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.

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!

Why equalities and diversity are more important to the Green Party than ever

Of all the issues facing the UK right now, the cuts agenda of the Coalition Government is clearly the most pressing. As the enormity of what this means for the public has sunk in, it's been encouraging to see that the Green Party (and Caroline Lucas in particular) are being listened to more than ever before as a voice of reason and moderation.

Research is already showing that the loss of public services are disproportionately affecting women, black and ethnic minority communities, disabled people and the working classes. More now than ever, we need to be directly addressing the hopes and fears of these groups in society and articulating an inclusive vision directed at standing up for their priorities.

Yet, right now it is clear that authentic voices from these communities remain a minority in the Green Party. The stark truth is that whilst we have made some strides forward in broadening our electorate platform, the overall view the public have of the Green Party is that we are are a white, male and middle-class organisation. This view may feel unfair and doesn't account for the concern we have for all of our society, but it remains an impediment to being taken seriously.

We need to urgently review our strategy in encouraging talented people from under-represented groups to take leading roles in the party, as well as more intensive engagement with communities outside our comfort zones. We need to be hearing hard truths from those who feel under-represented in the party. They should be provided with support to capacity-build and have a more prominent voice in shaping our future.

Within our party, we need dedicated people working to facilitate the breaking down of barriers to access for all members and to ensure that a plurality of voices are heard - in both our policy making and in how we operate as an organisation. Diversity also means regional too - I'm keen that whilst we retain strong voices from London and Brighton, we make space for voices represented from different regions, each wrestling with rich political traditions and challenges not heard enough in the UK political scene.

I have previously written about the opportunities and challenges facing those of us within the Green Party working on LGBT issues too. We should nurture good work like this, but ensure it becomes more transparent and inclusive so that individuals feel able to contribute and develop their confidence. We should learn from the successes of other groups in coalition-building outside the party, such as the work undertaken by Green Women.

We need voices that articulate our core principles in terms that make sense to a diversity of differing communities and speak to the pressing concerns of as many people as possible. I'm keen that we have a conversation as a Party as to how we can best achieve this and urge strong leadership at the highest parts of the party to ensure this happens.

In the longer term, if we are to succeed electorally and move from the political margins, the Green Party needs to nurture fresh voices that inspire and act as a glue to bring together the rich and varied communities within the UK. Championing equalities and diversity in this party isn't a "bolt on" concern, it must be at the heart of our work if we are to truly represent the hopes of our fellow citizens.

Gay political representations in the Green Party: the next phase

In one of my recent blog posts, I talked about the challenges those of us interested in LGBT rights within political parties need to wrestle with in the next couple of years. After thirteen years of unprecedented change in both legal and social terms, coming to terms with your sexuality has become a little easier for most young people. There is still a great deal more to do for these changes to be grounded permanently in the fabric of national life.

For me, the struggles that we need to confront in the coming years are four-fold:

1. Transforming the education system to protect LGBT students from bullying, whilst becoming more comfortable in educating all students clearly about sexuality.
2. Working closely with LGBT communities across the globe to support their struggles for equality in ways that make sense for them, rather than imposing Western cultural values or strategies.
3. Binding the solidarity between lesbian and gay men to truly embrace transgender and bi equality and to renew the links between the LGBT movement and those striving towards gender equality.
4. Breaking through the barriers of representation in every walk of life.

The final of these has a resonance within the Green Party. We've been rightly proud of being the most progressive, consistent and uncompromising on the equality agenda and those within the party who have worked on this deserve our profound thanks. Their work has kept our political opponents feet to the fire on these issues and contributed to the political consensus that shaped the Blair government's legislative programme for LGBT citizens.

However, looking at the work being undertaken by other political parties, we are slipping behind on building up our capacity in this area. In structural terms, the LGBT Greens group has relied upon the over-stretched time of a very small core of committed people. Without a constitution, terms of reference or even job descriptions for the officers, it is unsurprising that nobody new is coming forward to get involved. Elections for these positions are very informal and therefore not as transparent as they should be. With the massive influx of new members to the Green Party, this isn't conducive to harnessing fresh energy.

I am really keen that at this year's LGBT Greens AGM at the GP Annual Conference, we bring more clarity and take the time to fix the foundations of the group so that it can achieve even more. We should be using the opportunities afforded by the Green Party members site, Green Activist magazine, other publications and websites and conference fringe events to publicise membership more frequently. We should be identifying prominent LGBT champions within the national party to speak on our behalf. We should work to mentor or twin younger or newer activists with more experienced role models so that we can build upon the successes of electing LGBT representatives to date. (The new crop of councillors in Brighton & Hove are an excellent example!) And we should be undertaking modest fundraising from our supporters to give us the resources to do so, in much the same way as the Young Greens are beginning to translate their energy into concrete achievements and a stronger profile with non-political campaign organisations. We have so much untapped potential in the party.

Finally, and possibly controversially, we should seek to work with our counterpart LGBT groups in the other political parties where possible on joint campaign work. Half the battle is changing the mood music on political issues and a united front across the board would assist this. I am a firm believer that there are bigger issues than party political advantage.

This is a considerable programme of action - and I am personally happy to put my money where my mouth is and put myself forward to help deliver on some of this. I'll be speaking up for this at the September Conference and I hope others will join me in striving for an energised group, orientated once more to become leaders in the equality debate as it enters a new chapter.