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What the Green Party are really like – and how we can beat them

September 18, 2012 12:03 pm

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It was interesting to read Steve Bassam’s piece about Green Party hypocrisy.  Some years ago, when I first got into local politics I shared the view of those Steve describes who thought the Greens were a left-wing organisation we should try to be friendly with.  Experiencing a few misgivings in this regard I asked a Green-supporting leftie friend if the Green councillor I intended to stand against had any socialist tendencies.  Not that he’d noticed, he replied, while dutifully adding that he still didn’t think I should stand against her.  He has since resigned from the Green Party.

Since then the opportunity to see how the Green Party operates in local politics has led me to much the same conclusions as Steve.  One thing you quickly notice when canvassing areas where there are or have been Green councillors is how many people say they vote Tory or Lib Dem in general elections and Green in local elections.  This isn’t as surprising as I at first thought: indeed, the congruities are obvious (though I must stress I’m not tarring all Green voters with this brush).

In a rapidly worsening housing crisis, the Greens oppose building the new social housing that is needed; they campaign vociferously for a largely theoretical greenbelt never to be moved an inch, and to keep the disproportionately high amount of green space in the middle-class communities they represent, while expecting new housing for working-class people to be squeezed in like sardines into cramped and inconvenient brownfield sites.  They make, as it were, the bleeding-heart conscience case for exclusion of the poor from wealthy communities: wealthy people can afford to be more environmentally friendly.  Some people who feel the advantages they enjoy are unfair can thus salve their consciences by voting for the Green Party, rather than supporting practical measures to make society more equal.  This can be quite difficult to overcome.

The Green Party also attracts votes among students, where they have a simple case to make: Labour introduced tuition fees, the ConDems trebled them, so you’d better vote for someone else.  Of course we can point to the sell-outs of Green councillors in administration in Brighton, and formerly in coalition in Oxford and Leeds, but since they’ve never had any power nationally and never will, they can say what they like about national policy and have a reasonable hope of getting away with it.  Oxford has an unusually high number of students who are interested in the City they live in and get involved – big shout out to Oxford Uni and Oxford Brookes Uni Labour Clubs, among many other student groups.  But inevitably there is also a proportion who, while having liberal views, don’t know where the estate I represent is and would avoid going there if they did know.  The Green Party is perfect for these people, whose engagement in their City and in social issues is purely or mainly theoretical.  Witness the Green candidates who thought even after the election campaign was over, that there were “a few hundred” non-student residents in Carfax Ward (there are about one and a half thousand, including a small Council estate and the oldest surviving block of purpose-built social flats in Britain, built in 1866).

There is a limited amount that can be achieved by concentrating on these groups of voters.  My argument, therefore, is that if we want to beat the Greens we have to energise other voters – those who don’t normally vote in local elections, be they people in social housing, in insecure private rented housing (the least likely to vote at all) or the majority of students who are concerned about their local community.  Rather than just going after Green supporters, our strategy should be to build up Labour support.  Inevitably this will involve winning some Green supporters to vote for us, but this is best done by demonstrating that we are there in their communities, working hard for everyone.

The best tactics to use in pursuit of that strategy, in my experience, is intensive local work, mainly on the doorstep, day in and day out.  Much is said about the loss of trust in politics, but this in only partly true.  People will vote for candidates and a Party they think they can rely on – it’s just that the trust isn’t automatic any more, even in areas we think “should be” Labour.  We have to win people’s trust person by person, doorstep by doorstep, issue by issue, and start to solve people’s problems and help them to solve their own problems.

We can’t relax in the assumption that opposition councilors are crap because their parties’ agendas are not conducive to the practical support their communities need.  Some of them are but, let’s be honest, everyone reading this will be able to think of a crap Labour councillor or two as well.  This has never been acceptable, because the communities we represent deserve people who can and will fight for them every inch of the way; my hope is that now it will stop, because we won’t win elections unless we pick the best people for the job.

What I’ve seen has made me optimistic.  In this year’s local elections, we took a seat from the Greens and won two Lib Dem seats the Greens were sure they would win, because our candidates worked tremendously hard and  proved to local people that they could be trusted to stand up for their areas.

Mike Rowley is an Oxford City Councillor

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  • Mark Thompson

    Isn’t it rather arrogant to state as bald fact that the Green Party will “never” have any power nationally?

  • AlanGiles

    No politicl party is free of hypocrisy, Mr. Rowley – not even Labour – think of all those MPs/ex-Mps and ex ministers who wagged a reproving finger at benefit claimants “playing the system”, while they were playing the system themselves with the expenses system, for all they were worth (and more).

    For a very small party the Greens certainly seem to inspire fear or out-of-proportion dislike into some elements of the Labour party. I am afraid the more you try to convince yourself and everyone else how terrible they are the more  it draws attention to Labour’s own shortcomings.

    As for hypocrisy: well, how about Ms Diane Abbott, who disapproves of private education – with the honourable exception of her own son. That is just one example, if pressed I could come up with many more.

    • http://twitter.com/petewilson89 Pete Wilson

       To misquote an American comedian: “our suck doesn’t make their suck not suck”. I am all for pushing for cleansing the Labour Party of corrupt and complacent sorts, who seem to exist in larger numbers than I’d wish in ‘safe seat’ areas, local councils run like fiefs. However this article is on the Green Party who just like the Lib Dems and SNP use their lack of exposure nationally to be all things to all people. They hoover up votes from the ‘ethical’ middle class and students who don’t normally vote, and paint themselves as Old Labour in places like my neighbouring ward were this May they came only a few hundred votes within unseating a Labour councillor. In 2014, that same ward will be defended by the Council Leader and there’s a strong possibility he could suffer a decapitation from a party who have zero representation at the moment.

      All opponents should be taken seriously. In Brighton & Hove, Norwich, Oxford and the odd northern inner-city ward like my example, it happens to be the Greens. Nothing out-of-proportion about that. Now if Miliband expends serious time in his 2015 PPBs to maul Caroline Lucas I might see your point Alan.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1557475545 Jack Bonner

    Thanks very much for this article. As someone who stood against a Green candidate in a traditionally safe Tory seat (it went Green this year), the big issue was housing on the proposed green field site, which the Greens really went to town on. Our vote, although a bit disappointing, held up, the Tories collapsed and I think gifted the Greens a lot of votes.

  • NT86

    As long as the Greens market themselves as part of ‘the radical left’ (something which their new leader said at their conference) rather than trying to move to a more (electable) socially democratic platform (which was where the Lib Dems were, pre-Clegg) Labour doesn’t risk losing votes to them. People in this country are generally moderate and don’t want the dogma of radical parties being forced fed on them.

    Environmentalism is a good sell as it generally cuts across left and right wing politics. Angela Merkel is a centre right German Chancellor but is harnessing this idea for the country’s approach to renewable energy. The Green party of England and Wales aren’t of this planet, however. While some of their central policies like a living wage and community (as opposed to public) ownership are progressive, some of their other ideas like homeopathy on the NHS, opposition to even a little nuclear energy and GMO’s, massive tax rises, citizen’s income, abolition of the Monarchy (Republicanism is political suicide in this country), open door immigration (ironic considering that increased immigration adds pressure on the environment and natural resources), unrealistic approach transport and housing are impossible for anyone to ever agree to. Plus their image of wanting to regulate the way people live their lives, micromanaging every aspect of what we do sounds like communisim to me. Would they have any policies on reviving this country’s manufacturing sector by any chance?

    I believe that climate change is a major issue to deal with and think there’s much opportunity to explore transitioning to a more sustainable economy (something that’s widely supported in Labour, Lib Dem and even some Tory circles) but the way the Greens are unable to let go of their ideological anti-science dogma won’t do them any favours.

    They’ll continue to win votes from disaffected middle class Lib Dem voters in the south, gaining more council seats, perhaps another MP in 2015. But the experience Brighton residents have had of them so far has not been positive.

    Finally while Caroline Lucas is a very talented politician, her successor as Green leader is a major blow to the party’s image. Seen her several times and she was awful.

  • John Ruddy

    I think you should make it clear that you are referring to the Green Party of England and Wales here. I have found their Scottish equivalent to be quite left of centre – and I’m sure they DO call for new social housing.

  • PaulHalsall

    Personally I would like to see the country run by a Red-Green alliance.

  • http://twitter.com/christof_ff christof_ff

    Whilst the Greens have many ideas that might seem attractive to traditional Labour supporters, some elements of their manifesto have more in common with the LibDems, Tories and UKIP.
    Their focus on localism is poles apart from the centralised managerialsm of New Labour.
    Their opposition to the EU is closer to UKIP than any of the other parties (albeit for different reasons).
    Championing small local businesses & British agriculture has the potential to strike a chord with some grass-roots Tories.
    Their commitment to civil liberties matches the sound-bites of senior LibDems.
    Politics doesn’t have to operate on a strict left-right sliding spectrum.

  • Dave Postles

    Labour is supposed to be opposing the coalition not taking potshots at other opposition parties.  When is Labour intending to oppose the right target?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

    It seems to depend on the local situation. In some areas the Greens have clearly taken Labour votes, in others, less so. 
    The Greens I know are certainly left wing, though perhaps more liberal-left than socialist. Though the Greens have their red-green element too.

    However, there are areas where the Greens have done well in working class areas – the Bulk ward of Lancaster, and Solihull’s Chelmsley Wood estate are examples

    • AlanGiles

       A very fair assessment, Mike, but I recall once before you made some very considered and considerate comments on the Greens, and it is a pity that not everyone is as tolerant as you are. I think sections of Labour and the Greens could work together amicably.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jim.crowder2 Jim Crowder

      I don’t see the Greens as either Left or Liberal. They tend to be authoritarian (definitely not Liberal), and are based on middle class support and against industry/manufacturing. 

      • AlanGiles

         Well, Jim. In all honesty do you see the Labour Party 1994 till now as Left.Or Liberal?. Remember Blunkett, Straw, Reid….. the list is endless.

        Being involved in industry all my working life, I can see that it would not be possible to be totally Green, but…. we don’t need to be so wasteful and polluting as we were, and still are, despite education.

        If he will allow me to say so, when I was complimenting Mike Homfray earlier, he said in a previous thread some time ago, there are two sorts of Green – the diehard and the pragmatic (though he used more elegant phraseology), and I m very much in the pragmatic camp. But, that said, lets be frank – there are two wings to virtually every party – we have left and right in Labour, we have two sorts of Conservative, so that is nothing new.

        I was hoping Mike Rowley might have commented on the replies (I still hope he does) but I would like to take one small part of his piece and make a further comment. It’s this:

          “In a rapidly worsening housing crisis, the Greens oppose building the
        new social housing that is needed; they campaign vociferously for a
        largely theoretical greenbelt never to be moved an inch,”

        I would put it to Mike Rowley that housing built on green belt land is nearly always very expensive PRIVATE developments, which would not be available anyway to ordinary working people. I could take you to a village in Buckinghamshire…. but the point is, in my own part of outer London we are experiencing a lot of housebuilding on ex municpal property etc, and this to my mind is far more desirable for “ordinary” people, in that a proportion is “affordable” (whatever that is!). If  you build on a piece of greenbelt in Oxford the chances are that the only people who will be able to afford to live there  is Rebekah Wade manque’,  with their “country suppers”, ostentation and money-no-object lifestyles. Good luck to them, but this won’t help the shop-worker living in a poor town.

        Perhaps I am getting middle-class in my old age, but there are so few places of beauty left in our overcrowded island, why destroy in weeks what has taken centuries to mature, when there are so many defunct ugly buildings elsewhere that are often left for years to become derelict.

  • AlanGiles

     Possibly, Pete, but Mr Rowley accused the Greens of hypocrisy: I would have liked him to have come back so we could have discussed this. Mr Rowley, for all I know, might have always been concerned about council housing – but the point is this paucity of council housing and the concommitant waiting lists have’nt just occurred in the last two and a half years. It is a problem that goes back to the early 80s, and the “right to buy” scheme of Mrs Thatcher.

    In a moment of rare candour Hazel Blears once admitted that the Blair governments did nothing about this because “nobody was interested”. Suddenly, Labour is “interested”. It is the same with how they disparaged the working class, and their nasty habit of joining unions and occassionaly going on strike. Now suddenly they are interested in the working class again. Or rather – lets be frank about it – their votes. No doubt all will return to the status quo if and when they regain “power”.

    I voted Labour all my life since Harold Wilson’s time, and I continued to do so even when they tested our loyalty with Blair’s warmongering and cronyism etc etc. The Freud affair was the last straw for me. The desperate Brown allowing the callow Purnell to fiddle in things he didn’t understand.

    How can Mr Rowley suggest the Greens are hypocrites without admitting the same charge for Labour?

    For Labour to pretend now to be the friend of the ordinary person, while they try to airbrush the past out of existence would tempt me to vote Green (again) next time. They need to acknowledge the terrible mistakes of the past (getting rid of Byrne would be a good first step) then we will see if they can be trusted again. But talk, as the saying goes, is cheap. The only way is Ethics.

    • http://twitter.com/christof_ff christof_ff

      Couldn’t agree more with your comments about Labour hypocrisy.
      When my local Town Hall workers went on strike over pensions earlier this year, the local Labour party turned up with their banners to show solidarity with the workers.
      This attracted a lot of negative comment, given their indifference to workers during the previous decade – particularly the transfer of swathes of staff to a major out-sourcing company (whose chairman was a Labour donor).

  • AlanGiles

    Good morning, Mike Rowley. As it is Sunday today, I wonder if we can look forward to the courtesy of your response to our comments?.

    If you don’t respond you are going to look just like any other “post and run” LL contributor (I don’t agree with 95% of what Rob Marchant writes, but to do him justice he is never afraid to come back with replies).

    I have another question for you: why is Labour so terrified of this tiny party?. At one time – with good reason – the party feared the LibDems, but now the LDs have shown them to be as big a load of hypocrites as the other parties, you don’t have to worry about them any more, so you attack the Greens, who have only 1 MP (who, I might add hasn’t been embroiled in an expenses scandal unlike so many associated with the big three). You made some fairly serious charges, some of us have responded, so why won’t you fight your corner?

    In particular, have you nothing to say about the fact that, during the New Labour years, the party was not at all interested in council housing?. We know this because Hazel Blears admitted it.

    It looks frankly rather pathetic to attack a very small party, who, if they are lucky, might retain Brighton Pavillion and just might gain ONE more seat – also a bit timorous, like Goliath being afraid of David. The big strong Labour party, chock-full of big ideas and policies for 2015, setting us off on the journey to the promised land (once Mr Crudas has found the SatNav), but currently playing King Lear (“I will do such things, as yet I know not what…”), and you, if  you will allow me to say so,  not having the courage of your convictions, or regard us proles as too unimportant, to come back to answer the points that have been put to you.  In short, just another politician TELLING us rather than communicating WITH us.

    • AlanGiles

       Mr Rowley didn’t accept the invitation to come back and respond. What a surprise! “What the Green Party Is Really Like”?. Mr Rowley has proven what the Main Parties Are Really Like: make your accusations and run away. Ignore the customers -  Big hat and no knickers

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