Report from a meeting of the Green Party at the University of Manchester

In early December the Greens held a meeting at the University of Manchester attended by Red Youth. The intention of the Green Party on this evening was to reach out to students, and to persuade them to join the Greens in a fight for a better future both environmentally and economically. What they Green Partydidn’t tell you is that you have to be RED to be GREEN!

The evening began with a brief introduction from the leader of the Manchester Young Greens, introducing their deputy leader and MP for Dudley, Will Duckworth, and the newly elected party leader, Natalie Bennett.

As expected, the speaker’s comments were guided not by values of honesty and truth but by the typical opportunism of bourgeois politicians– say what the audience wants to hear. For the opening period, one may have even mistaken the Green Party for a socialist party (!), talking of abolishing tuition fees and giving everyone an opportunity at higher education, talking of the abolishment of poverty, talking of the need to tackle the agenda put forward by the coalition government, as well as Labour, and stressing the importance of renationalising the railways.

Behind the honeyed words that most left-wingers would agree with, there remains the fact that the Green Party is not that much different in outlook than the ‘old’ Labour Party of 20 to 30 years ago. The Green Party still adopts the system that has caused countless lives to be lost through poverty, neglect, war and oppression – namely capitalism. Just like the Labour Party of the past, they make endless promises to the masses; but the system upon which these promises rest is the very system of imperialism which gives a few crumbs to the workers in the imperialist countries whilst savagely looting the workers in the colonies. What the Green Party has not realised is that capitalism is in profound crisis and the ability of the system to hand down these crumbs is now over.

It is true that many of the policies spoken of, such as electoral reform, opposing the “oil-wars” and the abolishment of poverty, are the policies that we’d all like to see enacted. But these policies can never bring lasting social justice and can never be achieved for the majority of society, and sustained into the future, if we rely upon capitalist economics and private ownership of the means of production. It is for this reason that the Green Party should break its ties with social democracy, and instead should join the resistance against imperialism and unite with the working class and oppressed masses of the world – but don’t hold your breath! They claim to be the only viable alternative – but the rights that they seek to protect are not merely the rights of the planet, critically the Greens defend the right of private property – that is the right of individuals to own land and the natural resources which are bestowed upon individuals by mere flukes of birth or are captured, colonised stolen or forced from the hands of their indigenous people violently expropriated by capitalists, “developers” and “entrepreneurs”, as they run rampage across the planet, poisoning our soil, air and water in their pursuit of maximum profit!

After the meeting, I had a chance to have a few minutes with Will Duckworth. With time being pushed, I decided to opt for questioning him over the imperialist system and its never ending inherent rive for profit and war. He went on to say that war was not the answer, and that “selling arms and weapons to countries isn’t going to create any peace”. But after I elaborated, in the case that if it weren’t for Russian supplies to the Syrian government then the western imperialist predatory takeover may have already happened, he was unable to disagree. Ultimately its not weapons that are the problem, its in who’s hands these weapons are wielded! Based on his reaction, I would say that the Green Party is no different than a liberal-do-gooder party, saying things that they know the public will want to hear. The Greens are too afraid to stand against those real enemies of the people and the planet – the robber barons of finance capital!.

Sincerely, I hope that the Greens and many of their more progressive members make a decisive turn towards socialism, but with the fact that they still base their philosophy on the capitalist system– which is totally dependent on turning man into wage slaves – only reaffirms my conviction that the abolition of private property, the socialisation of the means of production and the taking into common ownership of the natural resources of our planet presents the only long-term sustainable future for our species and our planet!