Sorry it's been so long since I last posted on this blog. I do intend to start posting on here more often in the future though!
If you haven't heard about the #GreenSurge then let me tell you all about it. Last October-ish the BBC along with ITV and Channel 4 announced that they had no intentions of inviting the Green Party to the leaders debates, yet they would invite UKIP. The Green Party published an e-petition on Change.Org calling to be included on the live TV leaders debates, which gained over quarter of a million signatures in just 2 or 3 months. A couple of months later Ofcom announced that the Green Party would be classed as a minor party, while UKIP would be classed as a major party, despite the Greens having elected an MP for 4 years before UKIP received defected MPs from the Tories. This gave the TV broadcasters even more reason to exclude the Greens from the debates. This caused an outcry amongst left-leaning voters who oppose the politics of UKIP. Tens of thousands of people joined the party. Membership now sits around the 55,000 mark, which is above both UKIP and the Lib-Dems which makes us the 4th largest party in the country. In Scotland, the Scottish Greens got a massive surge in members following the independence referendum and more than doubled their membership in something like 2 weeks. They went from around 2,000 members before the referendum to over 7,000 members now. This means that the majority of Green Party members were not Green Party members at the last Green Party conference. In opinion polls the Green Party has been getting between 6-10% and frequently beating the Lib-Dems which is an improvement from the 2-5% we were getting about a year ago. In this post I want to talk about how I'm feeling about this surge in members and the potential futures of the party.
Now Until the General Election:
I predict just one thing until the day of the general election, and that is small further growth and steady media coverage. We are at about 55,000 members and I see that rising to 65,0000-70,000 members perhaps, maybe even just 60,000 members. We will be on 2 of the 3 leaders debates and I predict that the public will have mixed responses to it, but we will overall gain more supporters than we would had we not been on the debates. The party intends to stand in every seat in the general election and as a result we will receive a heck of a lot of extra media attention that we did not receive at the last general election. The party is realistically targeting to win in 3 seats (Brighton Pavilion, Norwich South and Bristol West) and has several lesser target seats spread throughout the country. The party is likely to stand in a record number of local election seats as well. What will happen on and after polling day is yet to be seen. For arguments sake, for the following predictions I am assuming that all that our possible number of MPs will do is as Caroline Lucas has been doing over the last 5 years, supporting or opposing issues on a case by case basis and refusing to enter any coalition government. Remember, this is all just my opinion and mostly speculation. Anything could happen in reality.
Possible scenario no.1: Greens do very well:
In this outcome, the Greens receive 5 or more seats as some members are predicting at the general election. The party keeps deposits in over 50% of seats. National share of the vote could be as high as 10%. The surge continues and we could potentially reach 100,000 members by the end of the year including members of different parties including Labour, the Lib-Dems, and other parties to the left of the Tories. Now, the more members who join, especially in a sudden surge as opposed to gradual growth, the more diverse views and opinions will be within the party. There will be calls for changes to the party as new members will be likely to expect the party to challenge to run local councils and by 2020 to be in a position to be in the next government, even if that is a minority party in a coalition. I'm already hearing calls from new members for the party to get rid of our more radical policies in order to be more presentable to the electorate. If we get another surge in members this call may only increase. Over the next 5 years the party gains seats all over the country and has a less radical vision than it has had. Members on the left of the party leave and potentially join other parties such as Left Unity, who in turn have their own small surge and become more of a force in British politics.
If this happens, the party will change its rules to become a less democratic party, or at least a less directly democratic party and a more elected representatively democratic party starting with introducing delegate conferences where your local party has to elect you as a delegate before you can come and vote at conferences. More and more power within the party will become centralised with the leaders, executive, paid staff and other committees making more decisions without first consulting the wider membership. I can already see this happening with Natalie Bennett setting the agenda for the party by choosing what she talks about in interviews. Essentially the party heads towards the general direction that the Lib-Dems were in perhaps 10 years ago, compromising on more radical left-wing policies, centralising power & influence within the party and appealing to a broad range of disaffected left-learning middle class Guardian reading voters. I think the likelihood of this outcome will be moderately low, I don't think we will receive as many as 5 seats in the general election.
Possible scenario no.2: Greens receive 3 seats:
So in this scenario the Greens gain 2 extra seats in the general election and therefore triple their seats in the commons. The surge continues but not as quickly as has happened. Many people feel that the Greens are not so likely to make a major breakthrough in British politics . Membership reaches over 100,000 within a year or two or perhaps a little longer. The party has less influence in Parliament than scenario 1 and has more freedom to be radical. As a result the Green Party keeps more members on the left of the party and starts to be taken more seriously by those on the left outside of the Green Party. As with scenario 1, the new members call for many changes to the party but these changes are less of a shift towards the centre. In general this scenario is the middle ground between scenario 1 where we lose our radical focus too quickly and the next scenario which will involve continuing our slow-ish gradual gain in seats and influence on British politics but no major surge. This scenario will still involve many members calling for compromises in order to become more electable but this will be slowed down by a higher percentage of the membership favouring the more radical left-wing policies. There will be internal struggles between polarised sections of the membership, with some members eventually leaving the party on both the left and the right of the party. I see this scenario as a compromise between the gradual, slow, but radical influence on British politics and the quick growth and shedding of our radical roots by too much compromise.
Until a few months ago when the surge began I felt this was an incredibly unlikely scenario, but given that we have had a big surge in members, we are going to be in the leaders debates and get a much increased media presence and we have had a significant rise in the polls, these 3 seats in Brighton, Norwich and Bristol could well be ours. I'm still not entirely convinced that we will get all three, but it could happen.
Possible scenario no.3: Caroline gets re-elected:
In this scenario Caroline Lucas gets re-elected but we don't gain any new MPs. I see this as the most likely outcome. With this scenario, we gain a few members, we lose a few members who felt we would gain seats, but in general we carry on slow growth that we had before the surge. This scenario makes me the most excited (perhaps along with scenario 2) because I feel this will give us the time needed to develop and mature into a sustainable major party. While surges are great, they aren't without their problems. The larger the party becomes the more difficult it is to have an open and direct democracy and having a slower growth will allow us the time to shape and test our democracy with a larger membership base. This scenario would allow us to remain as radical as we have been and will involve a lot less compromise than the first 2 scenarios. It will also be a period in which we really convince many members to remain with us for the foreseeable future. What I mean by this is that the members who stay in the party and work within the party are more likely to stay in the party for the long run. They are less likely to leave because we have compromised too much or because we have lost seats. As a result our candidates become more experienced and cemented in Green Party 'ideology' (for want of a better word). I'm really excited about this possibility.
Possible scenario no.4: No Green MPs:
We lose our only MP and we don't gain any new MPs. Members gradually leave until we're at roughly where we were before the surge (roughly 20,000 members), or perhaps a bit higher, maybe 30,000 members. Our influence in politics declines a little, we start receiving less media coverage and we have less resources than before. This isn't actually the end of the world for the party, it is still a much better position than we were in before the 2010 general election. We will still have more members and more elected representatives than we have had in recent years. This scenario could go two ways - we could build the party and still become a significant force in politics, just a lot slower than the other scenarios - or we could fall apart, members leave and join other parties who see a mini-surge and we gradually decline until we're no longer electable as has happened with far right parties like the BNP and National Front who have never recovered from the great plunge. I think it is a reasonably realistic outcome that we could end up with no seats, but I am more convinced that we will have at least 1 MP. However, this requires work. We need to work hard between now and the general election to give the Greens the best possible chance of gaining seats.
Well, those are my thoughts about potential outcomes. Really exciting but also really daunting as we're entering unknown territory. Let me know about what you think is most likely to happen in the party.
Showing posts with label left-wing politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label left-wing politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Animal rights & veganism is crucial to left-wing & environmental politics
Disclaimer: While I am a member of the Green Party, this blog post is not about changing Green Party policy, or the message of the party. This blog post is just about why environmentalists and people on the left should take animal rights and veganism seriously.
Recently I've been thinking about how a lot of my left-wing and socialist circles are almost entirely human-centric and discuss animal issues very little at all. As an animal rights activist this upsets me. Likewise a lot of animal rights activists don't consider human struggle any worth either. The environmentalist movement doesn't take veganism as seriously as it should considering animal produce is the leading industry for greenhouse gasses. I believe animal rights and veganism needs to be a big part of the left-wing and environmental movements, and I'd like to explain why.
First of all I think we need to understand animal rights before we can understand why it needs to be a part of left-wing movements. When I say animal rights, I mean abolitionist animal rights as opposed to animal welfare which is not the same thing. Abolitionism within animal rights means abolishing all forms of animal use, because there will always be animal exploitation otherwise. This means we all have to go vegan, zoos and animal circuses will be banned, animal testing to be abolished, and we stop all breeding of animals. This includes pets, which for some people I can understand is a difficult concept to get their head around. It certainly took me years of being vegan before I figured out why we shouldn't have pets. I will say this about pets though - looking after an animal from a rescue centre or animal sanctuary is giving that animal a better quality of life so most abolitionists don't have an issue with having rescued pets/companion animals. The basic idea is that if humans use animals then it is for their own gain and not for the animal's gain, and the animal doesn't have complete freedom. In other words, it's animal slavery. Animal welfare still supports animal slavery, just a "kinder" form of animal slavery. There isn't a single form of animal use which is necessary to human existence. We don't need to eat, hunt, be entertained by, play with, watch or do any of the other things we do with animals. I see no moral justification for not caring about animals this way. Furthermore, I see an important part of being left-wing is opposing all forms of discrimination, and that must also include speciesism. Speciesism is discriminating a being based on it's species, which it cannot help, the view that your own species is superior to other species.
I guess I could describe myself broadly as a green veganarchist. This means I favour a form of anarchism which looks after the interests of the environment and doesn't involve any animal exploitation. Veganism without anarchism is just another consumer lifestyle, anarchism without veganism is just another oppressive regime. I could also describe myself as an eco-socialist. Basically whatever you label give to my politics, I believe that there are several ways we could run society that I would be happy with as long as a few things are taken into consideration. I will not be happy with society until we have egalitarianism (an equal share of wealth and resources), a fully democratic society, an ecologically sound society and the abolition of all animal exploitation. If we are to create a society where all people are to be considered equal, and to be given equal rights and equal share of resources, then I find it hypocritical and wrong if we don't have a relationship with animals where they are also our equals. Humans and non-human animals are all sentient beings. We all share the ability to suffer. On this basis all animals should be given equal moral value. If it's morally wrong to exploit humans, why is it not also morally wrong to exploit other sentient beings? In my view, you can't have a truly left-wing society until all sentient beings have freedom and are not being exploited, and that must include all non-human animals.
When it comes to the environment there is no excuse to ignore veganism and animal produce. The industries that produce animal products are the single largest contributing industry to greenhouse gasses contributing over 18% of greenhouse gasses (some people report the figure to be as high as 51%, but I'm unconvinced) which is higher than the entire transport industries, including aviation which in total produce around 13.5% of global greenhouse gasses[1]. I say the word greenhouse gasses because carbon dioxide is not the worst gas for climate change by a long way. Methane is at least 20 times worse than carbon dioxide and nitrus oxide is over 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Cows, pigs, sheep and chicken all produce both methane and nitrus oxide. When you take into account that for 1 pound of meat it can take up to 1,000 times more water and 10 times more land than producing 1 pound of plant based food it really doesn't make any environmental sense not to be pursuing a plant based diet. Getting our food sources from animals is so much more inefficient than plant based food because through an animal's life they use up energy in moving, growing, digesting food, excreting, etc. This means that you have to feed an animal far more pounds of food than you get out of it. It is far more efficient and environmentally friendly to feed plant based food directly to humans. If animal product industries are causing nearly one fifth of all greenhouse gasses, more than any other industry, why isn't the environmental movement focused on veganism? Why does the environmental movement focus far more on aviation when the aviation industry causes a lot fewer greenhouse gasses? I've never been able to understand this. I'm not at all saying we shouldn't challenge the aviation industry, I'm just saying there's little point if we're not also challenging the bigger causes of climate change at the same time.
This also has a huge knock on effect around the world. In 3rd world countries around the world more and more land is being stolen for food production, without the the locals getting any of the food or being able to afford any. A transition to a vegan diet will mean that we require a lot less land to produce the same amount of food. This would mean more land in places like Africa and South America could be kept under local control rather than under control of massive multi-national food corporations. It could also prevent wars as there have been wars over land scarcity in places like Darfur.
To be an animal rights abolitionist, all you have to do is be vegan. I'm not saying that we have to go any further out of our way to help animals, all we have to do it just leave them alone. If you're committed to veganism, it will come easily to you. It's not as difficult as you might think and there's plenty of help out there. Once you're vegan it's up to you if you want to do more for animal rights and there are plenty of local groups all around the country. You can focus on human issues or environmental issues if you'd prefer to do that. Veganism can be a healthier diet as meat and dairy are generally not healthy for you. Either way, we can't continue to ignore veganism and animal rights if we call ourselves left-wing or environmentalists.
Further information on veganism and animal rights:
Recently I've been thinking about how a lot of my left-wing and socialist circles are almost entirely human-centric and discuss animal issues very little at all. As an animal rights activist this upsets me. Likewise a lot of animal rights activists don't consider human struggle any worth either. The environmentalist movement doesn't take veganism as seriously as it should considering animal produce is the leading industry for greenhouse gasses. I believe animal rights and veganism needs to be a big part of the left-wing and environmental movements, and I'd like to explain why.
First of all I think we need to understand animal rights before we can understand why it needs to be a part of left-wing movements. When I say animal rights, I mean abolitionist animal rights as opposed to animal welfare which is not the same thing. Abolitionism within animal rights means abolishing all forms of animal use, because there will always be animal exploitation otherwise. This means we all have to go vegan, zoos and animal circuses will be banned, animal testing to be abolished, and we stop all breeding of animals. This includes pets, which for some people I can understand is a difficult concept to get their head around. It certainly took me years of being vegan before I figured out why we shouldn't have pets. I will say this about pets though - looking after an animal from a rescue centre or animal sanctuary is giving that animal a better quality of life so most abolitionists don't have an issue with having rescued pets/companion animals. The basic idea is that if humans use animals then it is for their own gain and not for the animal's gain, and the animal doesn't have complete freedom. In other words, it's animal slavery. Animal welfare still supports animal slavery, just a "kinder" form of animal slavery. There isn't a single form of animal use which is necessary to human existence. We don't need to eat, hunt, be entertained by, play with, watch or do any of the other things we do with animals. I see no moral justification for not caring about animals this way. Furthermore, I see an important part of being left-wing is opposing all forms of discrimination, and that must also include speciesism. Speciesism is discriminating a being based on it's species, which it cannot help, the view that your own species is superior to other species.
I guess I could describe myself broadly as a green veganarchist. This means I favour a form of anarchism which looks after the interests of the environment and doesn't involve any animal exploitation. Veganism without anarchism is just another consumer lifestyle, anarchism without veganism is just another oppressive regime. I could also describe myself as an eco-socialist. Basically whatever you label give to my politics, I believe that there are several ways we could run society that I would be happy with as long as a few things are taken into consideration. I will not be happy with society until we have egalitarianism (an equal share of wealth and resources), a fully democratic society, an ecologically sound society and the abolition of all animal exploitation. If we are to create a society where all people are to be considered equal, and to be given equal rights and equal share of resources, then I find it hypocritical and wrong if we don't have a relationship with animals where they are also our equals. Humans and non-human animals are all sentient beings. We all share the ability to suffer. On this basis all animals should be given equal moral value. If it's morally wrong to exploit humans, why is it not also morally wrong to exploit other sentient beings? In my view, you can't have a truly left-wing society until all sentient beings have freedom and are not being exploited, and that must include all non-human animals.
When it comes to the environment there is no excuse to ignore veganism and animal produce. The industries that produce animal products are the single largest contributing industry to greenhouse gasses contributing over 18% of greenhouse gasses (some people report the figure to be as high as 51%, but I'm unconvinced) which is higher than the entire transport industries, including aviation which in total produce around 13.5% of global greenhouse gasses[1]. I say the word greenhouse gasses because carbon dioxide is not the worst gas for climate change by a long way. Methane is at least 20 times worse than carbon dioxide and nitrus oxide is over 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Cows, pigs, sheep and chicken all produce both methane and nitrus oxide. When you take into account that for 1 pound of meat it can take up to 1,000 times more water and 10 times more land than producing 1 pound of plant based food it really doesn't make any environmental sense not to be pursuing a plant based diet. Getting our food sources from animals is so much more inefficient than plant based food because through an animal's life they use up energy in moving, growing, digesting food, excreting, etc. This means that you have to feed an animal far more pounds of food than you get out of it. It is far more efficient and environmentally friendly to feed plant based food directly to humans. If animal product industries are causing nearly one fifth of all greenhouse gasses, more than any other industry, why isn't the environmental movement focused on veganism? Why does the environmental movement focus far more on aviation when the aviation industry causes a lot fewer greenhouse gasses? I've never been able to understand this. I'm not at all saying we shouldn't challenge the aviation industry, I'm just saying there's little point if we're not also challenging the bigger causes of climate change at the same time.
This also has a huge knock on effect around the world. In 3rd world countries around the world more and more land is being stolen for food production, without the the locals getting any of the food or being able to afford any. A transition to a vegan diet will mean that we require a lot less land to produce the same amount of food. This would mean more land in places like Africa and South America could be kept under local control rather than under control of massive multi-national food corporations. It could also prevent wars as there have been wars over land scarcity in places like Darfur.
To be an animal rights abolitionist, all you have to do is be vegan. I'm not saying that we have to go any further out of our way to help animals, all we have to do it just leave them alone. If you're committed to veganism, it will come easily to you. It's not as difficult as you might think and there's plenty of help out there. Once you're vegan it's up to you if you want to do more for animal rights and there are plenty of local groups all around the country. You can focus on human issues or environmental issues if you'd prefer to do that. Veganism can be a healthier diet as meat and dairy are generally not healthy for you. Either way, we can't continue to ignore veganism and animal rights if we call ourselves left-wing or environmentalists.
Further information on veganism and animal rights:
- The UK Vegan Society, the oldest vegan society in the world: http://www.vegansociety.com/
- Greens for Animal Protection: https://www.facebook.com/GreensForAnimalProtection
- UK animal rights gathering: http://www.argathering.org.uk/
- Animal Rights UK: http://animalrightsuk.org/
- Gary Francione, animal rights philosopher and founder of The Abolitionist Approach: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/
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