It’s day two of the Green party conference today in Brighton. There’s an air of expectation at this year’s jamboree as first-time attendees mingle with veteran eco-activists, clutching their pro-Palestine leaflets and tupperware lunchboxes. Mr S is a regular on the political conference circuit but even he didn’t expect the shindig to chime with his prejudices to this extent. From the all veggie menu to the copies of Jolyon Maugham’s book on sale, the homemade protest badges to the 20 minute check-in queues, at least the Greens are in keeping with traditional perceptions of the party.
But the Greens are now – they’d have you believe – a serious party of government, having quadrupled their number of councillors since 2019. They’re gunning for four seats at the next election and are willing to embrace a whole new swathe of tactics to keep the focus on green issues. So Mr S was intrigued to hear of one novel approach floated by John Moloney, Assistant General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which boasts almost 200,000 members. He told delegates at a panel yesterday that Green members ought to support the repeal of anti-strike legislation to advance their agenda:
Certainly my union has discussed more than once going on strike over green issues. In this country legally you can’t just have a straightforward “We think we should move to renewable energy, we will go on strike”. You can in France, you can in Italy, you can in many parts of the world. So we actually have to smuggle in green issues. So for instance we are going to put in what we call “Green claims” in hopefully later this year which are equivalent to pay claims where we say to the employer – I don’t know – “We want you to change all the bulbs and LEDs within six months”… Making the right to strike much easier will actually be a very important component potentially of green politics and we can then take strike action over issues such as an unjust transition. We can take political strikes or so-called political strikes over how we think this country should go.
More strikes? Well it’s one way to try to win votes…
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