What do the Greens Organise?
On the party’s new ‘anti-capitalist’ faction
Following a strong general election result for the party this summer, a new leftwing grouping of the Greens has emerged.
Green Organise was formally launched at their party’s conference in Manchester on September 7. Turnout was impressive and there is a lot of interest in the Greens, particularly given their quadrupling of parliamentary representation.
No-one from the leadership or the parliamentary delegation put in an appearance, but new Green MP Sian Berry posted a welcome message on social media. The evidence from a similar anti-capitalist faction in the Scottish Greens suggests that the elected representatives will not react with horror to this development.
So, what does this new anti-capitalist group want? And what will it have to do to succeed?
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The Manchester Manifesto
Road Bloc has previously considered the question of whether the Greens are a new left party, observing that as currently constituted they are left-reformist:
“Beyond the particular appeals to addressing the climate question – which ultimately concerns the whole of humanity – the Greens’ offer of an electoral route to progressive social change is appealing to some class-conscious working people who might otherwise back Labour.”
The founding document of Greens Organise acknowledges that Labour has won a ‘loveless landslide’ in the wake of the economic failure of the Conservative government.
They want to provide an alternative to continued austerity and avoid ‘electoral assimilation’ – a reference to coalitionism and ministerialism of parties like the German and Irish Greens. But there is not yet an endorsement of a strategy of patience based on opposition to both the right and centre of British politics, drawing up a common, minimum programme for taking power.
It seems like this faction in the Greens could end up leading the pack on the left outside of Labour in England in terms of membership and votes.
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Surges
The Green Party in England experienced a surge in membership ten years ago after the Scottish independence referendum (which itself led to huge numbers joining the SNP, Scottish Greens, and other pro-independence parties like the Scottish Socialist Party).
Then, the Greens picked up more lay union activists from the workers’ movement than either TUSC or Left Unity managed between 2010 and 2015, though many soon switched to Labour when Corbyn won the leadership. Some of these comrades have now gone back to the Greens.
An attractive feature of the Greens compared to the rest of the left is that it is possible to form open factions within the party without an immediate split.
That said, avoiding bureaucratic centralism only gets a party so far – without the democratic centralism of an elected party leadership which stands above that of the parliamentary delegation, the Greens will remain under intense pressure to emulate the monarchic/presidential model of leadership and to practice coalitionism beyond council chambers.
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Get with the (minimum) programme
The comrades of Greens Organise are right to want to avoid the fate of Greens across Europe. But it’s not just about the personalities or policies of these parties which has failed them but their lack of a minimum programme.
The road to ecosocialism in Britain is likely to run through legislative majorities for parties of the workers’ movement, establishing a constituent assembly to create a democratic republic in which the class rule of the state-monopoly capitalists will be brought to an end. In this course of events, we should want to respect national rights to self-determination and seek to unite with workers’ republics internationally, creating a red (and green) world-federation.
How do we get on this road to ecosocialism? We insist that our elected legislators hold out from taking executive power until such time as the minimum programme can feasibly be implemented in full.
For the Greens to become a part of this process of democratic revolution, the Green left will have to win their party to a left bloc strategy.
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Building the bloc today
The left needs maximum unity in alliances against Labour Right MPs. Winning may mean Greens have to go beyond just deprioritising certain seats to actually standing down as part of non-aggression deals with the newly-formed Independent Alliance and others.
This may be controversial for Greens who have been in the party for many years. After all, the party did not make huge gains from their alliances with the ‘centrist’ Liberal Democrats in the Progressive Alliance of 2017 or the repeat of this effort, the Unite to Remain pact of 2019.
A lot of Greens may feel that going it alone next time is the right approach. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! But this would be to ignore the post-Corbyn surge to the Greens which took place, resuming the kind of growth for the party which it experienced prior to 2015.
Greens on the left, meanwhile, will have to internalise the fact the broader left isn’t all going to join the Greens – and that success may have unusual consequences: one impact of effective leftwing electoral pressure on Labour might be to strengthen its union-backed ‘soft left’ MPs.
A growing Green Left will have to communicate effectively to those in the Greens who may be sceptical about the left bloc strategy becoming an overt fact of UK politics, reassuring councillors outside of urban centres in particular that it needn’t pose a threat to them.
One consequence of left MPs in parliament but external to the Greens (in the form of the Independent Alliance and Labour Left MPs) may be to limit the centrist component of Green Party’s voter coalition splitting off in the course of scare campaigns in ruling-class media.
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Meeting them halfway
Green, independent, and ex-Labour Left MPs will need to feel confident they can act as tribunes of a growing social constituency. What may give this bloc coherence is a common programme, transcending party lines, which includes not just economic but democratic demands.
The journalist Owen Jones broke from the Labour Left before the general election to co-found We Deserve Better, a cross-party group which fundraised and campaigned to elect Green, independent and Labour Left candidates. He has made the implicit potential of Greens Organise explicit in an article welcoming its launch.
Jones suggests what a left bloc strategy could achieve in the short term:
“The formation could even act as kingmaker in the event of a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party, with progressive Green and independent MPs demanding transformative social change, and a proportional electoral system that no longer conserves our ailing two-party state.”
Provided that the left bloc MPs do not take up ministerial positions or enter into a formal coalition with the Labour Right, this would arguably represent a victory for a strategy of hurried patience.
And ideally, this pressure would be met with movement inside Labour itself, via the strengthening of its ‘soft left’ MPs as suggested above.
Road Bloc has covered the latent power of Raynerism in detail. The contention is that Labour’s affiliated unions retain some influence in the government’s legislative agenda through the career prospects of its deputy leader, even as their funding of the party is diluted by Starmerism’s wealthy donors.
This case has been made since the launch of Road Bloc last October. Given that Starmerism combines popular policies like rail renationalisation with the continuation of Tory austerity, Labour evidently remains a bourgeois workers’ party.
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Ready, set, G.O.?
The left in the Greens will need to take the initiative, coordinating with the broad left in conferences to agree a common approach far in advance of the next general election. It’s something that could be initiated by an existing group of Green left members or a new one…
Are the comrades of Greens Organise up for this challenge?
It might be tempting for the comrades to narrow their horizons, focusing on internal elections and candidate selection processes for council and parliamentary seats as some will have done when in Labour.
But a faction cannot just be bound together for the purposes of running slates. Very quickly, new cadre can be absorbed into party structures and develop an insular approach to politics.
Let’s hope that these comrades are able to consciously break with the logic of small groups and go large, seeking alliances where possible between existing left-wing parties and candidates.