What would I do if elected to GPEX as Equalities & Diversity Co-ordinator?

As part of my election campaign for the Green Party Executive (GPEX) Equalities and Diversity Co-ordinator, I wanted to share a number of the key activities I would hope to to take forward if I was elected to serve by the membership:

Organisational change:

• Act as an advocate for equalities and diversity across our activities and bring that perspective explicitly to GPEX deliberations.
• Improve transparency in the role by providing regular reports to members, including using the Members website to communicate.
• Ensure that all activities and achievements are publicised regularly to the membership and demonstrate clear ways to get involved.
• Undertake an assessment of our membership application process to ensure we are collecting useful information on our members.
• Conduct regular analysis of our monitoring data and report progress to the membership.
• Consult with key stakeholders across the party and integrate these perspectives into a formal E&D strategy for the next two years.
• Build a robust network of activists across our local parties who will champion equalities and diversity work and feed ideas back to me.
• Investigate potential funding opportunities to support this programme of work, both from within and external to the Green Party.

Working with members:

• Meet regularly with the self-organised groups such as Green Women, Young Greens and LGBT Greens to ensure that their priorities are being communicated to GPEX.
• Build knowledge and capacity amongst self-organised groups to ensure that they are able to integrate their issues into the policy-making process.
• Work with self-organised groups to assist in making their activities and decision-making processes are transparent and accessible to members.
• Facilitate the creation of self-organisation for those groups of members currently under-represented in the Green Party.
• Facilitate working links between the various self-0rganised groups across the party, so that their outputs complement each other.
• Organise fringe events at the Green Party Conference to share best practice and raise the priority of equality and diversity within the membership.
• Work with Green Party Conference organisers to build upon recent improvements in accessibility and engagement for disabled members.

Outreach beyond the Green Party:

• Follow up on the excellent report undertaken by members into BME engagement with the Green Party and try to roll out some of their findings more widely.
• Make links with national organisations campaigning on equalities issues and build formal partnerships around key policy issues.
• Encourage external organisations to attend Green Party Conference and participate in fringe events.
• Support members conducting outreach work to under-represented groups, such as ethnic minority and disabled communities.

I hope this is a representative example of the work I hope to take forward over the next two years. I'm keen that this isn't a one-man band, so hope that some of this programme of action excites you into getting involved. If you think I've missed something fundamental out, please get in touch (stephen_a_wood@yahoo.co.uk).

Why politicizing aid has hidden costs for African LGBT communities

The situation for LGBT people in African states continues to deteriorate at a frightening pace. The frequent scapegoating of homosexuality in public debate means that there is a danger of these communities becoming collateral damage in a number of diplomatic rows between the UK and African governments. Troublingly, growing "aid scepticism" amongst politicians and voters here in the UK has the potential to make matters worse.

Last week, the UK Government cut £19M of it's £90M aid programme to Malawi in response to ongoing issues with governmental corruption and a deteriorating human rights record. We aren't alone - the European Union, World Bank and several other European countries have curtailed their support in Malawi. Concern over the effectiveness of aid and the disconnect between the desperately poor population and the governmental elite is widespread in the international community. There is genuine cause for concern that taxpayers money is going into the pockets of politicians and business whilst dissent and civil liberties are curtailed. This particular aid cut is newsworthy because the UK has traditionally been Malawi's greatest donor and in recent months an increasingly fractious relationship has developed between our country and President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Secretary of State Andre Mitchell's decision on Malawi is consistent with the new doctrine promoted by the Department for International Development (DFID) since the last election. Whilst international aid remains the only government department aside from Health protected from austerity cuts, a stringent new regime of transparency and accountability has taken root that insists upon measurable value for money in our spending. Even this hasn't been enough to ward off the increasingly shrill calls for cuts. Backbench Conservative MPs and increasing numbers of voters argue that we should be putting public services in the UK first before lending assistance abroad.

As I commented upon a few weeks ago, David Cameron has been keen to draw the connection between our commitment to international aid and making the moral case for LGBT rights internationally. Malawi has a particularly bad record on the human rights of gay citizens, with homosexuality criminalised and the arrest last year of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chumbalanga, who were freed and pardoned after an enormous amount of pressure, both within Malawi and from international solidarity and political leaders. Accusations that foreign organisations are trying to promote homosexuality by stealth are regularly reported in the local media.

Unfortunately, the UK's unilateral withdrawal of aid has caused an uproar within Malawi and our government's stance on LGBT rights has given President Mutharika an opening to blame the cut on a western gay agenda. This has neatly taken the heat off the accusations of corruption and bad governance leveled at him. According to LGBT Asylum News, the government has been publicly accusing opposition protest marches of being gay and funded by homosexual paymasters, something that is gaining traction after being reported on state television. This view plays into wider public concerns around western imperialism, worsened by the realities that this loss of money will mean for a country still struggling with widespread poverty.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but there are things we can consider. Work is needed to gain a clearer understanding of where resources are used effectively on the ground and working with in-country civil society organisations with strong reputations to ensure aid gets through to those who need it. If this means working around the Government, then so be it. We also need to tackle the politically-damaging argument that western donors are funding NGOs that promote homosexuality. This toxic narrative will continue to proliferate unless we can effectively counter it . And as I've said before, we need to bring the LGBT communities into our deliberations - above all, they know the political context much better than we do - and are directly in the firing line in this crisis.

The situation in Malawi clearly illustrates the political complexity involved in international aid. It is obvious that we need to take a more nuanced approach to promoting LGBT rights in African states, ensuring that aid gets through to those most in need, whilst building capacity within developing countries and tackling corruption. By that measure, the UK Government's approach in Malawi last week has failed on all four counts that matter.

What we learnt when we broke free of Murdoch's stranglehold

The acres of newsprint covering the tribulations of the house of Murdoch in the last two weeks has been staggering. It has blown away consideration of other crucial news stories, such as the humanitarian crisis unfolding in drought-hit East Africa and the Coalition's new privatisation plans for public services. As ever, whilst I cling optimistically to the vain hope for a balance in media reporting, I can't ignore the fact that this breakdown in trust represents a crucial juncture for both the elected and the electorate.

And you can see clearly why. By allowing a concentration of print and television media to fall into the hands of the few, politicians hand men such as Murdoch a knife with which to hold at the throat of the entire political establishment. An unelected Australian tax exile has dictated domestic and international policy in the UK for the last two or three decades, aggressively shaping public debate against our best interests. Rupert Murdoch has used his newspapers to ferment opposition to the European Union. Why? Because it's legislative programme represented a brake on his media monopoly. In circumstances such as this, there IS a legitimate case to be made for modest rebalancing of press freedom back towards those we democratically elected to represent our interests.

In recent years, the appetite for 24 hour news has made it even more dangerous to be outspoken about Murdoch's grip on our body politic. He has a 24/7 machine ready to hammer the reputations of those who oppose him. That's why I must praise Ed Miliband's performance in the last couple of weeks. We may not respect Labour's inability to stand up to News International previously, but we can surely appreciate why they felt politically powerless to do so. By putting his muscle behind key demands in this crisis that have now come to pass: the withdrawal of the BSkyB take-over bid, the resignation of Rebekah Brooks and closing down the News of the World, he finally seems to be making the political weather. As recently as two weeks ago, he was being lampooned for his stupidity. Yet it is the Prime Minister who is now finding himself increasingly close to becoming collateral damage as recriminations and arrests continue.

The truth is that politicians and political parties CAN survive without the patronage of the big media giants. As Labour and Tory MPs find their voices again, both they and political commentators are rediscovering the joys of free speech. If it didn't underline just how perversely twisted public debate has become, I'd find it amusing.

For the Green Party and Liberal Democrats, political parties beneath Murdoch's notice, this is nothing new. We've been used to the casual indifference of the press and have had to succeed by building relationships with voters directly. This means becoming embedded more in the lifeblood of communities. Consequently, we have built reputations in strong locally-based, bottom-up politics, which I believe are the antidote to mass-media led gesture politics.

So my response to the News International morality tale? Yes, we need to get a handle on press intrusion and start to regulate more firmly than before, although not to the extent that genuine press freedom is threatened. Regulating a tighter set of rules around what constitutes public interest could move us away from salacious tittle-tattle and back to necessary investigative journalism. Place limits on the amount of the fourth estate that can be bought up by one individual or business.

But for politicians, it means remembering the simplest of lessons from campaigning. That your reputation is forged voter by voter, speech by speech, one constituency issue and judgement call at a time.

Huffington Post UK: Introducing my new blogging sideline!

At the risk of becoming too self-referential, I wanted to write briefly to say I've started writing the odd blog post for the newly launched Huffington Post UK. I'm aiming to write my own particular brand of optimistic, Green Party, LGBT and equalities style postings for their slightly broader audience. Whilst the Huffington Post isn't without it's critics, I couldn't pass the opportunity up to try and get positive coverage of the Green Party to the widest possible audience, as well as encouraging bottom-up media stories, especially relevant in our post-hacking-gate times.

I hope you'll take a look at these as they arrive - my first post "How the Greens are quietly shaping the new political consensus" is an attempt to draw together some of my thoughts on the rapid changes we've seen on the UK political scene in the last year and how I feel the Green Party is capitalising steadily on them. For those interested, you can subscribe directly through the Huffington Post UK to be aware of my upcoming posts, as they arrive.

And whilst I'm on the subject, I wanted to thank the gradually increasing number of you who take the time to visit this blog each week - it has been quite an exciting experience so far and has taught me a great deal about my values, as well as how rewarding politics can be when you engage and try to change hearts and minds. Thanks again - and I hope you continue to pay visits to see how both the blog and the Green Party get on!