Posted by lynn in news | 1 Comment
A European Super-Party? No thanks
Why work towards a European super-party when so many Europeans actually rejected the European super-state, asks John Norris, former International Co-ordinator of the Green Party of England & Wales, who took, for the Green Party of England and Wales, part in the discussions of the Lisbon Treaty.
Dear Lynn
I’m afraid I won’t be coming <to your debate about the future of the EGP in Amsterdam>. My health currently leaves something to be desired. I am now retired, and I don’t really have the resources available for such trips.
That is also, if I am honest, a ‘polite answer’. Here is a honest reply to
your consultation.
The deciding factor for me and others about the future of the European
Union was the Lisbon Treaty, and the way that was handled. It was a
scandal, and frankly a disgrace to those involved.
The process was particularly dishonest, and Greens in Europe, particularly
the Green Group in the European Parliament, connived in it. I think the
values over which those Greens have trampled in that process are important,
and cast doubts on the democratic basis of the European Green project as a
whole.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of your personal advocacy of a European
super-state, or a single party. I think you are wrong, and much prefer a
looser federal association of nation states and parties. You have had
enough to do with us in the UK to understand why most of us here think that
way. We are an island, whatever the Eurocrats may pretend to believe!
However, I would have been very happy to debate that with you and
colleagues, if I felt the debate was fair and democratic. I would have
enjoyed our discussions.
I regret that some of your Green colleagues in Europe lacked such
principles, and instead succumbed to the temptation of getting the wretched
Lisbon Treaty through the back door, after it had been clearly _lost_ by
democratic vote. There is a price for such conduct.
If they throw out the principles on which the co-operation was
established, then I am sure someone with your experience can appreciate why
some of us – indeed a clear majority of the electorate in the UK – really
don’t want to know in future.
It’s not just a decision that was wrong, but the way in which it was and
would be made. I am not at all surprised that our electorate reacted in the
way they did, and that the reputation of the EU sank so low in the UK.
Cohn-Bendit and the rest earned it!
On the Continent, there is a feeling that the British are somehow being
unreasonable. Why are we so ‘obstinate’, and why do we think that way when
all the Europeans want is unity? Why are we not ‘better Europeans’? The
Lisbon Treaty episode does at least give you and others a clear reason. Put
bluntly, for which I apologise, we don’t like cheating. And we don’t
respect the results.
John Norris, international@jnorris.org.uk
Dear John
Sorry for the delay, and thanks for the honest answer.
Now at least you have made your point of view very clear – in the past I sometimes wondered whether you were playing the devils’ advocate, speaking on behalf of ‘the English’, the ‘Green Party of England and Wales’, or for yourself. You said you would have been happy to debate with us if you felt the debate were fair and democratic. Which debate? The debate within our supporters’ community, or the debate within the EGP – or even the EU?
As you know the debate within the EU is beyond our control, even the debate within the EGP we hardly can influence. But if you mean the debate within our supporters’ community, I object. You are most welcome to come and speak. And even if you won’t, your views will be taken into account – I have put your text online, promising people to put your name there once you’ve authorised me to do so.
Now about the contents. First: the party.
1. I object to your putting words in my mouth that are not mine. I’m not in favour of your big one size fits all-party, a centralistic Brussels centred body that decides – however democratically voted – what all its members should think and do. Even in a tiny country like the Netherlands, where all members can come and vote in conferences and travel back in one single day – at costs even the jobless can afford – I have always warned against centralistic tendencies, because they remind me of democratic centralism in former red days, where the grassroots served to legitimate the leadership’s views. I think one of the strong points of the Greens always has been diversity: the members come from all sorts of movements, some focusing on ecology, others on social equality or human rights, some deep red or green, others more moderate, some rooted in rural environments, others in metropoles. I’m not in favour of blending away those differences into a characterless whole – only of practical compromises when joint action is called for – because that would bereave the movement of its soul, and most members of their drive because only the centrists would have their way.
2. So much for my views of what a Green party should be like. Now why have such a party – or call it a generator of ideas rooted in society – on a European scale? Two reasons:
Because there happens to be a European Union that decides in their names. You may be against it, but it exists. And even the English Greens participate in the decision-making; in fact they have a bigger say in the EP than in their own parliament.
3. Democracy
I could bring forward my objections to the current system: a EP now chosen according to the district system the English Greens are s much opposed to because it favours the big parties whilst making life impossible for small and emerging ones. I could argue that this system forces people to vote along national lines and forces parties into thinking within national frameworks, which confirms a status quo we’ve inherited from the 19th century.
But I know that just doing away with borders as Greens would mean that we would deny a reality some of them already have difficulty coping with – as one of your party friends told me during the GPEW conference in Birmingham (where I dearly missed you by the way). It would be like opening the fences in a zoo: the big parties would massacre the small ones.
But leaving all those fences would mean that you would deny an emerging reality, that of people who think along other than national lines, who live an international life. I’d say: give them a space to develop new forms of democracy and participation, instead of forcing them to remain behind your nation state bars. Don’t do that by giving them their own cage, because that’s not how the Green movement was born, but give them the space to interact with the others within a framework you yourself have helped to create: the ‘individual supportership’, an EGP membership without the ‘teeth’ to devour the national parties, but with all the possibilities to contribute to a stronger Green movement in more democratic EGP and EU.
Best wishes, take care
Lynn