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?
Molly Scott Cato
1. A Campaigning Party vs Elections?
I have long argued that capitalism is not sustainable, as in my 2004 book Market, Schmarket. I believe in representative democracy rather than revolutionary change, enhanced with participatory elements and using the power of mass mobilisation, so I think winning elections and gaining more MPs is vital. I’ve been involved in campaigning and non-violent direction action all my political life, including speaking at the launch of the Extinction Rebellion in Parliament Square October 2018. One of my reasons for standing in these elections is to find imaginative ways to channel the recent upsurge of political energy into real change. I believe that the present government has many elements of a fascist regime and is dangerous to our democracy as well as in policy terms. I argued for a Popular Front to resist this in 2019 and would do the same again.
2. An accountable Party?
I haven’t made up my mind about the proposals for changing conference yet. I agree about the need for more local party discussions but am reluctant to keep ordinary members out of conference. I’m concerned about the way online systems make it harder for people to know who is really exercising power. Our party has always had a dual strategy of elections + campaigns and I believe that we need a greater focus on campaigns both to bring change directly and to give people a reason to vote Green.
3. A party that understands working-class communities?
While we can share statistics about Green members and voters having well-below-average incomes, we know that many of us do not have the lived experience of some of our most oppressed communities. I think most of us already use positive discrimination to encourage those who have been deprived of access and opportunities to find their power. And I welcome the growth in prominence of our liberation groups, although I agree we need to do more.
4. Austerity and reversing public service cuts
In 1992 I wrote the only political strategy the Green Party has ever passed democratically and the fact that we should focus more on social rather than environmental issues was at its heart. The reason I became an economist was because of my revulsion at social inequality. I have focused much of my activism and research time on cooperation because I believe in ownership and control by users, producers, and consumers alongside truly democratic systems of management and accountability. Of course we must reverse the cuts but we must also reverse privatisation, enable local control, and support local and community ownership.
5. The Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future
I’m a lifelong union member and have worked with unionists at their invitation and by inviting them onto panels I organised across the South West to spread the message of the Green New Deal. I’ve been a long-term supporter of the Lucas Plan, have written about it, and use the terminology of ‘industrial conversion’ in connection with the Covid recovery plan. I’ve shared several platforms with Sam Mason of the PCS who is doing such excellent work on this agenda. However, it is clear that the trade unions are not speaking with one voice on this issue, and that is natural as they represent workers in very different sectors, whose prospects as we go through the sustainability transition differ markedly. As Greens, we need to be able to communicate skilfully our determination that nobody should be left behind, that the government should take responsibility and pay for reskilling and employment conversion, and that unions should be actively involved in national plans for the sustainability transition. But when trade unionists seek to protect the jobs of current workers at the expense of future generations we should be prepared to speak out.
6. Are you an eco-socialist?
I’m not a big one for labels to be honest. I have learned a lot from reading Marx but also from reading Keynes and Polanyi. If I needed a label more than ‘Green’, I would probably say I was a ‘guild socialist’, along the lines of William Morris. I think socialism went off track when it became about centralisation and the unified rightness of the party. I see all the struggles you have listed as elements of the same struggle – for liberation, to which I would, of course, add the struggles of LGBTIQA+ and people of colour.
7. Support native and oppressed peoples
I was active in this area as a member of the Latin American delegation of the European Parliament. I spoke at the UN Human Rights committee and in the European Parliament in favour of the contribution that indigenous values and culture can offer to a world struggling to find a path to sustainability. This is huge area and I’ve written about it a lot, but in this limited space I would say that changing the way we think about trade is probably the most fundamental change we should emphasise more. I helped write the new trade paper of the European Greens and organised cross-party lobbying against the Mercosur trade deal. And, of course, using the impetus of Brexit and Black Lives Matter to undergo a national awakening around our shameful history of slave-trading and colonialism.
8.Minority rights
I’ve been a long-term supporter of Palestine liberation, since a visit to the country as a student. As an MEP I was President of the Tibet Interest Group and organised public meetings to publicise their oppression at the hands of the Chinese, and that of the Uighur people. I negotiated a strong resolution passed with a large majority by the European Parliament that condemned Chinese human rights abuses against the Tibetans and spoke at public events and conferences.
9. Making campaigning for PR a Green Party priority
As I said earlier, I think we are in the territory of a Popular Front. I supported the Unite to Reform process at GE19 and I think PR should be a top priority for the party, not just because our voters are deprived of the 38 seats their support deserve (ERS figures) but also because our lack of proper representation allows the ‘two main parties’ to continue to fail. Labour have chosen to defend their monopolisation of the Left against us as Greens and are willing that the whole country should pay the price of a Tory government to protect them from losing power and influence to us. This is shameful. I think we should take more direct action against Labour MPs who are not taking action to support PR as well as engaging in private negotiations.
10. Oppose Nuclear Power
Before becoming an economist I spent a decade campaigning against nuclear power and I helped set up and edited the magazine Radioactive Times for five years. I campaigned strongly against Hinkley C and am proud of our policy that the decision to invest in a second generation of deadly nuclear power stations should be reversed. As an MEP I helped fund the World Nuclear Industry Status Report that shows how nuclear has nothing to offer in economic or climate terms and is only continuing to stagger on with public support because of the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Peter Underwood
1. A
Campaigning Party vs Elections?
We are a
political party and so our route to changing the world is through winning
elections. There are already fantastic campaigning organisations on the
environment, social justice, democratic reform, etc. They are far better
equipped to run campaigns than us. We should link with them to amplify our
voices not compete with them or reproduce their work.
2. An
accountable Party?
I believe
power should come from the bottom up. So our policies and overall strategy
should always be decided by members, not delegates. We need to be far better at
explaining policy and strategy to members while also respecting the expertise
of those people we elect and employ to help us deliver them.
3 .A
party that understands working-class communities?
We need to
talk far more about the issues that directly affect working class and
not-working class people. We know that social justice and climate justice are
linked but if we only ever talk about the environment then many people will not
feel we care about them and the issues they face daily. Getting more people
from a working class background like me onto GPEx will help with changing this.
4.Austerity
and reversing public service cuts
Completely
agree apart from the fact that it has been going on far longer than 10 years.
Thatcherism and Blairism turned public services into private companies and we
must reverse that. We need to be seen as the champion of public services.
5.The
Movement for Green Jobs and a Green Socialist future
I have been
a union member (and at one point a union rep) all of my working life so I believe
in working with unions. As I said earlier, climate justice and social justice
are linked. We need a just transition to support and train workers to move from
destructive jobs into sustainable ones. Trade Unions have put in some good work
on this and we need to work with them but we still need to convince the few
remaining union leaders who see any job as good rather than just sustainable
jobs.
6.Are you an
eco-socialist?
I have been
a socialist all of my adult life, based on an anarcho-syndicalist model of
power coming from the bottom up and that structures need to support human needs
rather than private profit. As an eco-socialist I believe this model extends
beyond just human needs to the needs of the planet as whole and this guides my
thinking on tackling all of the crises we face.
7.Support
native and oppressed peoples
Having spent
some time working in the European Parliament I have seen where our
internationalism works well and also where our lack of international focus
fails us. Many of the problems we face are world-wide and so we need to show
solidarity with movements that share our values across the planet and work to
promote international cooperation not isolationism.
8.Minority
rights
I am opposed
to all oppression of minorities and discrimination on protected characteristics
and support BDS movements as a legitimate tool for change. I disagree with some
of the ‘examples’ often quoted with the IHRA definition of antisemitism but not
the definition itself. The IHRA definition is not sufficient or necessary to
establish a case of antisemitism but it can be a useful reference point in
helping us stamp out antisemitism wherever we find it.
9.Making
campaigning for PR a Green Party priority
Opposition
to introducing a fairer electoral system is opposition to democracy. We need to
make clear that any party that opposes a move towards PR is more interested in
power than democracy. We need to continue making the case to the public about
why we need voting reform and make that a condition of an agreement to work
with any other party.
10.Oppose
Nuclear Power
Having
worked in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, I am convinced that we
should not be building any more nuclear power plants and investing in renewable
energy instead. This makes sense on environmental, practical, and economic
grounds. On these same grounds I wouldn’t call for the immediate closure of
existing nuclear power plants but would want them to be phased out as soon as
is practical.
No comments:
Post a Comment