In this guest blog, London Green Party member Andrew Tobert tells us how he found his first ever Green Party Conference.
Cast your minds back to last Friday. I was in Euston Station in London, leaving the familiar sights and smells of the city I love, the Pret-a-Mangers, the overpriced drinks. And I was going somewhere new, somewhere strange. Somewhere north. I was going to the Green Party conference, and I was a little bit scared
Because the the thing is fellow greens (comrades?), we get a bit of a bad wrap. Even though I’m as much a green stereotype as the next guy person (I ride a bike, I’m a vegan and I never wear nice clothes), there’s something about greens as a collective that’s a little scary. I always fear a group of people who are just a bit too green. D’ya get me?
But as the train ambled it’s way through the English countryside, (£90 return, thank you Mr Branson), I was starting to feel better. The sun was shining. It would all be fine.
And then I arrived and spent the next few days in a light-less, air-less conference centre. But that feeling you get when the sun is on your face and all is right with the world never left me. The Green Party conference was a revelation.
It’s not like any political conference you’ve ever been too, or indeed like any other anything. There are no lobbyists (I’m not sure we’re counting The Vegan Society), no corporate sponsors. All you see around you is people. Normal, actual people. This wasn’t the Green Party of the popular imagination, mung beans and allotments, this was a group of people who see the system is broken, and want it fixed.
And my how god, how they want to fix it.
What inspired me most about the #GPConf wasn’t the snazzy powerpoint during Natalie’s speech, or even the inflated food prices and the embarrassing lack of tap water, but the recognition of what we’re dealing with. The conference didn’t discuss how we can scale up renewable energy, or how we can alleviate poverty. The central issue was much simpler. How can we end oppression in all it’s forms.
Conference was a micro version of the world the greens are trying to create. Everything was decided democratically. At one stage, we voted on whether we could change a few headings, and I *desperately* wanted to argue against. But this wasn’t democracy in the way that Westminster is a democracy, there were no alpha-males trying to shout on top of one another. Instead there were rules. Every vote, every argument, followed a protocol, and when that wasn’t followed or we just weren’t sure, the wise sages at the SOC (Something something committee?) would come on stage and tell us.
I did think that the iron-fist of the SOC was at first a little over-blown; that if the members wanted to make (for example) more than a minor textual amendment to a policy, well, surely that was OK? We’re a democratic party after all. Is it really acceptable that one committee has near-total power?
But then it clicked. Those rules existed because without them, the loudest voices would dominate. And if there was something about conference that really got my spine tingling, it was the Greens’ desire to listen to those voices that other parties ignore.
On Saturday, we heard a number of trans and intersex people, telling us their experiences. That was, what Oprah would call, my A-HA moment. The moment it clicked what the Green Party was for. It was moving, not because of the stories told (and a special mention goes to Cassie, a 17 year trans woman who is managing her transition with courage and pride.) But because of what it meant. The Green Party really are about something. This isn’t a party of ego, or careerists. This is a party that wants to listen to what we’ve all got say, and if something isn’t fair, it wants to have a crack at fixing it.
It’s a party then, that just to listen to its voters. That shouldn’t be refreshing, that shouldn’t be exciting, and in a mature democracy like ours really shouldn’t be revolutionary.
But it’s all of those things. And that’s why it has to succeed.