26th May 2007 

Stroud Green - key speaker at conference

Over 10 Green party members from Gloucestershire  joined the Green party's national conference in Swansea this weekend.

Photo right: Conference vote

Elinor Croxall, a Stroud Green party member who lives in Painswick (not a candidate this May) said: "Conference was wonderfully positive and has fired us up to win more seats in the May elections in Stroud - and our first seats in the Forest and Gloucester."

James Greenwood, a spokesperson for the newly launched West Gloucestershire Green party and District Council candidate said: "This year has seen Greens get our first seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. We plan to also see our first seats here in West Gloucestershire and show that getting Greens elected does make a difference."

Bryan Meloy, Gloucester Green party spokesperson and District Council candidate said: "Other parties are starting to talk green but they still don't understand. If they did, how could they still support more road building, doubling our airports, Trident, nuclear power, lower taxes for polluting industries, waste incineration and more? There is only one authentic Green voice: The Green Party."

London Mayoral Candidate and Principal Speaker Siân Berry, who was brought up in Cheltenham addressed the conference, urging people to rise to the challenge of being the only party with the right ideas and necessary courage to tackle climate change. She said: "Like a political fashion show, party leaders are strutting down the catwalk showing off their latest clothes. And we know whose designs they are copying. Whose clothes they are trying to steal? But the reality is they haven’t changed. They don’t understand that Green isn’t a sharp new suit you can wear for a few days."

Cllr Philip Booth, a Stroud District councillor and Green party spokesperson (not a candidate this May) said: "Great talks, great discussions and great music but most important of all great politics: Green policies make sense for people and the planet. As Principal Speaker Derek Wall said at conference: 'Green politics cannot fail - we have a world to save.' (i)"


Call for localisation

In a key workshop on the politics of localisation Stroud Green, Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party economics spokesperson, was a speaker with David Boyle of the New Economics Foundation and Carl Schlyter, an MEP for the Swedish Greens Party.

Ms Scott-Cato who will be a Green party candidate in the elections in Stroud in May, started the debate by dismissing the current economic status quo and went on to criticise the perceived benefits of material wealth. She said: "Personal wealth accumulation means that money has a claim in the present against a stake in the future, generating generational in-balance. The average child born now would have needed psychological therapy if they were born in the 1950's. Levels of mental problems and stress have never been higher."

David Boyle then dismissed outright the notion that industrial centralisation contains any benefit and also decimates social cohesion: "A recent study showed that towns in the US containing a Wal-Mart have fewer amenity groups, fewer local activities, less scout groups and a lower voting turn-out than places that don't. Why? Because these giant, rational, centralised systems suck the life out of places and the people that live there."

Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter despells the argument of globalisation still further. "When people think that companies are outsourcing all the jobs overseas, they're wrong to think that countries like China are benefiting from this globalisation. In the last 10 years, China have lost 15 million jobs in manufacturing, compared to a further 10 million jobs lost globally."

A localised economy was called for, with the benefits of zero food miles, a genuine ownership of production, and a greater emphasis on seasonality and community co-operation. The Green Party's Lord Beaumont's wise words from 2006 were repeated: 'Such a vision offers greater community and personal satisfaction: a world where conviviality replaces consumption, where local identity replaces global trade, and where community spirit replaces brand loyalty.'


Notes:

(i) BBC report of Derek wall's opening speech at conference:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6484987.stm