Date: Mar 02 2005, 02:55 PM

Reds: Go Green! – Are the Greens an alternative?

Peter Tatchell says the Greens are the most effective radical left
party and the best hope for advancing a progressive political agenda

Solidarity / Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, 17 February 2005

Labour has ditched socialism and internal party democracy. It is now
beyond reform. The various radical left groupings are dismally small,
with little influence.

The most significant left alternative to Labour is Respect. But it is
politically compromised. Following in New Labour’s footsteps, it has a
top-down, command-style leadership, and its leaders have declared it
is not a socialist party. Compounding this rightward drift, Respect
has made alliances with reactionary movements like the Muslim
Association of Britain.

All my life, the radical left has been in the political wilderness. It
doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t. There is no point being
a socialist if you can’t influence things in a socialist direction.
That is just self-indulgence.

Political purity is fine, but not if it means remaining marginal and
ineffectual. The whole point of being a socialist is to change the
world.

There is, alas, no serious prospect of social transformation being
initiated by the old-style radical left. For those of us who want to
secure social justice and human rights, there is only one option left
– the Green Party.

Respect and its forerunner, the Socialist Alliance, have never made a
political impact. In the 2004 European elections, Respect won a mere
1.7 per cent of the vote in England. Even its high-profile,
nationally-known star candidate, George Galloway, managed to poll only
4.84%.

The Greens are, in contrast, winners. They have seats on local
councils, the London Assembly and in the Scottish and European
Parliaments.

If most left-wingers and progressive social movements united together
in the Green Party, the Greens could do even better. Indeed, the
Greens have the potential to become a very influential electoral force
– pressuring Labour and the Lib Dems to adopt more radical policies
and perhaps, one day, even holding the balance of power.

After three decades of moving from right to left, the Greens now
occupy the progressive political space once held by left Labour. They
offer a clear alternative to Blair’s pro-war, pro-big business and
pro-Bush agenda.

The Green Party’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Society
(www.greenparty.org) incorporates key socialist principles. It rejects
privatisation, free market economics and globalisation; and includes
commitments to public ownership, worker’s rights, economic democracy,
progressive taxation, and the redistribution of wealth and power.

The Green’s synthesis of ecology and socialism integrates policies for
social justice and human rights with policies for tackling the
life-threatening dangers posed by global warming, environmental
pollution, resource depletion and species extinction.

Greens recognise that preventing environmental catastrophe requires
constraints on the power of big corporations. Profiteering and free
trade has to be subordinated to policies for the survival of humanity.
Can any socialist disagree with that?

It is true that the Green Party includes people who are not on the
left. The political alliances and policies of some elected Green
councillors have been shameful and disastrous. But many Green Party
members recognise these errors and are working to make sure they don’t
happen again.

The Greens are less than perfect. But will someone please show me the
perfect left-wing party? There has never been one and there never will
be one. Even the Bolsheviks had their shortcomings.

Left-wing critics complain that the Greens are not a pure socialist
party and are not working class-based. But look at the implications of
what the Greens say. Their goals and policies are often much the same
as the radical left’s, but expressed without jargon in a more
voter-friendly, appealing way.

The Greens may have few links to organised labour. But that is
changing too. Green conferences and public meetings increasingly
feature trade union activists. With more pressure from within, the
Greens will undoubtedly strengthen their ties to the worker’s
movement. The way the Australian trade unions have enforced ‘green
bans’ on environmentally-destructive developments shows the potential
for workers and greens to work together for the betterment of all.

The great virtue of the Greens is that they are a grassroots
democratic party, controlled by the ordinary membership and with no
power elite or embedded hierarchy. Moreover, the Greens value idealism
and principles. This means the party is open to further radicalisation
in a socialist direction.

But I don’t want to see the left infiltrate and take over the Green
Party. I certainly don’t want left-wing sectarianism to poison the
comradely atmosphere. My desire is a joining together of the red and
the green, with a mutual recognition and fusing together of the
respective values and strengths of each movement.

Unity is strength, as evidenced in the list vote for the London
Assembly in 2000. The combined poll for the Greens (11%) and the
various left slates (5%) totalled 16% - out-polling the Lib Dems by
two per cent and making red-green the third strongest political force
in London. The potential is there. Don’t sit on the sidelines of
politics. Let’s seize the opportunity. Go red and green.

Further information about Peter Tatchell’s human rights campaigns:
www.petertatchell.net

ENDS
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