Derek Wall is Male Principal Speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales as well as a leading figure in its political development since the early eighties. That he has been elected to that role despite the fact (and I have to say it that way given my experience of the Greens here) that he is dedicated ecosocialist -- deserves our attention.
While I have an interview with him pending for Green Left Weekly, Wall is also a leading figure in the GPEW Green Left Current.
Greenman's Occasional Organ has marked the occasion this week of the first year of the Green Left Current in the party.
The Green Left current was formed around a June 4th 2006 Launch Statement that warrants reading through. Jim Jepps, who is also a member of Green Left has some interesting posts on his blog logging his experiences with GL and the GPEW over this period . These will help you flesh out some of comments. here.
Greenman writes:
The first year has seen the current establish itself as an important part of the GPEW and a mobilising force for events and demonstrations that have taken place over the year. We have established dialogues with various left forces outside the Green Party and have been able to defend the Party from attacks from the left by clarifying policy and showing that the Party is not monolithic and contains a significant radical element. We have been able to demonstrate to internal critics the value of the work we are doing and to counter some of the fears about splitters and factionalism.He then goes on to make an important tactical assessment that should be (but isn't) de rigueur across the left:
The best part of this is that Green Left faces both outward and inward - it is both a network for strengthening and deepening the radical policies and activities of the party and communicating the left unity message outside the party. To Green Left's credit it does not present itself, or the GPEW as the be-all-and-end-all of left politics in England and Wales, but argues that Greens have a specific and indispensable role to play in the broad movement for social, economic and political change. Without the Green element that broad movement will be incomplete and not fit for purpose. Without recognition that politics is about more than electoralism and that real lasting change requires a coalition of forces on the left, the Green Party is diminished.Greenman's advocacy posses a key challenge I think both for greens and for lefts. While the fashion has been to passionately embrace Rudolf Bahro's edict that the greens are the "last hesitation to socialism", this easy dismissal has been an unfortunate habit that has cut both ways. In effect Green Left's advocacy is the correct one no matter what your political preference.
In my experience the intense exchange that accompanied the rise of the Greens in Australia has since been subsumed by a stolid electoralism as though this one tactic was 'it'. Fortunately, with the pressing urgency of a carbonated earth we have an opportunity to take up that exchange again and enrich it with the sort of massive campaign that is our only hope to save the planet from capitalism.
