Well A big challenge for the Green Party of England and Wales, in early incarnations our membership crashed in both the 1981 and 1991 recessions...this time with a more established party and a bit more to say on economics we should do better.
Far from recession in green the early 1990s saw the flowering of a militant direct action environmental movment around Earth First and the anti-roads movement in the UK.
Could we greens face a Caroline crunch or will the leadership team rescue us? Watch this space.
Any way on to Guy's new blog for his thoughts on the crunch for greens
Hi everyone,
I thought you might be interested in a new blog I've just started writing. It's called The Green Museum and it's about the history of the environmental movement. What can we greens learn from our history? How have previous generations got to grips with the idea of sustainability? How did we get where we are today?
Possible answers to these questions and others will be debated at http://greenmuseum.blogspot.com/.
My latest post is on climate change and the Credit Crunch: will environmentalism survive the downturn, or get forgotten like in previous recessions?
Comments, criticism and your thoughts gratefully received!
With best wishes,
Guy
Guy Shrubsole
Auckland, New Zealand
4 comments:
I think our membership will continue to rise in areas where we are active, and stagnate or drop in areas where we're not. Caroline appearing on Question Time might prompt some people to join, but if they are unfortunate enough to be in an area with a disfunctional local party they are unlikely to hang around long. It will be interesting to see if our latest London Green News, which leads on the economy, has any impact on membership.
What happened to votes?
Do membership and votes correlate?
I think so, they certainly do in Lewisham. Membership gradually grows in the wards we work in, some of those members become active, enabling us to do more work in the ward, then we get more votes in the next election. Darren always says that the main thing about winning elections is to make sure you get more votes than the other parties, which we try to do whenever possible ;)
Should have added that when I spoke to a new local member today, the reason she gave for joining us (having been a Greenpeace supporter for many years) was having heard Caroline's conference speech on TV and deciding 'I have to join'!
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