Green Party conference agreed to support the policy
Green co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.
The Green Party of England and Wales has formally backed a four day working week for the first time. Members of the party voted to support the policy at their autumn conference in Brighton.
Previously, leading Greens had given warm support for the principle of a four day week, but it did not formally sit in the party’s policy book.
Following the motion, the party has endorsed moving towards a 32 hour working week in the medium term. According to the party’s new policy, workers would have a ‘right to request these reduced hours at no loss of pay and without detriment’.
The motion was overwhelmingly passed by members at the conference.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Greenpeace is perhaps better known for boarding oil rigs and scaling buildings, but they have always mobilised people to fight for climate action. This time, they’re doing something even more ambitious. They have launched a nationwide door-knocking campaign to recruit at least one million Climate Voters ahead of the next election, and they’re inviting everyone who cares about a healthier, safe and fairer future to take part.
Over the next few weeks and months, thousands of people from all walks of life will go door to door holding conversations about climate, nature and other vital issues on the doorstep. Some of these ‘climate canvassers’ will then train other volunteers to do the same, aiming to create a snowball effect rippling through the country, but especially in those marginal seats where just a few hundreds or thousands of votes will decide the election.
This growing community of Climate Voters will put pressure on all political parties to up their game on climate and nature right now; they’ll vote with climate and nature in mind and crucially hold the next government to account. Climate Voters will give a voice and political agency to a climate majority that already exists in this country, but that’s all too often ignored by politicians. Many MPs know most of the UK public are worried about the climate crisis and want more government action, but they don’t think these are issues people will vote on. We’re going to prove them wrong, and turn the climate majority into a political force all parties will have to reckon with.
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay have delivered their speech to their party’s autumn conference with a call for key public services to be brought into public ownership. The conference speech – likely the last before the next general election – ripped into the failures of privatisation in sectors from water to the health service.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian_Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Ramsay told attendees: “Private water companies are dumping sewage into our rivers and seas, while taking on billions in debt to fund dividend payments to shareholders.”
He went on to say: “We’ll have the platform to say what none of the other parties has had the courage to say: that the privatised water companies have failed, that there must be no more shareholder payouts until the water companies stop dumping sewage in our rivers, that the money we pay for our water bills must be spent updating our infrastructure not filling the pockets of shareholders, and that water is run as the public service that it should be, not the profit-making scheme that it’s become – by bringing it back into public hands.”
Ramsay’s comments were met with eruptions of cheers and applause from the audience.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Denyer, meanwhile, highlighted the issues currently facing the NHS. She said: “The NHS and our other public services have been brought to breaking point by 13 years of Conservative cuts – with patients and staff paying the price. Has it ever been so hard to find a dentist? Have we ever had to wait so long to see an NHS consultant? Those that can afford it are forking out for private health care, those who can’t afford it are left behind. And meanwhile, no solutions are being offered.”
She went on to criticise the record and position of both Labour and the Tories on the health service, telling attendees: “The Tories blame medical staff – those frontline workers calling for a long overdue and well-deserved pay rise, and Labour’s promise of ‘reform’ rings hollow given the scale of the crisis – and hints at more privatisation by the back door. We know we can do better than this.”
Finishing her comments on the health service, Denyer called for the NHS to be reinstated as a fully public service – with free dental provision included. She said: “The Green Party believes in an NHS that sits fully in public hands, free at the point of use for all – including dentistry – and with four Green MPs in Parliament, we’ll never let the other parties forget it.
“We know that claps don’t pay the bills. We believe in decent pay and fair conditions for public sector workers and an NHS that provides the health safety net it was designed to all those years ago.”
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Elsewhere in their address, Denyer accused the Labour Party of being “more interested in fossil fuel investors getting their dirty profits” than addressing the climate crisis. She told the conference: “Energy bills in the UK are nearly £2.5bn higher than they would have been if the government hadn’t dismissed climate policy over the last decade. Not content with that, they are now doubling down on their climate vandalism: granting permission for a huge coal mine; failing to get a single bid for vital offshore wind projects; weakening our net zero commitments; and opening up the enormous Rosebank oilfield.
“And Labour are following them every step of the way – willing onlookers to the Conservatives’ climate crimes. Rosebank? ‘The right decision,’ says Gordon Brow[n]. Their reasoning: ‘investor certainty’. Sounds good right? But let us translate: Labour is more interested in fossil fuel investors getting their dirty profits, than in taking meaningful climate action.”
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Donor Dale Vince is abandoning Just Stop Oil and is instead intending to fund a campaign encouraging young people to vote and to vote Labour. He claims
The dividing lines have been drawn: Labour is green, the Tories are not. A vote for anyone other than Labour, or no vote at all, is a vote for another Tory government – this time with a mandate to pursue its anti-green crusade. Preventing that from happening is the only way to “just stop oil”.
I fundamentally disagree with him. I see no evidence that the Labour Party under Keith Starmer is in any way ‘green’. The Red Tories have made huge efforts to be indistinguishable from their Blue brothers and their intention to continue with Rosebank shows that they are in no way green and totally willing to analing Murdoch and the fossil fuel industry in exactly the same way.
9.40pm: A vote for Labour is a vote for the wolves dressed as sheep covert Conservatives and most definitely not a ‘green’ vote. It is so important to use votes to register support for climate action but that is certainly not done by voting Labour. I suggest that Dale Vince is blind to Labour’s obvious and glaring flaws.
