Why I will not (in general) support the Labour Party.

Labour's response to Brighton & Hove Green Party's call for a referendum on a council tax rise to protect care services for the vulnerable has inspired me to write a blog post on why I don't (in general) support the Labour Party.

To explain my views on Labour it may be worth looking back through my life and my first political memories. I was born in 1987 when Thatcher was still in power but John Major was the first prime minister that I remember knowing about. I didn't know much about him other than he was in the Conservative Party, and all I knew about the Conservative Party is that they claimed to care about Britain. The first general election I remember was 1997 when Tony Blair's New Labour won power from the Tories watching the results live with Peter Snow's excellent statistical analysis and famous "swingometer". I was 9 years old. The following years I heard very little about party politics, certainly nothing that I remember hearing and thinking positively about. In fact, the only political thing I became aware of (outside of animal rights) while I was at high school was the Iraq war and the protests against it, which I supported. During history lessons I learnt about communism and fell in love with what I later learnt was actually egalitarianism, which I am still in love with. When I was 16 I picked up Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men and it changed my life for the better. I was expecting a comedy book but it's mostly political. It's largely about the corruption going on in corporations who were sacking workers but giving big bonuses to the bosses at the top, with the governments also giving them tax breaks. These were companies that were doing business in the UK and were also getting tax cuts from the UK government. The Labour UK government. I never heard anything from the Labour Party which condemned this corruption and to this day I still haven't. In fact under Blair the gap between rich and poor increased. In 2007 I got to vote for the first time ever. I was living in Poulton-le-Fylde, a very strong Conservative town. We received 1 election leaflet, from the Conservative Party and that was it. No one knocked on our door. In my ward they were electing 2 councillors so I gave one vote to the Conservative Party and one vote to the Labour Party, no other party stood. At that time I honestly could not tell what the difference was between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, their literature was quite similar. Neither party really pushed a distinct set of policies that I could use to define that party in my head. The leaflet I received just explained who the candidates were and didn't explain anything about the policies of the party. I had no way of telling which party was more right-wing and which was more left-wing.

In the following 2 years (2007-2009) the only things I really heard about the Labour Party happened to be the expenses scandal and the bailout of the banks, neither of which I could ever support. At the same time I was discovering more about politics at university in Manchester. The Socialist Workers Party introduced me to Marxism and the idea of a socialist revolution, as well as the British National Party and made me a life long supporter of Palestine, although I never joined the SWP or became a Marxist. I learnt that the Labour UK government was a big supporter of Israel and sold weapons to their government. In the run up to the 2009 European elections the SWP and Unite Against Fascism held many actions to encourage people to vote against the BNP in the election. All these radical ideas that I supported were not coming from the Labour Party, but the Socialist Workers Party. The following 2009 European election broadcast persuaded me then to vote for the Green Party:

Finally here was a party saying what I wanted to hear. Finally here was a party standing up and challenging the corruption that lies within big corporations. A party who thinks it's government responsibility to tackle climate change so we can lower our impact on the environment. A party who wants to invest in jobs and nationalise industries. This appealed to me a lot, and I had to read up on their policies. Delighted with their animal rights policies and falling in love with the citizen's income I joined the Green Party a few months later and have been with the Greens ever since. The Labour Party however just seemed to me to support the injustices made by free market economics instead of challenge them.

In 2010 I was involved in a general election for the first time ever supporting the Greens in Hulme, Manchester. It was the first time I discovered Labour election tactics. My goodness do Labour play dirty tricks, trying to discredit our candidate by all means possible even if this included spreading false truths and lies rather than giving people reasons why Labour were the right choice. After Labour lost the general election and Gordon Brown resigned, Labour received the biggest intake in new members in a generation although this was partly due to members rejoining after leaving due to the Iraq war. I paid small attention to the Labour leadership election, and I was still hearing+* no mention of great radical left-wing reforms from anyone but Diane Abbot who had no chance of winning the election. The favourites, the Miliband brothers never spoke about their views on direction of policy. Since Ed Miliband was elected as leader, the Labour Party have done little but criticize the Tory-led coalition government for doing things that they would have done if they were in power. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have both stated several times that they will not reverse the cuts and many other reforms the coalition government has brought in if they won the next general election. I am yet to be convinced that the Labour Party have radically changed since the Blair and Brown days. I still don't hear the Labour Party challenging the injustices made by free market economics suggesting in fact that they may well still support free market economics.

I hope you can understand when I say that I have no confidence that the Labour Party will drag the country in a radically different position to that of the Tories. From what I've noticed, in general Labour groups in councils follow the line dictated by the national leaders, that we must oppose the Tories in national government while not proposing anything radically different. However, I'm going to say something positive now. There are some Labour politicians that I support such as Tony Benn, Diane Abbot, John McDonnell, Kerry McCarthy and Jeremy Corbyn as well as some councillors. Left-leaning Labour councillors have managed to push through some good policies such as imposing the living wage for all council workers in many councils. When I say I will not (in general) support the Labour Party, I do not mean I will never support the Labour Party. As with most Green Party politicians, if I was ever elected I would support initiatives on a case by case basis, depending whether or not I support the proposal regardless of who proposed it.

The Labour Party continue to oppose anyone who doesn't support the Labour Party, even if it means opposing progress for the working class or opposing progress towards Labour's own values. Labour's attitude towards the Green Party in Brighton has fully cemented my position of disliking the Labour Party. Many Labour members like Caroline Lucas, yet the party are determined to de-seat her in the next general election rather than putting their resources into de-seating a Tory MP. Like in the national government, the Labour group on Brighton & Hove City Council oppose the party in administration at all costs and that often leads to rejecting proposals that are close to Labour values because they do not want to be seen to be supporting the Green Party, and that is a position I cannot support. They are making things worse for people for their own political gains. I hope the people of Brighton can see through this. Their latest tantrum is opposing the Green Party's proposal for a referendum on a council tax rise to protect care services for the vulnerable. They aren't going to vote against it but will instead abstain, obviously playing politics - neither supporting or objecting to the proposal in order for them to say they didn't support the Green Party and to also say they didn't oppose letting the people of Brighton decide for themselves what they want.

As soon as the Labour Party state they will reverse the cuts the current coalition government have imposed, give more power to local councils, start to nationalise lots of services and industries, invest heavily in public transport, impose big increases in tax to the wealthy in society, increase minimum wage to at least the living wage and promise to tackle climate change by investing in renewable energy and taxing plane fuel, etc, I will gladly reconsider my position but I honestly don't see that happening in my lifetime I'm afraid to say.

European candidate urges people to vote Green next May to protect animals

Last week I became a candidate for the Green Party for the European Parliament for the North West of England region. Elections will be held next May along side local elections, for which I will also be a Green Party candidate in the Manchester City Council elections, for the Chorlton ward. As a vegan and an animal rights activist I urge all who care passionately about animals to vote for the Green Party in the European elections, and I will explain to you why this is one of the best things we can do to help animals.

From a purely animal rights point of view there really are not many political parties in the UK worth bothering with. There's only really the Green Party and the Animal Welfare Party (AWP) who are active and have even semi-decent animal rights policies. You can take a look at the Green Party's animal rights policies here: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ar . Both the AWP and the Green Party are standing in the European Parliament elections next May hoping to gain seats. The AWP (under their former name Animals Count) only stood in the Eastern region in the 2009 European election and received 13,201 votes (around 0.8% of the vote). This time round they are committed to standing in the London region, but will not stand in other regions unless they can get hold of enough funding/donations. They say they need 140,000 votes in London to get an MEP elected claiming that there are around 500,000 vegetarians/vegans in London and therefore they only need a small percentage of their votes. It is very unrealistic that they will achieve that quota given that the Green Party only managed to achieve 190,589 votes at the last European election and UKIP only managed 188,440 votes at the last election. The AWP does not have the national, regional or local presence and has not built it's name up enough to achieve that level of success. They need improve their vote by more than 10 times the amount they received in 2009, yet their profile has not significantly grown at all since 2009 and they still no not have a single person elected at any level.

The Green Party's MEPs (Member of European Parliament) have an excellent record when it comes to animals. Every few months the Green MEPs publish a newsletter on the work that they and the Green group in the parliament have been doing to improve things for animals (latest issue can be read here: http://www.keithtaylormep.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Final-Making-Tracks-Compressed.pdf ). Keith Taylor, MEP for the South East for example worked hard to keep the EU wide ban on the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals to 2013 when the industry was putting on pressure to delay the ban. Green MEPs worked hard to ensure the ban on battery hens was achieved. The Green group has worked hard to tighten up regulations on fishing so that fishing trawlers do not destroy our oceans. These achievements wouldn't be possible without Green MEPs. Voting for the AWP in London could prevent the Green Party's animal spokesperson Caroline Allen from being elected as she is second on the Green Party list. Being very generous, if the AWP get around 30,000 votes that could be the difference that the Green Party need to getting Caroline Allen elected. In many parts of the country the Greens were just less than 2% away from getting someone elected. In the North West where I am a candidate they were 0.3% away from defeating Nick Griffin.

If more animal advocates voted for the Greens next May it might be that extra amount we need to get a handful of extra MEPs. Since the last Euro elections in 2009 the Greens have grown tremendously, in 2010 Caroline Lucas was elected as the first ever Green MP. In 2011 Brighton & Hove City Council became the first Green-led council ever, which has led to vegan options becoming available in council owned canteens and other places where the council has influence. This year Jenny Jones became the first Green Party politician to be appointed to the House of Lords. We have never had such a great opportunity to make so many gains nationally. Good results in the European elections will do wonders for our chances in the General Election in 2015 when Caroline Lucas is up for re-election as an MP. Caroline Lucas does a lot of great things for animals in parliament. She has fought against the badger cull and has fought for the ban of wild animals being used in circuses amongst other things. If she did not get re-elected it would be a great loss for British politics at a time when people have very little faith in politicians. Well the Greens are something different. We care about the common good. We care about creating a society that benefits the planet and all beings living here, including animals.The very realistic alternative if people don't vote Green is that we will get more UKIP and Labour MEPs and they will not champion animal issues.

Further reading on Green Party animal rights campaigns, especially regarding the European parliament:

• Caroline Allen - Green Party animals spokesperson and 2nd on London European election list: carolineallengreenlondon.blogspot.co.uk
• Greens for Animal Protection: https://www.facebook.com/GreensForAnimalProtection
• Making Tracks - the Green MEPs animal welfare publication Autumn 2013 edition: http://www.keithtaylormep.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Final-Making-Tracks-Compressed.pdf
• Jean Lambert MEP animal protection page: http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk/issue_detail.php?id=2
• Keith Taylor (Green MEP for South East) animal rights page: http://www.keithtaylormep.org.uk/category/animal-rights/
• Keith Taylor celebrating the EU-wide ban on sale of cosmetic products tested on animals: http://www.greens-efa.eu/stopping-experiments-on-animals-for-cosmetics-9492.html
• The Greens/EFA (the Green group in the European Parliament) animal welfare campaigns: http://www.greens-efa.eu/animal-welfare-44.html

Cooperative fan-ownership, the future of football

A couple of weeks ago I witnessed a true phenomenon for the first time ever, I watched an FC United of Manchester match. They are the most amazing and unique football club I have ever had the pleasure of coming across. The passion and dedication of the fans was like nothing I had ever witnessed before in football. There were less than 2,000 people there but it felt more like 10,000 and apparently that was a poor match for attendance and atmosphere. What really impressed me is how pleasant the whole atmosphere was. There was next to no swearing and none of the chants I usually expect to hear about putting down former players of the club or rival clubs. It was all positive. There was also a lot of politics. Me and my friends went to the clubhouse before the match and at half time and there were many banners in the clubhouse and a lot were political. This is an entire different way of running a football club and is the future of the sport.

Fan ownership is by no means new and has been around for some time. In Germany nearly all football clubs are by law at least 51% owned by their fans. One of the world's largest clubs, Barcelona are a fan-owned club. In England fan ownership hit the headlines when Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes, and eventually changed their name to Milton Keynes Dons. Original Wimbledon fans weren't at all happy with this and they formed a new club called AFC Wimbledon in 2002, owned entirely by fans of the football club. The club have been going strong and have had 5 promotions in 8 seasons and are now a league club, just one league below MK Dons. Since then there has been a wave of clubs being owned by their fans, which can broadly be put into 2 different categories. Firstly, phoenix clubs. This is where a club ends up dissolving/no longer existing (usually due to not being able to pay off debt) and fans of that club form a new club entirely owned by the fans. Notable pheonix clubs replacing former league clubs include: AFC Wimbledon, Chester FC, Darlington 1883, AFC Rushden & Diamonds, Scarborough Town and Scarborough Athletic. The second category of fan-owned clubs are where clubs have either come into financial difficulties or the owners of the club have become unpopular with the fans and the fans have bought the club off the former owners. This is usually done via a supporters trust becoming the new owners of the club, and the supporters trust is owned and controlled by it's members who are fans of the clubs. Notable league and former league clubs that have become fan-owned include Portsmouth, Wrexham, Exeter City and Wycombe Wanderers. When Pompey Supporters' Trust took over Portsmouth FC in April 2013 they became the largest football club in English history to become fan-owned. As early as 2010 Portsmouth were playing in the Premier League and reached the FA Cup final, but following financial difficulties the club barely survived liquidation and were relegated 2 seasons in a row. Towards the end of last season the supporters' trust put a lot of work in to secure the club for the trust, and despite being relegated fans are rejoicing the new era with attendances up by 26.5% and over 10,000 season tickets were sold during the pre-season (compared to 7,250 the previous season).

The main club I've supported in recent years has been Fleetwood Town. When I first watched Fleetwood about 10 years ago when a friend of my Dad played for the club, they were getting attendances of around 150 per match and the highest paid player was paid in the region of £90 a match. The stadium included just one actual stand which covered a small section of one length of the pitch and around 200 seats, behind both goals were little more than a small roof with grass in front and the other length of the pitch was just grass. This was also around the time that Andy Pilley took over as chairman of the club and since then he has invested several millions of pounds which has mostly been improvements to the stadium bringing capacity to around 5,500. Under Pilley the club have risen from the North West Counties Football League Division One to The Football League League 2, a total of 5 promotions in 9 seasons and average attendances are now around 2,800. There is a good chance that the club could get promoted again this season as they are currently 2 points away from the top. Despite recent success, I am very worried about the future of the football club. Why? Because at some point Andy Pilley will cease to be chairman of the club. It could be in 2 years, 10 years or 30 years but at some point he will go and so will his money. Unless the club gets another wealthy businessman take a dedicated interest in the club, it will struggle to keep up league status. This is why I wish there was a supporters' trust that could take over the club from Andy Pilley when he decides to leave the club. This way the club will not get temporary funds from wealthy investors which could potentially lead to financial difficulties further down the line. Twice in the history of the club it has wound up due to financial difficulties, the current Fleetwood Town F.C. is the third incarnation of the club having been formed in 1997. If you're reading this and you are a Fleetwood Town fan, please try to set up a supporters' trust and buy a small stake in the club. I would gladly join but due to living in Manchester I could not get involved much.

So many clubs have been a victim of punching above their weight by having investment from a wealthy chairman, who leaves the club in financial ruin when they leave the club. Take a look at former league club Darlington. Former owner George Reynolds built a 25,000 capacity stadium for the club costing £20 million in 2003. This was despite average attendances for the club was less than 3,00. He had plans to make the club a Premier League team only to bring the club into administration and leaving a few months later the stadium was complete. The following seasons involved a downward spiral and eventually the club was effectively dissolved. The successor club was not allowed to use the 25,000 seater Darlington Area. If all clubs were owned by their fans then clubs would only be able to invest as much as the fans could invest (along with money from sponsors, prize money and potential TV money of course). A similar fate looked likely for Wycombe Wanderers when Steve Hayes owned the club. He intended to move the club to a new 17,000 capacity stadium which was unpopular with fans considering their current ground Adams Park only opened in 1990 with capacity of around 10,000 is more than enough for their average attendances of less than 5,000. The club, making a loss was reminded by Hayes that they needed his financial support to avoid being placed in administration. Fortunately however the supporters' trust took over the club in June 2012 and the future of Adams Park and the financial security of the club are secure. Stadium relocations are often unpopular with fans, and sometimes can be popular with fan. Under fan-ownership it's the fans themselves which can decide if they want a new stadium of would prefer to develop the current ground if needed.

Since the formation of the Premier League, tickets and merchandise for the tops clubs have continued to become more expensive. It's now cheaper to watch a Premier League match every week on Sky Sports than it is to buy a season ticket to most Premier League clubs. This has led to English football culture being shifted from one where everyone goes to watch their local football team, to one where most people watch Premier League matches on TV. The result of this is that some clubs are making more out of money from TV rights than from ticket sales and in modern football a lot of that money had gone to giving players higher wages. If clubs become owned by their fans, they can choose to lower prices of tickets to matches and pay players fairer wages, which would usually means lower wages in the top leagues. The fans can decide whether to invest in players or the stadium or to save funds to protect the finances. Fan-owned clubs have better attendances with fans being happier with how the club is being run. Because fans are so much more involved in the running of the club, they are more likely to be investors in the club. FC United of Manchester have been able to raise more than £2 million from their fans towards building their new 5,000 capacity stadium due to be opened in around a year's time, with some fans investing several thousand pounds via community shares (which do get paid back in a few years time). I bet near enough all of Manchester United's fans don't put thousands of pounds each into the club.

So for all of you football fans, I encourage all of you to join or set up supporters' trusts or support your local fan-owned football club. Here's a list of fan-owned sports clubs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fan-owned_sports_teams . It's better financial stability for your club, it's better financial stability for the sport, it gives fans what they want and it will stop big money from dictating which clubs are successful.

Public Common Ownership or Cooperative Collective Ownership?

Consider the basic definition of socialism and/or communism - common ownership of the means of production. What does it mean? What are the practical steps towards achieving this? What are the best forms of common ownership and are there alternatives worth considering? This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately and thought I'd do a blog post on the topic so here we go.

It's obvious to me that we could do with an alternative to the normal methods of private ownership. Private ownership is entirely run for profit, and in almost all cases the majority of the profit goes into the hands of the directors and shareholders rather than the ordinary workers who actually make the private companies their money. Of course the idea is supposed to be that people will not pay for services unless they are useful and good value for money, and any business that does not fulfil those 2 requirements will go out of business. Once upon a time this may have been the case, but no more. As time has gone on private companies have done as much as they can to spend as little as possible and done as much as possible to earn as much money as possible. In the name of competition, as time has gone on there have been less and less companies and more and more monopolies, where there are many industries controlled almost entirely a small handful of massive companies. This has lead to worse rights and pay for workers because when a multi-national company kills off small businesses and then builds a warehouse in your home town employing a thousand people, what alternative do people have for work other than work for other similar companies? It has also resulted in companies doing what's bad for the environment because that is usually the cheapest option. At the extreme end of private ownership just look at the American healthcare system. Instead of their healthcare system being run to help improve people's health and to heal the sick and injured, it is run entirely for profit. This has lead to thousands of people dying from not being able to afford the healthcare they need. Big private companies don't care about you, they don't care about the environment, they don't care about people in the third world who they are keeping in poverty, they only care about profit.

Common ownership is where everyone owns and has some form of democratic control over something. In practice this means public ownership, although under different systems it could be run differently. Collective ownership is similar but instead of you owning something by default, you opt in to owning it. One of the main forms of collective ownership, and the main one I support is cooperatives. In society today most business is exactly that, business and solely for profit, and for the profits of the big bosses, managers, directors and shareholders. Business structured either under public ownership or cooperative ownership are run for the interests of either the public or the members of the cooperative and therefore seek the interests of the many and not the few. But why do we need both?

Firstly take a look at public ownership. At the moment everything in public ownership is run by either the national government or by local councils or regional/national parliaments or assemblies. These are all themselves run by politicians from political parties elected by the general public. The current democratic system is deeply unfair where politicians are not directly accountable to the people who elected them and the party system is undemocratic with it being run by the parties who have lots of money and can win under first past the post. In an ideal situation this wouldn't be the case and we can change this. I believe in my lifetime we will at least see a change from first past the post to some form of proportional representation and I also believe there will be better legislation to make politicians a little more accountable to the people who elected them. In the mean time we can scare politicians into giving us a little of what we want by threatening to vote for other candidates at the next election, or better yet electing better politicians who will give the people what they voted for. In my ideal situation at least local councils would be run under pure democracy as opposed to the current elected representative democracy so that all citizens living in the council boundaries get the chance to be involved in decision making. It's this decision making which is key to the whole thing. With everyone being able to have some say in the decision making we can get down to services and society as a whole being run for the interests of the people. Take the NHS for example, the aim isn't to make a profit, the aim of the NHS is to treat unwell, sick and injured people. The aim of the fire brigade isn't to make a profit, it is to put out fires and potentially save people's lives and limit any damage caused by any fires. These are actually services which are of use to people and are run to be of use to people.

Now cooperatives. There are many different types of cooperatives; housing coops, workers coops, consumer coops, credit unions/cooperative banks, etc. Like publicly owned services, coops are run democratically and for the interests of their members. Some cooperatives are for profit, but instead of the profit mostly going into the hands of a small number of people it gets shared equally between members unless the members agree otherwise. There are certainly some grey areas for me when it comes to cooperatives, largely being that I am not sure if in my ideal society having workers cooperatives provide services that the service users do not have any democratic control whatsoever. On the other hand, should service users have the same control over the services as the workers? Let's use shops as an example to demonstrate this. Should we support shops being run as a workers coop or as consumer coop like the Co-operative Group is. The Co-operative Group is run by it's members (under a elected representative system) which can include it's workers, but the majority of it's members are it's customers. I am a member of the Co-operative Group and I shop at the Co-op probably about once a fortnight yet I have as much right to stand for election to the bodies which influence decision making as people working full time at the Co-op or people who shop there every single day. We can talk about cooperatives fitting into a market based economy or a society without money or a market as we understand it but that's another discussion for another time, let's assume for now that coops can fit into both scenarios .

How do they both fit in together? It's clear to me that there are some industries that people shouldn't have choice but are currently privatised and therefore people are given choice. Take gas and electricity for example. It doesn't matter who supplies your gas and electricity, at the day of the day you get the same product and use it the same way. Getting gas from a different company doesn't change how you use the gas, just how much you pay for the gas. Yet, the amount of money and resources wasted on advertising and competing between other companies for your custom is ridiculous and that is a cost that could be saved for the consumer. The same can be said for public transport, nationalise it and you save a lot of running costs and still supply the same service and people don't need to choose between 2 different services to get a bus or train from the same A to the same B. I believe that services where it doesn't matter who supplies the service should be publicly owned. You shouldn't have the choice of several different fire brigade companies, or different libraries on the same high street. However, there are some things I think you should have choice in. Take bread for example. People have different tastes in bread and different companies supply different types and flavours of bread. Same goes for all food, drink, clothes, entertainment, restaurants, pubs, clubs, hairdressers, etc. Those services should be run as cooperatives, with membership open to either just the workers or perhaps the workers and the service users. Having those services run by either the local council or the national government would take away people's freedom to choose from their own preferences. This way you get a society run for the people and by the people (or the 99% if you prefer) rather than just for the profit of the few.

Why I am not leaving the Green Party.

Over the last couple of years, quite a few decent activists have left the Green Party for various reasons. Some have gotten a bit fed up that the Greens aren't achieving a lot and therefore have decided to join Labour. Many have had enough of what's been happening on Brighton & Hove Council where the Greens have administered cuts and caused a strike of bin workers over reducing pay for male bin workers. While these things are true, I am not going to leave the Green Party. I still believe the Greens are just about the most radical party in at least England. The Greens are achieving things and making changes throughout the country. With over 130 councillors, 2 London Assembly Members, 2 MEPs, an MP and a life peer in the House of Lords the Greens are achieving things that no other left-wing party could possibly be achieving at the moment.  The alternative at the moment is not worth considering.

First of all, let us consider one obvious alternative - revolutionary politics. Having a revolution to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with some form of socialism is a very very good idea. Until this happens we will still have some form of capitalism, and I hope I don't need to explain the evils of capitalism here. I do want a revolution to happen. However, before we have a revolution we need to have the vast majority of the population willing to participate in the revolution and before that happens, things in society need to get a lot worse. Near enough every revolution that has ever happened as a response to tyranny. No revolution has happened purely because of a campaign to build for a revolution. There will be a time for revolutionary action but it is not now. And while there are plenty of good positive changes that can be made outside of electoralism (that the Greens should support), in the mean time, I see electoral politics as one of the best ways to create wider change.

Another alternative, join another left-wing electoral group. I'm opposed to this for 2 basic reasons. Firstly, other than the Greens I have yet to discover another left-wing electoral group that takes issues outside of socialism seriously. Issues such as environmentalism and animal rights are just as important as worker's rights and human rights. The Green Party's policy document, Policies for a Sustainable Society is several hundred pages long and covers many different topics. You can read it here: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ . Secondly, the Greens have spent the last few decades building up their name and becoming more and more electable while no other left-wing electoral group has prioritised becoming electable and winning elections for anywhere near this long. I did have hope for Respect at one or two points, but they seem to have blown it and are dwindling. There are many unelectable left-wing parties and alliances that keep on changing, in-fighting and splitting the left-wing vote. The left does not need this.

For those unhappy with the progress of the Greens, wanting to be part of creating change quicker than the Greens are delivering is tempting at times. That's why some people are joining the Labour Party instead of the Greens. Part of the thinking behind this is that they offer a better and more effective opposition to the Tory-led coalition government. While it is true that Labour are the party most likely to defeat the Tories at the next general election, if you think this is any alternative whatsoever you are kidding yourself. Ed Milliband and Ed Balls have both said that they won't reverse any of the cuts or welfare reforms that the coalition government have put into place. Even before the 2010 general election Labour were saying they want to perform similar amount of public sector cuts, just over a longer period of time. The theory behind this is that cutting too quickly will do too much damage. But would delaying sacking public sector workers by one year really have made that much difference in the long run? They would have still been made unemployed and less jobs would have been made available. Sorry Labour but you are just Tories in disguise. The Greens are the largest party opposed to all public sector cuts.

This brings my onto my next point, Brighton & Hove Council. Many people have left the Green Party because of what our councillors have been doing on Brighton & Hove Council, the only council in the country where the Greens are the largest party (although we do not have a majority of councillors). The Greens have made some unpopular choices in Brighton such as passing on government cuts to the council, raising car parking fees to around the region of £15 a day and tackled a gender pay gap of bin workers by lowering the pay of male bin workers rather than raise the pay of female workers. I don't know if I could remain a local member of Brighton & Hove Green Party if I lived there, but I don't and therefore I don't see the impact they're having. The vast majority of voters across the country don't even know we are the party administering Brighton & Hove City Council, and in fact I have found when going out canvassing that a lot of people haven't even heard of Caroline Lucas MP. I'm not excusing what the Greens have done on Brighton & Hove Council, I would have much rather they refuse to implement a budget with cuts and therefore left the Tories and Labour to have passed a cuts budget while instead leading an anti-cuts campaign across the city. While that is what I would have preferred to have happened the truth of the matter is that no matter what happened there would have been cuts to the budget of Brighton & Hove City Council. If the Greens had not passed cuts, either Tories and/or Labour would have passed a cuts budget or Eric Pickles' department would have forced a cuts budget upon Brighton & Hove. And let's not forget, the Greens don't even have the majority of seats on the council so can be outvoted at any point. Outside of Brighton however I notice that Green councillors are making good positive changes throughout the country. My local party used to be North Lancashire Green Party, which includes Lancaster who have had at one point 14 seats (2 county council seats and 12 city council seats) and attending their meetings was a delight as it was full of reports about what councillors had achieved, from parking permits to stopping a Tesco from being built, from the canal side being tidied up to delaying the closure of the indoor market. What I think I am most proud of those Lancaster councillors is they have told me that when they first started winning seats back in 1999 the party with the majority of seats on the council would propose and pass motions without anyone questioning them or debating things (possibly even from within their own party before being proposed), and thanks to the Greens putting forward amendments to motions and always questioning things, council meetings are now full of debate. This is a good thing for democracy.

Yes, despite what's happening in Brighton the Greens are achieving lots of great things throughout the country. Even just small things achieved by a single lone Green councillor such as getting trees cut back so that road signs can be read or getting a grit bin installed or helping a resident order a new recycling bin. While these small things are not going to change the world, where we have greater power we have achieved greater things. In Kirkless for example our councillors have managed to get free insulation for hundreds and hundreds of social houses that has saved people money on their heating bills which has gone directly into the local economy. In London all buses will be running on hybrid engines soon because of our Green Assembly Members. Lancaster City Council is now a living wage employer because of Green Party councillors. The list goes on. The mainstream parties are not pushing for these changes throughout the country and the smaller left-wing parties are not anywhere near to achieving this amount of change as they hardly have anyone elected at all. Sticking with the Greens is helping to get people elected who will be making good left-leaning changes throughout society.

What about the future? Will the Greens drift further and further to the right as they gain more seats or as more members of the mainstream parties start to join us? After attending Young Greens convention last month I can assure you the future of our party is radical. The Young Greens (for all members under 30 years old and student members) are full of radical ecosocialists who continue to push for radical policies and campaigning. Ideas such as getting young adults involved in trade unionism, citizens income, cutting the pay ratio in any company down to 10:1, the living wage and smashing patriarchy were all discussed and gained wide support. I often see environmentalists join the party for environmental reasons, and a couple of years down the line they realise they need to oppose capitalism in order to protect the environment. There was a lot of talk about putting serious resources into getting some of these radical Young Greens elected as councillors. The majority of people on the London Federations of Green Parties' committee are now Young Greens and left-leaning influence is growing all the time. I can't wait for the future of the party to begin.

So I would urge those who agree with our principles and policies to join the party and stay in the party. Tactics, strategy and direction can be debated and changed by the members of the party, so if you don't agree with a few things that have been happening you can influence changes in the Green Party. We're a bottom up rather than top down party, and I'm proud of that.

Young Greens convention comes to Manchester

Anyone who is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales and is either under 30 years old or is a student is automatically a member of the Young Greens of England and Wales. Every year the Young Greens host an annual convention. This year I'm delighted that this year the convention is coming to Manchester. It takes place this weekend (26th-27th October).

What's the role of the Young Greens? Well, there are various different important roles that the Young Greens play and could play for the Green Party. Firstly, to give young members a chance to meet other young people who share similar views. Most party members are over 30 so this is important for young members. Secondly, to ensure the interests of young people are considered throughout the party. Thirdly, to encourage and train young members to become important active members of the party. Fourthly, to promote and train the talents we have within our young members. Fifthly, to recruit more young adults to the party. Sixthly, to have a presence at students unions around the country. Seventhly, to persuade more young adults to vote for the Green Party. There are more things the Young Greens do and can do as well.

What happens at the convention?  Young Greens used to hold their AGM at the Green Party's conference before they started having convention. Now they hold it at the convention and this gives a lot more time for official business of the AGM. This involves hustings for and electing the committee and other bodies of the Young Greens, motions to amend the Young Greens' constitution and other official documents and accepting the reports from members of the previous year's committee. There's also a lot of workshops at the convention on a range of topics, including some that are for the interest of non-students. Some are training workshops, and some are workshops that come up with proposals for what the Young Greens should be doing. At a workshop last year we decided to change the logo of the Young Greens. There sometimes are sessions on Green Party policy and what Young Greens thinks of them, and sometimes this has resulted in motions being put forward to the national Green Party conference to change policy or the rules of the party. There's always social activity as well, and a crash space for people with sleeping bags. Luckily I live in Manchester and therefore get to sleep in a bed for the first time! Hurray!!! I have even slept at a Young Greens crash space for a weekend without a sleeping bag before.

I think there is a lot of scope for the Young Greens to increase the activity of our young members. A lot of progress has been made over the last decade but there is still a lot more to be done. There are only 1 or 2 active regional Young Greens groups, and a huge amount of universities that do not have a Young Greens group running. This is why I am favouring Clifford Fleming for co-chair of Young Greens. Clifford has done a great job in getting both Manchester Young Greens and the regional Young Greens North up and running and active. This has been a great success and has increased active membership. Clifford has a real knowledge of why and how students vote (or do not vote) and I believe his input will be very useful for helping towards improving the student vote for next year's European elections. Clifford also has a good way of explaining party politics to people new to politics. I also think he'd do a good job on GPEx and it would make him a good activist for the party for a long time hopefully. He's used to winning elections with him being the campaigns officer for Manchester University Student's Union, having won an election to get that post. Please vote for him if you're attending or submitting a proxy vote.

I hope to see a lot of great Young Greens this weekend. Come say hi to me. If you want to know anything about Manchester while you're here, ask me as I'm local.

Speciesism: The Forgotten Discrimination

I often get good left-wing activists tell me that speciesism isn't a real thing and that it's used as a bullying tactic and that it's actually offensive to human-centric struggles. A lot of people have never heard of speciesism, or don't understand it and even get offended by the use of the term. I'd thought I'd clarify what speciesism is all about in this blog post. Hopefully this will help some people to understand speciesism.

To everyone who accepts speciesism as a genuine term, and especially to those who are anti-speciesist speciesism is one of the general forms of discrimination. Just like sexism is discrimination based on sex, racism is discrimination based on race, speciesism is discrimination based on species. It is the belief that your species is superior to other species. Some people have argued that discrimination can only be applied to people and therefore speciesism is not a general form of discrimination because in their eyes only human beings can be people. This way of thinking is in and of itself speciesist. Some definitions of discrimination do not use the term people, but instead use the term individuals, and that would class all non-human animals as open to discrimination in the form speciesism.

Like all forms of discrimination, the use of the term speciesism has often been wrongly used by both speciesists and anti-speciesists. In my view people discriminate on 2 different bases, through ignorance and through the belief that some individuals or groups of individuals are superior to others. Take racism for example, some people discriminate against immigrants because they wrongly believe that immigrants are taking more state benefits than the taxes they pay. This is factually incorrect, and is ignorance. In my eyes this does not make those people racists, but it does make those individual acts of discrimination racist. If they knew that most immigrants work, pay taxes and might not even be eligible to claim state benefits then they would be less likely to discriminate. A true racist, I would argue, is someone who continues to discriminate even though they are aware of all of the facts because they believe their race is superior to other races. They could (but not always) be persuaded to change their beliefs however. I apply this thinking to speciesism. Just because someone takes part in speciesist acts, it does not automatically make them a speciesist. There is a lot of ignorance about speciesist issues, and the ultimate solution to speciesism is a difficult one (veganism).

All forms of animal exploitation are in fact acts of speciesism, from meat eating to zoos, from animal testing to the fur and leather trades. If you believe it is okay to treat animals in this way, or even that they were put on this earth for this purpose, then you are being speciesist. If you are reading this and you are a meat eater, don't worry I am not calling you a speciesist. The meat industry is a speciesist industry and you are supporting that industry, but how am I to know why you are a meat eater? In a society where from the moment you were born to the day you die animal products are pressured and even forced upon every human being, it can be difficult to know any better. One example of ignorance about a speciesist issue is how the dairy industry hides forced impregnations (in my view, rape) and tearing a calf from it's mother 2 days after the calf is born. I didn't know that even when I was vegetarian. Another example is that some people believe that greyhounds or horses in the racing industry are looked after well, but this is not true - over 300 horses are raced to death every year in the UK, and more than 15,000 greyhounds are put down every year because they are not good enough to race. The speciesist industries put an awful lot of money into advertising to make you unaware of these issues. When you get handed a burger at a takeaway or when you buy a leather jacket you weren't informed of how they were produced, weren't shown footage of the screams of the animals. Ever seen an advert for cheese or milk where they show (often cartoon) cows actually wanting the product for themselves? There is a lot of money put into creating a false image that animals are happy to be exploited for our own indulgence, when the reality is very different.

When people state that the term speciesism is offensive to human-centric struggles I get baffled. I have heard the claim that all struggles have to be fought and won by the groups that are oppressed, (I.E. women's struggle fought for by women, class struggle fought for by the working class, etc.), and that only oppressed groups can liberate themselves. I wonder if this would apply to child abuse, where children usually cannot stand up for themselves, or with other oppressed groups that are not able to liberate themselves. Should we not try to liberate oppressed groups who are not able to liberate themselves? I'm not advocating that people should get involved in direct action and smash up animal laboratories, animal liberation can take legal forms such as vegan outreach as well. In fact, all you have to do to be a part of the anti-speciesism movement is to be vegan, boycott animal industries and value all animals are morally equal to humans. This does not stop you from being involved in human-centric struggles, nor does it stop you from being further involved in the anti-speciesism movement. Often when I take part in animal rights actions I get asked why I am not campaigning about human issues, or even if I care about humans, I question them why they aren't at that moment themselves campaigning on human issues, and that I do in fact also campaign on human issues as well. It is often the person who accuses anti-speciesism activists of not caring about humans that does not campaign on any issues at all.

There is often a hypothetical scenario given to discuss speciesism and animal issues in a philosophical way. Imagine you are on a boat which is sinking due to being too heavy, and that there's a dog and a human on the boat and the only way to stop the boat from sinking is to throw either the dog or the human overboard. Which would you choose? Let's say for arguments sake that it is a young puppy and an elderly human, both of whom have around 10 more years to live. As both species are sentient it is speciesist to favour one species over another in this scenario. Both have the ability to enjoy life and to suffer. Neither are superior to the other, nor more worthy of life.

Here, watch the film Earthlings. It's about our relationship with animals. Vegan actor Joaquin Phoenix (from Gladiator, Walk The Line) narrates it, and vegan musician Moby does the music.

For further info:
Wikipedia page for speciesism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism
Speciesism: The Movie: http://speciesismthemovie.com/
Earthlings film: http://earthlings.com/