1.
East
Lincolnshire party split
This is a good idea,
but I feel there should be joint meetings regularly so that we do not become
isolated; perhaps we should also have occasional joint meetings and with
Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Scunthorpe, and Lincoln too.
2.
MP and
council watch
Although government
ministers will be shadowed by the party centrally, perhaps we too should also
shadow some ministers. I am thinking particularly of Amber Rudd with the energy
and climate change portfolio.
This is an area in
which Alison and I can give some help but we can’t help with monitoring social
media.
3.
Membership
Across our three
constituencies 3,639 voted Green on a turnout of 142,936 (2.54%). I do not know
what our total membership is, but perhaps not as many as voted Green. So there
must be some scope for further recruitment.
Across the two
constituencies of Louth and Gainsborough the Green vote was 2,389 on a turnout
of 99,597 (2.39%).
For information only,
across the ten constituencies of historic Lincolnshire, there were 10,689 Green
voters (2.37%).
I have not had time to
compile the figures for district councils.
One of the things
where Alison and I feel we can contribute is to do a series of talks
(presentation/film/discussion) to community groups in this area on green
issues, peak oil and climate change. We have been trying to compile a list of
groups who might be looking for speakers (community groups, WI, parish groups).
This hopefully would lead to more members and votes.
4.
Press
I may be able to help
with writing short articles.
5.
Regional
meetings
The regional group
seemed to us in danger of becoming too unwieldy. Perhaps attendance should be
limited to two delegates from each local party. The important principle is that
there needs to be a systematic method of feeding back between the local parties
and region.
We could help with
regional training to candidates on public speaking, presenting the
facts/argument?
What is the relationship
with young greens? Can we draw on them for local events?
6.
Policies
I wondered if you had
seen the recent post on the GP site by Andrew Brown, candidate in Skipton and
Ripon. It raises a number of important issues, one of which is that he felt
that the national campaign failed to put over the radical thrust of the green
message, but got tangled up in the details of policy. I agree with this and I
would go further by saying that currently I detect some haziness over what the
Green Party stands for. I feel this may be caused by a failure to work out
fundamental problems. Some key issues, I feel:
Are we anti-capitalist
or do we feel we can work within a capitalist framework? And, since there are
different forms of capitalism, what kind of capitalist system?
What is our attitude
to the state and what do we feel is its role within society?
Do we accept the neo-liberal
agenda that the market can decide any issue and that all problems can be
reduced to quantifiable cost-benefit analyses? If not why not?
Related to this, as
well as economic institutions, are there other institutions, civic and
democratic, that are of equal importance?
Etc.
Without addressing
such problems with some clarity, it is inevitable that policy will appear
ambivalent and even fudged. And our message can too easily be knocked off
course by tactical issues in fighting an election. Though it is early days for
me as a member, I so far feel there may be a lack of intellectual formation in
the national party. Is there a think tank nationally to consider strategic
issues of this sort?
7.
PR
You are right.
8.
Climate
and Environment
I fear that the Paris
summit will already have been hi-jacked by those institutions in whose interest
it is that fossil fuels continue to be used, and I think that the event will be
a combination of Davos and Ted ‘how amazing’ talks and that everybody will go
home having agreed something with plenty of get-outs.
First, there has been
massive lobbying by the fossil fuel interests at the highest levels in US and
Europe.
Next the carbon
trading ‘solution’ has seriously dented national resolve to cut emissions. We
must attack this at every opportunity.
Next, many fossil
fuels companies have ‘greened’ themselves by giving money to climate and
environmental NGOs, who in turn have colluded on a massive scale to put about
the story that we can, for example, make a transition using natural gas, that
we can use hybrid cars and change our brand of detergent and everything will be
OK. The public generally have been led to believe that there is no real problem
and that we can make a gradual change to renewables and continue to consume as
before.
The chief culprit is
the drive for economic growth which over the last few years has driven our
carbon emissions hugely beyond the 2 degree target. A feature in today’s (18th
May) Guardian shows that Shell have produced an internal report
predicting 4 degrees.
I absolutely agree
with you that we must use Paris to explain the issues, but the task is huge and
once more I detect a haziness over the fundamental premises of the Green Party
offering. What is our stand on economic growth? What is our position on the
challenges that, in the name of free trade, the World Trade Organization has
consistently made on the attempts to nurture green industries?
Perhaps the present
awareness of Shell’s imminent drilling in the Artic could be an immediate point
for action.
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything. Penguin 2014
(£8.99). This is a must read. I will try and communicate the main points for
those who are busy and don’t have much time to read.
9.
Human
Rights
It appears that we are
about to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. I am horribly
suspicious about this. Tom Bingham, ex-Lord Chief Justice, wrote The Rule of Law in 2010, a superb book
that I fully recommend you read, if you haven’t already, (it is very readable
and also contains a stunning refutation of the legality of the Iraq War). On
the Convention he concludes (p. 84):
Critics of the Convention must ultimately answer two
questions. Which of the rights would you discard? Would you rather live in a
country in which these rights are not protected by law?…There are probably
rights which could be valuably added to the Convention, but none which could
safely be discarded.
I have no idea how we
fight this, but fight it we must. It could make challenging this government
almost impossible.
10.
Economics
You are right. There
are several models of retail banking apart from the present system.
As regards the
viability of economic growth at present levels see:
Tim Jackson. Prosperity Without Growth. Earthscan
2009. I have heard Tim Jackson lecture. He is superb. He has a web site.
Simon Wren-Lewis, ‘The
Austerity Con’, London Review of Books
19th February 2015 gives a devastating critique of government
policy. He is Professor of Economics at Oxford. Available on web.
11.
Housing
You are right.
For the arguments
against right to buy, see the following excellent article: Owen Jones. ‘If you
vote for right to buy, where will your children live?’ Guardian 15 April 2015
For a discussion of
property tax see Caroline Lucas. Honourable
Gentlemen? Portobello 2015. pp.145-150.
12.
Education
I worked in adult
education and Further Education for some years. I have before now run an
intra-college news-feed on education issues. I might have time to do similar
again. I know next to nothing about primary and secondary sectors, so I
couldn’t do that.
13.
Basic
Income
You are right. I need
this explaining.
14.
Transport
Pressure is mounting
in the City to get on with HS2 and build the Heathrow extension. I have no idea
how to fight this. We could apply pressure for local improvements in rail and
public transport however.
An obvious way to cut
emissions and pollution is to cut the national speed limit to 50 mph. The USA
have done this since the oil crisis of the 1970s. Why haven’t we?
15.
Energy
The fight over
fracking will be nasty. It will be said that natural gas forms a less harmful
transmission to fully renewable energy. It doesn’t. Its methane content makes
it a highly dangerous fuel. I can’t myself yet understand the full import of
the 2015 Infrastructure Act, but I think it will make it easier for fracking
planning applications to be got through in the face of local opposition. We
need a discussion on how to tackle this.
The so-called green
tax that forms a component of energy bills is being set up as responsible for
the high cost of energy. We must think of ways to counter this.
Hinckley Point will
now go ahead with even less opposition. We must counter this.
Although some jobs are
being created in the Grimsby area related to marine wind farms, are the
turbines manufactured in this area? I don’t think so, and yet they could be.
What will stop it is the World Trade Organization and TTIP. I believe that
local start-up industries should receive protection and should not be exposed
to free competition. You may disagree. Let’s discuss.
16.
TEQs
I don’t know anything
about these.
17.
Farming
For industrial farming
uses a vast tonnage of fertilizers and insecticides that are petroleum based. I
see that problem being: how do we move to organic farming? I have no idea.
Please help.
Wild life protection.
Industrial farming is wiping out whole species of bird, insects and wild
flowers. I know that in the small East Riding estate village in which I lived
until recently, there was a resident game-keeper and pheasants bred for
hunting, and farmers were mostly pro-hunting and regularly complained about
foxes and badgers. If I had declared my allegiance to the Green Party I would
have been branded as a troublesome leftie. Getting over these sorts of barriers
will be difficult.
18.
EU referendum
I would welcome a
discussion on how to handle this and what people think the main issues are.
I feel that the EU is
about to change greatly in any case. I think TTIP will initiate huge reforms
and recast the EU much more as a vehicle for global capitalism driven by free
market principles. Greece may well leave and this will be of little concern to
those countries who consider themselves doing well out of all this. With TTIP
signed, Cameron will be able to claim the changes have been agreed that allow
us to stay in.
All this is part of
that trend by which the world is inevitably experiencing a greater and greater concentration
of wealth in fewer hands. The divisions are between countries, between regions
of countries and between people. However this trend is politically very
destabilising. It will become especially so as those who are now at the bottom
end of the middle class and just getting by, start to lose their position and
this trend spreads upwards to hurt more and more.
Of course, this
connects with housing, because as more and more drop out of the housing market,
the power of rentiers will become greater. There is great danger of political
instability here, because for most of the twentieth century living off private
rents has generally been regarded as unjust and unfair.
Thomas Piketty. Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century.
Harvard, 2014 explains why this is happening under the present dispensation.
This is an important book and I am near completing my reading of it and I can
try sometime soon to give the gist of it as best I can. Would this be useful?
19.
Other
issues
We must discuss what
we can do to take a stand against nuclear weapons and demonstrate that the UK
deterrent represents a moral monstrosity, that even in purely military terms it
is a logical absurdity, and is being misrepresented by vested interests.
Chris Hennesey 19/05/2015
