Cheltenham has a growing and increasingly active Green Party ~ get involved and help us get the first Green Councillor elected in Cheltenham.

Meetings:

Cheltenham Green Party meetings - Join us at our monthly meetings at the Cheltenham Centre for Change, 30 St Georges Place, Cheltenham. For further information please contact John Marjoram on 01453 751189

Elections:

The Cheltenham Green Party regularly field candidates in all the local elections but have yet to get their break through, in terms of getting a councillor elected. Green votes are increasing and campaigning will pay off.

We have seen in Cheltenham, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats asking people to vote for them because they are the "only alternative" to Labour. In effect they are asking us to vote against something rather than positively voting for something. Tactical voting is a feature of elections and has worked before. Yet all three parties now have very similar policies. A vote for one of these parties makes very little difference, whereas with one or more Green councillors we could show that there was a different way of doing politics.

JUNE 2004 CHELTENHAM LOCAL ELECTIONS

We stood in the 6 seats and came third place ahead of Labour in 3 of the seats. Two got over 12%, one got 10% and the other three all increased on the 5% we had last time.

This compares well with Greens across the country in local elections. We won around 10% of the vote where we fielded candidates (up by 2% from last year) and increased our overall number of seats by eight.

JANUARY 2004 CHARLTON KINGS BY-ELECTION

Caroline Griffiths in the Charlton Kings ward by-election came third, 84 votes ahead of Labour.

Caroline drew attention to the Council's woefully inadequate recycling facilities and it's absurd claims to be at the forefront of recycling activity. She was also the only candidate to put forward constructive policies for reducing traffic on London Road near Six Ways. Similarly the only candidate that seemed concerned about revitalising local shops - an issue of very high priority to many local people who have seen the loss of two Post Offices and just recently Leopolds bread shop, one of the oldest shops in Charlton Kings.

The other parties talked about traffic reduction and support for local businesses, but at the same time had policies that directly encouraged increases in traffic and sold out small shopkeepers to the out-of-town superstores.

Caroline also campaigned on stronger local planning policies to protect green spaces, protecting schools and homes from the health risks of TETRA and mobile phone masts, opposing water fluoridation, and abolishing the unfair Council tax system.