As one door closes, another opens…

For those of you who know me or follow me on Twitter, you will have been aware that I have recently moved back to London, leaving behind my time with the Brighton and Hove Green Party and throwing myself back into life back home.

It’s been an amazing three years down by the coast and I’ve been lucky enough to take a small part in some historic successes for the Green Party. Many of the political lessons I’ve learnt there have found their way into my blog pieces over the last year and in spite of leaving the city, I will be keeping a close and supportive eye on the achievements and challenges facing my friends in the local party. As recent events with the Council budget have shown, this is never going to be a quiet term of office for them and I intend to continue following the political context in the city.

As a political activist, moving to Lambeth GP will involve new exciting opportunities. Back in the centre of the city, I will be joining a vibrant local party facing a different set of issues and voters and with a greater electoral mountain to climb than Brighton and Hove. As such, I will be writing much more about how I find my place within my new community and re-engaging with the London Green Parties.

This change of location has prompted me to re-evaluate Green Politics: Sustainable Futures and to take the opportunity to upgrade my capacity to blog. I have made a decision to make this my last blog post for the site and to transfer to a new personal blog site with Wordpress, with better functionality and more ability to improve it over time. Don’t worry though, as I intend to be more engaged and productive as ever!

I hope that my regular readers will make the journey across and start following my new blog. In the coming weeks, I’m going to be talking about my experiences of changing party, the upcoming London Assembly elections, my work as Chair of the national LGBTIQ Greens caucus, as well as continuing my challenges to the Green Party to modernize and develop itself to reflect and represent modern Britain.

Please join me and subscribe to regular updates by email, because in the current financial climate, political activism has never been so important and urgent.

Why isn’t the Green Party breaking through?

As we curl up at home on these grim winter nights, a highlight has been my creeping addiction to Borgen. This new Danish political drama focuses upon the female leader of a minor party, who suddenly finds herself thrust into leading a coalition government as Prime Minister. There is a distinct similarity to the journey taken by the Green Party in the last couple of years. It hasn’t hurt to see one of the key partners of this coalition is a politically savvy and successful Green leader at the cabinet table, reminding us once more how more seriously our party is seen within other European electorates.

It’s an intoxicating mix, yet as the political and economic environment deteriorates seriously in the UK and all three major parties come out in favour of a cuts agenda that patently isn’t working, why isn’t the Green Party rapidly climbing up the opinion polls in line with the public mood?

Talk to many Green Party members and a rosier picture emerges. These last two years have yielded crucial breakthrough moments for our party. After thirty plus years, we finally have our first Member of Parliament in party leader Caroline Lucas. We now run our first local authority in Brighton and Hove, protecting the elderly, vulnerable and children. A modest amount of headlines followed these amazing successes, but not a sufficient amount to have shifted perceptions of the party by the national media and public.

In the immediate aftermath of these victories, the party has rightly consolidated. Our priority has been to ensure that constituents are represented effectively by their MP and manifesto pledges are met by the local authority. The aggressive attacks mounting on the party in Brighton and Hove is a testament to the hard work and commitment of the local party in the city and the disquiet our opponents are experiencing at our steady progress.

But where is the strategy to move forward nationally? Across the country, hundreds of local parties are tirelessly working towards the next victory, yet there is a faint impression that we are resting on our laurels when we should be taking the fight to the coalition and Labour. Our recent achievements shouldn’t be the high point of our success - they should be a launching pad for our next big leap forward. We need to be hungry for actual power – as the state’s provision for the most vulnerable is stripped away, exacerbating inequalities, we need to be there promoting alternatives, not just complaining at how unfair it all is. But where is the next Brighton Pavilion? The local party in Norwich is the only place with an outside chance of success.

Caroline Lucas has rapidly grown into a towering public figure. She is respected across the political spectrum to speak truth to power and is outshining the majority of national politicians. But where is the next Caroline Lucas? I fear that we are not investing sufficiently in building capacity amongst our activist base to nurture the next generation of politicians. As party leader, Caroline has an obligation to ensure the party functions to create such an enabling environment. Understandably, there are only so many hours in the day for her to act as party leader, parliamentarian and constituency MP, as well as retain some work / life balance. Heaping this amount of responsibility onto one set of shoulders is dangerous, but the party’s structural deficiencies aren’t helping here.

The role of Party Spokespeople is a case in point. The vast majority of green party members aren’t even aware they exist, let alone who they are. I challenge you to look over our website. The only people showcased are our national politicians: MP, MEPs and GLA members. It’s exceptionally difficult to ascertain who these spokespeople are – they aren’t elected by the party membership and they have no public duties that we can measure their performance against. The policy areas they cover aren’t consistent with the UK Government’s Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet portfolios, so we are unable to allow them to build ongoing public profiles or make it easier for the media to ask them for comment on issues of public concern. This model is undemocratic and unaccountable in a party that professes to be stronger than others on participation, democracy and fairness. Where underperformance exists, we have no mechanisms to monitor and evaluate this and no recourse to remove people who damage the party’s reputation. We wonder why we are sometimes seen as unresponsive to the big issues confronting the public, without looking at how we are presenting ourselves at a most basic level to them.

We need to bring these individuals out into the public eye. They should be elected to these positions by ordinary members and held account for their performance. These are ideal positions for us to build a cadre of experienced, professional politicians that become trusted figures for the public, doubly important whilst we are kept out of national elected office.

Until we invest in the next generation of Green political leaders, all eyes will remain on Brighton and Hove, placing our colleagues there under enormous scrutiny and pressure and without acknowledging the vast network of capable Green political figures up and down the country. Without opening up the party to a new generation of voices, the opportunities available to the politicians of Borgen remain the stuff of television drama.

Boom or bust? Championing a revitalised Green Party Executive

One of the savviest investments by the Green Party in nurturing it's democratic health over the last couple of years has been to invest in the Member's Website. As I wrote earlier in the year, using this private space to lay out all potential policy motions to our conference has allowed members to more easily input into honing and redrafting these so that they are smarter and more likely to be passed at conference. Whilst the Member's Website is still finding it's audience (I'd encourage all members to visit and subscribe to the LGBTIQ Greens section!), it has been heartening to see policy motions each receiving a solid audience and in some case, forensic analysis that can only improve the quality of debate within the party.

Amongst the usual diverse mix of policy and campaign motions, what has struck me has been the push for new roles for the Green Party Executive (GPEX). Alongside the agreement at last party conference that the Welsh Leader become a member of GPEX, both the Young Greens and Green Party Trade Union group have called for representation on this body. This does lead me to wonder whether members feel there is an absence of support for these sections of the party. Are these motions a reflection that GPEX is failing to champion the priorities of parts of the membership? Could there be lessons for our policy-making process, that people feel unable to effect change without being "in the room" at the Executive level?

Some experienced activists are already warning against inflating the membership of GPEX further, arguing that it makes it harder to manage the party. Whilst I'm still undecided on how I feel about these motions, I do wonder whether this would necessarily be so problematic: additional members of GPEX could increase accountability across a wider range of areas, improve access to ordinary members into the decison-making process and could ensure that roles are more manageable in size for those people interested in serving the party. Presenting a plurality of viewpoints and ideas in these debates, when chaired effectively, could produce more a more participatory organisation.

Either way, with a consistent inability to fill all the roles on GPEX or to contest the majority of positions sufficiently, shouldn't we begin with reforming those positions we currently have to ensure they are fit for purpose, attractive to a greater number of serious candidates and are supported sufficiently to enable hard-working officers deliver on their responsibilities?

The Big Green Leap Forward: Welcoming submissions from guest writers

If the last few months of campaigning amongst the membership have taught me anything, it is that there are more amazing and talented people in the Green Party than ever before. It really does feel that with the substantial leap in members over the last couple of years, a renewed sense of purpose and urgency has transformed the party’s outlook.

As regular readers know, one of the original aims for this blog was to provide space to talk about how we can construct a modern Green Party, one that could be capable of speaking to the whole electorate. I hope in some ways it has been successful in putting issues on the agenda and reflecting an optimistic vision in how we can broaden public interest in our campaigning. With a substantial (and heartening) expansion in readership since it began, there is an obvious appetite for this type of analysis.

Would you be interested in writing a piece for the blog over the next few weeks? I’m looking for members of the Green Party, or critical friends, who want to put forward ideas for how we can make the next leap forward in public profile and membership numbers. How can we become a mass membership party and yet still retain our core values of participation and inclusion? Where should our limited resources be placed to make most impact? How do we nurture the next generation of Green leaders?

If you’re interested in submitting an article for the blog, please drop me a line (stephen_a_wood@yahoo.co.uk) to discuss your ideas for a post and I’ll be happy to work with you to bring your ideas to a wider audience.

Launching the LGBTIQ Greens strategy for 2011-2012

Over the last couple of months, the Committee for the LGBTIQ Greens group has been working on a strategic plan for the coming year. I thought it would be useful to share our thinking behind some of the key areas we will be focussing our attention upon. For members of the Green Party, the full summary of activities can be found on our Member's Website.

Organisation:

To ensure the group is sustainable for the longer term, we thought it important to create stronger foundations for the group to build upon over the coming years. This means drafting and ratifying a constitution for the group that clearly outlines our aims and objectives, roles and responsibilities for elected officers, as well as making the their elections much more democratic and transparent.

We also realised that many of the activities we hope to undertake this year will require financial resources, so will work upon a method by which we can start modest fundraising efforts to build our capacity. This will occur alongside a refreshing of our external appearance and ensuring regular practical resources are available for members nationally to access and use in their local campaign work.

Communications & increasing our reach

We were also keen to make the best use of the communication avenues available within the Green Party to get our message and activities out to the greatest audience. We have set ourselves firm targets on expanding the number of people in contact with the LGBTIQ Greens, be that through our section on the Member's Website, via our website, our Twitter or Facebook feeds or through our mailing list. This will be coupled with more consistent communication about our achievements with members, so members can hold us to account and hopefully are inspired to contribute their energies too.

Externally, we are aiming to look at procedures around Press Work, to ensure that we are publishing material reflective of collective views, of high quality and working in partnership with other external communications stakeholders within the national party to reach the right audiences. Likewise, we are aiming to involve many more people in spotting news opportunities across England and Wales and sharing responsibility for this element of our work.

Policy & campaigning

Similarly, we are aiming to examine the policy-making process for LGBTIQ Greens, to ensure it is accessible and inclusive to the concerns of ordinary members, especially as we will need to examine our manifesto for the European elections within the next few months.

More broadly, we felt it was essential that LGBTIQ Greens plays a greater role within our communities, both as partners and leaders. To that end, we will work to build ongoing partnerships with some LGBTIQ community and campaign organisations in the coming months, especially around areas such as transgender rights that have traditionally been less well-served.

Support and Regional Focus

At the LGBTIQ Greens AGM in September, one of the striking things that I heard was the appetite for ordinary LGBTIQ members to feel part of the Green Party, but many reported that this wasn't always easy in local parties where they felt in a minority.

To begin addressing this, we have decided to try and organise a number of regional events, so as many members as possible have the opportunity to engage with other LGBTIQ individuals in a supportive environment. If anybody want to come forward and work with us to organise other events in their local area, we would love to hear from you. In the longer term, we want to look into the possibility of a mentorship and leadership programme to nurture the next generation of LGBTIQ activists and elected representatives.

If you have any feedback or questions around the strategic plan, please don't hesitate to contact me directly to discuss further. Likewise, if you would like to contribute any time or expertise to any of the activities, each of the Officers responsible would be keen to hear from you.

How the Right began setting the agenda for LGBT rights

When opening a broadsheet newspaper in the last few weeks, you can’t have failed to see a disproportionate number of column inches devoted to a shift in policy from the UK Government towards LGBT rights. Making international aid conditional on a good track record on LGBT rights is now floated as a concrete policy, with countries such as Uganda and Ghana in the firing line for cancelled aid. On the face of it, we seem to be seeing a Conservative Party in power that has genuinely changed their tune on gay rights. Wrong.

Of course it is important for LGBT rights to play a greater role in our foreign policy outlook. There has been lobbying for years from UK activists to achieve this and steady progress under the Labour Government. However, this isn’t an area you just blunder into with a sledgehammer. The cracks in this new approach are already beginning to show – earlier this week a coalition of all the major African LGBT and human rights organisations released a strong statement illustrating their disquiet over the UK Government’s stance and calling for a more nuanced approach. Additionally, the UK approach to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place this week has ignored the efforts and undermined years of lobbying from LGBT groups in the global South, whilst stepping forward to speak for others without any sense of history... or irony.

Once again, these UK activists and politicians are ignoring rule number one of working on international development, which is to start by listening to the lived experience of those you are campaigning to support. The truth is that activists in other countries have a more sophisticated sense of their own political contexts, know what strategies will work best and where to apply pressure. For those of us who want to see a more just and equal world, this means we must listen, pledge solidarity and apply pressure as and when requested. We are running the risk of being viewed as arrogant amateurs who think they know best: the worst kind of colonialism repackaged for the 21st century.

We are already seeing the unintended results of this policy strategy. In a number of African countries, homosexuality is portrayed by a hostile media and political elite as an imported cultural abomination. Reduction of international aid, (still desperately needed in severely poor countries) will be blamed upon Western imperialism and LGBT communities in these states will be convenient scapegoats. This can already be seen in Malawi, where this is another stick with which to demonise communities already under siege.

A cynic might wonder whether this threat to reduce UK aid to homophobic states is a progressive sheen to a longer-term policy of reducing aid levels. Why isn’t the UK Government pledging to provide aid directly to those NGOs with a proven track-record in extending human rights to LGBT citizens? The Department for International Development (DfID) gives virtually no financial support to the inspiring, frontline work these groups are undertaking under the harshest circumstances. Behind their progressive headlines, are we seeing the limits of Compassionate Conservatism?

Re-launching the LGBT Greens in England and Wales

In the last few weeks, my blog posts have been a little bit less frequent than I would have liked. Other commitments have made their bid for my attention, so apologies for the radio silence from me. With the political ground shifting under our feet on an almost weekly basis, you’ll be hearing more from me in the coming weeks!

One of the most exciting things I am working on at the moment is the new team leading on the national LGBT work for the Green Party. At our recent AGM at autumn conference, I was elected as Chair for the coming year and the existing team has been joined by a number of fresh, enthusiastic activists I’m hoping you’ll hear more from over the next year.

We are talking about our aspirations at the moment and are hoping to publish a strategy for the coming year fairly soon. As some of these aims will be around improving our ability to get out our message and activities to the broadest audience possible, I thought I might cheekily use this space to highlight ways you can help us hit our targets and keep in touch!

• Visit our website, which contains details on our LGBT-specific manifesto commitments, as well as news, activities and glamorous photos of the LGBT Greens Officers!
• Follow us on Twitter to keep up to the minute on our work and our response to news as it happens.
• For Green Party members, we would appreciate you subscribing to the LGBT Greens section of the Member’s Website, where we are providing reports, minutes and campaign resources.
• For Green Party members, we hope you’ll provide your email address so that you can be subscribed to our moderate-traffic LGBT Greens email list. Contact Nigel Tart to be added: tart@ntlworld.com

We’re not an exclusive group either, so support and interest from anybody committed to equality and building diversity in politics is equally welcome. Please encourage anyone you think might be interested in our work to get in touch or start following us!

Piercing the white noise of party conference season

We hear all too frequently these days that party political conferences should be scrapped, but I have to disagree. I've spent the last three weeks knee-deep in policy announcements, soundings from fringe events and the shifting of political allegiances between key figures in their parties. For the Green Party, generally thrust in the media shadows around this time, this presents an ideal opportunity to view the platforms of our political competitors in forensic detail, enabling us to glean insight into the roads ahead and the pitfalls that threaten us.

Of our main two competitors, the Liberal Democrats and Labour, I sensed that they remained unable to cut through to the public mood. In both their embrace and impotent loss of power, these parties have turned dialogue inwards and focussed upon their internal concerns. As a consequence, the level of political debate felt muted and weak, oblivious to the economic precipice the country stands upon. The growth strategies of all parties remain unfinished and whilst they continue to shy away from putting meat on the bones of their philosophies, they will be ignored by the electorate.

However, I do think that the Green Party runs the risk of embracing the same level of complacency. In much the same way as the Liberal Democrats have had their heads turned, our recent modest electoral success has satiated some of the political hunger that has driven us for the last 20 years. My concern will be that the leadership of the party will find it easier to put all our eggs in the basket that Brighton and Hove Council represents, as well as our local MP, rather than force us to take risks and invest in new campaigns nationally. The "wasted vote" argument does hold sway still in vast swathes of the country and will only crumble under the sustained efforts of elected local Green councillors. I'm keen for us to focus less on parliamentary fights and more on capacity-building broadly across regions, such as the North-West (who narrowly missed electing a further Green MEP). Experience teaches us that the Green vote hardens when voters see us in action on their behalf.

The other bitter pill to swallow from party conferences is the realisation that party activists from Labour and the Liberal Democrats clearly look as if they have reserves of smart, competent and single-minded politicians ready to step into power. We still need to identify and nurture unique voices within Green ranks, individuals with a rich level of experience. Otherwise, we will stack our fortunes upon the shoulders of our party leader and the scant other national figures, which isn't sustainable in the longer term. At our recent national conference, I was excited to see so many young activists full of energy and ideas, but many less of my generation able to step up to the challenges ahead.

Our employment strategy needs work too. As much as I have been one of the strongest cheerleaders for the common-sense approach of our New Green Deal agenda, I am fearful that it remains a relevant strategy for certain sections of UK industry. Whilst the knock on effect of it's success would be pumping more consumer spending into the wider economy, it does feel like a partial approach to a global problem from within our environmental comfort zone. What do we have to say to the broader range of professions under threat and experiencing flatline growth and job losses?

It's quite a gauntlet to lay down to my own party, but times have never been as serious as this. None of the other parties have come up yet with a compelling argument, so there is an opening for us to cogently speak to the fears and aspirations of the electorate whilst they conduct a conversation amongst themselves.

I have been pretty uncompromising in this post, for which I make no apology. But I'm keen to hear - what do you think the Greens should learn from the other party conferences this year?

Green Party Autumn Conference 2011: Day 2

As you might expect, the second day of conference is where party business intensifies. Once the national news cycle around the Leader's Speech subsides and remaining delegates arrive in the city, attention turns firmly to voting upon policy motions and the substantive discussions on the fringe circuit.

Things kicked off early with the Deputy Leader's speech. Viewed as a rallying cry to enthuse activists (the traditional role of Deputy Leader speeches), Adrian Ramsay's address can be deemed a success. That said, the content he chose resolutely refused to stray far from the script Caroline Lucas had laid down the day before and was therefore unlikely to interest news reporting for a second day, which is a shame. Within the strictures of his role, I would encourage him to continue to hone a distinctive voice and policy platform that both complements Caroline's and surprises the audience. This year I found his speech likeable, but underwhelming.

One issue that did rouse a great deal of debate was a seemingly innocuous motion to come out against the Government's Immigration Cap and reaffirm our commitment to a fair and liberal immigration system. In the end, it became quite an impassioned discussion and whilst there was understandable opposition to it due to the potential political mischief the media could make of our existing policy, at other times some speakers skirted dangerously close in my view to being racist. One participant even argued that environmental sustainability should always take precedence over social justice, something I have real political difficulty with. Thankfully, the motion eventually passed intact, but it was a sharp reminder that we must guard against complacency in moving towards a more diverse membership that challenges such outdated views.

Later in the afternoon, I chaired a fringe session with both Deputy Leaders of Brighton & Hove's Green Council, as well as number of Cabinet members and Councillors from my home city. It was a really great opportunity for members around the country to ask some pretty direct questions about our experience of taking power in a local authority and get a sense of some of the challenges we hadn't seen coming! In spite of being held at the same time as one of the keynote panels on inequality, we had a really substantial turnout and could have easily continued talking into the night. As a local party not noted for our large conference delegations, it was really heartening to see fellow members from home connecting with others around the country and sharing strategies.

Finally, I have to report that I was sadly not successful in my bid to be elected to the Green Party Executive. I really felt I fought as strong as a campaign as I could over the summer on this. Anyway, I'm staying chipper - political setbacks are good character building exercises! I really felt I got to understand the values and priorities of the membership through old fashioned debate and listening and hopefully gave members a healthy democratic contest to get their teeth into in a year when most GPEx roles were uncontested. Thanks to all of my readers who actively supported my candidacy, either through kind words or well-placed publicising of my blog articles on the subject. I'm weighing up where to put my energy next, but I've not done with contributing to the party. I'm as hungry for us to move forward towards success as ever.

Green Party Autumn Conference 2011: Day 1

Greetings from Sheffield! As delegates start drifting back in this morning from their night at the bar, I thought I'd write a quick report on some of the highlights and my reflections on the first day of conference.

The dominant event of the first day was the keynote speech by Caroline Lucas as party leader. Although she is always someone who speaks plainly, I was impressed to see a slightly harder edge in her address to conference than perhaps I am used to. Her speech was structured around a scathing, forensic analysis of the record for each of the other political parties and reminded both Green members (and those Lib Dems watching explicitly) why their failures in power rendered them unable to take moral leadership in dealing with the challenges we face over this Parliament. From talking to delegates plugged in to the media response to conference, her message has received real traction across the Guardian, BBC Radio 4 and 5. She has explicitly thrown down the gauntlet to Nick Clegg in his home constituency and whilst her request that Lib Dems disappointed by their party join us is not unexpected, it does give a novel sense that she is parking tanks on his lawn.

What else happened? For me personally, it was a slightly frustrating day, as the results from the Green Party Executive (GPEx) elections were postponed until today due to the lateness of the submission date for ballots. In a session which allowed members to question GPEx on their performance in the last year, I got a sense of how tough a role that will be too, although talking to some of the elected officers really underlined to me how rewarding it might be to support the membership across the whole party. Clearly, delivery of some fundamental systems being worked upon and rolling these out to local parties has to be a principal priority for the next year.

The other thing I noticed quite strongly yesterday was that the demographics of the party seem to be shifting. Earlier in the year, we ran an offer of free membership to Young Greens and it has resulted in an astounding increase in 1,000 younger members joining the party. You can really feel their energy and enthusiasm coursing through sessions - in a party of 14,500 people their arrival is an enormous shot in the arm for us. Membership has traditionally tended towards an older demographic (I do feel part of a slightly under-represented age range!) and whilst I can imagine challenges lie ahead in marrying the diverse outlook of our membership, I'm confident that this decision will be one of the single most important things the party could have done in the last year.

Green Party autumn conference 2011: Coverage starts here!

As regular readers will no doubt be aware, tomorrow marks the start of the Green Party's autumn conference in Sheffield. I'll be making the long journey from Brighton pretty early tomorrow morning and will be blogging daily from the conference to share some of the highlights.

Considering the stormy summer we've just gone through, it will be interesting to see how our Leader Caroline Lucas MP and Deputy Leader, Adrian Ramsay respond to the transformed political landscape. We'll also be taking the political fight locally to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, with a conference open to the public and explicitly presenting our alternative to the cuts agenda the Liberal Democrats are presiding over in Government.

Keep coming back to the blog regularly for updates, breaking news and fringe reports over the weekend. For those of you attending, I'd love to hear your comments on the conference as it unfolds too!

Conservatives weaving a dangerous new narrative

As we head into party conference season, public debate has sharpened again on a variety of topics, as battle-lines are drawn between political parties keen to differentiate themselves from each other.

Nowhere is it more stark than in the recent outpourings from the Conservative Party, increasingly confident in asserting it's distinctive platform and radical zeal in "modernising" the state's relationship with voters. Across a varied number of policy areas, we are hearing voices articulating seemingly common-sense, mainstream viewpoints: tough justice for rioters, tackling moral sickness amongst a feral underclass, a generation of women using abortion as a convenient birth control method and police officers supposedly idle in unnecessary "backroom" activities and ripe for cutting.

This is an increasingly successful strategy, because it lays claim to the middle ground of public opinion and builds a collective "us" against those people struggling at the margins of society. The Conservatives argue that reasonable people living through tough and constrained times are doing the right thing, whilst being taken advantage of by those who play the system. For those feeling the pinch, it's a very persuasive argument and has the benefit of being easily explained, appealing to tabloid gut instinct and the British sense of "fairness". This simplicity of message has translated into a popular narrative over the last couple of months, while left-leaning parties struggle to articulate the more sophisticated rationale needed to explain the multi-faceted problems facing those people at the sharp end of life in the UK.

The indignity of it all is that in spite of deliberately aiming to divide and conquer elements of society, David Cameron is still widely described as a One Nation Tory. The Green Party needs to renew efforts to remind people that the Conservatives (and frankly, to a lesser extent, Labour and the Liberal Democrats) are not speaking impartially for everyone in society. We need to encourage people to follow the equally vocal expressions of anger we hear around some other issues, such as bankers-bonuses, illegal press activities and MP expenses to their final destination: a silent vacuum where robust policy-making should be.

The Green Party's pledge that "Fairness is fighting for" remains more relevant than ever - but we need to remind opponents squatting on our political ground that fairness isn't the province of the select few. Providing opt-outs for those rich individuals financing political parties and media figures making and breaking political reputations will just exacerbate division. Setting particular sections of society at each other's throats in order to quash coherent resistance to the Government's damaging policies will only lead to widened inequalities and an elite class further insulated from their responsibilities to others.

Taking the pre-conference temperature of the Green Party

With the Green Party Conference around the corner, I thought it would be good to revisit some highlights of the last twelve months and get a sense of the challenges ahead. A couple of weeks ago, I asked readers for their feedback - and coupled with an avalanche of correspondence from members around my current GPEX election bid, I hit a rich seam of answers!

Something that I've been aware of in the last year has been a fairly rapid transformation in the way that we view ourselves as a party. The biggest change focussed around my home of Brighton and Hove, where we followed the election of Caroline Lucas MP in 2010 by wrestling control of the local council from the Conservative administration. Leaving aside the substantial upturn in national media coverage these victories have given us, many people have commented upon a shift at all levels of the local party towards a more pragmatic, professional and voter-centred approach to the city. Here by the sea, you can sense the party rapidly maturing as responsibility rests upon it's shoulders.

Elsewhere in England and Wales, there have been modest gains for the party. Whilst the recent local elections gave a smaller boost in council representation than had been expected, they have been followed by a steady trickle of defections from other parties and unexpected Green gains. Alongside incremental increases in Norwich, members are heartened by the confidence being placed in them by the public in areas such as Solihull and Reading. The Welsh Green Party came the closest they ever have to a breakthrough and London Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones is shaping up to be a credible threat to Boris Johnson's record on policing and the environment.

Membership figures for the party are also continuing to grow past the 12,000 figure. Anecdotal evidence is showing that a significant number of these are experienced activists who feel let-down by the compromises of the Liberal Democrats and Labour. Making the most out of these newcomer's experiences within larger parties is already reaping dividends in our electoral success and also strengthens the hand of those party members pushing for social justice to be at the centre of our electoral appeal. Whilst we retain the credibility to speak out on the crushingly mediocre environmental records of our opponents, we are increasingly getting a hearing on the broader bread-and-butter issues that rate highly with the public, particularly those on lower incomes. The growth of left-of-centre and Young Green membership is giving us renewed credibility within national campaign activities and is something we must continue to nurture.

All positive so far. However, I suspect you'll not be overly surprised to hear that I received some less than positive feedback about the last twelve months too. You open the flood gates and you take your chances!

Disappointment still lingers about the missed chances of the Yes to AV campaign and how that has set back the prospects for electoral reform. For my part, whilst I was a real cheerleader for change, my disappointment has been redirected into the hard but necessary graft of building deep support across constituencies. AV would have been a useful short-cut: I know we have the values, talent and track record in our Party to get there regardless when we share best practice clearly.

Closer to home, the handling of a redundancy situation of a Green Party staff member has created a great deal of discord between ordinary members and the Green Party Executive over the last few months. Some of this has spilled out into the national press and whilst the case at hand is too involved to get into within this post, it has underlined the importance of a strong and accountable governance structure for the Party as we grow and evolve, to ensure we demonstrably live our values. As a candidate for GPEX, I'm aware of how exceptionally challenging the work is for elected officers, not just within their personal portfolio, but in acting as custodian to the party as a whole. Improving our decision-making processes for the future is as important for the welfare of GPEX members as it is for everybody else. Members must hold to account AND support those elected into office for the party in equal measure over the next year.

Finally, the perennial issue of finances will continue to trouble the party. Where resources allow, there does seem to be some support for re-balancing funding to benefit a wider number of local groups in capacity building, which I strongly support (especially if funded posts are results-driven in increased membership and party self-financing). We continue to run a slightly higher deficit than anticipated in spite of the money brought in by an increased membership, which will need to be monitored closely. Innovative funding avenues in line with our values will need to be explored to boost our reach and share the burden of running core party functions.

Yet in spite of these concerns, the overall impression I am getting from party members is one of optimism. The existential threat to public services and the yawning gap in wage inequality within the UK has given us something immediate and topical to stand up for. Whilst the Green Party continues to negotiate organisational growing-pains, the faith in what we can achieve continues to impress.

Roll on conference - and for those of you able to attend this autumn, I hope to get to know you in person during the fringe sessions!

Vote in the Total Politics Blog 2011 Awards!

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The rise and rise of the UK Feminista

Bucking the trend for August's silly-season, I've been pleasantly surprised to see some refreshingly even-handed reporting in the UK national press. At the weekend, the campaign organisation UK Feminista held an activist training weekend for aspiring feminist activists. Unexpectedly, in all the reporting I saw, there was none of the usual stereotyping and lazy criticism we've come to expect since the mid-1980s.

It isn't my first brush with UK Feminista. At the Compass conference I attended earlier in the summer, I was exceptionally impressed with how founder Kat Banyard portrayed the issues confronting feminists as a fiercely contemporary challenge to both women and men. She spoke passionately to current concerns about equality, employment, public services and tackling a culture of disrespect.

For many years, feminism has felt like a closed shop to many men who espouse feminist ideals. I know that for me, my concern around gender equity has been more readily channeled through my activism for LGBT equality, an area that is sometimes not immune to peddling sexist viewpoints. Yet I feel that UK Feminista have a good chance of broader-based success because they see men as crucial partners in making change happen. Their approach is more media-savvy, using social-media networks to get their message over and being very careful in choosing potent current issues that matter to everyone. Women, especially those starting out in the job market, are feeling the bite of the recession with reduced opportunities. The ladders of state support are being disproportionately kicked away from them. Interrogating fairness and inequality is high on everyone's agenda - from female low pay, to those living in deprived communities scarred by the recent riots, through to the lost of trust in political, business and media elites. Under such circumstances, sexism is an even less tolerable distraction.

And we need to challenge it now. An impact analysis by the Fawcett Society has shown that the Government's austerity cuts are hitting women hardest. Home Secretary Theresa May warned colleagues of this behind the scenes, although she was ignored. We shouldn't be surprised. Political parties are still dominated by wealthy men. With only modest improvements at the last General Election, women are still pitifully represented in the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat ranks.

There is an issue here for the Greens too. We have made great strides, with our Leader (also our first MP) being a woman, as well as our leading GLA Member Jenny Jones and MEP Jean Lambert. They represent a respected and inspiring "front bench" of female Green politicians, but I'm anxious that nobody repairs the glass ceiling they have shattered before the next generation of female leaders comes forward. I do wonder whether their prominence can lead ordinary members of the Green Party to uncritically assume that we've cracked the gender representation issue and side-stepped the pitfalls others have fallen into. That is something that we need to guard against.

We should constantly interrogate the way our party functions and how it encourages and facilitates engagement from women activists. I think the time is upon us to have a serious party-wide conversation about how we not only increase representation in our number of female politicians, but how we transform our political outlook as a party to embed these gains into the DNA of our party. The growing success of UK Feminista is a stark reminder that women-focussed policies are crucial to solving the complex problems facing this country and aren't something tacked on to political policy as an "added extra".

Whilst we have that debate, I'll also be keeping an eye out to see if UK Feminista start up a group in Brighton, because when society faces hard times and difficult choices, female equality will (as always) be the battleground on which it is fought.

Why UK riots are sounding the alarm on inequality

The scenes of widespread violence and looting across British cities this week have been a horrifying reminder of what can happen when a community chooses to turn it's back on each other. The disenfranchised in turn react to their exclusion by violently refusing to play by the rules of the majority. I spent the first few days of the rioting watching aghast from Amsterdam and Brussels, desperate for detail from parts of London I used to live in and unable to support those of my friends frightened by the violence around them. Whilst the immediate focus has rightly been upon the police re--establishing safety on our streets, the crucial task ahead will be identifying ways to prevent this happening again.

The impotence I felt in Europe is even stronger back home. After plowing through acres of newsprint and countless TV interviews, at first I had a real struggle to understand how the political context is changing. The press and politicians have run the gamut of explanations: at first it was black youth run rampant, then disaffected white young men, then gang culture breaking into the mainstream, police discrimination against ethnic minorities, cuts to Educational Maintenance Allowances and University tuition fees, joblessness and lack of parenting. The truth is that there may be a dozen contributing factors to this explosion, but there is still no excuse for criminality.

The Government has notably stuck close to right-wing simplistic form in arguing that the perpetrators are morally bankrupt criminals raised without discipline and respect. This sort of thinking leads you into an intellectual dead-end and conveniently places all blame at the door of the individual, not accounting for the impact culture and political choices make to this toxic brew. It also means they can stay firm on their decision to cut policing budgets in the next year. I'm as angry as anybody else about the havoc these rioters have caused to our cities, but blanket condemnation without understanding the context isn't going to prevent a recurrence. The priority for Government is to get the situation under control and then learn lessons from both the affected communities and professionals in the field.

I think that there two elements of Green political philosophy lurking here that we need to talking about: the gradual replacement of citizenship with consumerism and the gulf of inequality widening between the rich and poor in society.

The attractive embrace of individualism, consumption and a sense of entitlement has fueled political discourse in the UK since Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and has led to a society where value stems from which labels you wear, which restaurants or gigs you visit or where you take your holidays. Gaining our self-esteem from how others perceive us, rather than what we have achieved or contributed, has never been more worrying. This seduction has been made even more rampant by the rise of social-networking, where we form and project a number of identities to the outside world. How destructive must this hierarchy of importance feel to those without money, influence and voice? Look at the focus of the looting - opportunistic attacks on top brand names, such as sports and trainer stores, high-end electrical equipment and computer games. Allowing the market to reign supreme has made us all consumers rather than citizens. It leads to us devaluing our communities and responsibilities to each other. As always, it is the poorest who feel the effects most severely, as the quality of life deteriorates in inner-city communities and public goods such as libraries dwindle in number.

The destructive role that inequality between richest and poorest plays on a number of indicators, such as community relations, violence and social mobility has been heavily documented in recent years. The most articulate and common-sense argument for closing this gap is found in "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, published in 2009. If inequality widens between groups of people, they will inevitably distance themselves from each other and find the other's behaviour increasingly alien and incomprehensible. Much of the violence has stemmed from individuals living in relative proximity to wealth, but finding that affluence frustratingly unattainable. We need to urgently rebuild a sense of shared community and give everybody a stake in it. The time has come for the Big Society, but not in the way that conservatives have been expressing it. We need to continue investing in community infrastructure, the provision of career advisors and youth activities in deprived areas. The indicators of success in public policy-making should be to ensure that it does not deepen inequality amongst us.

What does it mean to the Green Party? I am standing for election this month for political office on the Green Party Executive on theEqualities & Diversity ticket and it is strikingly clear to me that this crisis makes this role more critical than ever before. I have talked a great deal in my election platform about the importance of broadening representation within the Green Party, so that the full diversity of voices in this country have a place at the table and a role in solving our problems. This remains more crucial than ever, but it is not the only element that needs to be pursued. To view the Equalities & Diversity Co-ordinator role merely in terms of facilitating inclusion is no longer sufficient after we've experienced this tragic wake-up call. Every sinew of the Green Party needs to be strained to close the inequality gap across our policies and if elected, I will work across the party and on GPEX to champion this at the heart of our activities.

NB: Since I published this article, Caroline Lucas has spoken in the Parliamentary debate on the riots and has given a strong speech touching on many of the points I raised above. It is well worth looking at.