party (along with population and, more recently, immigration), with one side associated with the monetary-reform campaign group Positive Money arguing that ‘the power to create money must be removed from private banks’ and calling for ‘a programme of banking reform’ based around reigning in banks’ lending power, and those on the more explicitly socialist side of the party arguing the problem is more systemic and requires more radical change, insisting banks’ ‘lending power should be socialised’ alongside ‘social control [of] the financial sector’. The former group have proposed ‘C03 – Monetary and Banking Reform Composite’, amended by those on the left to state ‘a Green government would seek to bring all banking institutions into social control’, beginning with the transformation of one of the existing nationalised banks into a genuine ‘People’s Bank’. Watch out for which side comes out on top.
But in the wake of the ramped-up seizure of common land by multinational corporations across the globe, International Coordinator Derek Wall’s motion opposing Land Grabs may prove more immediately pressing. The policy asks that the Green Party ‘affirms its support for indigenous peoples, peasants and their social movement allies in opposing land seizures’ and back collective ownership of land. It states that in the case of land, ‘free market mechanisms should always be overruled by the principles of sustainability and social justice’ and demands the UK government act to prevent the destruction of common land ownership by multinationals. All calls that should go down well in the world’s first One Planet City.
There are plenty more fascinating and worthy policies to be debated, from the Green-led national campaign to ban advertising aimed at children, anonymisation of CVs to prevent discrimination, an elected head of state, the de facto reversal of last conference’s Philosophical Basis change (don’t get me started …), and proposals for a locally-implemented Progressive Council Tax to stop the cuts – made more urgent by the recent refuse-worker pay dispute.
Yet perhaps most important and most telling after Labour’s Falkirk scandal will be the presence of trade union figures at the conference, with National Union of Teachers leader Christine Blower speaking on education, rail union figures discussing Britain’s privatised transport system and the PCS having a stall – encouraging signs of a growing realisation in the union movement of Labour’s failure to challenge neoliberalism.
All this alongside speeches from Reinhard Butikofer (Co-Chair, European Green Party), GPEW leader Natalie Bennett, the freshly-released Caroline Lucas MP, council leader Jason Kitcat, Will Duckworth and others, in the home of the first Green-run council, Brighton and Hove. See you there, folks.
The final agenda for Autumn Conference is available here: http://my.greenparty.org.uk/news/final-agenda-autumn-conference-2013-brighton, and you can book your place here.
@josiahmortimer is a student, blogger and activist based in York, and will be hosting a Young Greens Skype debate on the 9th September for next month’s conference – https://www.facebook.com/events/698458290170926/.
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Jock, Adam
“Environmentalism without radical left-wing politics is therefore merely nostalgia for the world we’re about to destroy.” Yes, very poetic but nothing to do with my posting.
I genuinely want to connect with you, but wonder sometimes if you ever seriously stop and give real consideration to alternative possibilities. Well, unlike Josiah, at least you respond and I thank you for that.
You seem to be suffering from a common misapprehension which I’m coming across time and time again, especially amongst younger Greens, which is, that we Greens who don’t choose to adopt the ‘Green Left’ label are simply environmentalists, or worse still, right wing in nature. That indicates an incomplete understanding of the nature of Green Politics, leading to the false perceptions. The radical policies of the Green Party didn’t suddenly appear in recent years as a result of socialist input. Our policies have remained basically the same for over 30 years. As I said before, “the social justice dimension of Green politics is part of its core philosophy” – or to put it another way – Green Politics IS radical left-wing politics with environmentalism, and a whole lot more besides.
And beauty of it is that it manifests itself in a way that can attract people from right, left and centre backgrounds, which is what the Green Party has been doing for decades.
We are not “waiting for the existing political order to start caring for the environment” – and that includes the left, right and centre. We are seeking to convince and win support from people from all over the country and across every political spectrum. Because I agree with you about the ecological cliff, capitalism and the limits to growth. We are of the same mind! We should be working together, as we have done with the Green Left for decades. But if Josiah gets his way and repositions the Green Party as an OVERTLY left wing organisation there will be no place in it for people like me, and at least two thirds of the Party’s activists, councillors, local parties and membership will wither away. You will be left with a rump of a party competing for a limited share of the left wing voting section of the electorate. Does that make any sense?
We are all Greens, we have common goals, and we need to unite. Come and work with us. We really are very nice people – just like you. And there is too much at stake to allow old fashioned political ideology wreck our chances of success.
Maybe I missed it, but did Josiah actually mention the environment? No, I thought not.
@Jock – “Environmentalism without radical left-wing politics is therefore merely nostalgia for the world we’re about to destroy.”
Beautiful, thanks.
Peter – with respect, how long do you say we wait for the existing political order to start caring about the environment?
The reason that we’re currently headed off an ecological cliff is that free-market capitalism demands endless growth on a finite planet, and insists on subordinating the needs of humans to that of capital.
The planet’s only hope is that we reverse these two priorities, which is a change that is never ever going to come from the right or the centre.
Environmentalism without radical left-wing politics is therefore merely nostalgia for the world we’re about to destroy.
Josiah, I do not understand the logic in your desire to position the Green Party on the left. It goes fundamentally against the Green principles of inclusivity and would destroy years and years of hard work by Greens across the country who have established spearheads in the Tory and LibDem heartlands.
There is a huge chunk of the Green Party that does not think of itself as Left. That doesn’t mean they have a problem with the Party’s left wing policies, far from it, the social justice dimension of Green politics is part of its core philosophy. But they do not come from a Left or socialist background and do not identify with such, even though their beliefs might fit. They identify themselves as simply Greens. The Green Left contingent of the Party has played an invaluable role both in policy development and breaking into Labour strongholds winning council seats and establishing thriving parties in Left dominated areas. But at the same time the rest of the Party has done likewise in Tory and LibDem strongholds, winning seats from voters who would not vote for a Left party in a million years. The Green Party is an amazing alliance in which these two wings, bound together by common beliefs, have worked together for some 30 years, with the ability to win support from EVERY area of the country. I would urge you to reconsider your wish for a Green Left Party. We would lose about two thirds of our councils seats, and similar number of active members, leave local parties across the Tory and LibDem heartlands with a hopelessly impossible task. For the Party to prosper and grow, Green Left should be working to enhance its relationship with the rest of the Party. If they truly believe in the interests of the people and planet they will come round to us eventually. But let’s not break up the remarkable alliance that is the Green Party by positioning it in a place which is untenable to the majority of people in this country. The bottom line is that we can ‘socialise’ people by drawing them to the Green Party, whereas a Green Left Party will simply scare them off.