“Only the truth is revolutionary.” That’s the underpinning philosophy of this site. By that criterion Joseph Healey is in the same pantheon as Spartacus and Gracchus Babeuf. Joseph is the Green Party’s International Coordinator and the co-convenor of the Green Left. In this talk to the Socialist Resistance seminar on broad parties he surveys the…
“Only the truth is revolutionary.” That’s the underpinning philosophy of this site. By that criterion Joseph Healey is in the same pantheon as Spartacus and Gracchus Babeuf. Joseph is the Green Party’s International Coordinator and the co-convenor of the Green Left. In this talk to the Socialist Resistance seminar on broad parties he surveys the European Greens. He does not seem too impressed but he is honest.
I hope, he will communicate his experiences with the continental Greens to his party … it is my impression, that several members are still thinking e.g that the German Greens still have a large hard left “Fundi” wing … in fact, nearly all of them left the party in the period 1988-1992 (like the ÖkoLi around Jutta Ditfurth or the “eco-socialists” around Ebermann/Trampert), a big chunk of the soft left (like 5 MLAs in Hamburg) decided to leave the Greens because of the German wars against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in 1999-2001 (some are still leaving like two MLAs in Nordrhein-Westfalia and Saarland last year who switched to “Die Linke”) … the history of the German Greens provide us with the experience, how socialists should not work inside a broader party
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e – I think he does, frequently, and my impression is that there is general agreement about the majority of the European greens who are substantially to the right of the party in england and wales (shamefully I know less about Scotland)
Which is probably why many greens in Europe view the gpew as a kind of embarrassingly left wing nephew who they hope will snap out of it any day now.
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that’s true … as far as I know, apart from some figures like the German MP Christian Ströbele or around the French youth organization Chiche! there are only a few (reformist) socialists left in the green parties on the continent (don’t know, if Alain Lipietz still considers himself a socialist)
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Jim
The Scottish Green party seems to sit in the middle. It is less left wing than GPEW, but still has some good socialists in it. Rather unfortunatley the Green party MSPs voted to support the suspecnion of the SSP MSP’s from Holyrood after the g8 demonstrations – which was seriously undemocratic, and the SSP lost a lot of money due to the suspensions.
I recommend reading Scottish left Review, that often has very informative articles by Scottish Greens. and indeed the last issue has two or three articles either by Grren party members, or about Grren politics:
http://www.slrp.co.uk/test1/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
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Thanks Andy – I’ll take a look
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Joseph revealed the Danish Greens may be losing their franchise in the European green set up. Does anyone know whether Joseph meant by Danish greens the red/green alliance? Does anyone know much about recent developments in the Danish red/green alliance?
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Liam redux 
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