Readers Requests: short story edition

Occasionally I open the blog up for requests from the readers. Last time I wrote half a dozen posts on a variety of subjects and left one unwritten. Well, actually it's a half written screed on animal rights and I'll try to get it sorted before 2010 runs dry.

It's that time again, but this time there'll be a twist. In a radical departure for this blog I'm going to write a short story. Don't worry, I wont make a habit of it, but I like to push the boundaries occasionally.

So what I want from you are suggestions for characters, plot, setting, or objects to include - whatever takes your fancy. Leave them in the comments if you please.

Try not to get too detailed as I'm writing the story, not you, but we'll call it a joint collaberation if you want some of the no doubt copious reflected glory. I don't guarentee to include everything, but I will use your suggestions as inspiration.

Who knows how this will end up, it's a bit of risk to be honest, but if it's a dog's breakfast at least it's only one post and we can all move along, passing over the disaster both calmly and with decorum.

Those right-wing Greens

There's nothing particularly left-wing about caring about the environment. I know plenty of Tories who are passionate about tackling climate change for instance. And when I say plenty I mean two, but I've no reason to doubt their sincerity. In fact conservationism, the movements to preserve the lesser spotted voles of Dingle Wood and chums, has often been the preserve of the more conservative elements of society.

The Charter of the Global Greens sees Green Party politics as something far wider than simply caring about the environment. The six core strands are "Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Participatory Democracy, Nonviolence, Sustainability, Respect for Diversity" which looks to four movements; "the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the labour movement."

In other words the politics of the Green Parties around the world are not just about single issue campaigning, there is a specific and integrated political philosophy even if, like all parties, this is often realised in very different ways in different countries.

Internationally each Green Party has a unique history as well as common political ground.

In Holland the franchise is called the Green Left and was formed in 1989 by a merger of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Party of Radicals and the Evangelical People's Party. In Denmark the Green sister party is the Socialistisk Folkeparti, or Socialist People's Party, a party formed decades ago by leading Communist Party members who'd been expelled for opposing the crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

These are left parties very comfortably nestled in the international brotherhood of tree huggers.

Ireland: Green suicide

Other parties have a more "deep green" history. The Irish Greens tell us that they were the brainchild, in 1981, of Christopher Fettes (right) who was "[a]ctive in the Vegetarian Society, the Esperanto movement and Friends of the Earth".

It's just speculation on my part but it may be that this eclectic collection of nice interests were not a strong enough foundation on which to stand when they were given the opportunity to prop up a discredited right-wing government without gaining any significant policy concessions.

Indeed the fact that they got into bed with Fianna Fáil at all when their leader at the time had gone into the election saying that he would not lead the party into such a coalition (he resigned in order to keep his word) was not just an electoral error of judgment it was, in my view, an unprincipled placing of seats at the table of government before the political purpose of the Green Party.

They placed the interests of the party above fighting for what they believed in. As one ex-member put it;

It has been painful, then, to observe the conduct of the Greens since they joined a coalition government with Fianna Fáil, Ireland's largest party, in 2007. Principles once regarded as sacrosanct have been abandoned, as the Greens have morphed from the party of education and equality into one that accepts cutbacks for schools, bailouts for feckless bankers and "civil partnerships" that deny gays and lesbians the same rights as heterosexuals.

That is not to say that the Irish Greens leap on each and every opportunity to steer right, far from it. John Gormley's Parliamentary speech on the Gaza flotilla this week is powerful stuff, for example, but you can't ignore the fact that the Irish Greens have embraced the kind of right-wing economic policies of cuts and privatisation that would make any self-respecting socialist's hair curl.

By seperating its own interests from the movements in which it should have been based the Greens in Ireland not only threw away their own political compass they discarded any reason for people to actually vote for them. They were heftily punished in last year's European and council elections more than halving their vote and seeing their representation slashed. You can't posture as a progressive force while selling your soul for a seat at the big man's table.

Czech mates chosen poorly

The Irish Greens are not alone in finding themselves out in the cold after unwise coalitions with the right. Czech Green leader Ondrej Liska, right, must know how they feel.

The Czech Greens had just started to make electoral headway achieving 6.3% in the 2006 elections, winning 6 of 200 Parliamentary seats. However, they used those votes to go into government with two right-wing parties, the Civic Democrats and the Christian Democrats, taking the education and environment ministries.

This year, after three years of association with corruption, mismanagement and instability, the Greens received just over a third of their previous vote and didn't win a single seat. In a year when all the parties of the establishment were being punished new and radical parties made great headway - the Greens found themselves on the wrong side of that division crashing and burning as a party of the stale elites rather than rising like the new political stars offering a new political direction, sadly further to the right.

For a party that's meant to be looking to the long term rather than the short termist PR approach of the old politics these are poor decisions. The argument may be that you have to take these opportunities in order to be 'influential' but in reality if you want to be an influential political force for the next twenty years going into the first coalition that comes your way and getting completely wiped out isn't wise.

In fairness to these parties it's not that they are natural parties of the right but that they weren't politically astute enough to see the traps and too opportunist to care that they were committing to fatally compromise a radical vision to a conservative ungreen future where a few Ministers wear sandals.

German examples

My last example, for sake of brevity (!) will be from Germany. Die Grünen is one of the largest Green Parties in the world and has its roots in the environmental, anti-nuclear and peace movements. Just to show that Green parties do not always go into coalition with the centre right in 1998 they went into a Red-Green coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Certainly this is not unusual. In France the coalition partners of choice are the Socialist Party, in Italy the Greens were an ultra-left part of the Prodi cabinet and when the coalition fell apart they joined forces with the hard left to contest the next elections, just as in Portugal the Greens there are all but merged with ex-Communist Party types.

That does not mean all went well, as before the ink was dry on the coalition deal we saw the launch of the Kosovan war courtesy of Mr Blair and Mr Clinton. The German government, including its bright and shiny Green Ministers supported the bombing. Understandably many previous supporters were disgusted and left the party. However whilst their vote dipped temporarily in the long term they were able to balance pragmatism with gaining electoral support.

The Greens also found the coalition difficult terrain to negotiate and many critics feel they were too ready to concede to the pro-business agenda of the SPD and could have, or should have, pushed for the dismantling of nuclear power stations more vigorously - it's difficult to know what was possible within the confines of the alliance but what is clear is that the experience has left the German Greens with burned fingers and on a local level some areas have begun to consider center-right coalition partners.

This is a process that's still in motion and hotly contested within the German party. Just as the leftist Die Linke has its different wings, the Greens have not become entirely consumed by either the respectability of government nor the logic of compromise that define the Irish and Czech experience, which may account for their record breaking representation in the Bundestag (right), but these tendencies exist and have real influence.

Green shoots and roots

The three very different examples I've given of Green Parties that leaned to the right share a number of factors. First, they were all in a strong enough position to become national players. Second, that they took the right fork in the road in a way that the Greens in Finland, Italy and Australia, for example, have not in similar situations. Third, these coalitions tend to be marriages of convenience rather than love. Fourth, that in each case it threw the party in question into a turmoil that only the Germans were able to survive meaningfully.

This could be because Green voters will forgive coalitions with Labour but not the Tories. Whatever the views of specific Green politicians the voting demographic of the Green Party is overwhelming to the left, pro-immigration, anti-war, and anti-privatisation.

While I'm not against coalitions in principle I do think there are two questions that should be considered. Are you strong enough to win concessions and do your partners share enough political ground with you. If the answer to either of these questions are no then you're better off fighting to build political support for your ideas outside the cabinet than trying to win ground inside of it.

I think it's a reasonable conclusion to say that in none of these cases were the Greens parties of the right, but the choices that they made in order to win government power made them indistinguishable from the parties of the right. It's also reasonable to say that all Green Parties have the same tendencies and currents within them that could pull them to the left or right.

That means that in Leeds when the Green councillors were in a position to forge alliances they have got into bed with the Tories and are now sleeping with Labour, the trollops. In other areas, like Lewisham, when offered a coalition with Labour in 2006 they refused in order to maintain political independence.

My tentative conclusions

In each of these cases I believe the fatal flaw was an inadequate relationship to the movements on which Green politics is supposed to be based which allowed party bigwigs to see their political decisions as boardroom maneuvers rather than a battle for a sustainable future. In other words they took a managerial approach to politics and this naturally pulled them to the right.

It's not an inevitable condition of government, but it is an ever present force. The Scottish Greens, for example, were right to keep an arms length approach to the SNP while refusing to pull the government down. Taking the decision to support or oppose on a case by case basis may not always reap rewards but over time the ability to take an independent line at least allows for the possibility of growth regardless of the fortunes of the ruling party.

In short all parties are effected by both the specific circumstances of the country they are based in and the repercussions of the decisions that they take. There is no such thing as an abstract political philosophy immune from the trials and tribulations of the world. The best we can do is arm ourselves with the facts and ensure we learn from them.

What's left and right?

Simon requests that I say something about "right-wing Greens" no doubt to help people come to terms with the fact that the Green Party here-abouts stands on a clearly left-wing manifesto yet we hear about greens in foreign lands, and sadly sometimes closer to home, who're not exactly over burdened with socialist credentials.

I think this is a useful and interesting topic, so useful and interesting in fact that I'm going to take a little bit of a run up to it, so this is going to be the prequel to the readers request post itself.

The reason for this is not just that I'm an insufferable windbag who can't stop blathering on, it's also because I'd like to quickly grapple with a couple of points that would only clutter up the Green Right post.

The first is on the left-right spectrum and the second is the nature of parties.

I'm not one of those people who think that it's possible to step outside of the left-right axis. Loosely defined the left are people who want to see society become more egalitarian and are willing to challenge existing social structures to do so, and the right are those who hope to preserve the current way of doing things, or even move things backwards so that capitalism can function free and unhindered.

Whatever your politics you are somewhere on this scale. Objectively you will be either reinforcing inequality or challenging it no matter how slick your "new politics" PR machine may be.

However, this axis has never been an adequate way of describing someone's politics meaningfully. Simply saying that someone is more left or right wing than someone else is unlikely to tell you much about their politics unless you're hindered by a truly ultra-orthodox dogma.

For instance, there are people on the right who want a small state, low taxes, and think that the law should regulate the absolute minimum amount. There are others on the right who believe in a strong, authoritarian state with rock hard legislation to prevent anyone messing with an employer's right to make money - by joining a union or being unwell. Neither side of the big/small state argument is more or less right wing by default - they just disagree.

Add to this the complication that whilst political philosophies may be ideal types human beings rarely are. You can have those who do a bang up job challenging sexism but who despise immigrants. There are those who want to see radical progressive taxation create real redistribution of welath and who think the Queen is goodness personified. People are lovely and messy like that.

Then add on top of all this that sometimes political questions can be pretty tricky. For years even the most hardened socialists debated whether 'revolutionaries' should be members of the Labour Party. Whatever nuance you put on it you either end up with a party card or you don't and it's pretty hard to co-exist in the same organisation when glaring differences in strategy flow from that decision.

That's why I think it's fair to say that the thing that most divided the politics of the SWP and Militant in the eighties was not a competition about who was the most left wing but rather how they went about trying to achieve very similar programs for change.

Then you have emphasis. At anyone time a concentration on abortion laws, strike action, anti-war activity, building a rally, standing for Parliament or whatever may or may not be the right thing to do - but none of them are inherently more left or right wing than each other, but rather they are tactical considerations albeit ones that may have unintended political consequences.

All in all you have this complex mallange of strategy, tactics, personal history and tastes, errors of judgment, ways of working, accidents of philosophy, style and specific approaches to specific issues and the whole left/right thing starts to look less and less adequate as anything but a loose explanation.

Then we come to the second part of what I wanted to say - that all real parties, which have an actual internal life, are alliances of different political tendencies. Sometimes this is formal with specific in-party organisations (like the Fabians or Christian Socialists) and sometimes it's looser but no less real (like Blairites and Brownies).

Some people talk about Green Parties being divided between 'realos' and 'fundies' (or suits and tunics as I call them) but there are few Parties, if any, that actually have party groupings along those lines.

This means in general that parties can have both racists and anti-racists as members, pro-union and anti-union members, those who see elections as the be all and end all and those who come out in a rash at the very thought of canvassing the neighbourhood and asking for a vote or two. And, weirdly, that works.

There can be tensions or bouts of civil war but generally these alliances, of often very different kinds of politician, are stable, at least in established parties. That's stable and dynamic simultaneously, because of that very fact that we disagree and yet still come together.

When trying to capture the dynamic of any party we need to keep in mind that a) key fissures may not be left/right or revolutionary/reformist but over other kinds of disagreement, b) that parties are always in a process of change and development, c) that parties are also part of and influenced by more general social shifts and d) that decisions those parties take impact on how they behave in the future.

When I take a look at the 'Green Right' next time I'll try to keep things a little more concrete and practical, but I thought this might be a useful discussion to have first just to provide a kind of framework for debate.

Readers requests: No shock doctrine for the UK

Adam requests that I explain to everyone why they should visit www.noshockdoctrine.org.uk which is slightly cheeky bit of self advertisement as I might not think people should. But I do. So I shall.

In the next few years the political landscape is going to be dominated by how we deal with the economic crisis. While we may be officially out of recession history tells us that unemployment is likely to continue to grow and we are yet to feel what the results of the deficit reduction plans. There's also the outside chance that we may plunge back into recession for another taste, but let's leave the predictions on that one to the astrologers.

The government has made it clear that its response to the gap between the revenue it receives from taxation and the amount of money it spends will be to make some cuts in taxation and immediate and savage cuts in public services. Both Lib Dems and Tories were clear before the election that this was the plan and they are cracking on by outlining the areas where the axe will fall first.

They may promise us that 'front-line' services will not be effected but the scale of the cuts to come in the next few years will certainly hurt services, throw public sector workers onto a growing dole queue and leave us all worse off. As this video from public sector union UNISON explains the cuts will directly effect everyone.



It is my view that investing in job creation would pay for itself long term while stabilising the jobs market. When we are feeling the effects of the recession it is the very worst time to cut back public services that protect the most vulnerable.

It seems to me that there are a number of tasks that we need to get on with in response to approaching cuts. First we need to get specific. Across the country there will be a rash of campaigns to save specific NHS wards, nurseries, and other services - we need to make sure we are part of those campaigns and help to ensure the attempts to cut back are met with real resistance.

This can't be centrally driven but a national movement can support those local campaigns in much the way that the highly successful Defend Council Housing campaign has been able to do.

The government's plans must come at a political price to ensure that these parties are no longer electable, credible as a political force. Each ward, each job loss, each service withdrawn has to hurt the government whether or not we are able to save them.

That also means that once the government have made it clear what their exact plans are we need to scour them with a fine tooth comb and come up with a strong, critical and detailed response that is difficult to refute without appearing to be like Ghengis Khan.

I do think we need to firm up a more accessible version of the alternative economic vision embodied in the Green New Deal and turn it into something like a fighting document whose various demands can be fought for and won. My concern is that getting the balance right between the 'high politics' of the economic strategy and the 'community politics' of the local campaigns is a difficult trick to pull off without becoming either a nimby or indulging in dry political philosophy.

Popularising concrete alternatives to the government's approach is going to be vital so that we can build up a large movement of meaningful resistance rather than a clique of self-appointed radicals on a mission.

That's why sites like www.noshockdoctrine.org.uk are going to be so important in reaching out and building confidence that just because there is a political consensus in the Westminster bubble there is a people's alternative.

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Can't Pay Won't Pay: Solidarity with the Greek protests

Date: Wednesday, May 26
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, WC1
Speakers: Caroline Lucas MP, Tony Benn and a host of others

Readers Requests: My Desert Island Discs

Neil asks what my Desert Island Disc choices would be. For those unfamiliar DID is a very long running radio programme where guests are asked to imagine they have been marooned on a desert island and can rescue eight music tracks of their choice, one book and a luxury from their ship before it sinks.

This is damn hard you know! I'd find it much easier to choose eight books - but not much. I'll just bite the bullet and ignore all those great tunes I'm just going to have to miss out, although Natalie Portman rapping or the funky gibbon didn't make the short list..

As it Morrissey's birthday I think we should start with one of his later works which contains the immortal and brilliant line; "You have never been in love before you've seen the dawn rise behind the home for the blind". It contains that Bragg/Pogues romanticism of the urban environment mixed with the miserablism of the Cure. Splendid.



There was always something about Germ Free Adolescent that captured my attention. Constrained and restrained I think the way the sentiment of the music works with the lyrics is slightly hypnotic.



When I first heard Bill Haley singing Rocket 88 on John Peel sometime in the eighties it absolutely blew me away. It hadn't even occurred to me that it might be 'Rock and Roll' which would have instantly consigned it to the dustbin. Once again my stupidity gave me the edge and allowed me to enjoy this glorious song about his lovely car.



Well, we can't have all this jollity so let's switch to Pulp's 97 Lovers, from before they sold out by selling actual records and being able to pay the rent and that. This song is the eighties for me.



Joan Baez was someone I only came to in later life and it was her Diamonds and Rust that first sent shivers up my spine. It still does.



And if we're speaking of spines shivering then we have to include Lennon's working class hero. There are few greater songs that have been made in the last one hundred years than this.



Where would any selection of music be without Kate Bush. I've selected Breathing out of a number of possible tracks simply because it seems to epitomise the ferociously tangental approach that Bush always brought to music.



Lastly I'll go with Tracy Chapman's I'm Ready partly because it's the tune I'd like played at my funeral and partly because it's such an entrancing song.



Feel free to play along at home.

Oh, but before I forget I get to take a book and a luxury too. Well, the luxury has got to be a freezer full of bacon. I could be out there a long time you know!

The book? I think I'll go for the Three Musketeers simply because it's so full of life and fire. It would be a good way to remind myself of the pleasure that other people can bring as I sit in the delicious peace of the lapping waves and bright stars of my little island.

Readers requests

It's been sometime since I've done this but I thought I'd throw open the blog content to readers' requests again. What would you like me to blog on?

Whatever you suggest I'll do my best to fulfill your request with as good a post as I can muster.

This has gone surprisingly well in the past and I've probably blogged a proper post on 80% of the requests that were made previously so fire away!

You ask the questions: Adrian Ramsay

Adrian Ramsay is the Deputy Leader of the Green Party and one of our three target candidates at the General Election, standing against Labour's Charles Clarke in Norwich South.

I'm offering Daily (Maybe) readers an exclusive opportunity to pose questions to Adrian in a 'You ask the questions' special.

To ask a question simply email me at jimjepps@hotmail.com with your (real) name, where you're from (place and organisation, if appropriate) and your question. I'll collect them together and then pose a selection to Adrian. Difficult or hostile questions are welcome, although keep it polite and keep it interesting.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Air Quality: assistance required

Just as a little experiment I thought I'd see what happened if I put a call out for assistance on an article I'm writing.

I'm putting together an article on air quality and pollution in the urban environment. The focus will be on modern cities but I have space to talk about a little history or pop in an aside or two if they meet the elucidation criteria. Or is that criterion?

If you have links or thoughts that you think might be useful drop me a line in the comments box. Examples of campaigning, legislation or planning issues more than welcome, as are statistics or related info - particularly if they have a precis so I don't have to crunch more numbers than I have to.

I'll be interested to see how useful this method is as an experiment. I tend to think of the readers here as an educated and thoughtful bunch so my hopes are high - don't dash them people, please, don't dash them.