The Green Party was a Green political party in the United Kingdom. It has been succeeded by three political parties:
* the Green Party of England and Wales
* the Green Party in Northern Ireland
* the Scottish Green Party
The Green Party was originally formed as PEOPLE, or the Ecology Party, in Coventry in 1973, with the first edition of Manifesto for a Sustainable Society as the party’s statement of philosophy and policies. This document was inspired by Blueprint for Survival, published by The Ecologist (then edited by Edward Goldsmith). The party changed its name to become the Green Party in the 1980s.
In 1973 policy concerns included economics, employment, defence, energy (fuel) supplies, land tenure, pollution and social security, as then seen within an ecological perspective. “Zero growth” (or “steady state”) economics were a strong feature in the party’s philosophical basis and the all-UK party became a persistent and growing presence in general elections and European elections, fielding often enough candidates to qualify for television and radio election broadcasts.
As the Ecology Party, with Jonathon Porritt as a prominent member and an election manifesto called The Real Alternative, the party fielded over 50 candidates in the general election of 1979, and so qualified for election broadcasts on television and radio. The party received 39,918 votes and membership jumped tenfold, from about 500 to over 5,000.
Again as the Ecology Party the party fielded over 100 candidates in the 1983 general election and took 54,299 votes.
The party was the Green Party in the 1987 general election and took 89,753 votes.
In the 1989 European election the Green Party won 2 million votes, and received 15% of the overall vote. This pushed the Liberal Democrats into 4th place (with 6%) and has been described by David Butler a Dennis Kavanagh as the most successful protest vote ever (The British General Election of 1992). At this time however European elections in the UK were run on a purely first past the post basis and therefore the party failed to gain any seats. Nonetheless mainstream political parties were alarmed by the party’s election performance and adopted some Green policies in an attempt to counter the threat [citation needed].
In the 1990s both the Scottish and Northern Irish wings of the party established themselves as separate entities. The three UK parties co-operate closely.
From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_England_and_Wales
Also see Green Policies Debate for discussion on specific Green Policies. For a Green Party discussion not covered below feel free to create your own forum topic at Green Party Forum.
Please use the comment form below to describe why you will or will not be voting Green Party at the 2010 General Election.
I’ll be voting Green again. I’ve been a Labour voter most of my life but couldn’t bring myself to vote for them after the Iraq war.
What I find very hard to understand is the supposed Old Labour voters saying that they will now vote BNP. What possible justification could there be for a Socialist or working class man or woman to support an openly racist party? It doesn’t compute.
If you have concerns about immigration, the BNP is not going to save you. Their stories are hugely over-exaggerated and designed to stir up hatred amongst communities. Their policies for dealing with illegal immigrants are no different from any other party – the clue is in the title ‘illegal immigrant’ – all parties want to repatriate people without legal status.
This country needs immigration to provide vital skills and services to the British public and our ageing population. We have thousands of people who emigrate every year. If we withdraw from the EU, what are you going to say to the 300,000 British pensioners who withdraw their pensions in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal?
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I cannot see how this country can ever be green, and still allow the population to keep growing.
The more densely populated we are, the more pollution etc.
Also: this old ‘red herring’ about ‘ageing population’ – do you really know for a fact that this is REALLY going to present a problem? Or are you just falling for Nulabour’s lies? They are not well known for being truthful are they?
Nulabour produced this excuse for immigration suddenly a few years ago!
Yes – the number of old people is slowly rising – as it has done for decades, but – – –
Heard of TECHNOLOGY? It’s constantly coming up with new wonders – making life so easy that most people are getting fat from too little activity!
Most old people will need less carers because technology is taking over jobs which people used to do.
And – let’s face it ‘carers’ have not got a very good reputation have they?
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Our people would probably come home, if all the foreigners left and we had housing and jobs to offer them, and by leaving the EU we would have £45million a day staying in our own Country we would have no foreigners sending money back to their original Country so our economy would be strong again no scroungers just hard working people, and we would have lots of jobs to offer our own people and we would teach our own people the skilled labour we need, and we would not be losing our Christianity by offending other religions, we would be a normal happy country again
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Oh my goodness, I read through the comments of others thinking how we love to generalise and make sweeping statements devoid of substance or fact. Here is my offering of sweeping statements!
Hoorah for immigration! It provides our country with workers for the jobs us Brits think we are above e.g care workers, cleaners, etc
It makes absolutely no difference who we vote for and who gets in to office as they will ultimately do a bad job and we will all ridicule and hate them for it.
Who cares whether we are part of europe or not. If we leave Europe all that will happen is some other UK organisation/agency will find a way to waste the money saved from leaving.
Yes I will be voting but for who I’m not sure. Like car design, all the options have become too similar to differentiate a preference.
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We Greens are the only peple in politics who care about the enviroment
Climate change is real we needed 100 billion from europe to fight climate change in third world and they give us 6 billion is that all the planet is worth???
vote Green party to protect our precious home from greedy politicions
The Green Party on Crime
Think Again Vote Green
Although the Greens have much to commend them, I am still undecided about them. In particular, they seem to be yielding too much to political correctness: why should the LGBT groups, pensioners, children, etc., have their own mini human rights?
PC is inherently divisive. Would it not be better to treat everyone the same, and accept any differences, instead of drawing attention to them by writing them into law?
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I could not agree more..political correctness is divisive. People are different…favouring any groups based on race, gender or religion is wrong. Labour have proved that, success should be based on merit alone.
Invasive political correctness has also limited the debate on key issues that simply must be discussed. It is unfair to favour anyone based on their race, gender or religion and to do so is to forget history. That is why I will not be voting Green among a whole host of other reasons:
1. No PPC in my constituency.
2. Under qualified/experienced candidates.
3. Socialist tendencies.
4. Lack of rationality (policy is far to ideological)
5. To many people vote green because it is seen as alternative and cool, when it really isn’t!
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I agree with James and Roger, so will not be voting for the Greens this coming May. One particular gripe I have with them is their wholesale adoption of global warming mantra, a philosophy which, I think, would cause the lights to go out.
Also, even though the members of the party have many years experience in politics, I still can’t help but view them as the students who stand outside student unions handing out copies of the Socialist Worker.
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“wholesale adoption of global warming mantra, a philosophy which, I think, would cause the lights to go out.”
Like all the smaller parties, the Green party will not gain significant power this general election no matter what happens between now and May. I see the Green party as mostly harmless, they have some silly ideas, but their hearts are in the right place, so a few Green MPs would be good for the country to keep the main parties on track when it comes to green issues.
I do agree with you, the Greens are putting the planets well being significantly above that of our welfare and I couldn’t vote for a party that doesn’t put us first over the environment and animal welfare etc… To put it into perspective, if my family was starving and the very last family of chimps was in a forest just down the road, I know what my family would be eating that evening even knowing it would result in the extinction of a species.
I’m sure by now the vast majority of British people realise we are living on borrowed time when it comes to limited resources like oil, gas and coal (fossil fuels) and so even if a person believes climate change is total BS and a conspiracy to control the masses and increase taxation, we do have to come up with a plan to both conserve the resources we still have and replace them in the future.
It’s especially important to countries like ours as we don’t have a great deal of fossil fuel reserves under our land and waters, which means when shortages hit, we’ll be one of the first countries that will go cold in winter!
I don’t think we are doing nearly enough to conserve resources, seems to me most people don’t care that much beyond saving themselves money on their heating bills etc… and are probably hoping 50 years from now some new wondrous energy source has been found that will replace fossil fuels. Lets hope we get cold fusion quite soon :-)
As a country we are going to have to embrace alternative/renewable energy sources like wind and tidal energy. Seems almost everyone hates wind farms (I quite like them as long as I can’t hear them), but unless there’s better ways to create renewable energy en mass, we are going to have to have them in the short term until new renewable energy sources are found that are less irritating to the eye.
The alternative if we don’t prepare for the future is that in our children’s life time (and maybe some of ours) there’s going to be energy shortages as fossil fuels run out.
David
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I dont see the point in having a Political Partyy called ‘The Green Party’ because it sounds like a party advertising marajuaana and to be honest im not moaning about it as it is each to its own i just think it is a tad bit beculuar.
Lots of love and kisses
Francesca-Leigh ♥