We have had two periods when there were Green councillors in Hackney. The first two Greens were elected at the same time I first became a councillor in 1998. Their victory was part of a general swing away from Labour caused by a split in the Labour group in 1995. A split which saw many former Labour councillors elected as either Tories or Liberal Democrats and resulted in a hung council.
On the council the two Greens held the balance of power (there were 29 Labour councillors and a total of 29 Tories and Liberal Democrats). They immediately voted for a Tory mayor and shunned an offer from Labour to form a red-green coalition, piously opining that the people of Hackney had kicked Labour out of power and they were not going to put us back in. The council went three years with no leader or committee chairs and the Greens worked with the Tories and Liberal Democrats to block the formation of an administration. This chaotic situation caused the council to drift into a financial and service delivery meltdown, with a huge in-year budget gap developing, cuts to key services, and central government intervention in Hackney’s failing schools and social services.
For a short time the Green group went back up to two members after the defection of David Philips, a man who enjoyed six different group or party labels in the space of six years (Labour, Hackney New Labour, Tory, Independent, Green and finally Liberal Democrat). At the 2002 elections the Greens reaped the whirlwind of their complicity in the hung council chaos, and lost their two seats (alongside 14 of the 17 Lib Dems).
In 2006 they set out to carefully target the ward I now represent, Clissold ward in Stoke Newington. It is a predominantly affluent area with a few pockets of social housing. Their campaign cynically preyed on Labour supporters’ interest in and sympathy for green issues by urging them to split their vote, backing two Labour and one Green candidate, so that there would still be a Labour council but with ‘a Green voice’ on it. My co-candidate who was the Labour victim of this was an African woman who was chair of a local tenants’ association – faux radicalism expressed by stopping a working class ethnic minority woman council tenant from getting elected.
The single Green councillor elected in 2006 – the most notable of many tokenistic interventions she made in four years on the council was to call for compulsory veganism in the borough’s schools – but only on Mondays. Meanwhile the two Labour councillors for the ward worked with the Labour administration to deliver real improvements for the ward such as a 20mph zone, a new state of the art youth club and multimillion pound improvements to the local park.
From 2006 to 2010 the Greens pursued a ‘six seat strategy’ trying to win all the seats in both Clissold and neighbouring Stoke Newington Central ward. This involved parachuted-in candidates – all young, all white, all middle-class, some ex-Oxford councillors or activists, some working in Green national HQ – the Green equivalent of 1980s ‘bedsit Trots’ migrating to find winnable wards. They hadn’t reckoned with the very focused and hyper-local campaign Labour implemented to stop them, first in the 2009 Stoke Newington Central by-election, then in the all out elections in 2010. We fought the Greens on a street-by-street basis, using locally produced direct mails and leaflets which dealt with the very local concerns voters had however mundane they might be.
When canvassing I would try to work out what motivated Green voters. Invariably they were happy with Labour’s dramatic improvements to the Council, although often their knowledge was hazy as they personally made little use of council services. If they had concerns they were likely to not be about green issues but about our car parking policy being too draconian for well-off multi-car families, or the swimming pool water not being hot enough in the new leisure centre. Green voting was an alternative lifestyle choice, a brand, a fashion statement to keep you in with the in-crowd at north London dinner parties. I was often met with a blank face when I asked if there was anything more the council should be doing on green issues. They would say that it was good to have a mix of councillors and an alternative voice on the council. They thought the council was greener because of the one Green councillor, ignoring the policies on sustainability and recycling that Labour, in majority control, was pursuing because we believed in them.
Stoke Newington where the Greens have their support is polarised. They get their vote from beautiful Victorian mansions worth close to a million pounds. They had nothing to say to voters on estates and they got no votes there except from the occasional leaseholder disgruntled over service charges. Their vote came from highly educated professional and affluent people who had decided they did not identify with Labour because of a mixture of Iraq and pure snobbishness about Labour in Hackney’s identification with ethnic minority communities, council tenants and the poor.
Some of my colleagues wanted to appease the Greens. While opponents of triangulation nationally against the Tories, they strongly advocated a local triangulation strategy against the Greens – outflanking them by outgreening them. They were wrong, you can’t out green them or appease them. Our improved recycling rate or the energy efficiency of our fleet vehicles had no impact. This is because their voters are either so radically Green nothing short of a post-industrial, post-material economy will satisfy them, or middle-class gesture voters who are making a statement about not being culturally Labour, not making a judgement about our policies.
The way to beat them is to out campaign them. We won in 2010 with hyper-local campaigning, street by street and estate by estate – we identified issues which resonated with people, we were able to do this as sitting councillors and long-term local residents. Their candidates, parachuted in from Oxford and Green party head office, were talking about off-the-peg national campaigns on climate change, and had nothing to say about dog mess in Hawksley Road or about antisocial behaviour on the Milton Gardens Estate.
After the election the Greens whinged about us for being ‘bereft of a wider vision for the borough’. As it turned out Hackney residents wanted local solutions to local environmental problems in local council elections, not hot air about global environmental issues. In 2010 three Labour councillors were elected in Clissold ward and the Greens are now back to having no seats on the council.
Going by what the yes campaign were saying yesterday on their acceptable reliance of BNP supporters vote when AV comes in Linda could save time not bother fighting the Greens and hope they give Labour their preference vote.
What an outstanding conclusion, the way to beat the minor green party is to out campaign them?! I never could have guessed. Following ten year of ‘New Labour’ you should be welcoming the fact that there is an alternative progressive party rising around the country. Simply because of your bad experience you bad mouth and entire movement with your wonderfully puerile piece. Labour is not the be all and end all of centre-left politics.
A useful warning to all Green’s. Green’s need to get support from disgruntled Lib-Dem’s. There may be a resurgence in popularity of Labour. The Lib-Dem’s are probably about to collapse. Green’s need to target this.
The reason I support the greens ain’t becuase im some sandle wearing quiche eater who bangs about soya milk its cause your party dropped any committment to undoing the damage done by thatcher and just went along with her banker loving, neo liberal policies that left workin class communities slowly dying, my great granddad thought in the spanish civil war and voted labour all his life, my dad stood by labour and spent the time he weren’t workin his arse off to knock on doors for you lot round our estate but gave up in 2010 when he just couldn’t do it any more. If you wanna know how you can win election, get back to the founding principals of the party and stand up for people for christ sake and stop wasting your time slagging on off the greens, atleast they’re manifesto committs them to created jobs not chucking people out of work.
I am not surprised by the lack of understanding of what ‘progress’ means to the some if not a great number in Labour. We’ve had 13 years of this and need no more, clearly in Hackney they’re are driven for power more so than knowing what Green Party stands for. It’s the people of Hackney being consistently cheated by the shallow mindset as the above article that I am sorry for. Shame.
This article reflect how bereft of real politics Labour has become. The striking thing about the last election in Hackney was that Green posters outnumbered Labour posters in the council flats by three to one. Working class people felt let down by Labour, because under a Labour government, inequality rose to the highest it has ever been. I assume that people who are facing the breadline have more concerns than how warm the local swimming baths are. It is no surprise that Labour won the votes of rich people in Stoke Newington – because Labour they have become the party of the well-off. From your article, it looks like working class people and middle class people with a social conscience are swinging to the Greens. The way to win them back is to promote redistributive policies – not to lay in to a party with more progressive policies than your own
This is a disgraceful piece of Labour propaganda, which makes the Greens sound like dangerous fascists who can’t be either trusted or ‘appeased’. Given Labour’s failure to do anything about inequality, their neo-liberal attitude to business and the Iraq War (lest we forget), this is a remarkably arrogant and unrepentant piece.
blimey,touched a nerve with the twitchers eh!
There is a response to this post here – based on the article and the comments below http://politicaldynamite.com/2011/01/can-labour-out-green-the-greens/
Totally agree with d.mcardle. Thin skinned greens appear to be sore losers. Obviously the voters were too stupid to realise how good greens are to the digestive system, or perhaps they weren’t!
The 20mph speed limit in Hackney was backed by Labour but the motion was introduced by Mischa Borris, the Green Party Cllr. http://www.hackney-cyclists.org.uk/20mph_press_release_14-4-8.htm
So Labour victory had nothing to do with a general election being on the same day? As someone who was there I can say that this is a very dishonest piece of propaganda. Not sure what Stoke”s Labour’s upper middle class voters, of which there are many, will make of the hatchet job. In fact don’t a certain Mr Ed Balls and Ms Yvette Cooper reside in one such million pound mansion! Have you asked their opinion on the swimming pool temperature?
I thought this comment was interesting; “My co-candidate who was the Labour victim of this was an African woman who was chair of a local tenants’ association – faux radicalism expressed by stopping a working class ethnic minority woman council tenant from getting elected.” a) it implies that somehow if you have a black candidate no one should stand against them and *shock* get more votes than them… which is a fairly typical sense of Labour entitlement at being horrified that someone might stand against them. and b) it airbrushes out of history that the Green who beat her was a woman from an ethnic minority herself… oh… you forgot to mention that!
This sounds like the normal Labour rubbish and lies. Its bizarre that Labour hate the Greens more than they hate the Tories. Several times the Greens in Brighton have asked to work with Labour and Labour have rejected the offer.
“My co-candidate who was the Labour victim of this was an African woman who was chair of a local tenants’ association – faux radicalism expressed by stopping a working class ethnic minority woman council tenant from getting elected.” What utter rubbish! “I’m going to stand down from this election because my opponent is poor and/or black”? Really? Is that what you expect. Labour have done much more harm than good for the working class of this country. One Green getting elected instead of one working class Labour candidate is a complete non-issue. Of course, it is a shame that there is a “political class” and they are predominantly white, male, middle-class baby-boomers, and this needs to be addressed, but not by letting somebody from an opposing party win because of such factors. Also, implying that winning in 2010 was all about out-campaigning, or about what the people of the borough wanted is misguided. It had a lot more to do with the coincidence of the general election, and the associated increase in turn out and additional national press coverage than out-campaigning. And if what you are interested in is what the people of the borough want, then put aside petty party political squabbling, work together, introduce more direct democracy and put an end to negative campaigning.
I was amazed at the reactions to this article. I also had some disagreements with the analysis but in broad terms there is no getting away from the fact that door step campaigning is what counted in the wards targeted by the greens. However, this would not have been possible unless the Labour Council had delivered results – and that is the real lesson. Government has to deliver and to be seen to deliver. The responses above imply that the greens have been successful in getting votes and having more posters in hackney than Labour. Whether this is true or not doesn’t matter – it’s the voters who vote that count not the posters in windows. Tim’s comment about Labour being bereft of real policies is staggering. I believe that in the future people will look back on the last 13 years as the time when the Government invested in the infrastructure of the country more than at any time since the 1800s. The schools, hospitals and other public services that have been rebuilt will stand testimony to this. It is interesting that you now have a Tory government (with lib dems) condemning Labour for its progressive policies. The reductions in Benefits both short term and long term, the attack on public housing with a new ‘affordable’ rent of 80% (currently 30%) of market rent with caps on housing benefit, the increase in unemployment (compared to the real increase in employment under labour with more people employed than ever before) are all clear examples. All of these changes will hurt the poor the most. All of them are a consequence of not having a Labour Government. The Lib Dems and the Greens are peripheral parties who only allow the Tories to cut the services to those in need. The Labour Government was kicked out because people forgot what the Tories were about – or didn’t know. After all people under 35 didn’t elect the last Tory government in 1992. The sad fact is that it will all get worse before it gets better and for that, peripheral parties must take some of the blame.
People vote green “because of pure snobbishness about Labour in Hackney’s identification with ethnic minority communities” Wow this seems to suggest that a large portion of the Hackney green voters did so because they are racists! I voted green and was at the time a resident of Milton Garden Estate. And it certainly was not because I was “disgruntled over service charges” it was because the green’s support job creation over cuts (unlike New Labour), the redistribution of wealth from the rich and ending New Labour’s imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reading this makes me want to write a thesis in response with a riposte to every sentence. I’ll settle for my personal defence. I was not ‘parachuted in’ (and just to clarify no one in the team was working for GP office at the time. Are you saying that none of your own activists have worked for the Labour Party in the past?!). I have lived in Hackney for three years, moving here before I joined the Green Party, but as soon as I joined I knew I wanted to get stuck in straight away, hence my standing for council. Your own colleagues commended our team on election night for the excellent campaign we fought. It was localised, relevant, and exhausting, much like your own. I don’t need to justify our methods or effort, as the election has been fought, but I’m glad the comments made so far have corrected your misleading assertions, particularly with regards to council estates. I hope that next time we can survive the Labour steamroller and reward the very significant number of people who gave us their votes with Green Councillors. Anna Hughes, Green Party candidate for Stoke Newington Central ward.
No it’s the Truth mate…..of course your new labour forgot that one….
I think the Green supporting commentators on here are rather missing the point of this article – it is about How to beat the Greens, which is why it has been published on a website for Labour Party activists. I want Labour to win elections because it is the party that best represents the interests of ordinary working people and their families. Our values and vision for the borough were set out in our manifesto (http://hackney-labour.org.uk/images/uploads/165713/a1e30789-c8be-5254-41d0-dc0da296c114.pdf) which we distributed to over 2000 households in Clissold. It contains our commitment to the living wage and other policies designed to help LBH’s least well-off residents. Of course, we stand for more than clean streets and decent council facilities but our campaign did not underestimate the importance of these things and as Jim Cannon has said – the council has made such dramatic progress in this area that residents could not fail to notice the difference the Labour administration has made. On posters on estates. Green voters are always more inclined to display a poster than most Labour voters. It goes back to my original point about Green voting being a lifestyle/identity choice – its a statement.
Terrible piece – good comments. Your defence against the comments is very weak, Linda. Your ‘explanation’ of the differential numbers of posters for instance is Hegelian in its faux-brilliance: You have stood the truth on its head. The reason why Green voters are often more willing to put up posters in my experience is that they actually know and care about what they are voting for. Let’s be honest: there are lots of Labour voters who would vote for a donkey spouting Tory policies, if it was wearing a red rosette. In fact, they DO: look at all the Blairites who still get voted in by folk on Council estates… If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny. You get posters up because they are red. We get posters up because people believe in what we are trying to do and to change. But tribal politics is dying. Within another generation, you will hardly be able to rely on ANY Labour voters of the kind who turn out on tgeneral election day only to vote for donkeys. Your old loyalists who say (this is a sentence I have heard many times on the doorstep) “I’m just too old to change” will have died off. And we’ll be ready then to sweep you away into the dustbin of history. Let’s just hope that you don’t keep the Greens out long enough to consign a liveable planet to oblivion. C’llr. Rupert Read, representing a mainly working class ward, in Norwich.
wooooah there eeeh-aaaw, methinks thee doth protest too much ! There is no such thing as truth,it’s all contingency for us mere mortals I’m afraid . Of course you wizzards with your pixie dust,sprinkle sprinkle….all better,no nasty people driving up the motorways to work in nasty smelly factories, oh no its all lovely and pink and fluffy now , the ‘I believe in’ for you is an unrealistic utopia ,sadly of course ,but never the less so. And ,we DO need third runway at Heathrow.
Although I still prefer the other Linda Smith, the late lamented comedian, it is nonetheless amusing to read in this article the accusation of political cynicism being levelled at the Green Party. If anything, I think that my criticism of the Green Party would be a lingering political naivety which remains one of our most prominent weaknesses and which has prevented us from pushing further into the political mainstream. By contrast to the relative innocence of the Greens, I don’t suppose that there are many more cynical and tribal political cliques than that which runs Hackney Council. The spitting unpleasantness in Councillor Smith’s article demonstrates more clearly than I could dream of doing, how important a stronger Green Party is for the political life of this country, along with profound electoral reform, of course.
Oh right, sorry Linda, I didn’t realise that only Labour activists were allowed to read or comment on this website. Jim, you’re right, there is no getting away from the fact that door step campaigning is what counted in the wards targeted by the greens. I resent the implication that us Greens did not put in the hours or manpower or dedication in door step campaigning. That’s all I and my team did in the 18 months preceding the election in our hyper-local campaign. Linda, if you think that all we talked about during the campaign was off-the-peg national campaigns on climate change, you clearly didn’t read a single one of our ward-specific leaflets, look at our website, or actually listen to any of those thousands of people you spoke to on the doorstep. So, how to beat the Greens? Call a general election on the same day. Confuse people into thinking there are only three parties available to choose from. Rely on tribalism. Whatever it was, the election was over 8 months ago. I’m glad you’re still acknowledging us as a threat.
Apart from a couple of responders, most of the pro-Green comments are enlightening in their tendency to blame Labour ‘lies and rubbish’ and ‘propaganda’, smears in themselves, rather than engaging with substantive matters. The naivety of greens, which has been noted already here, is quite palpable. They’ve obviously been emailing this article back and forth to each other the last few days and talking about how mean those big bad Labourites are. More striking, though, is the accusation made, I think, four times that Labour ‘only won because local were on the same day as the general election’. Similarly, Rupert Read talks about the ‘lots of Labour voters who would vote for a donkey spouting Tory policies, if it was wearing a red rosette’. I am sure there are green voters who will vote for the candidate just because they have a green rosette on. More deeply, it is very dismissive, and rather contradictory, to be arguing that Labour somehow ‘shouldn’t’ have won because it has more support! It’s also rather rude to suggest Labour voters don’t know what they’re doing. Like any voter, including green ones, they’ll be voting for an idea or an ideal and will not necessarily know the full range policies contained in the different parties’ manifestos. Whining about there being more Labour support out there is not something you can attack Labour with. You ARE allowed to go and talk to those Labour voters, and try to win them round you know! that’s democracy and it’s very possible at a local level!