A poster reading "Vote Green Party" on the back of a chair

At its most recent conference in Bournemouth, the Green Party of England and Wales adopted a change to its constitution in motion D28 which would allow the party leadership, in the broadest sense (The Regional Council, the Party Executive) to issue a proposal to the membership to vote on. There would be no opportunity to discuss and debate the proposals, there would be no opportunity to amend the proposals and discuss alternatives.

The Philosophical Basis of the party outlines in PB443 that “We advocate participatory and democratic politics” this proposal runs contrary to that. There is no real opportunity to shape the outcomes of the process. Our participation is limited to simply voting, and as any theorist of democracy will tell you, there is more to democracy than voting. Genuine engagement in democracy requires that people can dissent and propose alternative approaches through amendment. This provides none of that and is antithetical to our principles and the things we hold dear about the party.

Within the party, we are very proud of our democracy, even to the point that it might, in some cases, slow us down. This motion takes that democracy away from our members and gives all the power to those who already have significant opportunities to influence the way in which the party operates. Members are regularly critical of the democratic systems within the Labour party, but these changes are arguably worse than Labour’s democracy.

As part of the debate around our internal democracy we often think about how our current systems compare with other political parties and their approaches. There is no other political party which uses this approach, with good reason. There are however historic precedents for governance in this manner. In the establishment of the Second French Empire, Bonapart III utilised referenda to solidify his position as Emperor of France.

Whilst the conference was, overall, a huge success, the passing of this motion places the party in a very dangerous position and in reality, hands overall control of the party to the central leadership in a completely unprecedented way. Whilst you might like the current people who are in the roles which will influence this, there is nothing to say that they will remain in that position, and someone could come into a role in the future and take wide ranging decisions to make changes and then push them through this process. The proposal treats members as voting fodder to legitimise the diktats of the leadership of the party. We can and should do better.

Image credit: Jon Craig – Creative Commons