Workers' Liberty

Recently I went to a lecture by Joel Kovel, a leading US eco-socialist and author of the book, The Enemy of Nature. The meeting was chaired by Derek Wall from the Green Party and had Jane Kelly from Socialist Resistance on the platform. Over 50 people were there.

Three letters responding to Sacha Ismail’s “Peter Tatchell and voting Labour” (Solidarity 3/111).

The news that long-standing gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will be the Green Party’s candidate in Oxford East at the next general election has generated some debate on the left.

Anyone who encountered the Green Party during the recent local elections will be aware of their incoherent and even janus-like politics, claiming to transcend “traditional” left-right divisions and appealing to everyone from Labour voters disillusioned with Blairism to Tories with a “social conscience”.

Peter Tatchell is a human rights activist who is a member of the Green Party and the gay rights group OutRage! He is particularly well-known for his criticism of homophobic reggae artists and the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, who he has twice tried to Citizen's Arrest.

The Green Party has really increased its profile in recent years, particularly among Britain's youth. This has led to a progression in the number of Greens and environmentalists at all sorts of demos, and they've managed to make their anti-war sentiment well known. Beyond this, their stances on issues such as gay and lesbian rights, top-up fees and multinationals have meant that they've been able to attract a number of young people, disaffected by the mainstream parties, looking for a group which can voice their anger at the problems in our society.

Many socialists, trade unionists and campaigners who would usually vote Labour are thinking of supporting Respect, the Green Party or the Lib Dems as an alternative to Labour in the coming general election. We examine the manifestos of these parties to see whether they deserve such hopes being pinned on them.

Sacha Ismail and Peter Tatchell debate the issues

In January the International Climate Change Taskforce Report concluded that drastic action was necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off immensely damaging and irreversible climate change. On 16 February the Kyoto Protocol on limiting emissions came into operation. We asked environmental campaigners for their evaluations and for their thoughts on alternative energy sources and use.

by Amanda Lohrey in Quarterly Essay, No. 8 2002

Amanda Lohrey's essay on the history of the Greens proclaims "the political potency of ecology". "This movement and its ecological narrative have the power to subsume the traditional grand narratives of capital and labour and indeed to some degree they already have." "The Green constituency is based on…a new paradigm or grand narrative of what politics is about, i.e. the 'ecological'."