Anyone who attended the Green Party Spring Conference online, intending to help clarify and amend policy, would have come away deeply disappointed. Especially those committed comrades who tried to engage whilst simultaneously attending the Together demonstration.
The key takeaways for us are that an online conference open to one thousand self-selecting ‘delegates’ was always going to be unwieldy to the point of being unworkable, whilst at the same time excluding the voices of the tens or hundreds of thousands of other GP members who might like to have an input.
There was a pre-conference online process that allowed members to comment on motions and prioritise them. This still led to an agenda with hundreds of motions in a 200-plus page document. All of this is just about manageable with a healthy amount of goodwill and give and take, but that was before the conference was subjected to a well-organised attempt to disrupt it and prevent discussion of the contentious ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.
When we say ‘contentious’, that does not mean that opinion in the Green Party was against the motion, or evenly divided. Far from it – having been at number 12 on the priority list, the motion was bumped up to number 3 by conference delegates keen to have that debate heard in the limited time available.
It was clear that those opposing the motion (probably the same people who leafletted the Green contingent on the Together march, calling us racists) were in a small minority, and the motion was likely to pass largely unamended, were they not able to disrupt proceedings with endless points of order, attempts to no-confidence the chair, and generally run down the clock.
For the hardline Zionists now turning their attention to the Green Party in the way they previously did to the Labour Party when Corbyn was leader, it would be a disaster if we were to pass clear policy which correctly labelled Zionism as a racist ideology. The Green Party must hold true to its principles and not duck this debate when it comes back before the main conference in the Autumn, which will be held in person.
We think the Green Party has now outgrown its previous conference structure – it is a victim of its own success as membership nears a quarter of a million.
Surely, it is now time to move to a delegate model. Yes, all members can still attend the conference and the various meetings, training, and fringe events, but the decisions should be voted on by properly elected delegates from the branches.
This would also have the virtue of sparking more debate at the local level, as delegates made their pitches for their preferred motions and argued the positions they would like to take at the conference.
More grassroots, in-person policy discussion during the pre-conference period can only be a good thing. It would also prevent disruption from well-organised or well-funded elements unless they also had political support within the wider membership.
Another point of contention arising from the conference relates to the motion on nationalisation of the energy sector, which was high up the priorities agenda and thus discussed and voted on.
The argument, ironically, often put forward by people within the Labour Party, is that the Green Party has removed its commitment to nationalisation.
In fact, the conference voted by a large margin to replace “The five largest energy companies will be nationalised” with a more nuanced formulation, “As natural monopolies with, at present, high profit margins, electricity national transmission and regional distribution will be brought into public ownership”.
This is bigger than the ‘Big 5’ and means public ownership of the entire supply and transmission sector (the grid) whilst allowing for smaller-scale and local community energy generation projects to feed into it.
As ecosocialists, we should welcome this as it democratises the energy sector and promotes community buy-in to the whole transition to net-zero and beyond to zero-carbon.
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How the Palestinian people are helped by the Green Party denouncing as “racist” all Jewish people with a reflex (and however critical) sympathy with Israeli Jewish life, has never been satisfactorily explained.
The leadership of the Party, which has squirmed around the issue, now has a few months before some version of it returns to the Autumn conference.
The speech against pushing the “Zionism is racism” up the agenda came not from “hardline Zionists now turning their attention to the Green Party in the way they previously did to the Labour Party when Corbyn was leader” (as the article above claims) but from councillor Jo Bird, a one-time Corbynite Labour councillor in the Wirral and a former leading member of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Labour (now Jewish Voice for Resiatance). Her speech said the motion should not be discussed so that mediation and further consideration could take place and a new unifying motion be put forward in the autumn.
Other committed “anti-Zionist” GPEW members have also urged caution. The Jewish Greens called to vote against.
Around 600 voters seemed to be ready to support the motion had it been heard. A significant proportion of people were only involved in the conference in order to support this motion. However, with the Party’s focus on local elections and the Together Alliance March on the same day, it’s hard to say exactly what the level of support would have been at a representative conference.
Supporters of an alternative “Peacebuilding in Israel Palestine” motion, which would get the Party to back forces, including Standing Together, who are fighting the occupation and the far-right Israeli government, from within Israel, should redouble efforts to have the political arguments against “Zionism is racism” or whatever iteration makes it to the autumn conference on 2-4 October.
Three misconceptions here:
1. Local green parties are not ‘ branches’. They are autonomous
2. The ” one member , one vote ” is the main cause of a deeply dysfunctional confefence as self appointees are not accountable to anyone
3. Online only conferences have never attracted many members and those who tend to be more active on their social media group than their local party. Very bad idea.