This years autumn conference was in Sheffield , UK’s fifth largest city and where there were no riots. Sheffield is one of those places that exemplify the kind of “voodoo “regeneration that has taken place in so many parts of the UK. What I means is that huge improvements have been made to the centre and the place has nice squares, water features, coffee bars , bistro’s etc. However, such regeneration has not really trickled down in the way that the expenditure and plans promised. Instead too much of it has trickled out or simply up..that is benefiting those already with, rather than those without.
Unemployment levels here have been historically high for the past decade and more..indeed its almost as full employment has become a structurally impossible goal. Unemployment in 2010 was just over 8% but youth unemployment was much higher. Infact the local green party fought its recent campaign on this issue.
The venue was Hallam University and when I arrived there was an underwhelming lack of visibility that our conference was taking place..still I eventually got to find registration and then queued for 30 minutes to be registered.
Caroline’s message was as always well delivered. The political thrust was that we were the party of principle. Its clear that the tactical thinking is to focus on principles in order to expose the Lib Dems. Indeed she spent a great part of her intervention attacking the Lib Dems ..there was fantastic line when she described Nick Clegg as the Minister for meeting angry people and being shouted at.
The problem is how to ensure that all the buttons are pressed when you are addressing such a broad church as the green party. I fear that our message may be just too all encompassing. For example she spoke about “unrestrained capitalism” being the cause. This is a really important issue but somehow it just got lost in a whole list of issues from NHS, nuclear power, biodiversity, sustainable development, green new deal etc. I think we are missing an opportunity. We need to be focusing on how we have a dysfunctional form of capitalism that has been determining economic policy for at least the last 40 years.
• We need to be making a connection between how this dysfunctional form of capitalism has created a model of growth that has bypassed the least advantaged and rewarded the wealthy. We have 10 million who earn less than £15,000 per year. 2 million children live in low income families. On the other hand , the power and influence of the 7% of the school population in private schools has grown. 55% of top journalists; 70% of financial directors; 45% of top civil servants. This is a capitalist model that will ensure that the next generation of professional men and women will have been educated in ever richer families.
• How this model has created huge and unfair inequalities. How the pay differential between the pay of company bosses /bankers etc has mushroomed from a ratio of 47:1 to 81:1 in the past 8 years.
• How this model has created bad health and poor well being.
• How this model has trashed and is trashing our planet. The worlds biggest corporations inflict over $2.2 trillion of environmental damage per year. This takes the form of pollution, loss of freshwater, destruction of fisheries and fertile soil.
• How this model has killed off social mobility.
• How it has created a “gambling and extravagant “culture. The growth of the financial sector reflects this graphically. By 2008 over $800 trillion of financial derivatives were being traded globally. That is a staggering 12 times greater than global GDP.
• How it has resulted in the doubling of household debt in the last 12 years. Average household debt in the UK now stands at 160% of personal income.
• How it has created a dysfunctional and rotten party political system which has created an unhealthy “revolving “door of people and money between corporations and government. For example the Tories have received over £3m from property developers and therefore its no surprise that the Tory party is relaxing planning restrictions on green space
• These immoral and corrupt corporate relationships, account for why we are picking up the tab for their greed. We have seen a “communism for the rich” as Will Hutton has said.$14 trillion was spent globally in supporting bankers and financial institutions who made huge profits on the back of the financial alchemy they produced but somehow profits remain private gain while private losses become socialised.
We also need to be highlighting the fact that the dominant model will cause an even bigger crash unless we undertake some fundamental changes. This is not about creating alarm its about waking up people. Andrew Haldane, executive Director, Bank of England, no less has written about a “doom loop”.£530 billion of corporate debt has to be re-financed by 2015. There will be no new money for business investment or innovation.
Its also about challenging the dominant “left” and “right” perspectives. Whether we like it or not, outcomes cannot be solely explained by impersonal economic and social forces. There has to be some acknowledgment of individual responsibility for actions and consequences.
The tensions within the party were graphically exposed during the debate on the immigration cap. There was a motion which to all extents was an “open borders” position. However, this it was argued by Caroline was going to far and what would create a problem for the party.Here was the classic dilemma, principle or message as the key issue. Those proposing the motion were simply establishing or re-establishing the principle of open borders. Those opposing , were at pains to state that they were for the principle BUT not in favour of what it would mean in terms of political fallout.
What the discussion highlighted was the need for the party to have a clear narrative about immigration. Yes it may cost us votes BUT if we are about principles then on this issue we have facts on our side as well. We should be highlighting how demographic ageing means a growing need to attract more migrants. We should be highlighting the huge contribution that migrants make. The issue that has not been debated is what kind and level of entitlements can migrants get. This is the issue that allows the whole debate to be skewed –there is a sense in which people feel that those who have not financially contributed to welfare provision should be able to get the same as those who have not. In the post EU enlargement period this issue becomes even more relevant given the rights that intra EU migrants have. We need to grasp this nettle.
The party remains organisationally challenged. The venue chosen meant that delegates had to move from level 2 to level 10 in order to attend any of the group sessions. Inevitably this meant crowds waiting for lifts and further more, the rooms for the group session were just inadequate in terms of size, number of chairs. Having eventually climbed the eight flights by the staircase, I arrived to find that the session I wanted to attend was in a room suitable for at best 25, and in which there were already 50. It’s impossible to work effectively in such conditions. There needs to be some kind of signing up process so that you can allocate the bigger rooms to the sessions that generate most interest.
One of the key plenary sessions was focused on inequality. Richard Wilkinson(co-author of the excellent book “The spirit level”), Danny Dorling(author of “Injustice: why social inequality exists”) and John McNally(PCS) were the speakers.
It was an interesting sandwich they made. The facts and trends were provided by Richard and Danny. It is incontrovertible that more equal societies are better places, people are healthier, they generate a smaller C02 footprint, they recycle more, they give more etc. Yet despite these clear benefits we are an increasingly unequal society. Consumerism is in part to blame as it has created a what I have is what I am culture. It has created debt.
Growing income differentials highlight the rise in inequality.90% of people have an average income of £17,000 per year currently. In 1970 the same 90% had an average income of just £11,400. These are inflation adjusted figures.
9% of people have an average income of £50,000 per year. In 1970 this was £20,000.
1%(minus the top 1000) have an average income of £155,000. In 1970 it was £55,000.
The top 1000 have an average income of £780,000. In 1970 this was £100,000.
The crash has made things even worse. Whilst 99.99% have suffered a loss as a result of the crash, The top 1000 have benefitted to the tune of £69 million each. We have created a society in which the richest 1% have 50% of all the available money that is available for lending.
The so called “austerity” measures will in fact make this situation even worse.
John McNally’s solution was “socialism”, which I somehow do not think will secure electoral support. Richard Wilkinson, spoke about the need for the greens to develop a picture of the future..in other words some kind of vision.
It seems to me that we should simply be promoting the need to restore differentials of income to their 1970 levels. This is something very concrete and understandable, especially if we also promote active economic citizenship. I do not believe that there is a demand for some kind of flat earth egalitarianism, but there is sense of injustice and unfairness and that is what we need to capture. Greater equality is a pre-condition for a steady state economy. The problem we face is neatly encapsulated by Murray Bookchin in his observation that “Capitalism can no more be persuaded to limit growth than a human being can be persuaded to stop breathing.”
We need a new political system in order to meet this challenge. We need to question the primacy of economic growth as an objective. This primacy impacts on all elements of policy. Environmental policies are fine as long as they do not impede growth. Education policy is just about human capital for the “new economy”. Transportation policy is all about the rapid movement of goods. Immigration policy is about attracting educated and wealthy people. Support for the arts is conditional on the economic contribution generated.
It seems that there is very little chance that people will voluntarily forgo opportunities for higher standards of living. Most of us accept the economic system as we find it. We have to generate a debate about what kind of growth we should aim at. The need for this is even more pressing given the scale and complexity of the environmental problems we face.
One response to all this has been the launch of a think tank called “The Green House”. This is fronted by what seems to be the Green party “establishment”. The presenters were Rupert Read, Molly Scott Cato, Brain Healey and Andrew Dobson. The new think tank seeks to undertake a “deep reframing “of issues facing us. Apparently the GP has the highest level of human capital in its membership and the think tank seeks to capitalise on this issue. Sadly there does not seem to be any mechanism for wider involvement and several delegates expressed concerns about it being an elitist group.It is also heavily male dominated and Molly Scott Cato gave , what to me was a slightly dubious analysis as to why this was the case. Her view is simply that women do not like taking on such roles which require “stage presence”.I fear she is out of touch with reality on this point. The think tank also released its first two “deep reframing” reports which didn’t light any new fires and infact just seem to reflect ongoing work, or even previous work repackaged. I cannot see how these reports will impact in terms of wider media discourse. The last thing on this issue that was also a bit strange was that the presenters were at pains to point out that they were NOT a green party think tank and yet their base is largely in the green party.
Nuclear power in the post Fukushima context was the subject of a panel discussion. I find it strange that we are already taking “post” Fukushima when infact its simply not over. Its ongoing and as we now know it was more serious than Chernobyl and 25 years on we know that that is still an ongoing drama. Fukuhima has already released more than 168 times more radiation than the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
This is an issue that divides the green party. Caroline is against nuclear power and yet there are many within the party who argue that we have no choice but to continue our dependence on nuclear power. Climate change priorities require us to continue with nuclear power. However, even this argument is suspect. Projections show that even if we double our capacity for nuclear power, then this will only reduce CO2 emissions by 8%.
In a sense Japan and Germany are going to be the real testing beds for post nuclear power scenarios. Germany has now resolved to stop its power station by 2022. We therefore have a live experiment on our door step as to whether investment in renewables will be sufficient and quick enough to make good the shortfall of energy that nuclear power provides. Already there are indications that the Germans , whilst stopping nuclear power production will in fact be investing in the construction of power stations in Czech republic and Poland. On the positive side , since the german government announced its decision, the value of shares in renewables has gone up which means that there could be a step up in investment.
More worrying for me are the ongoing information deficits and mis- information generated by governments, regulators, power companies and sadly also academics who are in the pay of powerful lobbies. I really do not believe that any government has come clean about the effects of low level radiation or the real costs and problems of safe storage of what is about three Albert halls of toxic waste we have created in the UK.
Furthermore, underlying this issue is also the fact that we are in fact entering a unique period in our history. We are for the first time facing a permanent decline in the supply of the dominant fuel(oil). Previous transitions from wood to coal and coal to oil were not brought about by global exhaustion , but by lower prices and better qualities of new fuels.
It may well be that we will see a transition back to coal and again this then begs the question as to whether this is better than nuclear power ?
Care for the Elderly was the subject of another panel I attended. The picture is clear, we are getting older and living longer. There were some really moving stories from delegates who were or had been carers for elderly parents. The reality is that quality of care services for the elderly are at best “patchy”. Its not a simple public provision good , private provision bad scenario.There is need to support third sector care services and above all there is desperate need to re-evaluate the value and wealth(in social good) generated by care workers.Alongside this the care profession(s) are themselves heavily staffed by older people so there is a need to attract young people into these sectors and that will require a higher value being accorded to this work. The thing that also emerged , is that whilst we know that we will become an older population there is a dearth of real, forecasting as to what this mean in specific areas. Planning is thus piecemeal and doesn’t treat older people within amore holistic perspective that sets care needs alongside older people and work, re-training , volunteering etc. The so called silver economy will play an increasingly important part as the baby boomers retire between now and 2019.
I ran a fringe event on a new tool that the EU has created to stimulate participatory democracy. This is called the European Citizens Initiative(ECI). From April 2012, it will be possible for a group of 7 citizens from 7 member states to launch an ECI. The goal here is to enable citizens to propose legislative change to matters that fall under the powers of the EC.1 million signatures will need to be collected in 12 months and the these signatures will have to be validated by each of the member states in which signatures have been collected. These signatures can be collected online but there are specific minimum nulbers required from each member state. So for the UK you have to have a minimum of 54,000 signatures.
It is potentially an empowering tool that could stimulate participatory democracy..which Europe desperately needs given the lack involvement in EU decision making.However, there are some aspects that could end up making the process only accessible to already well established groups and interests. Firstly, in 18 of the 27 member states people will have to be willing to give their identity card numbers. This could prove difficult. Secondly, the cost. Doing an ECI will require resources. One group that has undertaken a dry run has said that it cost more than €750,000. If this is real then it will be only resource rich organisations that could launch an ECI .
Nevertheless, the ECI could be useful to get issues onto the agenda. Already there is interest in doing one on “No more Nuclear power”. This could be something which Greens at an EU level could successfully exploit.
On the last day, I found myself with a group of delegates who were taking about what they had found most significant about the conference. I suddenly realised that they had been at another Conference. What I mean is that they had participated solely in the sessions relating to policy and organisational levels. The key issue for this group had been the debate about moving to a delegate conference . In the end the issue was kicked into touch until we have 25,000 members. If membership continues in the way that is currently taking palace then we should hit that threshold within 18 months…judging by the heated discussion I heard, then will be hot issue for the Spring Conference.
Haroon Saad
Waltham Forest and Redbridge
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