here are some thoughts on how to operate with councils for newly elected Green Party councillors, indications are that this is likely to be the approach in Lewisham and has worked well on the Greater London Authority and in Oxford...
this is from the excellent greenman blog
'From an ecosocialist point of view I would argue that the new councillors should avoid formal coalition politics as they usually lead to the Greens being the whipping boys for failures without significant power to make changes. Many councillors have already achieved much both for their wards and at full Council level whilst maintaining a respectful distance from the backstabbing neo-liberal parties. Any alliances with parties of the centre or right, no mater how "pragmatic " or "useful" in the short term, make the longer term building of a progressive coalition for change at local and national level (involving union members, community organisations aand the broader left) much more difficult and unlikely. And in the longer term, the sort of political changes needed demand that sort of progressive/ left united front - fairweather allies from the (neo) Lib Dems and "green" Tories will jump ship long before we get to the stage of achieving the long term and sustainable changes that are needed. Those parties are about tinkering with or preserving the status quo, not a massive shift in wealth and power or real challenge to the neoliberal project. They are also hated by a good number of the people, political and anti-political that we need in our coalition. Greens have been praised for thinking long term - let us hope we see some of this from our new Councillors.'
Greenman
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4 comments:
Funny, I didn't see this on any of the Green election literature that came through the doors round here.
That is because it is my personal opinion, Joe, but one shared by a good number of GPEW members, I would guess. In my personal opinion it would be good if Green candidates did make it clear on election literature that we are elected to serve our electors and on a platform of a party that has
long term aims, aims that are unlikely to be achieved through coalition with parties that wish to maintain or tinker with the status quo. This is of course without ruling out the putting forward of positive motions and agendas that can be signed up to by representatives of all parties - as many of our excellent current councillors have done.
On purely electoral grounds alone, the right and centre of British politics is a depressingly cluttered zone - the space is from the honest centre left to the radical left, as New Labour have abandoned this ground and the left parties can never get their act together to make an impact there. All in my opinion, of course :-)
And in case there is any misunderstanding, this preference against formal coalitions also applies to coalitions with Labour, where the local Council is of a New Labour, neo-liberal character.
The debacle of the formal electoral alliance with Plaid Cymru (a party much closer to us politically than any of the big three) has made us very wary of pre election alliances we should have a similar view of post electoral ones.
In my personal experience the pacts pursued by certain local parties in Councils have *already* caused the Greens much damage in terms of credibility and image nationally, regardless of the reasons given at local level.
Greenman, I think you are right about the missing left - apart from the Green Party, the left and radical left is sparsely populated.
So you shouldn't expect a deal based on old-fashioned left wing politics to be acceptable to other parties.
One based on sustainability, on the other hand, might attract support.
There is little to connect the two, apart from that the environment is a collective good not an individual one - and so those that deny collective goods altogehter - Randians and US libertarians must force themselves to be blind to it.
But parties of and near the centre have no difficulty recognising collective goods.
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