The group wants the Green Party to adopt an “internationalist, anti-capitalist, and ecologically transformative agenda”
One of the most significant moments at this year’s Green Party Conference didn’t take place in the conference venue itself. It took place ten minutes down the road at the Mechanics Institute – the location where the first meeting of the Trades Union Congress took place.
The event was the launch of Greens Organise – a new left wing grouping within the Green Party which wants to push the party towards what it describes as an “internationalist, anti-capitalist, and ecologically transformative agenda”. Around 150 party members squeezed into the room where the launch was held to listen to speeches and join workshops planning the future of the group.
Among those in attendance were a number of high profile Greens – including London Assembly member Zoë Garbett, party spokespeople Benali Hamdache and Nate Higgins, the deputy leader of the Wales Green Party Philip Davies, and dozens of local councillors. While she wasn’t in the room, one of the party’s newly elected MPs – Siân Berry – has since said she is ‘really pleased’ that the group has launched.
Benali Hamdache – who is the Green Party’s migration spokesperson – was one of those to address the launch meeting. He told the meeting that Greens Organise: “want a bold and crystal clear party that doesn’t fudge our principles or values for perceived electoral gain. What is the point of winning seats if we don’t flex that power?”
Left Foot Forward spoke to a number of people at the event about why they were there, why they were supporting Greens Organise and what they wanted to see it achieve and deliver.
Zoë Garbett – the most high profile Green at the launch – told Left Foot Forward: “I’m really excited about joining together with people on the left of the party to think about policies we want to talk about, things we want to get known about, who we connect with, and just really being that predominant[ly] left party that we are.”
Nate Higgins, the Green Party’s democracy spokesperson explained why he’d joined the Greens Organise launch: “I joined the Green Party because I wanted to see us pushing the really radical solutions to the problems that so many people in our society face. In my Borough in Newham, 50 per cent of children are growing up in poverty – thousands of children in food insecurity. And we’re the only political party with the policies to solve that. But we need to be putting them at the very front of all of our messaging, and I see this as a path towards doing that, and this is really about being the Green Party that I know we are at heart.”
Throughout the launch, both in the speeches at the start and in the conversations taking place around the room, there was a clear impulse that Greens Organise wants to see the Green Party speak more clearly about class and organise more explicitly around working class interests.
Lucy Pegg, a former councillor, told Left Foot Forward: “I think there needs to be a strong push from the Greens to be clear that we’re a left wing party connecting with working class communities across the country, and that’s the route for Greens to increase their power and win more seats.”
Philip Davies, the Wales Green Party deputy leader said he attended the launch because he is “from a pretty traditional working class area”, and said that “it’s really important that we have more working class voices within the Green Party.”
Alongside seeking to orientate the Green Party around class politics, one of the words that came up repeatedly throughout the evening was ‘socialism’. While in some of the discussions there was a clear hesitancy among some attendees to tie themselves to that label, others were very clear that Greens Organise is attempting to build an organised socialist current within the Green Party.
Matthew Hull – the Green Party’s trade union liaison officer told Left Foot Forward he was “really excited to build a network of socialists and other leftists within the Green Party. I think it’s long overdue.” He went on to say: “I think it’s high time that we start speaking about what it means to be socialist as the Green Party, what it means for the Green Party to be socialist, so I’m really glad that we’ve started those conversations.”
Likewise, Ria Patel – a councillor in Croydon – told Left Foot Forward that Greens Organise’s ambition was to create a ‘socialist utopia’. They said: “As the right get more organised, it’s really important that we get more organised. We need to imagine a better world and put it into practice, and that’s exactly what Greens Organise is going to do. It’s going to create a socialist utopia, because it’s so necessary.”
While there was no shortage of ambition, the launch of Greens Organise was nonetheless a launch of a group very much in its infancy. In the workshops, party members held conversations about whether they would seek to run slates in internal elections and how the group would seek to organise democratically. These questions – and many more – weren’t firmly answered by the time the meeting wrapped up.
Nevertheless, the energy behind the launch felt significant. Presently, there is only one formally organised faction within the Green Party. That’s Green Left, a group founded almost two decades ago whose influence has significantly declined in recent years, not least as a result of some of its key organisers having left the Greens in the 2010s.
The launching of Greens Organise, at a time when the Green Party has experienced unprecedented electoral success and as it steps firmly into the political mainstream, could be an important moment of ideological contestation. Do the Greens in England and Wales – having won a foothold in parliament – take the direction of sister parties like the German Greens, of moving to the right and assimilating into the establishment, or do they turn closer to their radical, counter-cultural and social movement oriented routes?
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy of development at Left Foot Forward
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