Leftwing Green party members form ‘anti-capitalist’ pressure group
Leftwing members of the Green party are calling for a shift towards an “internationalist, anti-capitalist and ecologically transformative agenda” as they launch a new group at their party’s conference this weekend.
The new collective aims to combine the party’s traditional environmentalist politics with “new strands of ecological consciousness, from river pollution and right to roam campaigns to an internationalist and decolonial climate justice movement”.
With more than 800 councillors and four elected MPs in parliament, the Green party is enjoying an unprecedented wave of public support, mainly at the expense of Labour, which won a landslide despite receiving the lowest vote share of any victorious party since at least 1922.
A source within the new grouping – which is being established under the provisional name Greens Organise – said they believed a leftward turn is essential to achieving the Greens’ environmental policies. But it is also hoped it will attract leftwing voters turned off by Labour’s rightward shift under Keir Starmer.
“The Green party can make the positive case for something better,” the source, who asked not to be named, said. “Compromise has gotten us to the edge of climate disaster and a resurgent far-right. The time for a bolder politics is now.
“The Green party already has transformative, leftwing policies that would take power back from big business and put it people’s hands. We should be proud of this, and Greens Organise wants to help the party bring this message to the wider left.”
At the party’s conference this weekend, discussions have been under way on how its sudden growth can be further built in, with the hope that a strategy that led to a quadrupling of its representation in the Commons can be replicated in dozens more constituencies at the next election.
Although senior figures in the party have not officially thrown their weight behind the new group, the Guardian understands they are supportive of its aims and agenda. Alongside their well known environmental focus, at the last election, the Greens campaigned on pledges for a wealth tax, a £15 minimum wage and public ownership of the railways, water and energy companies.
A major concern of leftwing members in Greens Organise is to avoid the centrist turn taken by overseas green movements when they have arrived in proximity to power. An open letter signed by party members emphasised the need to reject the path of “electoral assimilation” taken by other Green parties in Europe and urges “strengthened links with the labour, social and environmental movements”.
“In the face of so much yearning for more, this [Labour] government promises less,” the letter says. “As it fails to address the underlying decay of the UK’s economy and public sphere, the only answer is a coordinated left movement from the ground up – one that can mobilise millions of frustrated voters who have lost faith in the political system entirely, that can take on the far right – not pander to it.
“As Green party members, we see a historic opportunity and responsibility to become the principal electoral voice of that movement.”
