GPEx Campaigns Co-ordinator

 

Green Left's questions to candidates - Answers below

1. A Campaigning Party vs Elections?

Within a flawed electoral system, are we focusing on winning elections, one by one seat, above being a Campaigning Party within the mass movement needed to fight capitalism and transform society before the climate change emergency becomes irreversible? Are we paying lip service to the warning from the brave climate change activists especially the youth who recognise time is running out?

2. An accountable Party?

How can the Green Party be an effective campaigning political party, with transparent internal democracy and accountability, supporting local party campaigns with devolved resources? Do we need delegate conferences to ensure policy is properly discussed at local level before conference decides?

3. A party that understands working-class communities?

Many people (with some progress) still see the green movement and subsequently the GPEW as being well meaning but not relevant to the everyday struggles of working people and working-class communities. How can we challenge that idea?

4. Austerity and reversing public service cuts

After over 10 years of cruel Tory austerity which has trashed public services for millions, we must restore those essential services which we all rely on. Not only the NHS and social care but all the local government services like environmental health, trading standards, pollution control, libraries, public toilets, parks etc and the Green Party has not focused on this sufficiently for several years. Do you agree?

5. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future

What do you know of the Trade Union backed Campaign Against Climate Change, Lucas Plan, The Million Green Jobs campaign and the Greener Jobs Alliance of trade unions? How would you work with these campaigns and ensure all parts of the party are engaging with these groups? Do understand and support what Just Transition means?

6. Are you an eco-socialist?

What does eco-socialism mean to you? What links do you see between climate change and the need for social, economic and democratic change?

7. Support native and oppressed peoples

Greens need to expand our world solidarity by working to liberate millions of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Asia: Kurdistan, Middle East, Tibet, and many parts of Africa etc. Internationalism is still too weak in Green culture. How would you improve this in the GPEW?

8.Minority rights

Do you oppose the colonialist oppression of minorities such as Kashmiris, the Uighurs and Tibetans in China, and support the Palestinian-led global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)? Palestine solidarity groups world-wide have opposed the so-called 'IHRA definition of antisemitism' as an attack on Palestinian rights. Do you support or oppose this definition?

9. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority

It’s clear the electoral system is holding back Green Party advance at local and parliamentary elections. How can we campaign to convince members of the Labour Party, Trade Unions and Labour MPs to support this left democratic change to bring elections in line with other parts of the UK? Do you see this as a major priority for the Green Party in the next period?

10. Oppose Nuclear Power

Green Left is supporting a motion to the forthcoming GPEW Conference that calls on the Green Party to demand the government abandons the Hinkley Point nuclear project and plans for the follow-up Sizewell C nuclear project, including the regulated asset-based model and any further development of the hazardous and expensive nuclear power programme. The Green Party should also calls for all existing nuclear power plants to be shut down. No power sourced from nuclear should be imported - only renewable. Will you support this motion?

Hannah Graham

1. A Campaigning Party vs Elections?

We are quite simply, a political party. Political parties fight elections. Winning seats on all levels equates to decision-making power and influence, which we need to strive for to ensure Green policies become conventional. However, we cannot win elections without appealing to the general public, so relevant and timely campaigns matter.

2. An accountable party?

The Green Party is led by members. Members decide the policy, leadership and priorities. Members therefore have a duty to hold their elected officials accountable. Delegate conferences in other parties are elitist and exclusive. We need to ensure our decision-making remains open to any member and should utilise technology to engage more members in our democratic processes.

3. A party that understands working-class communities?

The Green Party has policies and campaigns that support and liberate our most marginalised and oppressed groups of people. However, we still appear to many as a white, middle class crowd. As a working class northern young woman, I can see the divide very clearly. To tackle this, we need to elect people from diverse communities. People need to see people like them in elected positions and our campaigns need to be spearheaded by people with lived experience.

4. Austerity and reversing public service cuts

I very much agree that 10 years of cruel Tory austerity has left our public services in tatters. I have first-hand experience of this as a youth worker where youth and children’s services have decimated over the past 10 years. Campaigns to protect public services have been successful for local parties on a local level, where the decision-making power for many of these services is devolved. 

5. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future

I believe all Green Party campaigns must be evidence-based, relevant and formed through interactions and partnerships with pressure groups and civil society. The party should form bonds with these knowledgeable and active campaigning groups to attract more members and have an equal campaigning stake. I support ‘Just Transition’ and think we should advocate this framework to secure workers’ rights and livelihoods when shifting to sustainable production. This, for me is the direct link between environmental and social justice that the party needs to bridge the gap.

6. Are you an eco-socialist?

I am an eco-socialist. Similarly to my answer to the last question, there is a vital need for a complementary ‘Just Transition’ approach protecting people and planet. We cannot stop climate change under capitalism as the need for growth will always lead to us producing and consuming more and more. Eco-socialism to me means a society without class divisions living in harmony and balance with the environment, nature and wildlife. 

7. Support native and oppressed peoples

Building strong international relations is vital to expand our global solidarity, understanding and cohesion. We are lucky to have a very hard working International Committee who have built strong links around the world. I have been lucky enough to do some of this work: from supporting a Kenyan Green Party young woman running for leadership, to establishing a training programme for Young Greens in Macedonia. It’s about sharing good ideas and successes from the UK with other parties to help them develop, and implementing their good ideas and successes to try new things right here in the UK too.

8. Minority rights

I oppose colonialism in all of its forms, and especially with the oppression of minority groups and nations. I support the Palestinian-led global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) however; I do not support the IHRA definition of antisemitism in its entirety. I am in total opposition to all manifestations of racism/antisemitism wherever they arise in society. I think the Green Party have faltered in our weak positioning and guidance for candidates on this issue.  

9. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority

I support proportional electoral reform in all levels of Government. Under a first past the post system, we will continue to be left behind. Collaborating with the Electoral Reform Society, I think The Green Party could make this a priority, advocating for an end to the sterile two-party state, fewer wasted votes, better election accountability and ensuring Parliament is more representative of the diversity of political opinion within the UK.

10. Oppose Nuclear Power

I support this motion and the calls for existing nuclear power plants to be shut down. Nuclear power is my inclination when the only alternatives are oil and gas under the Conservative Government; however, my preference will always be for a decarbonised system: moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and clean electricity generation.

Daniel Laycock

1. A Campaigning Party vs Elections?

Within a flawed system, we need to look at the wards, local authorities, constituencies and build our movement up and campaign much earlier on.

In local authorities, we work hard to gain more Green Wins. The party’s TTW works.

We need to work and build a Parliamentary, Assemblies, Mayoral strategies to win Greens in Westminster, Wales and around England and Wales.

2. An accountable Party?

We encourage local, regional parties and liberations groups to discuss motions, submit motions for conference for these to be debated and voted on.

GPEx needs to work towards being more transparent. Informing members on GPEx meetings, agendas, minutes throughout the party by communicating with our membership. More members will attend these meetings.

3. A party that understands working-class communities?

We need to listen to communities that are struggling every day as we’re seen to be a single issue party. It’s time to go beyond just one issue and talk about where we stand on other issues, like the single mother in a one bed flat on the 9th floor. Talk to the working class communities that we are leaving behind.

4. Austerity and reversing public service cuts

Yes, we need to change how we do things as a party. We’re a left-wing party and we need to start talking about the cuts, like we have done since 2010. It’s time for us to get back talking about the important issues and how austerity has impacted millions of peoples lives.

5. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future

We need to work with all campaigns, organisations, Trade Unions, businesses and experts. Are aim is to see a Green New Deal, Green jobs, in all industries. As GPEW we need to reach out to these campaigns and organisations and work together to put structures in place, like the Lucas Plan. To shift to sustainable production, that will combat the climate crisis and protect biodiversity, and jobs.

Yes I understand and support the Just Transition.

6. Are you an eco-socialist?

Eco-socialist means fighting for climate and social justice, including a proper education system, BAME communities, adequate funding for the NHS, for green politics, an green economy, green jobs, greener transport, accountability, inclusiveness, equality, LGBTIQA+ rights, and anti-capitalist. 

7. Support native and oppressed peoples

Working with our sister parties across the world to share the oppression of those from native and indigenous people. We are an international party and it’s time we started working towards this.

8.Minority rights

As we continue to see oppression of Kashmiris, the Uighurs, Tibetans in China and BAME people here in the U.K. in the 21st Century, we must campaign and call out this until every person in society around the world are free.

I support the the Green Party policy IP610 to IP642

9. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority

I agree with this sentiment. We must not only campaign, whether GPEW speaks with the Labour Leadership, working with Make Votes and other parties, by pressing on Labour though petitions, lobbying MP’s, social media campaigns, or working by ourselves to ensure Labour back PR in their policy, election manifesto and then when in Government.

10. Oppose Nuclear Power

Yes I will fully support this motion. I live in the East of England where Sizewell C will impact this region in an unprecedented manner. 

Britta Goodman

 

1.A Campaigning Party vs Elections?

The debate about balancing elections against campaigns has been with us since the party was founded. I think lately we have not focused enough on the need to link to the extraordinary mobilisation of our young people – especially around the issues of the Climate Emergency and Black Lives Matter – and I would like us to put more emphasis on building those relationships in the years ahead.

We need to reactivate and refresh the campaign pages of our website. We cannot assume votes from environmental activists will come to us and these pages are the places to make sure that does happen. Many of our members are also keen campaigners and want to use Green-Party-led campaigns to raise their profiles locally.

I would run a devolved campaigning structure, where local campaigns run by local parties are supported from the centre with messages and materials.

It is vital that we consider diversity in our campaigns both in terms of choice of the themes, the way we present messages, and the way we design material

The ultimate aim of campaigns is to win votes, but we have always been a party that understands how campaigns can change the climate of opinion, making it easier for people to choose to vote Green but also easier for us to argue for our policy platform.

2. An accountable Party?

Our structures remain those of a fully democratic party but they are not always clear to members, for example it is not easy for find the constitution on our website.

The members’ website offers a space for internal debates but is not easy to access and is only used by a small minority of our members.

I value the fact that conference is our supreme decision-making body but regret that the rapid policy-making process via GPRC has been stalled during the past year. We need a process to decide policy between conferences.

I am committed to including a wider range of members at conference but am not yet decided about whether delegate conferences is the way to achieve this.

3. A party that understands working-class communities?

Many Green solutions are also solutions for the struggles of working people but in order to connect with these communities we need to actively go out, listen to their problems and propose solutions. Where local parties have followed this strategy for local elections, it is often very successful. We need to see more of this.

For starters I would suggest that we share the experience of local parties that have done this successfully via Zoom training sessions

4. Austerity and reversing public service cuts

I absolutely agreed that this is the way to win elections, especially as Labour moves away from its radical position of recent years. As a party that has always supported decentralisation and has its power-base in local authorities we should lead the fight for funding to follow powers down the local councils, as we did with our Community Shield proposal for tackling the Corona Crisis.

And I would like to add one thing that is not mentioned here. How unjust education is. This is really upsetting me. Education cannot be private, and Universities need to be free if don’t want to be stuck a vicious circle where the intellectual resources and high payed jobs are only given to those who can afford them.

5. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future

I have been active with Campaign against Climate Change in London when I was on the Campaigns Committee 2017-2018. We are having a lot in common and share the same interests.

I have tried to make closer links with unions but in the past but obviously the institutional link to the Labour Party of many unions can operate as a barrier to close working.

I would be glad to see a stronger commitment from GPEX and GPRC to work for closer links with the trade union movement since their campaign for a Just Transition is the only fair way towards a sustainable society that is also an equal society.

 

 

6. Are you an eco-socialist?

The only label I am truly comfortable with is Green, but I do believe that we need to restructure society if we want to fight climate change and this restructuring process needs to lead to a fairer society. It is clear that an economy focused on growth and profit can never be sustainable, so I see the struggle for a fair economy and social justice as intrinsically connected to the struggle to preserve our environment and climate.

7. Support native and oppressed peoples

The lockdown has shown us how we can really make distance irrelevant when we communicate online. For the climate campaign we have made contact with climate campaigners across the world and I would like to run a series of webinars connecting campaigners in different countries and making the point about how the rich are causing the climate crisis while the poor suffer the worst impacts. It is also important to campaign for the idea of a ‘climate migrant’.

8.Minority rights

By principle I am staying out of any debates around antisemitism because I am German, and I am aware that the Nazi past of my birth country still makes many Jews feel uncomfortable. I understand and respect that. Getting involved would not help a productive debate. 

I do oppose the oppression of minorities.

9. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority

There are several groups within the Green Party that are working on PR. I am supportive of them. The Green Recovery is top of the agenda at the moment, but it is important to keep the work on PR alive, in order to be prepared when it comes up again. In the long run, without PR the Greens in the UK will never achieve the power our level of support demands.

10. Oppose Nuclear Power

Yes. I have always opposed nuclear power and always will.