28: Green Party Conference, Zionism is Racism and Organising Beyond Elections

Come on, Joey. What else you got? I'm sorry, Jonas is ducking this debate. He's like, "You know what? I'm not even listening." I don't want that, I don't want that heat. It is, it is, Jonas on over. It is Jonas on over. That's the question. It's Jonas even here. Hello and welcome to this week's Life of the Party. A deep dive into everything to do with left-wing political organising in Britain. I'm your host Jonas Marvin, and I'm here with my friends and comrades, Joe Todd. Hello. And Shaniees McBean. Hi. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to our Patreon episodes of After Hours, where we dive a bit deeper into questions slightly unmoored from the everyday questions of party, strategy are available to all subscribers who pay £5. If you would like to get access to them, become a member subscriber, joining on the fun. In that spirit, today we'd especially like to thank our catered-tier subscribers, Nor Neil Rogal, Liam Miller, Andrew Glassford, and the compellingly entitled Skeleton Wizard, for their continued support of the podcast. Oh, I didn't realise people could do this. They can just get us to complete shit at the start of every episode. When it gets a bit tricky, I'm not hosting. This would not continue to be possible without your contributions, comrades. Thank you so much. This week, Shaniees is going to kick off the episode. Take us to Brighton for a breakdown of Green Party Conference. Yeah, so this weekend is the Green Party's Autumn Conference, and it is touted by the Green Party as being their biggest conference yet. And I guess this is really unsurprising, given that they have a historic membership size, sitting at over 225,000 members as of March this year, so it's probably grown since then. So over three days in Brighton this weekend, the conference will take place, and the Green Party Conference is basically the heart of the Democratic machine of the Green Party, where members debate and decide policy and positioning in their platforms. So having had a look at the kind of full agenda, for me, it's also quite clear that the Green Party has a very vibrant political and ideological life. They have a full weekend of different kind of tour, different speakers, different events, different debates, with both official and fringe events on a whole host of topics, from kind of big ticket contemporary political issues, such as masculinity, the boycott divestment and sanctions campaign, fighting immigration raids, all the way to issues that speak more to party operations, such as accountability of elected party officials. So I think this conference, for me, there are three significant things to draw out. The first is that there is a very clear socialist thread running through this conference. There are several motions, for example, a motion on trade union strategy, motion clarifying eco-socialist principles of the Green Party, and a motion on socialist policy platform within the Green Party. So there's clearly a group who are organising to transform the Green Party into a socialist party, and I suppose turn that red thread that has historically been in and been visible within the kind of policies of the Green Party, but not necessarily explicitly part of the character of the Green Party. There are people trying to turn that red thread into a party identity, into a recognisable platform within the Green Party. So how successful they'll be? I guess we'll debate that after the conference, and kind of as the debates unfold. And we've also been invited to participate in that debate, we're doing a fringe event this weekend on the Green Party as an eco-socialist party and what that shouldn't can mean. I have also picked up on, and obviously I'm not a Green Party member, but having had a deep dive into the motions and into the events that are taking place, it seems to me that one of the things that's missing is there is a lot of debate on political questions and really, really important political topics. What I've seen less of coming into this conference is a focus on kind of strategy and a vision for what the Green Party sees itself as being, both in terms of a political organ and a political vehicle, but also in terms of how it positions itself on the kind of broader British political landscape. And so yeah, I guess I didn't really see much that really teases out what the Green Party is actually for as a mass organisation. And maybe that is because there is a consensus that it's an electoral vehicle, and maybe it's, you know, that debate has already been won in that particular direction. But if that's the case, for me, there's a disaster waiting to happen, right? Because not just because of the Burnham question and the difficulty that the Burnham question presents to the Green Party, if it positions itself as exclusively an electoral vehicle, but also because we have been through very recently with Corbinism 2019, what happens when you put hopes and dreams of millions of people in a doomed electoral project? And I think the Green Party with its four MPs and, you know, not projected to be that much more in the next general election has a lot of questions to answer around, is it really going to go down the trajectory of being another lukewarm electoral project? And I guess the final thing that I want to draw out, so Zach Polanski is obviously running in Hoban and St. Pancras by election, which the polling will begin for that on the 8th of October. And I guess the timing of this conference represented a bit of a logistical and political issue for the Green Party, because the conference is taking place from the 2nd to the 4th of October. So obviously that's quite inconvenient because there are a lot of resources tied up in running, a big conference, and as the Green Party has said itself, the biggest conference, it's held, it's face to face, there's a lot of logistics involved, a lot of work goes into arranging the venue, making it safe, then you've got the political work of, you know, putting all the documentation together, making sure people have been communicated with around kind of the motions that are taking place, everything is organised. So there's that that goes on with regards to a conference, but obviously there's a very specific element of this conference, which is the Zionism is racism motion, which presents a political issue for Zach Polanski. I think as I understand it, Zach Polanski staffers try to get this conference postponed and push back to after the by-election, and then obviously there's a very clear public argument that you make around that, around, you know, we don't want our logistics and we don't want our resources tied up in this conference. There's obviously a political question underneath this, which is if the Zionism is racism motion passes, that could spur on a political crisis for Zach Polanski around antisemitism right before polling on the 8th of October. So yeah, and I and as I understand it, there was a vote on whether the conference should be postponed, that vote was lost, I think it's a good thing that that that vote was lost, you know, there would have been a lot of chaos created for individual members, had the conference been postponed, a lot of wasted resources, no guarantee that it would have actually converted to a political win in Hobernand St. Pancras, and actually the political fallout of that for Zach Polanski could have been potentially massive. We saw what happened with your party in Zoroastletana when she gambled with people's money and time, and it was a huge flop, and it ruined her reputation, and there was absolutely the potential for the same thing to happen here with Zach Polanski gambling on postponing the conference, members being financially, you know, put out as a result of that, having time wasted as a result of that, him losing Hobernand St. Pancras, and there being an absolute political crisis and turmoil as a result of that. So I think it's good that the conference wasn't postponed, but also I'm not so sure that this Zionism is racism motion actually represents, you know, this big political wedge issue that is being presented as both, I think, by the anxieties that feel like they're coming from Zach's team, and also how it's being presented in the mainstream media. Zionism is racism, you know, that is the case, that is what I believe, but also there have been two amendments that have been put forward, which I think raise really salient and important political points. As I understand it, one of the amendments is that if this motion passes, the amendment says, and I think quite rightly, that there shouldn't be any pressure, prescriptions or discipline attributed to members who are Jewish and who might be associated with Zionist institutions, or who express views that might be considered Zionists, such as a two-state solution. And I think that's right. You know, I think that these are ongoing political debates, these are ongoing political questions and we can't start mobilizing disciplinary party structures to win political debates and win political arguments and we can't also start punishing people for being associated with Jewish institutional life. I think that's right. I think there's a second amendment which has elements which are more concerning politically. The second amendment deletes recognition of Israel as an apartheid state that's committing genocide. I think that's a mistake both in just in terms of, you know, factually what Israel is doing, all the Israel is, but also in terms of what that signals politically and also weirdly deletes reference to reparations for Palestinians. Reparations for me just seems like a very basic political demand, quite a liberal political demand even. So again, I think it's a political mistake for that to be deleted. But there are two actually really important political points that that amendment makes. The first being that Westerners shouldn't be litigating, I think, whether Palestine should be a one or two-state solution. Now don't get me wrong. If you were to ask me what I think Palestine should be, I would argue it should be one state from the River to the Sea, called Palestine, that would be my position. But whether or not I have a stake in determining whether that actually is the case is a separate question. And ultimately, it's the freedom struggle of Palestinians that is going to determine what the constitutional resolution and what constitutional liberation looks like. And it's not for us and it's not for the green party to be kind of putting lines in the sand, I think. And number two, I think the more important question is what we should be arguing for in the West is rather than getting kind of bogged down in one or two states, is the question of freedom, rights and liberation for all people on the land from the River to the Sea, for all Palestinians from the River to the Sea. That is the crucial argument that we should be making. The right of return, the right to reparations, the right for freedom of movement for all Palestinians on all of the land, the right for democratic rights, all Palestinians on all of the land, the equal legal status of Palestinians, all Palestinians on all of the land and all Palestinians who have the right of return, these are the salient arguments that we should be making. And obviously that would end in the end of Zionism and the end of Jewish supremacy. The good thing about arguing it that way is you don't get bogged down in these kind of one or two state debates, which frankly is none of our business. So all of these questions are at play at the Green Party conference this weekend. So over to you, Joan Jonas, what do you think are going to be the kind of political wins, the debates, the fallouts, world one? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'll come back on the Zionism and racism and stuff in particular number, when that's the rest of the conference. And just on just on that second amendment, which is around one state or two state and respecting the ability and right of partisan people to decide themselves, it does say at the bottom of that, we reiterate our support for reparations and accountability for that part, I'd in the current genocide. So I think the only thing that they're trying to change with that amendment is taking out the one state position and putting in a, you know, like a self determination position. And I just, you know, I just completely agree with you on that. So I think that it isn't up for, it isn't up to the British state and by extension British political parties to be saying, you know, you people who live in this different land, you should be, you should be having this specific constitutional arrangement. It's not, it's not a settled issue amongst that Palestinian civil society. I was just into a fantastic podcast on Palestine deep dive yesterday with Omar Baguti, you want to co-found us a BDS. And, you know, he was very clear about it and was basically saying, look, this, some people within the community support one state, some people will support two states, there's often a bit of a distinction between diaspora organizations that more often tend towards one state. And organizations that are by Palestinians who still live in Palestine that tend towards two states. And he was quite explicit and said, we don't want the British support as a Palestine to get immersed in endless debates about one state or two state. It's not up to you, self determination, to determination means we determine the future of how we want to live in our homeland. He goes on to say, why was, why waste time debating when your duty is to end the complicity of the government, universities, trade unions, city councils, everybody, that's your duty focus on that rather than some theoretical question. And I think this is a broad point that you can make about the Zionism as racism motion, is that it's fundamentally a theoretical motion. It's an academic theoretical motion talking about the definition of a concept, it's about language, it's about words. And I think at a time when degrees have, you know, a very radical and principled and unified position on Palestine, which is, you know, exactly as you say, calling it a genocide, calling for the right of a term, calling for an arms embargo in the UK, calling for the UK to stop manufacturing arms and weapons and send them to Israel and using the more Palestinians. And at the same time, you have labor who are trying to move into this space, but are still very happy with arms sales and still refusing to call it a genocide. To me, it seems pretty misguided to then start talking in the national presence to get our leader talking about Zionism as racism rather than talking about these things. And I think that's one of my big frustrations with this motion is that it just has created this entire conversation around a thing that just doesn't really change the political picture in the country, put pressure on the Labour Party in a material way, and also doesn't speak to the kind of mass politics that we're trying to build, you know, it just doesn't speak to mass politics that we're trying to build. I come back to the, you know, the words of the Belgian workers party where they talk about being principled but flexible. So, you know, you start from your ideology and your political principles, but then how those principles are communicated to the working class and to the people and how you employ them is flexible depending on where people are at. And we know from going on on doors and talking to people who aren't political and don't think about all the stuff all the time that you can very easily talk to people about how Britain is still complicit because of manufacturing arms and sending them over there. And that's an obviously bad thing and we shouldn't be doing that. It's very, very, very hard to try and get into a conversation about Zionism as racism. So I just, I really, I don't know, I feel kind of frustrated with the fact that this is just not, it's just not a motion that aims at mass politics. And I think the, you know, the final thing that I'll say on it is that I do, I do worry a bit about the culture that it seems to be creating in the party. I've been in some debates around it, which have been incredibly civil and really, you know, really fantastic. Actually, there was a Greens organized call last night where there are people arguing for and against it. It is really good and really civil of people. People made very good points on both sides. And I thought it was brilliant. There was also a meeting this week at the Haringay Green Party, which was completely opposite where people that were speaking for these amendments, for these two amendments that come from the left as well, were heckled. And they were shouted down when they were trying to speak for them. I know multiple people in that meeting who didn't end up speaking because they just felt too intimidated and felt like they didn't have the place. And I just think that this is not the culture that we want to build. It's not the culture of a winning party. It's not the culture of a unite party that, you know, can actually go out and decide and do the stuff that we need to do. So yeah, I'm just not feeling great about it, to be honest. It's the difference between prioritising, are we prioritising the correctness of our political positions? Are we prioritising shedding a light on the realities of Palestinian life and oppression in Israel? So what I mean by that is if, for example, you're on the doorstep and you say, did you know that there are Palestinians that have to go through checkpoints in order to travel in their historic homeland? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Why do they have to do that? Because Jews are prioritised in Israel in terms of citizenship and freedom of movement. Oh, why are Jews prioritised? Because there's this ideology called Zionism, which is Jewish nationalist, Jewish supremacist ideology, which prioritises the rights of Jews over Palestinians. Oh, so Zionism's racism. Yeah, you see how you can get to that by prioritising actually talking about the livelihoods of Palestinians as opposed to starting with the principle which Zionism is racism and working your way backwards. I think there's a question of emphasis there, which is just totally backwards. For me, I agree Zionism is racism. I don't have a problem with the motion as in terms of its principles and in terms of its correctness, but I think you're right. There's something there that is reflective of a political culture, which is worrisome. It should also just be said, the exact Palestinian yesterday did the Jewish community hustles in the home and in St. Pancras. See and said that Zionism is racism and declared himself an anti-Zionist. So when we think about actually, is this just a kind of a right-wing retreat and defensive move from the leadership or is this an attempt to do what both of you talked about, which is to make the politics of Palestine, solidarity, something that's lived real and relatable to people, rather than declarative from the outset? Yeah. I mean, let's be honest about things. Exactly. Yeah, and I just, yeah, and maybe the final thing that I'll say on this is just that I read and it's on the culture thing again. I do, I do just think that we have to try and take our comrades in the party at their word when people put forward criticisms of things that you might want to pass and I do you think one of the problems, not with all the supporters of this motion, it's definitely not not everybody. I really want to be very clear about that. I have met people that will argue about it in very reasonable ways, but some of the supporters of this motion You won't really engage with the content of the criticisms at all. You will just either be implied or it will be said explicitly that you're a Zionist because you're critiquing the motion. And it becomes this kind of totem where if you're for it, you're anti-Zionist. If you're against it, you're pro-Zionist or at least, you know, like, okay, Zionism or you don't care about it or whatever. And I think I won't usually read out a tweet on the podcast because I just, I'm trying to get off to it. But there was one tweet that I'll tweet this week from, you know, Matt Kenard, who is a very, very high profile support of the motion. So I don't feel bad for reading it out. But, you know, he talks about planskees, proposed amendments, the two amendments that we talked about, which are just very reasonable and also come from the left. He says planskees proposed amendments, brought down Zionism as racist motion, are reflective of a very insidious element of the Israel lobby. It's an element which is critical of atrocities committed to Israel, committed by Israel, but tries to whitewash and obfuscate ethosuit premises, colonial ideology driving them and preserve the apartheid state. It's his phenotype. I do not know what phenotype means. Someone can tell me later, it's vital that the motion passes without these amendments. It just doesn't, it just doesn't engage with the content of the amendments and it doesn't, and it doesn't take seriously that my people might have criticism. And he ends it with, like, don't give an inch and it's like, don't give a inch to who, your comrades, your comrades in the Green Party who are part of the same political project as you. Like, this is, I'm sorry. At some point, we have to call this out because what really frustrates me about how some people mobilize around questions of race is they will mobilize the identity of the people that they're supposedly supporting in defense of their position. This is the only legitimate position that is supportive of Palestinians. I've had so many conversations with my Palestinian comrades about one state to stay, what we prioritize, do we prioritize a question of one state to stay or rights and liberation and freedom, so many different diverse opinions within the Palestinian community around these political questions. And to put your flag in the sand, I'd be like, this is the only position that legitimately supports Palestinian liberation and any other position is antithetical to Palestinian liberation. At some point, we have to start calling this stuff racist because it assumes that the Palestinian community is an ideological monolith. There isn't this, there isn't a rich intellectual culture amongst Palestinians. There isn't debate and conversation and discussion and disagreement amongst Palestinians. And we get it with the black community as well, white people who are like, this is the only way to be supportive of a black liberation struggle, even to black people. And it's like, you know, at some point we have to be like, dude, sit down because you ain't the savior. I'm sorry. Yeah. And I really want to, I really want to, you know, in, I'm obviously demanding good faith of other people. So I'm also trying to, I'm trying to approach these comrades and I do see those, these people as my comrades, in good faith and I think, I think what's happened is, you know, because of the intense, you know, how intensely a motive the issue is and how a genocide can affect people because obviously it can, like people are becoming credibly polarized around this, you know, that, and that's, and that's why they feel like you must win the motion unadulterated. And if there are any amendments to the motion, then that's absolutely terrible. That's, that's my good faith read, my, you know, my slightly more worrying bad faith read maybe is that, you know, why is it that the proponents of the motion don't want it to be amended to make it clear that Jewish people that have a connection to a synagogue can't be kicked out of the party? Like if, if there's no plans to do that and if there's no plans to pursue people in that way and if there's no plans to use the disciplinary mechanism to, you know, like kick out people like that, why would people be so against an amendment that made it clear that they weren't going to do that? And it's worth saying that the history of this motion is loosely based on a, on a motion that went to DSA conference a couple of years ago, which did have the explicit, the explicit intention of using disciplinary mechanisms within the DSA to kick out people who had association with Zionist institutions. It should be said that, you know, most, most synagogues in this country would consider themselves Zionist in some form. So if you're a Jewish and you go to synagogue, then, you know, that connection could be proven as it were. And so my question to the, yeah, my question to proponents of this motion is just like, why, why wouldn't, why wouldn't you have that amendment like what, what harm does it just the emotion? What does it take away? So it's just a little bit, sorry, I'm getting a motive, I don't usually get a motive, but it's so frustrating because what, so none of us are in any way associated or affiliated with racist institutions. So none of us went to, none of us went to a school or none of us work in a workplace that's institutionally racist or none of us went to a university that is institutionally like you joking, you joking like the idea that we will litigate politics through either falling back on disciplinary measures or falling back on the purity of your politics. And I really don't like to use that term purity politics because it's overused to kind of critique people who just have a different position to you. Listen, I think your position might be a bit racist, so purity politics. Actually, it is okay to think that someone's political position might be racist. It is no different for me than the reverse side of the argument, which is, well, everything's anti-semitism, calling for the end of Zionism or calling Zionism racism, that's just anti-semitism, and we're going to shut down the debate based on an appeal to liberation politics. And it's no different here, and it is a weakness of our political culture and it's a weakness of our ability to articulate ideas when people over persuade. It is a weakness of our political culture that we have to revert to shame and putting our political principles so high that for most people that are unachievable. This idea that no one's associated with a racist political institution or no one's, we're all perfect on our anti-colonial politics and none of us engage with any aspect of politics or ideology or living life in under capitalism that is in any way conforms to colonial imperial politics. It's nonsense. Now, that's not to say that we should therefore be lazy with our politics and just be like, oh, well, you know, everything's racist, so I don't need to be responsible for my politics. Not to say that, but to treat your comrades with loathing because they have a different political take than you. I just can't get behind it. Even though I agree with the motion, I just can't get behind the approach by some. And I do think that the approach might cost the proponent's own conference floor. Because one of the dominant cultures in the green part is that people do want to treat. People do want other members to treat each other with respect and kindness like being nice is quite highly, being nice and collegiate is quite highly prized in the party. And you know, if they end up heckling the speakers from the floor who are speaking against the motion or are proposing amendments, I just don't think that's going to go well for them. And on one side, lots of people want to vote for the motion because they will want to vote for the motion. It is the pro-Palestinian motion. I just wish we had a better pro-Palestinian motion that wasn't this one. Something incredibly radical, you know, something that can push our policy further and can, you know, like really make it intervention-bridge politics, it's wish it wasn't this one. People want to vote for it. But then at the same time, they won't, they won't like that behavior from the proponents if that's what they do in conference. And I really, if any of them, if any people who, you know, back this motion are listening, I really, I said, like, if you want to get your motion passed, like, don't heckle people from the floor at conference, it just won't go well for you. Come on, Joey, what else you got? He's like, you know what, I'm not even, I don't want, I don't want that heat. He is, he is Jonas on over, he is Jonas on over. That's the question. He's Japanese even here. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can we just do a little bit more on, on green conference though, because green conference isn't just design as racist motion, that is not and I just, I just noted down a few things from Chinese intro that I thought we could respond to, like, I think that, yeah, I think it's really, I think it's really good and right to highlight the kind of, like, the left wing eco-socialist thread that's, you know, coming through in conference motions now. It takes a while for conference motions to come through, because you can get it on the agenda, but most emotions just aren't debated and it takes a couple of years of going back to conference before you get high enough up the agenda to actually debate stuff. I'd say though that it, it's more, I'd say it's more an organic expression of the membership rather than an organised thing at the moment. Like, green's organised who, you know, it's the group that I'm a part of, I think, I think it goes amazing because I'm part of it and it will be part of it, I don't think it was good. But I go, hasn't taken a very activist approach conference over the last two years. It kind of backed some motions last year, but it didn't really heavily organise for them. This year, it had a meeting and took a straw poll on members on various motions, which is going to be circulated, but it's not strong for and against lots of motions. So I don't think it is, I don't think it is actually coming from a place of organisation and I think if next year there was a higher level of organisation amongst the socialists left, we could, we could really dominate conference and we could have some fantastic stuff going through. So I think that's, you know, that for me is the one to watch for next year. And I think with your point on, you know, there's not like a coherent strategy or vision or maybe I can insert the word programme in there because I'm just obsessed with programmes at the moment. Like, coming through with conference, I think that's completely true, but that's a structural problem with conference, really. Like, conference, it's not very good, I don't think it's synthesising disparate positions or policy ideas or whatever into something that's actually coherent and whole, it almost benefits those who have. pet projects who then work really hard to get those motions to the top of conference over a number of years. And I do, I don't think we want anti-democratic reform in the party. I don't think we want any reform to disempower members, but I do think that the Green Party at the moment is so decentralized that it is hard for us, it is hard for us to care here all of this stuff into like a choir here, a program in the way that the Franceants and me have one, you know. And I have spoken to people who think that you could lead that from the leadership and from GPEX, one of the two bodies that members are elected to. And that would be possible, but I think the mechanisms of conference just don't, just don't quite lend themselves to it. And then a final thing and then I will shut up, I promise, it's just that I think you're a little bit pessimistic on these about some of the some of the green polling, just in the yes, the MRP polls suggest that at the next election, at the moment, we're not looking at that many more MPs, but I just don't believe any of them. And you can tell me it's co-op if you want. You can tell me it's co-op if you want, but I basically don't believe any of them. In part, because I think our polling situation will improve because there's no way Labour's is going to get better, and it's no way Burnham's position's going to get better. And also in part, because those polls do not take account of levels of local organisation in this specific city of local context, and how tactical voting in some places will push people mostly towards Labour, because they'll be Labour versus reform seats, but or how in London and Bristol and many of the cities, there'll be this almost phenomena that we haven't conceptualised yet, I'm calling it like free voting. So this idea that like, you don't have to vote tactically at all, because it's Labour versus the Greens, and there's no chance of reform, no chance of the Tories, and there's almost this anti-tactical impulse where you're like, fuck, I actually get to vote for who I want to vote for. I get to vote for the party that actually more represents my politics rather than been pushed back into the Labour, the Labour bucket. And I do have quite a bit of confidence that we will see that exhibit itself, and the polls start taking account of that at all. Amazing. Next up, Joseph has got a spicy tear jerking hot take for us, take us away. There's no tears, and there's little spice, and only my head teacher primary school called me Joseph. It's very, it's very humble in the world. I feel like I look a little kid ago. Me and your head teacher. Honourable Jonas and my head teacher. All right, so my, my hot take this week is about going to give it all of the names, community organising, building popular power, base building, and it's running on from our conversation two weeks ago where we talked about attentional politics and hyperpolitics, and how, you know, we and a lot of the left get dragged into the spectacle of politics where we end up watching it as these passive participants. And you know, we think, wow, I was acted a really good video last week. Oh, where's that video's gone, and you know, and that's the kind of the entirety of our politics. And I kind of want to talk about, you know, why even though a lot of the people who are part of Zach's leadership campaign and to flooded into the party are all, if you talk to them very pro having a political party that not only does elections, but does power building and organising outside of elections with the understanding that you need to do that. If you're going to build a party that is actually capable of transitioning the British state from capitalism to socialism, you need to do that because electoral power will never be enough. I want to, I want to have a bit of a take around that. Why even though we all agree with that, very little of this work is happening in the green party so far. Very little of this work has happened over the last year and how we might overcome that and how we might start to change that. And you know, my first caveat is just to say there's not a total thing. There are some things that happen. Obviously, lots of local green parties do litter picks. I know there's a Cambridge Greens Organised Group which used to be a Cambridge or party group and then they broke for Greens Organised who do weekly food drives. And there are, you know, there are bits and pieces of things happening that will come through in the hot take. But by and large, you know, these ambitions have not been fulfilled at all yet. And I think there's a bunch of reasons. One reason is that so far the Green Projects just has been an intentional project. And I don't want to repeat this too much because we talked about it last week, but it's been mediated by the kind of dominant effect. The 21st century politics, which is you see hyper leader politicians on your social media fees, on the news, and you kind of cheer them along. You're like, yeah, go Zach, that was a sick video, or yeah, go, you know, go Zach in, in some media interview where he actually treats migrants and refugees as human beings. So far the project has been that that has been the dominant effect. People have come out to canvas for things, but many local parties are not experiencing huge surges in members turning up. They might be, I mean, this is very anecdotal, but many parties might be roughly doubling the amount of people who are turning up to meetings, even though the overall membership of the party is quadrupled. So it's, you know, like many, many, many of those people that are coming into the party are, you know, passive paper members. And again, this is not just like a green party thing. Many left projects across at least the global north feel this, the DSA, which is, you know, one of the most volunteerists, one of the most activists, one of the most organizing focused projects that we have still has a majority of members that are paper members and do very little and don't properly commit to the organization. The reason by a number of Belgian workers party are so small is because they actually, to be a member, you have to commit to coming to a meeting every month. And that just means that a lot of people don't become members because you don't commit to coming to the meeting every month. And they're cadre layer, even though it's kind of be powerful, there's actually very small in terms of scale. So it's, you know, this is not just a green party problem, but, you know, we have to emphasize this context. I think some more specific things about the green party, like it, it's a very hyper leader project, like it kind of started with the election of Zach, and it has just been the Zach thing. I think that makes doing things that are outside of Zach or outside of electoralism feel hard or less intuitive. I think there's just a lack of organization in general in the green party. Many of us came into it and we found very disorganized branches, unambitious branches, branches that were kind of just social clubs or associations for, you know, kind of like liberal climate retirees often. And changing those has been, you know, and continuing to change those and transform those is a whole process and obviously text time. So I think like that, that's been definitely a problem. We haven't come into like a really organized party. I think lack of central direction from the party in this regard has been a big problem as well. Like there's no one in the staff team as far as I understand that is tasked with thinking about this or directing this. The, you know, the campaign committee that has elected a conference has been pretty ineffectual in parks. There's doesn't have much power. It's there's not really been a central drive to make this stuff really important. And you know, a lot of that again has been because of I would say events. We've kind of like lurched by election to by election as these moments where we can prove the worth of project to British public. We had this brief, you know, four month window where we were like, oh my god, maybe we can overtake Labour because Starmer was doing so so badly and all the British politics was warped by Starmer's presence as leader of the Labour Party. And all of this kind of slight distracted us and took us away from this project of actually doing, you know, base building and movement linking work. And I think a final thing, maybe some of the sense we could disagree with this. So I'd be interested if you do. But I think a final thing is that just the amount of work that you have to do as a local member or someone that's running a local branch in a party that is heavily decentralized and heavily democratic is just, it's just a lot of work. Like, if you're in a party that's, you know, not particularly decentralized nor particularly democratic, so let's take the PTB, at least in a formal way, it's not, it's not democratic in the same sense. If you're in a base group, you know, like you spend your time one month, you're doing political education, another month, you're doing, you know, outward focused campaigns and organizing work that's directed from the top. It's quite simple in a way. And you have time for it. Whereas the problem in the green party is just every local level, you have to work everything out. All the local parties work differently. Like they have to engage in all these internal democratic processes in all these different ways. Like you have to be contesting these positions in the party. Like you have to be finding council candidates all over time, just finding a full set of council candidates and then running those is just so much work. So there is just, there is just this thing about it's a lot of work, a cause of the decentralized and democratic nature of the party. And I think, you know, one of my, one of my responses to that, which I'll come to is that I don't think we should make the party less democratic. I think we should change some of the democratic processes in some way, but I do think we should probably make the party less decentralized. And I think, and I think the party just needs to have more centralized focus and power. But anyway, so I think there the reasons why it hasn't happened. I think that how we can overcome this is, as I was just saying, like central direction and leadership. Like I think that we need the leadership of the party. And that's both, you know, the leads and the deputy leaders, but also the elected leadership in GPEX and GPC, which are the two member bodies that are elected. And also the staff team to provide resources and direction to support members to do this. I think we need to let go of the old movementist impulse of just, I will put, put some guides together and we'll put it out there and we'll give people the permission to do it and then they'll just do it. That happens in some moments of like upsurge and kind of movement uprising. It doesn't, it doesn't happen all of the time. And I think it's very hard to make that happen in a steadier organization that exists over a period of time. I think we need to, from the centre, get serious about organizing our members around this stuff and have them all. Yeah, I think like directed organizing approach, which understands that, you know, people and parties and organisations can do amazing things, but they need the support from the centre and the support from the staff and we just have to resource that. I know unions have tons of paid staff organisations, be they're registered unions or trade unions. If we want to do base building or organizing work, we also need that somewhat. So that's number one, like we need more central direction and leadership and I'll explain in a minute how we get there. I think number two, we just need to try and build some lighthouse examples and kind of the best branches that we have. So, you know, some of the branches that are most advanced and have most energy needs try and do some. They can be small, but small pilot projects at the party that can then, you know, understand and learn from and then roll out elsewhere. And I think the third thing is that we just. We need to become clearer as to what it means for the party to do community-organising all base building work. I think one of the problems with this is that community-organising and green circles can kind of become anything that involves the community. So I can be like, "Oh, we did some community-organising work, so we did some community outreach to, you know, like find some council candidates or ask them what they thought about this thing." And it just. It becomes like any engagement with the community that's not knocking on their door asking for their vote is community-organising work. And I don't want to set a really high bar as to what organising means and not interested in that, but I do just think we need to become that a bit more specific about what we're talking about in the party when we're talking about these things. So here's my prescription for concrete next steps. I've been deliberately quite directive in this because I am doing some self-critique, which is that I have talked about this in quite vague terms before. I'm going to try and not use the phrase sociability. I'm going to. You know what I mean? I'm going to try and talk quite specifically. If it feels frustrating, if it feels like some random podcaster is taking what your local party should do, please just do something else. It's fine. I have no power over you. But I'm just trying to talk more concretely about this in green party terms because I think it's what's needed. So number one, I think the first thing, and this feels a bit counterintuitive, but I think the first thing is we need to get serious about taking positions in the party. You know, we need green to organise or a, you know, left organisation in the party, but probably green to organise needs to run a serious site for GPEX and GPC in the elections next year, and that needs to include people that run for the campaign's roles, and we need to use those roles to push organising from the centre of the party. Similarly, a conference has a bunch of committees that you can run for, standing orders committee to site our conference work, so we can decide if motions on organising get to the top, campaigns committee, trade union ladies and committee. Like these committees have some influence in the party, not much, but some influence in the party. If you're listening to this and you're agree, remember you can run for these, you can work on a part of it, just email me and I will put your tips for the right people, but like we actually need to take these positions in the party and get serious about that. I think another concrete thing you can do at a local level, and you can do this right now, is that in your branch you can propose and then elect either a movement or union liaison officer, so so they could have done this, so they could have elected a movement liaison officer and they're trying to build a national network of them, and these are people who are tasked to go out and build kind of like real, productive and kind of mutually supportive working relationships with, you know, renters unions or community unions or social movement groups in your area, and I do think this is a really good way of institutionalising it in the local party. I've been doing some work with Greens organised to support them to find candidates to run, and I've realised that you can build this very, you can build this very mutually supportive relationship between the party and the movement org where you can go to the movement org and be like, okay, what incredible people do you have who could run as a green candidate? And you know, it solves a problem for local parties because local parties often struggle to find enough council candidates, and there are often people in these movement groups who do kind of think of running for council at various points, but they don't really know how, and they're not really part of the political party. There's actually like a mutual relationship you can build there. The other way that you can support, I think, which will come again, again, is just mobilising for either pickets or eviction resistance for renters unions. Like, that will come up again and again. These are really good things to do. It'll be politicising for green party members. I think you just need someone in local party that's responsible for doing this and getting it going. So yeah, I would, you know, I'd love to see those local parties because the country is just selecting movement or trading union leaders and officers. I think a third thing that we've got to think seriously about doing is taking space in the community and building something that brings people into contact with the party in a way that is joyful and casual. We've talked about this a lot, but like the thing that I completely always hit on is community meals. I've been part of some really good community meal projects when I worked in South London, and you don't have to do every week. You don't have to run a full time space. You can do it once a month and move to once a week, but you take a space that's visible in the community. You have a board outside and you say like community meal tonight, pay what you can. It's for everybody. It's not just for people who's hard up. You make it so it's for everybody. You make sure the food's incredible. You make sure the food is representative of the area that you're in and different people from different groups and backgrounds can cook different food that like expresses their culture each week. It's explicitly egalitarian. And everyone knows it's run by the green party, but you're not stuffing it down their throats. You're not giving them a lecture on green politics whilst you're there. It's a space for the community to come together to be convivial to meet each other. Ideally, you're sat on long tables together. You're not just sat with your mates and people that you know. That is the kind of thing that makes the green party real in a community, I think. And it's the kind of thing that we should be looking at doing. Two more things I think we should be looking at working out how we can offer material sports working class people. They didn't could do this really well. They found a kind of a wrinkle in national legislation in Germany where they go door to door and they say to people, oh, you might have had an illegal rent rise. We can investigate this for you. We can help you get this money back. That means people then build a relationship with the party where they say, oh, that party I've never voted for them, but they did knock on the door and they help me, they help me with my bills or they help me actually save some money. In the cost of living crisis, this is immediate. It's not just like promising politics in the future. We need to look at similar ways to do it. One possible way might be around rent repayment orders where people who are in unlicensed HMOs can claim back years worth of rent. It's not super simple to get it back, but it is possible. I could totally see a local green party, a certain group to do something like that. And then finally, community direct action. So what I mean by community direct action is not asking for permission, but taking action in the community that makes it better and also creates a conflict or a struggle with some power holder that you want to expose. So the one that I'll talk about, which I think is so green party coded, is the river roadings trust. So it's run by this guy called Paul Palsland. He went viral a bit ago and he's basically been, had this, you know, group of community volunteers working on this river in East London and they clean it up. They do like quite a lot of structural work on the banks of the river and stuff. It's not just, you know, it's not just like litter picking. And they've gotten into this massive fight with the environmental agencies. He's very advantageous. He said, like, well, we're going to sue you if you keep doing this because you're doing what we're supposed to be doing, but we're not doing it. So it exposes the inaction of this agency. It shows that people can come together and just make that community better in a very immediate way. But there's a sense of struggle and conflict to it, which is politicising. And I think it's really, really good. And it goes beyond just your typical kind of like green party little bit. So yeah, those would be the concrete things that I would suggest. As I say, I'm trying to be concrete. I apologise to be indirective. I think I also probably don't apologise to be indirective. One thing that I want to add to your analysis, which I found really helpful and really enlightening in terms of the kind of internal machinations of the green party and your thoughts on organising. One thing that I want to add is I think in a context where we feel like we're losing and where it is uncertain, whether we can put the fires out that are burning around the world, election victories feel psychologically really motivating. You know, that classic thing that we argue, if you're running a campaign, you know, in order to keep morale up, in order to keep motivation up, in order to keep coming back, you have to have small victories. And because of the way our election cycle works, where we've got local elections and then morality's and general elections, there are lots of opportunities for us to have these moments of euphoria where we win something. And I think we can't underestimate the psychological pool that that has on outside a burgeoning party like the green party. I say it's burgeoning, it's been around for decades, obviously, but in terms of burgeoning in the wider political landscape, that the impacts that has, that the euphoria, the internal euphoria that that creates when you see your leader like smashing it on question time and that converts to election results, like that feels amazing. And it can be, I think, really difficult to make a political argument as to why that really good feeling shouldn't be the centre of the activity that we do. Or it can be the dual centre, you know, like I really, I want to emphasize that I don't, I think that stuff is really important. I think if it's just the only thing that we're doing will create a very brittle and thin project. And I think there can be this dual centre where you can, you know, see Zach smashing it on question time. Whilst also So, you know, running a wonderful community meal in the place that you live with me, people they never meet before, and doing that through the party, that should be the kind of, you know, the dual thing. Some great quotables from that hot-take Joe. This is not a directive, you know, some interesting clarifications there. There's a few things here, I mean, one of them for me is really important, and I think you've really felt this over the course of the last three months of green politics is this question about what you do when the attention isn't going your way, right? And how important it is to have forms of community in politics and organizing beyond that kind of attention or economy and the attritional warfare that comes with it, because you need those spaces both to be connecting with people outside the party and also to be building capacities within the party when shit isn't you're going your way in high politics, right? It's really important that you have that right. It's really clear to me that the space is there in the green party to do this kind of stuff. I mean, even when you think about some of the more advanced bits of the green party where in London, for example, where they've made huge electoral ground, you know, when I speak to people in those situations where they might even be in office, so much of what they'll talk to you about is how they want more relationships with people in working class communities. They want more relationships with people on the left doing good campaign work, right? They want more of these like congruent relationships with people who are doing stuff. They want that kind of tension almost to exist because it's beneficial for them in office and in power. And I think that's a really interesting to the spaces there. But I think it's really difficult, right, because I think there's a green surge, right? That's what we went through this time last year and in the six months afterwards, which means you have loads of people in to party politics and organized politics we weren't necessarily in politics before. Lots of those people were paper members, but lots of them who decided no, I'm going to become a really active part of my branch. Sometimes they're creating branches from scratch, right? And when you create a branch from scratch, like you have to make sure that the branch runs effectively, right? Like you actually have to run the branch, and then you run the branch, which is a big bureaucratic task in and of itself, right, which requires lots of time and energy, then a bi-election pops up, right? Whether it's a wardsie or whether it's a general, right? And that becomes the whole thing that you have to throw your energy behind, right? And so it's quite hard in our moment to find that kind of political space to think about longer term projects, about organizing, about all of that kind of stuff. And all of this is without even acknowledging the fact that lots of people who may become members of the green pipe don't ever clue what base building is. Don't ever clue what organizing power is, isn't what they signed up for necessarily when they became a green party member, right? Like that wasn't the thing that they ticked on the card to say they were going to engage in politics. They saw an active opportunity with the Plancky project in politics, right? So you also have to win the argument as well, which is why I really thought your take was brilliant, right? Because it's a part of let's actually disseminate the argument for why this is important stuff to be doing. And here's the practical steps in which you can do it because we do have to win the argument with people. I'm thinking a lot about this, you know, I'm not a green party member, but I do do organise it. And with bread and roses, one of the things that we're doing at the minute that we just decided upon is that we're going to have a kind of series of events each orientated around a particular aspect of the cost of living crisis. So for example, we're going to have an event next month about food and, you know, I know I love food and I talk about food a lot in this podcast and got a bit of a belly, but we're going to start off with food. And we're going to talk about the different ways in which food is absolutely pivotal to the cost of living for people and we're going to invite people for a community meal as the kind of basis for that kind of conversation, right, is what brings people together. I think stuff like that is really, really basically crucial, but I think there's a problem as well at the same time. And so that's why it's really good, Joe, that you outline some actual directives, if you like, which is that organizing is a strategic priority in lots of ways, but determining what organizing you do can often be quite overwhelming and it can feel quite diffuse, right, because trying to choose a version of political organizing in the absence of a kind of national political energy and a national priority actually can be quite difficult to reckon with and that becomes the kind of harder meatier work of actually thinking through what are the gaps in the place that you live in, right, what are the weaknesses of your enemies, but also where are the kind of spaces that you can fill and it does require being much more immersed in in your city or your area or your constituency because it's working out where you're not stepping on people's toes and where there's actually something that's worth doing, right, and something that needs doing. The only other thing that I would say is I think we have to get better and it's hard because all of this is very time draining, but we have to get better at conceptualising the electoral part of a project as central to the base building part of it and vice versa, right. If you elect a councillor or you have a campaign to elect a councillor, part of that is building the platform of the political organisation locally and building the base of the organisation locally so that you can therefore increase your capacities and your profile to actually make some of the organisations stuff happening and vice versa, and I don't think we're thinking those terms enough nationally when we think about what role and what connection elections have to base building work. Yeah, for sure, and I think you're looking ideally for relationships or dynamics of mutual complementarity, so where you can end up in working relationships with movement organisations or community organisations that have a base that is not the green party's base or with communities in a way that benefits, I don't say benefits, but like builds the party and builds the strength of the party whilst also building the strength of the class or the organisation that you're working with and yeah, I have found this as I say doing some work with Greens organised and chatting to movement organisations nationally and like renters unions and smaller trade unions and stuff, I realise there's this mutually beneficial thing where often these organisations have people who can be amazing candidates, they do a ton of organising but they also recognise that some of their work is campaigning and some of their work is legislative and they can see that having one of their members in parliament or in a local council or whatever could be incredibly beneficial for them at the same time, it's incredibly beneficial for the green party because you get to reach communities that you just would not otherwise and you get to bring people into the party that might have incredible politics and incredible adaptive experience or whatever, and people with really compelling stories for why they're there and why they're doing what they're doing. So I think it's trying to identify these elements where it doesn't feel like either organisation is taking something from the other but you're greater than you some of your parts and it is the best example I've found so far of the party as movement articulator, I think there was an article where in a viewpoint magazine about this, it was really good and how the parties should try to become an articulator of movement demands and movement subjectivity, use of movement power and stuff and having movement candidates explicitly run through the party as DSA NYC has done, as LFI have done, it just seems like a very good way, a very good way of doing it. I'd say with regards to how overwhelming it is trying to work out what organising to do in your place, in the place that you live also how important it is because obviously you want to do something that's actually worthwhile and impactful where you live and it's appropriate. I kind of fall on the side of the perfection being the enemy of the good here and so far as I think what happens is a lot of people get very stuck in there kind of like mapping, researching, thinking out stuff and then never end up making it to the point of actually doing a thing because when you actually do a thing and you get a thing rolling so you're running a weekly community dinner or monthly community dinner, I guarantee there'll be loads of people that want to get involved in that because it's the kind of thing that feels good to get involved and people love me another people where they live, they love cooking food, it feels good, people will want to get involved in that. But in the abstract kind of like diffuse planning and research stage of like what best thing could we do locally, we have to map the whole local community or whatever. Those processes just don't often end up, they don't often end up actually finishing I find it. I'm not saying it's not worth doing if you do have a group of people who have the energy to do it but I sometimes do kind of think that number one, you don't really know whether things are useful or not until you try it. And also number two, there are some problems which are national and aren't locally specific. And one of the reasons why I come to community meals is not because I think people are necessarily going hungry and they'll go to those meals because they're out of food, but it's because people are lonely and they'll go to those meals because they want to meet people who are from that community. And you know, we all know that like loneliness is rampant in many communities across the country. It's not just like a specific thing in a specific city. And then the final thing I'll say is that you know Jonas think you're really right to emphasize the work that goes into running a local branch. But we've got a double problem in many bits of London now and that it's not only that all of our green caterer putting loads of work into running the local branch, they're also putting loads of work into running the local council. So you know, all of the people, frankly, who would have been doing a lot of the stuff. stuff that I'm talking about and would have been the people driving it forward have now been sucked up to be counsellors and I do kind of think it's one of the tragedies of the green project at this stage is that we wouldn't so many councils. I think it had been fantastic to win tons of counsellors but I actually think running the councils is a complete fucking nightmare and for all of the reasons that we talked about on the show before but you know in summary because they have very little room to maneuver, very constrained budgets and credible levels of responsibility, very difficult to communicate and get your ideas your politics to cut through. It's just like really hard thing to do from the left in the context and yeah it's just a bit of a shame that a lot of this work that would have been done by those people is not being done. Obviously the answer to that is that we need to build more people up and bring them through but that takes time and that takes work too. Lovely stuff, thanks for that hot take Joe and finally to round out and say goodbye, what should everyone else be reading or listening to this week? Joe? Okay I got two things warm political one definitely not. The first thing is that I went to prepare for this hot take I went back to the submission that organising for popular power put to the world transformed assemblies last year so these were assemblies to debate the future in the direction of the party they were implicitly looking at your party RIP and you know they put together this incredible submission which I think if it were adopted by the green party would be absolutely fantastic. You know like a really concrete and concrete was also theoretical understanding of like what the different strands of organising work that a party could or should do the tensions within gauging with existing organisations and not and I really just think that anyone interested in this work should go yeah should go back and read that stuff because although you know it says your party a lot and you could almost control that and just replace your party for the green party and 80% of it would still work and I just yeah I think it was really really good. I'd say the thing the non-political thing that I've been absolutely loving this week and has been sending me into a kind of like calm bliss like state is a podcast called Get Birding with Sean Bean and it's based who knew but Sean Bean's got into Birdwatching and it's like incredibly gentle incredible I'm not into Birdwatching I think I will end up being into Birdwatching but it's this incredibly gentle podcast by Sean Bean's walking around you know bits of sort of that or Devon or whatever talking to other birders and there's like bird song in the background and you know he's like oh yeah look at that sparrow hook that sparrow hook's amazing blah blah blah and it's just I mean I do it I listen to it in the gym now and I'm not really sure it's I'm not sure it helps me lift the heaviest weight that I could lift but it definitely definitely calms me down. There you go. If you want to go and listen to Ned talk about his stocks then that's the podcast for you. Shinesh. Given the kind of big chunk of this episode was on Palestine and Zionism I would strongly recommend reading Resisting Erasure by Adam Hinnier, Robert Knox and Rafseida. Yes called Resisting Erasure, Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine and I think what is it's a small little book and what is fantastic about it is it cuts through I think some of the confusing formulations around imperialism and anti-colonism and political strategy within the Palestine solidarity movement by basing our understanding of the connection between the West and Palestine in the material realities of capitalism and imperialism today. So it starts with that material context and out of that comes the politics and the strategy rather than starting with a series of abstract principles and kind of generalising from there and I think sometimes in our movements we do for victim to that where we start with what we feel is moral clarity and then do our politics and strategising and kind of tactical maneuvering from there and it's just a really fantastic book that if you want to understand the connection between Palestine and capitalism and Palestine and imperialism then yeah this is a book for you. Fantastic for me this week it's a book that I'm just really surprised that I hadn't read before to be honest with you it's a book called Familiar Stranger between Bill Swatch and Stuart Hall it's like a kind of I mean it's kind of suggested that it's a conversation between the two of them but it's much more like a kind of memoir of Stuart Hall the you know one of the founders of cultural studies incredibly erudite and impressive black intellectual and it's it's just it's just an amazing book it's so moving it's such a wonderful collision of theory as a way of constructing the personal and as a way of explaining the personal and thinking about the place of the person in history it's amazing and it spends a lot of time on Hall's life in Jamaica the kind of first 30 or 40 years of his life and his eventual migration to Britain both Oxford and Birmingham and London and it's just incredible learn so much about so many different bits of Britain but also Jamaica and I really recommend everybody give it a read thanks so much for today guys we love your feedback so please leave us a comment on Spotify Apple pod live for the party at gmail.com don't be a stranger see you layers bye this is an ampersounds production