Against a Green leader

Derek Wall argues against the Green Party of England and Wales appointing a single leader.

Published in the Morning Star, 14 August 2007
Derek Wall, Green Party Male Principal speaker

The issue of leadership is a hot topic within the Green Party of England and Wales, which is holding a special vote in November to decide whether to appoint a single leader.

Its two principal speakers, who stand on either side of the debate, set out their case to Morning Star readers.

A STRONG campaign has been launched in the Green Party to maintain its present decentralist constitution. While some prominent party members are campaigning to create a party leader, others reject the idea.

The question as to whether to have a single leader will be decided by a referendum of members in November. Supporters of a leader argue that the post will deliver success for the party at a future general election and that such a leader need not be a distant Blairite figure.

The referendum has opened the space for a major strategic debate in the party, which can be no bad thing - climate change, the growing gap between rich and poor and the spread of global conflict all mean that time is becoming short and the green message needs to be put into action.

There is also concern that some European Green parties have pruned their radical policies to achieve office. There has, for example, been criticism from the grass roots of the Irish Green Party of the decision to go into coalition with Fianna Fail, despite Fianna Fail's support for a controversial motorway that will smash into the World Heritage Site at Tara.

Political parties universally tend to attract those addicted to fame and careerism.

Sociologist Robert Michels, in his famous Iron Law of Oligarchy, showed how the radical parties of the Second Socialist International moved to the right and supported war.

Famously, the German SPD, the first mass socialist party in the world, voted - to the astonishment of socialists elsewhere - for war credits and, with few exceptions, the different socialist parties supported the militarism of their respective countries in the first world war.

Michels argued that all parties tend to become undemocratic whatever their ideology, with a small elite hoodwinking the members into supporting what, in the short term, delivers office. Greens are not immune. Because of such an understanding, Green parties constructed strong constitutions to limit the power of their leading members and to keep things democratic.

The Green Party of England and Wales does not have an individual leader. It rotates office holders on its party executive, which includes two speakers. The speakers are not given a vote on the executive and are not "leaders" - their mission is simply to get out and spread the message of green politics.

Having both a male and a female speaker provides gender balance. It is difficult to see how replacing the two speakers with a leader or even co-leaders would lead to more success.

Clearly, the biggest barrier to green electoral victory is the lack of proportional representation. Greens have been elected around the world in countries with PR.

The fear is that a leader will shift the party to the right, cutting the Greens' radical edge. This is all too common, with a few notable exceptions.

The call for a single leader would compromise the party's commitment to radical democracy. It also suggests a failure to think about strategy in any real sense. The fear is that it could be part of a more extensive shift towards a new green politics of shallow environmentalism, rather than a thorough critique of an unequal, profit-motivated society.

Supporters of the Green Empowerment campaign have launched a petition for a grassroots democratic party that Green Party members can sign at www.greenempowerment.org.uk

We are not against "leadership," but we are against a single figurehead. After all, if you have only one leader, you must be in trouble.

Talent is wider than one person. Equally, we all have different skills. Arguing on television is a different skill from organising a committee.

London Assembly Member, Southwark councillor and former deputy mayor of London Jenny Jones says: "We've proved in London that you don't need a leader to get good media coverage - there are plenty of opportunities for us all.

"In fact, the limitation on how much media we can do is often the need to rest, eat and visit the loo. So what we need is more people prepared to do media, not rely on one fallible person to deliver our message."

At present, the two principal speakers, the two Green members of the London Assembly and our MEPs all regularly appear on television and the radio and in our newspapers. A single leader might actually monopolise and, therefore, reduce coverage.

Peter Tatchell, the civil rights campaigner and Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East, is another critic of having a single leader, arguing that a cabinet-style list of speakers is the way forward. He has recently been made the party's Home Office speaker and is rarely off our TV screens.

George Monbiot has also championed the Green Party structure. He says: "I think much of the Green Party's refreshing distinctiveness rests on the absence of a single leader. It's one of the only parties which really looks like a party, rather than simply an apparatus of power designed to sustain those at the top."

Personalities can make a party but they are a risky proposition. Recent events in Scotland between the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity are a case in point. The Greens should not risk putting all of their eggs in one basket. The basket might prove weak and smash them.

Leadership is vital. We must have effective voices. However, conventional leadership with a single leader has been disastrous for political participation. It almost always comes with commitments to water down the message, to remove real debate and participation. It turns ordinary members into observers.

Green politics is about giving everyone a say, not recreating the top-down, image-spun pantomime of the other political parties. Our constitution puts the case clearly and we should not repeat the Labour Party's Clause IV moment by removing our commitment to real change. Our manifesto sums things up in a couple of sentences.

"We seek a society in which people are empowered and involved in making the decisions which affect them. We reject the hierarchical structure of leaders and followers and, instead, advocate participatory politics. For this reason, the Green Party itself does not have an individual leader."

These are sentences that should be preserved, not pruned into the bin.