We now have an insurgent left-wing Labour party in this country - does this make the Greens redundant?
I went to the Green Party conference this weekend expecting my growing ambivalence towards the party to be reinforced.
We now have an insurgent left-wing Labour party in this country, and that’s a good thing; a Corbyn government would radically improve material conditions for millions of people, and for any of us on the left to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. I have become increasingly frustrated by many Green Party members’ refusal to engage with this new landscape and the dilemmas it throws up.
But while I did find a mood much less dynamic than previous conferences, I also found reasons to be positive.
In his speech, Jonathan Bartley claimed ‘I believe that we will be the most influential party of the 21st Century.’ This in itself is at best wildly optimistic and at worst patently absurd – but behind it is an important truth.
As Jonathan went on to say, ‘In 2010 we were told by the Tories, by Labour, by the Lib Dems – that austerity was the only answer. We bravely dared to be different. What we were saying then – that neoliberalism is dying and must be replaced – has become the mainstream.’
Before Corbynmania, there was the ‘Green surge’: a wave of support for a radical left-wing party which opposed austerity, championed public ownership, and questioned some fundamental assumptions about the economy and society. We lost the momentum. But the impact we had should not be underestimated. The Overton window – the range of policies considered politically acceptable by the public – is malleable, and can be shifted by voices pushing at its margins. Until Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, Greens were that voice on the left.
In 2015, we called for a £10 per hour minimum wage, renationalisation of the railways and free education. This May, Labour won nearly 13 million votes on a remarkably similar platform. That’s a huge vindication of what Greens have been fighting for for years.
This isn’t about taking credit – although there are many activists, from those who for years worked internally to make the Greens a radical left-wing party, to those who tirelessly knocked doors to make us an electoral threat in local areas, who now seem to be rewarded only by their own party’s declining relevance. It is about recognising the genuinely crucial role that the Green Party has played in shifting the political landscape, and thinking carefully about how we can continue to be that force.
That thinking is clearly being done by the party leadership. Jonathan’s speech lay out the beginnings of a radical vision that goes above and beyond Labour’s: replacing Universal Credit with a Universal Basic Income; a mutually owned and publicly-regulated Uber; asking, fundamentally, ‘who the economy is for.’
At conference however this wasn’t reflected in the concerns of members. Among the motions brought to the floor were not one but two which called for a re-focusing of our messaging to highlight ecology and climate change, while it seemed that much more time was dedicated to internal and organisational issues than to updating or strengthening policy.
But shunning social and economic issues in favour of a retreat to a narrow ‘deep green’ vision of environmentalism would be the death of our electoral chances and, ultimately, of any potential we might have to genuinely influence climate policy in this country. If we keep being imaginative, bold and forward-looking in all our policy areas, we have a chance to remain the vanguard of the radical left.
Even then, there are big questions to be answered about electoral tactics. Members will not accept a re-run of the progressive alliance strategy. But I doubt I am the only Green reluctant to pour my time and energy into campaigning against decent Labour MPs, for Green candidates unlikely to win the seat, when there are scores of Tories with wafer-thin majorities just a few action days away from being unseated by Labour.
One part of the answer to this is a sharp focus on local elections, which was clearly at the fore this conference. Amelia Womack highlighted the work of Alison Teal who has stood up against the Labour council in Sheffield in the battle to save the city’s street trees – just one example of Green councillors holding Labour to account. There is in many places a real disconnect between Labour’s national policy platform and its actions locally, and a strong showing for a radical left-wing Green Party in the May elections would send a message to the Labour councils that too often take their voters for granted.
There’s no pretending this isn’t a tough time for the Greens. There are no easy answers. But I left conference certain that there is still a place for us in British politics, and a real need for strong left-wing voices within the party. The urgent task now is keeping those voices there and making them heard.
Georgia Elander is a member of the Green Party. She tweets here.
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16 Responses to “Do we still need the Green Party?”
Cloud Cuckoo
Nil growth & redistribution are two sides of the same coin & need to be argued for in equal measure. See great piece in today’s Guardian about Costa Rica, where nil growth has led to an increase in well-being and decrease in inequality. Labour has nearly got the redistribution thing, certainly better than under New Labour. But it has a long way to go on nil-growth.
Remember, the Green Party of England & Wales is just one of many global Green parties, all more or less working towards the same end. If it packed up tomorrow, it would break the chain of a broad front of Green progress worldwide, as well as leaving a growth-obsessed hole for Labour to occupy.
But its main role is to be the political wing of the wider Green movement, forcing environmental and social policy change on all political parties in a way that Labour and LibDem plus NGO pressure groups could never do. There is nothing that focuses the minds of politicians like the threat of losing votes.
Mark H Burton
I’m not a Green Party member, though I’ve been close to it at times. I rejoined Labour after 30+ years when Corbyn was elected. But but as a degrowth activist I am strongly of the view that we need a Green party that is distinctively, well Green. We need a consistent voice to the environmental left of Labour that makes it clear that we cannot continue with the present economic system, that a Green Keynesian approach of “invest for low carbon growth” is incoherent and unscientific twaddle. I can’t see that in the utterances of leading Green Party politicians who while picking up a variety of worthy issues, nevertheless seem frankly to be all over the place, often focusing on the short term manifestations of the (eco-political-economic) crisis rather than the roots.
I don’t agree with Rupert that the Greens shouldn’t be socialist, however, because the root of our ecological and planetary crises is Capital. Now I know that taking an eco-Marxist approach would scare a lot of horses (and I’m not suggesting this is how to present things), but at the same time, it is no use pretending that a Capital-friendly set of policies will help us.
If the Greens have role in a FPTP system, it has to be one of education, of helping peel back the layers of ideological mist that surround public debate on economic and environmental policy. And that requires a consistent, clear, philosophy based firstly on social ecology.
So tell it like it is and be confident in your Green-ery.
John Blewitt
If the Green Party does not become a green socialist party – and that does not necessarily mean one identifying a big role for the state – but an ecologist one believing that green capitalism is a possibility, then I feel there is no role for the party beyond that of being a climate change pressure group. And there are plenty of organisations already campaigning on climate change and other ecological concerns. Having said that, if the Labour party wants to become a truly dynamic radical political it needs to be a more ecologically focused and less tied to the redundant ideology of economic growth.
Julian Dean
The Greens are needed because there is reason to believe Labour will continue to be inconsistent in it’s radicalism. Superficially that’s about policy failure or compromise on Brexit, Trident, Nuclear Power. Deeper than that it’s about:
1. Labour being a party of government power (nationally and locally). So it has been a party of war and has been subject to the same revolving door with Capitalism as the Tories.
2. The Trade Union base having built in inconsistency. They need to represent workers interests, but they often experience these narrowly (so defend indefensible jobs) and also need to protect their own bureaucracies;
3. The Labour voting base contains significant numbers who share the nationalism and bigotry of the Tory base. Labour needs them to retain its current position in a FPTP system.
Inside the green party the case against the progressive alliance often opens with the statement that the last election results were a ‘disaster’. This is nonsense; most 2015 Green voters who went to Labour in 2017 certainly don’t see it that way; yet they haven’t changed their ideas, just made a tactical decision on where to place their votes; one that made perfect sense. They are still pro Green Party; they just aren’t tribal about it, so neither should we be.
There is a contradiction in the ecologist tendency also being opposed to progressive alliance work. If Labour is not really progressive then why retreat into a bunker rather than capture the ground left by their non-progressiveness. If Labour are progressive then why not comfortably be an ecology ginger group pushing Labour, whilst accepting they take the front seat on non-ecology issues, and so work with them in elections. I don’t see how you can have it both ways. (I don’t take either position).
Reality hurts. We will continue to be bumped and bruised by elections. But the attraction of progressive alliance politics to millions who would really quite like to see a growth in Green Party influence, but also are excited by (and have some scepticism towards) the prospect of a left-labour government, is worth it. To turn away from this approach is to turn our backs on them.
Meanwhile there is a job of work to do to keep looking outwards and to be central to every local campaign, sometimes with momentum and labour members, sometimes not, sometimes with people from other parties (it’s actually a Tory councillor in my area who, in the last week or two, had the most influence in restraining the NHS cuts locally), sometimes not.
Alan Borgars
Green politics is very distinct from the socialist politics Labour espouses and always will be. Labour is still committed to continuous growth, which is unsustainable and will ultimately doom humanity in the long run. Labour also does not really care about the environment or about holistic socio-economics, and is too tied to the trade unions.
The Green Party is here to stay, and needs to stop pretending it is left of Labour. Green politics is above the old left-right spectrum, and can appeal to all people.