My thoughts about the Spring Green Party conference

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am back from the Green Party conference of Liverpool, which was rather tense at times due to the closeness of several votes.

 There were many useful highlights of our conference in my opinion, of which I will list the top three:

1. Our unanimous condemning of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) at conference-in related news, we have reported that the Liberal Democrats support this partnership even though this free trade agreement would make implementing some of their own official policies impossible.

2. The joint meeting between GreenLeft and the Association of Green Councillors-a great chance for unity to defeat the ConDems and the rest of the establishment.

3. The Open Mic night at the Ship & Mitre, where I and many others performed, and well. I am glad for the many poets and singers who come to our conferences.

There were a few sad downsides in my opinion however:

1. There were relatively few Young Greens present at the conference.

2. A motion to bar the Population Matters group from Green Party conferences was narrowly defeated for missing the 2/3 majority by one vote-people only spoke against it on procedural grounds despite the clear evidence of Population Matters' racist stance and the damage Population Matters can potentially do to the ecological movement.

3.  Several important policy motions did not get heard when they needed to, when I believed they would.

In the meantime, I hope the Greens can elect more MEPs in May, despite OFCOM's unfair decision to give UKIP, but not us, equal coverage to the three major parties during the Euro elections campaign.

Alan.









Comments

  1. Ronnie Lee4 March 2014 at 19:32

    Hi Alan,

    Good to see you at conference. Especially enjoyed your theatrical performance in the Concert Hall!

    I think there were two main reasons why the motion to bar Population Matters was defeated:-
    (1) Some people thought it was a way of getting at Population Matters by human overpopulation deniers within the party, rather than a straightforward attempt to censure them for racism.
    (2) There was a dislike of the use of the David Attenborough quote, which only appears pernicious if looked at in one particular way.

    Looking forward to seeing you in Birmingham, where I hope you'll get that motion on the Arctic through.

    Ronnie

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