Greens, Fighting Cuts or Making Cuts?

Across England and Wales the Green Party can boast of having 139 local councillors and they are in the favourable position of also being the biggest party on Brighton and Hove City Council. In the latter case, this means that we have the perfect case study to demonstrate what the Green’s will do when at the reigns of a Council. This despite the fact that the Greens are a minority administration, as they were elected with 23 councillors out of 54.

Having risen to power in 2011 on a mandate to ‘resist austerity’ the Green Party surged from 13 to 23 councillors to oust the Tories as the councils largest group. Yet under the watch of Jason Kitcat who heads up the Council for the Green Party, the Council is in the process of slashing the city’s budget; and if successful will have cut nearly £50 million of funding for jobs and services in just three years.

Instead of resisting the Con-Dem government’s vile attacks on the working-class, the Greens, like Labour dominated Councils, plead that their hands are tied. Hence the latest response of the Brighton Green’s has been to propose increasing council tax by 4.75% — which even if it hadn’t been blocked by Labour and the Tories would still have meant that nine tenths of the proposed cuts would take place; hardly a reasonable strategy for preventing the cuts. Arguably, if anything such misinformed tactics will actually weaken the resolve of voters who put the greens in power to fight not implement the cuts.

This had led the Brighton Greens to merely offer the public what they call ‘a referendum’ on what level of austerity they must accept. The two choices being to accept a 2% increase in council tax or a 4.75% increase. In fact it is clear to all that the referendum should ask whether voters agree that:

“Brighton and Hove Council should draw up a ‘needs budget’ to restore jobs and services. Based on this the council should launch a campaign with Trade Unions, Service Users and Community Groups to demand that Central Government refund the £70 million lost from the City’s funding since 2010.”

By refusing to implement the Government’s cuts agenda the Brighton council has a rare opportunity to use their political position as the basis for building a mass campaign demanding that funding is returned to the city. This would emulate the momentous resistance built around the 47 militant Labour councillors during the 1980s in Liverpool, wherein members of the Socialist Party’s predecessor the Militant played a key role in organising the fight-back.

Like all political groups, the Green Party is not homogeneous and internal opposition exists. Even Caroline Lucas, the former Green Party leader and local MP, supported the Brighton bin workers on their picket line last year along with some of the Green councillors who are opposed to the Council’s plans. For the then deputy leader of the council this display of solidarity had real consequences and Phelim McCafferty no longer holds this position.

The question that thus needs to be asked of the Greens’ is why have they gone so wrong?

Looking back at the Brighton Green’s 2007 manifesto for change they were at least able to identify their difference from the other mainstream parties, noting how “Both the Tories and Labour are determined to carry on their policies of pollute and privatise.”

On the reactionary role played by the Labour Party they correctly observed that: “The next four years will be extremely difficult for whichever political group runs the city, because the Labour Government is bent on cutting the financial support for essential services.” Yet instead of proposing a fighting strategy for opposing the dire underfunding of vital local services, the Brighton Green’s manifesto accepted that the best they can offer the public was to ensure that “the council gets the best value it can from the money it spends.”

As one might expect, the Brighton Green’s 2011-15 city council manifesto “A Fresh Start for a Fair City” is not so different from its predecessor, and they lead with the empty slogan “fair is worth fighting for…” But apparently fair is not actually worth fighting for, as their manifesto points out how:

“It is also a Manifesto for hard times. During the next four years the Tory and LibDem Coalition of All The Cuts will rob the city of £84 million that should have been spent on vital services. Things wouldn’t have been much better under Labour.”

The manifesto continues by estimating “that at least 2,000 public sector jobs and a matching 2,000 private sector jobs will be lost in Brighton and Hove as a result of the Coalition Government public spending cuts.” Following on from their defeatist line of logic they say: “We can’t stop the cuts made at source by the Coalition, but we will fight them all the way and we will oppose any attempt to further privatise local services.”

In lieu of a presenting a strategy for defeating the government’s cuts agenda — in the here and now anyway — they write that they “will not abandon our aspirations, because they offer practical solutions to the challenges the city faces.” Practical, that is, only if the Green Party displaced all of the mainstream parties of cuts in the houses of parliament at some unknown date in the future. This however is quite unlikely given their track record combined with the barriers presented by our first-past-the-post electoral system.

In September 2012 Natalie Bennett, a former editor of the Guardian Weekly, became the new leader of Greens and reiterated this point: “We might not be able to do all the things we’d like, but until we get a Green government in Westminster we have to work within the framework we have.”

Nevertheless despite admitting they will not present a viable challenge the needless Government cuts the 2011-15 Brighton manifesto boasts that their first “green priority” will be to: “Resist, to the greatest extent possible, the service cuts and privisation imposed on local councils by the Conservative and Lib Dem Government.” What this means in reality is anyone’s guess. This is precisely why it is so important to support the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the forthcoming elections as an alternative political organization that is willing to fight all cuts by whatever means necessary.

Further Reading: introduction to an upcoming pamphlet Fight Environmental and Economic Destruction – A Socialist Strategy to be published soon by Socialist Alternative.