Green Party backs by-election candidate in Davis contest
Hi folks,
We have just put out a press release giving official Green Party support to Shan Oakes standing in the H and H by-election,
my blog entry tells you how you can donate money to the campaign and get involved.
http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2008/06/greens-will-stand-for-civil-liberties.html
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/3473
Its been controversial but I am very proud the members of the local Green Party got to decide rather than having a decison imposed on them by the central party i.e people like me.
Its not so much ‘my party right or wrong’ but ‘the members are in control’ which is good, I worried we might be moving in the wrong direction and I am inspired that the grassroots are still in control.
I’m so pleased that a real supporter of Civil liberties is standing. I hope that socialists and real supporters of Human Rights rally around her.
It would be crazy situationif Davis was depicted as the progressive candidate!
Comment by TheSocialistVote — 25 June, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Thank goodness for that - good luck greenies!
Comment by Joepolitix — 25 June, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
It was already announced that a candidate from Socialist Equality was standing. So there is a left candidate already.
As both will oppose the government’s anti-terror laws and neither has a chance of winning, shouldnt we be backing the socialist?
I mean, this site IS called socialist unity.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 25 June, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
It’s called Socialist Unity not `swivel-eyed nutters unity’. Respect just got rid of one bunch of Looney Losers surely it doesn’t want to encourage another.
It is absolutely correct to be sectarian about Marxist theory but Marxists must exist and apply it in the living breathing movement. The SEPtics don’t even live in the real world or aguably on the same planet.
I am sad that Respect didn’t have the resources to stand in this by-election to offer a distinct socialist voting opportunity for the working class in the constituency. The Greens it is then. Kudos to the brave local branch and Derek Wall for opposing the National Leadership and winning the arguement to stand but I think socialists should be persuading them to take up the question of the Tory Anti-Union laws if they are to be taken really serious about showing up the Tory on civil rights especially with so many workers in wage struggles at the moment. This will also bolster the socialist element in the Greens themselves and could facilitate an eventual merger with Respect and the left Greens on an eco-socialist programme.
Comment by David Ellis — 25 June, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
is this an official green party candidate? what is her background? is there any ‘active’ green party branch in the area?
ks
Comment by ks — 25 June, 2008 @ 10:09 pm
yes she is official but on monday the party withheld the paper work, several of us campaigned succesfully to reverse this, so there was some ‘debate’ in our party over it http://fairfieldlife.blogspot.com/2008/06/shan-oakes-real-civil-liberties.html
All candidates for any party have to be ‘certificated’ by a national nominating officer under electoral law.
The local Party in Hull is active and Shan is an experienced candidate, she is on our Euro election list for example, click on the links I have pasted up on this post for more information.
I am looking at my diary to see when I can go and support.
Comment by Derek Wall — 25 June, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
great news
lefty labour greenish type
labour party member
now TB get behind Shan Oakes
Comment by Tam — 25 June, 2008 @ 11:43 pm
I must say I was disgusted by Jenny Jones’s performance on tonight’s ‘newsnight’. (Jones is a Green Party London Assembly member and also sits on the Metropolitan Police Authority MPA). And I am also a Green Party member! Argghhh! So pissed off!
She basically dismissed allegations of racism in the police made by Tarique Ghaffur, and shielded the police force from exposure to anti-racist critique. Now any basic anti-racist understanding means that when a black or Asian person alleges racism, then you take that seriously - especially given the context of institutionalised racism in the police force and the experience of black people. The last thing anyone on the left should do is dismiss the allegations out of hand, based only on anecdote about her own personal experience of the MPA.
Ghaffur is an Assistant Commissioner in the met - in other words a senior member of a highly repressive, authoritarian and racist institution. If even he is now admitting this racism exists, based on his experience, then this is highly significant. Yet I see a leading member of the Green Party whitewashing the met.
Comment by Larry R — 26 June, 2008 @ 1:23 am
So basically (following on from my post at #8) I wonder what the point is in good people working so hard to get Green Party, (or Respect - LL or RR , or Labour candidates elected) - who then just betray their grassroots activists, and social movements, trades unions and everyday folk?
On the one hand it seems so important to try to inhabit the hard won (but limited) spaces of (bourgeois) democracy, and also gain a mass reception for radical ideas via this electoral platform - but on the other hand this exerts such a pressure towards opportunism and betrayal. Oh well, its time for bed.
Comment by Larry R — 26 June, 2008 @ 1:40 am
While not being totally in favour of standing - because the heat should be on this reactionary Government and side tracked into personal swipes at David Davis,
I am glad that the local party was allowed to make its own decision to stand - What will be interesting is the only other well known party standing in the elections will be ourselves - so should allow a positive contribution from the left about civil liberties.
We will challenging the Labour candidate in our marginal seat to a debate - I suggest others do some thing similar.
Make civil liberties a national issue!
Comment by Roy — 26 June, 2008 @ 7:55 am
Sorry should read
While not being totally in favour of standing - because the heat should be on this reactionary Government and side tracked NOT into personal swipes at David Davis,
I am glad that the local party was allowed to make its own decision to stand - What will be interesting is the only other well known party standing in the elections will be ourselves - so should allow a positive contribution from the left about civil liberties.
We will challenging the Labour candidate in our marginal seat to a debate - I suggest others do some thing similar.
Make civil liberties a national issue!
Comment by Roy — 26 June, 2008 @ 7:57 am
and Labour will challenge the Greens to debate on leaving the EU
Lets have a vote based on in out of EU….would be 80% to remain in
The Greens best bet is to knock out Charles Clark in Norwich…nobody will cry…..
Comment by Tam — 26 June, 2008 @ 9:23 am
I hear that three Respect councillors have left for Labour in Tower Hamlets
Comment by Tam — 26 June, 2008 @ 9:24 am
RE: Larry R, I agree about Jenny Jones, her performance was appalling - but then, she’s a pretty appalling politician. For every Derek or Caroline Lucas in the Greens there’s half a dozen petty bourgeois shitbags - that’s my experience on a national and local level, unfortunately.
Comment by Randy Newman — 26 June, 2008 @ 9:55 am
Irrespective of other policies, the excuse for supporting the Green candidate is that we have an alternative to Davis. Surely the sectarian views of one left party over another should be able to be overridden by the fact that a marxist candidate will oppose davis from a socialist perspective.
I would say that, at the very least, we could say that a vote for either would be better than Davis, but to dismiss them as loony lefties is a worrying development in how people in this blog view the left. It seems to be that the Labour Party, Green party and Plaed Cymru are now preferable to socialist parties and that the Celtic League has more credibility as an organisation than the Fourth International!
Where is all this going?
If I lived there I would vote for SEP, in the absence of a candidate from either side of the RESPECT split or the Socialist Party. If any of those stood I would back them over SEP but definitely not the Greens.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 26 June, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
Jim
This would depend upon the relative credibility of the SEP and Green candidates.
Comment by Andy Newman — 26 June, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Jim,
I called the SWP `looney loosers’ not looney left.
Look, I understand your instincts. There is a socialist candidate we must support him/her but the SEP are a bog standard sect incapable of reaching out to the masses. They do more harm than good.
This Green candidate is the product of a genuine, if not split then fault line, within that organisation. They had to struggle against the conservative centre to be allowed to stand at all and it is very courageous that they are. They are standing on a radical civil rights ticket against the posturing of a right wing tory. I think the aim of socialists must be to support them both to give the working class a genuine alternative to the tory and also to boost the left within the Greens. But we must push them. Genuine civil rights would surely include demanding the repeal of the Tory anti-union laws. We must campaign with them and push that agenda, perhaps the candidate already holds that view. Also I think we must be getting people like Tony Benn to withdraw his support for Davies and everybody in the Labour left such as Corbyn and MacDonald to go on the stump with the candidate and raise the question of workers rights. Also, I’m sure Galloway and Respect will want to be there to help out and raise the question of war and imperialism and the threat to Iran and the need to pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a good opportunity and you have to take your hat off to the local Greens and the candidate herself for their refusal to be cowed. This is also an excellent opportunity to debate socialism and environmentalism.
Comment by David Ellis — 26 June, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
Are the labour party still not standing? And the Lib-dem’s have said there not. The hideous SUN bloke has said he isn’t standing.
If so this is going to a weird election, a Tory standing in his own safe Tory seat as a stand against Labour’s policies but with no serious opposition who are supporting Labours position?
It’ll be interesting to see how the media play it.
Good luck to Shan Oakes I hope she really pitches her campaign leftwards and builds the radical mood in the area.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 26 June, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
Well said Joseph. Our role I think must be to get the labour lefties to get out there and offer their support to Shan’s candidacy as opposed to remaining strangely silent or worse supporting the filthy tory and to get on the stump with her and raise the issue of workers rights, war, socialist environmentalism etc.
Comment by David Ellis — 26 June, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
#18 “The hideous SUN bloke has said he isn’t standing.”
I’m not an Andy Newman fan but that’s a but harsh!!! lol
I would vote SEP probably, at least they are clearly socialist and they will take a marxist uncompromising stance towards the state (one would hope!).
It would depend on the campaign that the Greens wage and the merits of their candidate though. It might be worth the left engaging with the greens in this campaign, we’ll see. If the socialist left could try and get them to stand on a more radical and crucially working class based programme in this instance, help bolster the left in the greens and build ties with them, then that would be a good outcome.
If however the vast majority of the greens in this area are petty-bourgeois liberal-green ‘radicals’ then it would be a complete waste of time. Such people reject class based socialist politics, they despise it in fact. You can’t seriously orientate towards or intervene with these people.
Unfortunately, despite some good lefts within the greens (maybe a few hundred max), most greens are not that left-wing and are petty-bourgeois / liberal / eccentric / or careerist!
Why don’t the LRC stand their own candidate???? (I know they wont, but they should do).
KS
Comment by karl — 26 June, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
KS - they’d be expelled from the Labour Party and the LRC in that order.
I completely fail to understand the logic of challenging Davis from the Left in this election. He’s making a single argument, which we can all get behind. The lower his vote, the weaker his challenge to New Labour is, and the weaker his argument looks.
Comment by Phil — 26 June, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
This election business is strange. First Davis stands and all the others pull out, then Mugabe does the same. Nothing like a good agent.
Who’s socialist equality? We’re running out of names
Comment by shmuel ben avrahom — 26 June, 2008 @ 11:16 pm
Phil, if there were a serious pro-detention, pro-surveillance candidate then your argument might make some sense but there isn’t.
It won’t be possible to see the vote for Davis as a proper test for authoritarianism verses civil liberties because there isn’t a serious candidate opposing him on that basis.
Because of this the election will be very strange and we have to think what’s the best the left can get out of it?
Well, we can support Davis’ raising of the issue but since his actual vote won’t matter (for the reasons stated) we can also support a left-wing candidate who hopefully will be able to agitate to raise the radical mood in the constituency. The chances of SEP making any (even small) impact are minimal, so supporting them is pointless but the green party candidate might be able to make some small but worthwhile impact.
Are the BNP standing? I think I heard somewhere that they are supporting Davis, if so that adds a new level of weirdness to this odd election since, whatever they might opportunistically think they can get out of trying to look pro-civil liberties, such a stance is clearly at odds with so many of there policy statements and (I would imagine) not particularly in tune with their voter base. Perhaps they would be more supportive of the detention laws if the legal phrase “only for darkies” was amended to it.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 27 June, 2008 @ 9:11 am
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=15253
Comment by johng — 27 June, 2008 @ 9:43 am
The Green party candidate has no chance of winning. The choice for socialist is simple, to confront the anti-terror laws from a socialist perspective (SEP) or from a liberal perspective (Greens).
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 27 June, 2008 @ 10:13 am
`I completely fail to understand the logic of challenging Davis from the Left in this election. He’s making a single argument, which we can all get behind. The lower his vote, the weaker his challenge to New Labour is, and the weaker his argument looks.’
There are perhaps two reasons which may in the end boil down to the same thing. 1. Voting for the Tories is very corrosive of class consciousness and 2. it is highly likely that the Tories will win the next general election and it will be a very reactionary government indeed. If the left start calling for a tory vote now it will look like the abject surrender it is and the Tories’ majority will be all the bigger for it. The Tories’ idea of `freedom’ was summed up in a TRB song in the eighties `Power in the Darkness’.
Every labour mp who voted against the 42 days should get down to the constituency and support Shan’s candidacy.
Comment by Realist — 28 June, 2008 @ 10:05 am
FINAL PUSH: 10 WAYS TO HELP SHAN OAKES TO BECOME ELECTED AS BRITAIN’S FIRST GREEN MP, HALTEMPRICE AND HOWDEN BY-ELECTION, 10TH JULY 2008
See:
http://shanoakes.typepad.com
http://shanoakes.blogspot.com
Contact:
Tel. 01482 862085 OR 01482 471467
email. shan@voice-international.net
Join:
Shan Oakes Facebook group -
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33635377720
Comment by Rebecca Voroni — 8 July, 2008 @ 12:26 am