Earlier green party successes in UK

RyanF

Banned
In last years UK general election the Green Party polled 1.1 million votes (3.8% of the total) but only returned 1 MP (Caroline Lucas in Brighton, now co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales) due to the FPTP electoral system. This was the greatest success a green party had ever had in a general election, but could they have been more successful earlier?

In the 1979 GE their predecessor the Ecology Party gained just under 40,000 votes, not a bad increase for a party that had only been founded 4 years earlier (succeeding the UK's first environmental party PEOPLE, itself only founded in 1972). The Ecology Party saw their membership increase tenfold during this time, becoming the fourth largest political party in the UK, but were unable to capitalise on these successes and were soon overtaken as the fourth party by the newly formed SDP.

In the late 1980s the Green Party (following a name change in 1985) saw major electoral success in the 1989 European parliament elections (helped by increased environmental concerns after the Chernobyl disaster), gaining over 2 million votes (the third largest vote-share, eclipsing the recently merged Social and Liberal Democrats) cast in the greatest electoral success of a green party in any election in the UK, but again due to FPTP they failed to gain any seats.


How can the Greens/Ecology capitalise on the momentum they had built up in the late 1970s and late 1980s to gain elected representation before they did OTL, and how would this earlier representation effect the way green politics developed? Would overpopulation remain a concern of the party, would they still feel the need to greater emulate their continental cousins from the 1980s onwards, would the party still split into separate English & Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish parties as happened in 1990?
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
In last years UK general election the Green Party polled 1.1 million votes (3.8% of the total) but only returned 1 MP (Caroline Lucas in Brighton, now co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales) due to the FPTP electoral system. This was the greatest success a green party had ever had in a general election, but could they have been more successful earlier?

In the 1979 GE their predecessor the Ecology Party gained just under 40,000 votes, not a bad increase for a party that had only been founded 4 years earlier (succeeding the UK's first environmental party PEOPLE, itself only founded in 1972). The Ecology Party saw their membership increase tenfold during this time, becoming the fourth largest political party in the UK, but were unable to capitalise on these successes and were soon overtaken as the fourth party by the newly formed SDP.

In the late 1980s the Green Party (following a name change in 1985) saw major electoral success in the 1989 European parliament elections (helped by increased environmental concerns after the Chernobyl disaster), gaining over 2 million votes (the third largest vote-share, eclipsing the recently merged Social and Liberal Democrats) cast in the greatest electoral success of a green party in any election in the UK, but again due to FPTP they failed to gain any seats.


How can the Greens/Ecology capitalise on the momentum they had built up in the late 1970s and late 1980s to gain elected representation before they did OTL, and how would this earlier representation effect the way green politics developed? Would overpopulation remain a concern of the party, would they still feel the need to greater emulate their continental cousins from the 1980s onwards, would the party still split into separate English & Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish parties as happened in 1990?

I say this in the nicest possible way but... less kooks? More serious recognition of climate issues and a couple of well off backers.
 
Obviously, having an environmental catastrophe or a nuclear accident and then capitalising on it in the media. That's how Green politics tends to break through. But the Greens in that period were woefully bad at using the media to their advantage, which is why the Euro elections didn't end up creating anything bigger.
 
I say this in the nicest possible way but... less kooks? More serious recognition of climate issues and a couple of well off backers.

=Less David Icke. :p

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Perhaps have the 1989 Euro elections fought under the 1999 election system and boundaries - that way the Greens are bound to win seats - perhaps use that as a springboard for parliamentary seats earlier than OTL?
 

RyanF

Banned
In terms of less kooks (not mentioning anyone interested in shapeshifting lizards by name) Sara Parkin may help present a more reasonable figure to the public.

She stood against Keith Joseph in 1979, before moving to France with her husband and becoming active in Green politics on the continent. In the late 1980s she had returned to the UK and again became active in the Green Party, before retiring from politics entirely in 1992 due to internal party strife.

If she hadn't moved to France after 1979 she may have helped speed up Ecology/Green Party adoption of an actual party structure, which might have helped with organisation of the influx of new members in the late 1970s.

Separately, if she had stayed with the party after 1992 there would be no opening for any shapeshifting lizard conspiracy theorists to gain prominence within the party as they did OTL.
 
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In addition to what has already been said, killing the Liberals/Lib Dems would help a fair bit. In many ways, they are Greens lite, if they weren't around, there would be more space for a socially liberal anti establishment third party, particularly in the South West, that the Greens could exploit if they moderated themselves somewhat. In the absence of that, going down the whole eco socialist road was the way that probably made the most sense in terms of what gaps there were in the electoral market at the time.

Another factor in that 1989 result I believe was (correct me if I am wrong) that the party was still eurosceptic at the time. I read once that Nigel Farage voted for them in one of the European Elections for that reason. It would be interesting to see if a TL was possible when it was the Greens, not parties like UKIP, that benefit from Eurosceptic sentiment, though I think the immigration issue makes that a situation which isn't viable for all that long.
 
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Would more fusion tickets work? IOTL, there were joint Green-Plaid Cymru candidates, but this didn't really lead anywhere - Plaid kept getting MPs, the Greens fell by the wayside electorally speaking.
 
What if the PR amendement for Euro elections had been carried in the late 70s

Do you have any more information on this? What was the proposed system? Having direct elections in themselves were a big step forward at the time.

Getting some elected representation from that 15% of the vote would potentially be a huge boost going into the nineties. Even one MEP (with office and researchers, etc.) means more resources for policy and communication, and a typically higher media profile.

Has there ever been a definitive published history of the GPEW? My own knowledge is fairly patchy.

And there's always this.
 

RyanF

Banned
PR in the Euro elections being introduced earlier would help the Greens.

I'm not so sure that fusion would work to the Greens benefit, the reason they stopped doing it was because of differing politics with PC but fusion with the Welsh nationalists can only take them so far. Would PC be willing to stand aside for the Greens in a seat they could win themselves?

One scenario that would work to their advantage is if the Greens are able to make sufficient advantage of any of the number of environmental issues that occurred during the 1980s/90s in the UK. There was enough oil being transported around the UK during this period that there were two major oil spills (Shetland in 1993 and Pembrokeshire in 1996), if either of these had happened in close proximity to a general election I can envision a scenario where PC or the SNP (the former more likely than the latter) step aside in the seat for the Greens (like the SNP did for the pro-devolution Orkney & Shetland Movement in 1987).

Another possibility is the 1988 Camelford water poisoning, but the Greens being the Greens they never even stood a candidate in the relevant seat in 1992 GE.
 
. . . Would overpopulation remain a concern of the party, . . .
I know I'm very much in a minority, but I think there are good arguments to be made that overpopulation is not the problem we think it is.

And I take a lot of this from British philosopher Derek Parfit. And this would make an interesting timeline. The questions which he raise, and all he does is raise the questions, gain greater currency and these bump up against a surging Green Party and the more conventional view.
 
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By-elections are pretty much the life blood of minor parties. The Liberals, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru can all chart their modern successes from the profile of 'against the odds' by-election wins - I'm respectively thinking Orpington '62, Hamilton '68, and Carmarthen '67 in particular. The SDP would have been dead in the water without being able to win Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead (and the earlier near-loss in Warrington still helped as 'exceeding expectations'). Rather poetically, the 1990 Bootle by-elections killed off the continuity SDP as anything to be taken seriously. By-elections have long previously been recognised as the Liberal Democrat's specialty, and their repetuation is richly deserved - even their current slow revival is coming in the form of local council by-elections. Its also why they're talking up Witney right now.

More recently Bradford West (2012) afforded Respect a minor revival, even as basically just the George Galloway Party. And UKIP becoming a thing owes as much to by-elections as to their European Parliament election success - obviously the defector by-elections in Clacton and Rochester & Strood, but also Barnsley Central (2011) where they placed 2nd for the first time ever (a feat they then repeated in Middlesbrough (2012) and at every subsequent contested by-election in the 2010-2015 parliament, barring those they won).

So... as another avenue for electoral success - are their any by-elections potential by-elections from 1979 onwards where the Greens could have made a decent enough showing to springboard them to a stronger showing further down the line? Winning from a standing start is unlikely, but if a good result in e.g. 1987-1989 means an even higher votes share in the 1989 Euros (and bonus if there's PR), followed by a higher profile into the early nineties when another favourable by-election comes up and the (Social and) Liberal Democrats are at something of a nadir. And in those seats in particular the good by-election result may help going into the subsequent general election, when "can't win here!" becomes a factor.

Perhaps by the early noughties you'd have a Green Party that can realistically talk about having 6 target seats - instead of waiting until 2016 for that to be the case.

(Oh wait, Boundary Commission review - its now "defend Brighton at all costs" for another cycle.)

Of course this is me thinking from an ideal electoral strategy point of view - Brother Sideways will probably be along in moment to explain why the party organisation and structure of the time means that this wouldn't have been possible.

But are there any by-elections where the Green Party could have made a serious running? Because to my knowledge it hasn't happened in OTL.
 

RyanF

Banned
@Agent Boot, I agree that the best route for the Green Party to take would be a by-election success.

We would need to see so many things to come into alignment for the Greens to actually win a by-election however - dissatisfaction with the government, a lacklustre opposition, third party in a nadir, if in Scotland and Wales then the nationalists standing aside; as well as taking place in a seat where some environmental concern had been a major talking point in the past twelve months.

Most of these stars are in alignment now if a by-election were to come up in England, all that missing is the environmental concern.

Earlier than the 2010s? It's not unfeasible that these things could all come to pass and allow them to take a seat in the by-election; the problem then becomes the Greens laying the groundwork for a successful campaign. Something that was seriously lacking in the 20th century Green parties in the UK.
 

Sideways

Donor
I don't think fusion tickets are the way forward, historically, it leads to the Greens getting screwed. Certainly in Wales it meant giving up target wards and losing some strength.

Sara Parkin I think gets played up as a realist moderate. The important thing to remember is that she wanted a Green government by 2000. This was nineties Era Green realism. Besides, we had figures in the Eighties to fill the role.

A problem is that centralization often pissed people off. They lost momentum in 1979 because they didn't have the resources to get people mobilized. Many joined, most left.

Then, in the Eighties there were big arguments over issues of internal organisation, which cost the party some senior members.

If the Greens had stronger leadership sooner then they might actually be in a position to organize.
 
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