The question is who will emerge with a hand full of representatives, the forces of the socialist left or the Greens? What impact will this have on the Labour Party and can a Socialist Green Party emerge ? I would argue that the TWA should throw its full weight into the Network of Socialist Alliances and stop tailing the Greens.

In Europe very few social democratic parties gain more than 40 per cent of the vote when exposed to a red and green challenge. Only those with mass memberships and policies supported by their core supporters are able to have any prospect of ruling alone.

Only the absence of PR has kept Labour’s vote artificially high and kept socialists and greens inside the Labour Party. All this could change next year. The limited proportional voting next year is likely to fracture Labour’s vote and open up the cracks emerging.

Already the writing is on the wall for Labour. Its performance in the European elections and local elections shows that New Labour’s active support is very weak. Its membership is plummeting and it is failing to motivate its core supporters. The question of entry into EMU and the debate regarding electoral reform is likely to divide and demoralise its supporters.

The baring of socialist candidates, including Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London could well be the final straw that splinters the Labour left from their party.

In Scotland the SNP is neck and neck with Labour. It could be that the newly formed Scottish Socialist Party gains a toe hold and in a hung Scottish parliament could play a pivotal role in extracting concessions to defend the environment and the working class.

The emerging Socialist Alliance in Wales is also likely to have an impact, but it is unlikely that the Greens in either Scotland or Wales will gain more than a handful of votes.

It is now clear that despite offers of joint slates from the Independent Labour Network and local socialist alliances, both locally and nationally the Green Party has adopted a sectarian approach to elections.

In local elections in Lewisham in May the Socialist Alliance agreed not to stand in a ward where the local Green Party had concentrated its work, but this was not reciprocated in a ward where supporters of the Socialist Alliance had a real prospect of winning. The intervention by the Greens probably prevented a socialist councillor from re-gaining the seat.

The cooling of relations between the Network and the Green Party was clear when not a single leader of the Green Party elected to turn up at the national Network Conference in Rugby, despite the Network shifting its conference to accommodate the Greens’ conference.

The Green Party predicted a repeat of their 15 percent 1989 Europe vote and they are hoped to gain up to eight seats. As a result of their sectarianism I believe they were lucky to gain two!

The Green Party is a poor relation of its European sister parties and it has little in common with the militant campaigning politics of the German Green party which after 20 years of environmental activism gained over seven per cent in the recent election. Most Greens in this country are markedly more right wing.

It should however be remembered that it was the parties of the socialist left, barely a couple of years old that held five deposits in the 1997 election in Scotland, England and Wales. The Greens failed to save a single one, even where they had built up a level of local campaigning and managed to have councillors elected.

It would be a mistake to believe that the Green Party is the political expression of all those concerned with the environment. Those organised around Labour’s SERA, the Green Socialist Network and the Green Left count for far more. Two of these groups are turning towards the Network of Socialist Alliances.

Something new is happening in British left politics. The sectarianism that has long bedevilled the left is beginning to thaw under the heat of PR. The Network of Socialist Alliances is bringing together the disparate left.

The TWA can be part of this thawing process helping to develop its green cutting edge or it can continue to ally with a party that has demonstrated all the worse aspects of left parties.

Like them or loathe them political parties are essential in giving expression to the beliefs hopes and ideals of social forces in society. The moves to the right by Labour Party is freeing up a space on the left, lets fill it with a Socialist Green Party.

 

 

 

It would be a mistake to believe that the Green Party is the political expression of all those concerned with the environment. Those organised around Labour’s SERA, the Green Socialist Network and the Green Left count for far more