Green issues are far too important to be politicised. A conversation yesterday with a local Green Party canvassing person made me realise that the UK’s Green Party has become too concerned with politics to be effective as a pressure group.
The background to this was after one of my musical friends – in a FaceBook discussion – made some good points in favour of voting for the Greens. So following up on this, I asked the Greens lady about one particular Greens’ manifesto pledge – reducing copyright to 16 years (and thus depriving creative people who depend on royalties for their pensions).
This earned me an immediate telling-off for being a self-interested person whose vote the Greens would not want. On asking why the Greens didn’t just stick to environmental issues, I was told that they are a political party and not a pressure group, which is fine. But when I suggested that their non-environmental policies – like reducing the period of copyright – meant fewer people would vote for them, I got both barrels.
It is not, she said, for people to say what they would like, as that derives from self-interest as the prime motive. It is for people to share equitably she said – which I strongly agree is needed globally to reduce inequality. But she continued, this equitable sharing is to be mandatory – as with quartering the period of copyright. And as far as she was concerned, this equitable sharing was not actually anything to do with the environment.
Our discussion was curtailed after I suggested that the vital Green environmental point of view was degraded by their putting forward non-environmental policies.
Surely controlling development in a green and sustainable way is by far the most important issue – especially for the Green Party? As they’re never going be in government, concentrating on that would give them more influence – along with the votes of people like me. This would give them a better chance of developing into a party that might be involved with future government. Unless it’s all just a hippy sort of game – or you’re a an old-style anarchist revolutionary.
I’m far more hippy – but not for social reasons; and Green, from a purely environmental point of view. But there seems to be a very left-wing socialist requirement for Green Party membership. This alienates a lot of people. Environmental issues are vitally important and ought to be cross-party and so pitched to engage the whole political spectrum.
Apart from other considerations, there’s money to be made from sustainable industry. And sustainable jobs for millions of people. “Sustainable”…. Show the industrialist the profit and she’ll take it. Revolutions lead to chaos; and the left wing regimes we’ve seen emerge from their ashes have been characterised by their uncaring pollution.
My discussion today has left me profoundly disenchanted with The Greens. Todays local electioneering party seems have become just as self-seeking as the other parties, when it should actually not be a party at all – rather an all-encompassing human determination.