By Martin Ohr
In the same week that Derek Wall was elected principal male speaker of the Green Party, Leeds and four other West Yorkshire city councils announced the privatisation of Leeds Bradford International Airport. Leeds council is run by a Tory-Lib Dem-Green coalition.
Derek Wall describes himself as not only an "ecosocialist" but a Marxist. When he spoke at November's AWL forum on socialism and the environment, he claimed that those who want to see capitalism replaced by a society of freedom, equality and sustainability should join the Green Party and its Green Left platform. (The Greens' new female principal speaker, Sian Berry, is also involved in Green Left.)
This is a picture sharply contradicted by the Greens' coalition with the Lib Dems and Tories on Leeds city council, an issue brought into relief by its decision to sell-off one of the very few publicly owned airports remaining in Britain. It is not just a matter of Derek Wall's sincereness and intentions, but of what the Green Party is. For all its talk of putting the environment before profit, it has no programme of social ownership to make this goal a reality, and no orientation to the working class, the only force that can realise that programme. Its manifesto hardly hints at even the idea of bringing the railways, buses etc into public ownership in order to build an integrated transport system.
Even for Green Left, socialism seems to be more a general buzzword for all good things than a concrete vision of how to change society. When the organisation was founded, we commented:
"Those involved are clearly sincere in their opposition to capitalism and their desire for a better world, but they seem to have no real conception of what "socialism" might mean.
"The working class, exploitation, the labour movement, trade unions etc do not figure at all. Neither does collective ownership or even social provision. All this suggests that for Green Revolution [as Green Left was then called] "socialism" is more a catchphrase for good causes in general than a vision of the democratic transformation of society, by workers, from below."
Even for Derek Wall, it seems to us that socialism has no special connection to the working class. The Green Party, and Green Left too, have less to do with workers and the labour movement than even the very smallest far left group, and it is difficult to see that changing. Nonetheless, we will be watching with sympathy and interest.