Keith Taylor – 2006 Speech to the Green Party’s Conference

The speech made by Keith Taylor, the then Principal Speaker of the Green Party (alongside Caroline Lucas) on 22 September 2006.

Great to welcome delegates here to the greenest city in the uk where, just 18 months ago we secured the highest ever UK general election vote and where next year, we are looking forward to significant gains in the local elections

This is our first national conference since this May’s local elections where there was an increase of almost a third in the number of cllrs across the country. The elections that saw massive Labour losses and the LibDems failing to win a single seat. I’d like to congratulate those winning candidates and their local parties – their diligence and determination is an example to us all.

What those results show is that people are turning to the Greens because the traditional politics, whether at Westminster or in their Town Hall is no longer part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.

What those results show is that people are recognising that our vision of environmental, social and economic justice is the right vision for the 21st century.

Those votes have been given to us so we can continue our work ..So that Caroline Lucas can fight for Fair Trade not Free Trade so Jean Lambert can defend public services and human rights. So Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson can carry on the greening of our capital city, as Londoners clearly want. So councillors across the country can bring the green revolution to people’s doorsteps..making improvements to people’s lives.

We are doing all this, and more, delivering concrete political achievements in all the decision-making chambers to which we’re elected

And it doesn’t take much imagination to realise how much more we’ll be able achieve once the first Greens are elected as MP’s to Westminster,

Fellow greens, at the start of the 21st century humankind faces a climate change challenge which could literally end our time as the dominant species on this planet.

Over the last 200 years there have been social and political challenges which have been solved by the emergence of new philosophies, new movements.

At the beginning of the 19th century out of UK population of 16m, only 400,000 people were allowed a vote. After dedicated campaigns from reformers it took till 1928 until all adults, men and women had a vote.

And it wasn’t til midway through the 20th century, in a bid to combat ignorance, disease, squalor, and poverty the Beveridge Report laid the foundations of the Welfare State.

New thinking to provide new solutions to new problems.

And now it is our climate that is on a critical path in world affairs, because of the activities of humankind.

People are hungry for a solution, the planet is desperate for mercy, and it is green thinkers like us who have the answers..

But when people look to the Westminster political parties for those climate change answers, what do they get?

With the party of government, for all their posturing and ‘world leadership’ on global warming, they see carbon emissions going up not coming down under new labour!

Furthermore, when Blair eventually does go, the country has to hope in vain his replacement will be any better – the New Labour project has entirely failed to lead the world on climate change by example – and they’ve proved leading by spin alone just doesn’t work.

And when we look to the tories/lib dems –

It’s good that environmental awareness has at last surfaced onto the mainstream agenda – because18 months ago at the last election it was nowhere.

Indeed Cameron – architect of the brand new hug-a-hoodie-ride-a-bike- conservatism, failed to mention climate change at all when he wrote the Tories last manifesto.

And as for Ming, just look and see what decisions the LibDems take when they are in power, more roads like the M74 in Scotland which was branded by FoE as probably the worst environmental decision ever taken by the Scottish Assembly.

That’s repeated across the UK with more runways approved or supported by the LDs in Manchester, Exeter and Sheffield

But this new found enthusiasm from the Tories and the LibDEms for tackling climate change is hollow without understanding the need for wholesale radical economic reform. The green taxes proposed by the Lds this week in Brighton are only part of the solution. A part that won’t work in isolation.

Economic management is at the heart of tackling carbon reduction.

For as long as the Westminster parties remain wedded to the joint beliefs the ‘market’ will deliver social and environmental solutions and that unrestrained unfettered economic growth at home and abroad must be given free rein we will make no real progress

They are clinging to the economic strategies of the past which were about increasing consumption, about growth at any cost. But that growth brings effects the future can simply no longer absorb.

The economic strategies of the past will not meet the needs of the future.

Those traditional targets have no room for restrained and channeled growth, for reigning in our addiction to oil, and profligate energy use

Nor do they accommodate or promote a world where simple solutions, using technology we already have…for wind farms, for solar panels, for energy efficient homes, … that could start us on the road to recovery and adaptation where local, small measures adopted on a global scale could make the high energy lifestyles of today unrecognizable.

TERROR

Since our last conference we’ve also see the fifth anniversary of the twin tower attack and since Bush and Blair declared their disastrous War on Terror.

Five years on but disaster follows disaster and the world is now a far more dangerous place than it was five years ago…

Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of people have died as a result of the War on Terror, most of them civilians. Crimes against humanity have been committed, and the situation in the Middle East is bloodier than ever.

The Americans have simply thrown international law, and respect for international law, out of the window.

Under the new neo-con world law, set and sheriffed by the US they seek to secure both continuous oil supplies and the destruction of any groups and governments perceived as hostile to US policies, democratically elected or not.

Pre-emptive strike policies have now become a valid form of defence, and god help anyone who stands in their way. Right-thinking people the world over hope the lessons of Iraq are learnt before the same mistakes are made in Iran.

This policy is both illegal – It violates the UN charter – and immoral

And our own country’s involvement has been ignoble and shameful with Yo Blair’s act-now-pray-later-anything-you-say-boss-brown-nosing adoration of Bush and anything American.

Blair is responsible for crimes against humanity and should be tried alongside Bush accordingly It’s not only abroad that the New Labour project is intent on leaving their damaging mark on our society.

With both Blair and Brown’s support for a Trident nuclear weapons replacement they are spending billions in contravention of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.

And in championing Trident, a replacement for a system which was designed to be a deterrent in a cold war which no longer exists, they have the full support of the Tories, and though the Lib Dems might be sitting on the fence we al know which way they are going to jump!

Trident – the nuclear weapons system that, as part of the world wide web of WMD’s, ensures we are all only seconds away from annihilation at any one time.

Tragedy is that whilst the nuclear nations spend billions on more efficient ways of killing people, millions die of malnutrition or lack of clean water for want of aid

And at home, when we look at the energy crisis and government enthusiasm for a new programme of nuclear power stations we can see just how out of touch the they really are, both with the aspirations of this generation and any sense of responsibility to generations yet to come.

We already have 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste in storage,every single tax payer in this country is already paying 1000 pounds a head to clear up the toxic legacy of our current generation – but the government want to build more! There are better, cleaner, safer and cheaper alternatives, that don’t endanger our children’s health. That provide cheap and reliable energy and an end to fuel poverty, that don’t leave a dirty dangerous and expensive legacy for future generations to deal with.

We should immediately rule out a greater use of the nuclear option and focus on cleaner, safer, renewable forms of energy. There should be a national strategy in place now to address the impacts of Peak Oil

The challenge for the Green Party

So how can the GP increase the pressure? Simply put, to achieve change through the political process we nee more greens elected.We already have the policies that can appeal to millions, now we have to sharpen up our act in admin delivering our message We need to be presenting our case across doorsteps, in works canteens, in colleges and meetings. We must all be messengers that another world is possible We must keep faith as other parties make their half-hearted attempts to jump on the green bandwagon.As it says on the back of a pair of Levis, beware of imitations.the time is arriving for our party, we have a job to do and a responsibility to step forward with our green solutions

CALL TO ARMS

The UK needs a new political order to deliver a new political will, to breathe life into the aspirations of people in their millions waking up to the real threat climate change poses, to put people at the centre of policies and curb the corporate takeover of the UK.

The Green Party are a central part of that new political order

That’s because, unlike the major parties with their self interest in preserving their own structures and government’s corporate links, we’re different. We are honest, trustworthy and courageous. We are not afraid to challenge and change the political climate, and the patronage that supports it. We need drastic, radical action on global warming – not tinkering round the edges. We have already adopted Tradeable Carbon Quotas and Contraction and Convergence – these together with a basket of other measures are solutions that will work and they must be widely adopted right now because we don’t have time to squander.

The Westminster parties have failed to take decisive action, as yet they have not adopted these models

But the greens are prepared to do this, because we are motivated by more than political expediency and tomorrow’s headlines. Our overarching ambition at home and abroad is a just and sustainable world.

This means facing some hard choices and having the courage to challenge the status quo of life in Britain today and the effects it has

….Something the other parties aren’t prepared to do.

They aren’t prepared to look at a country where…

1 in 4 children grow up in poverty where the gulf between rich and poor is every day widening, public services are being eroded schools and hospitals sold off to the highest bidder and civil liberties eroded in the name of respect where billions are wasted on the Big Brother ID card scheme

….no, the other parties don’t want to go there..let alone say “something has go to change”

They would prefer not to admit that…

the world’s policeman has turned into a bully-boy and words like intolerance, bigotry, hatred, persecution and ethnic cleansing are stock in trade of evil leaders and the rich live in excess at the expense of the poor or that the world’s poorest are suffering the impacts of our over travelled, over consumptive lives in the West, and where extreme weather events are more frequent and the dead and displaced are measured in their millions

We must not shirk from confronting these wrongs

We have a part to play in returning true environmental, social and economic justice whether it be to the Transit camps at DarfurOr the refugee camps in Gaza

Conference, I think now is the time that we must declare war on carbon.

This is a war we CAN win, and a war we MUST win for human survival. The front line is here, the time for action is now.

And I believe the Greens are the party with real and pragmatic plans to get us out of this hole

A party that understands to lower our emissions by 90% by 2050

reduce energy demand source from renewable sources, improve efficiency.

..We must have binding , compulsory carbon reduction targets

We need to control and reduce aviation emissions, with a special aviation emission trading system

We need to look at the way we live and how we can change that to fit within the resources of one world.

And we must shout loud and clear that voters shouldn’t be taken in by the green-sounding platitudes of the gray parties.

There is only one party that’s really green, and that’s the Green Party

And we have the solutions that the future needs.Because we only have one planet, and we only have one chance, and that is why we will continue to win peoples hearts and minds. And that’s why people will vote Green.

Conference, we must never give up our quest, because the future is in our hands, and history waits to see if humankind is up to the challenge we’ve been given.

Thank you.