The Green Party: Emerging from the Political Wilderness?
British Politics
The Green Party: Emerging from the Political Wilderness?
0 Neil Carter Department of Politics, University of York , Heslington, York YO10 5DD , UK
Green Party; environment; British elections
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In November 2007, Green Party members in England and Wales voted
overwhelmingly to replace its system of collective leadership with a more
conventional leadership structure of Leader and Deputy Leader.2 It was a
decision that, on the face of it, represented a major compromise of the party’s
commitment to participatory democracy and its traditional suspicion of the
very notion of having a ‘party leader’. Will this decision come to be regarded as
a significant shift in the direction and, crucially, the electoral fortunes of the
Green Party? For although the UK boasts the oldest Green Party in Europe,
the Greens have struggled to achieve any significant electoral success and have
performed feebly in general elections. However, there have been some modest
advances in recent years, with Greens elected to the European Parliament,
Greater London Authority (GLA), and a steady increase in local councillors.
The Scottish Green Party has been represented in all three Scottish
Parliaments, and the Scottish National Party (SNP) was able to form a
government in 2007 only with support from the two Green MSPs. More
generally, since 2006 public concern about the environment, particularly
climate change, has been at the highest level since the peak of interest in
1989–90 and there has been a sharp intensification in the party politicisation of
the environment. Thus the leadership referendum decision came at a time when
the Green Party is slowly becoming a more credible electoral force and there
has been a resurgence in the electoral salience of the environment. This article
examines the electoral record of the British Greens,3 analyses why they have
struggled to make electoral headway and assesses their future prospects.
Green Party Electoral Performance4
The Green Party’s performance in general elections has been mostly dismal (see
Table 1). It has failed to get a Green elected to the House of Commons, or even
come close to doing so.5 Formed in 1973 as ‘People’, just a handful of
candidates contested the two 1974 general elections. It changed its name to the
Ecology Party in 1975 and, in order to attract more national publicity,
presented a slate of over 50 candidates in the 1979 general election, which
secured 5-minute party political broadcasts on radio and television. Between
1979 and 1997, the Green Party’s (the name it adopted in 1985) average share
of the vote in those seats it contested was between 1.0 and 1.5%, its share of the
overall UK votes cast was less than 0.5% and it lost every deposit. The main
development over this period was a steady increase in the number of seats
contested, which peaked at 256 in 1992, when the Greens, boosted by
impressive performances in the 1989 European Parliament election (see below)
and in local council elections, hoped to make a breakthrough in the
Westminster election. After failing to do so, the party entered a period of
consolidation, putting up only 95 candidates in 1997.
In 2001, with more candidates, the average vote share doubled to 2.9% and,
at last, 10 deposits were saved. The party attracted a record vote of 283,414 in
the 2005 general election, representing an average share of 3.4% in those seats
contested and 1% of the overall vote. Perhaps most significantly, having saved
Table 1 Green Party UK general election performance 1974–2005
a record 24 deposits, there were signs that Greens were building local pockets
of support. The best result was in the Brighton Pavilion constituency, where
the Green candidate, local councillor Keith Taylor, gained 22% of the vote to
finish third, pushing the Liberal Democrat into fourth place. It was, by a long
way, the best ever Green performance in an individual Westminster
constituency, and was supplemented by saved deposits in two neighbouring
constituencies. Ten of the saved deposits were in London. Elsewhere, they were
mostly in urban seats, some with large student populations, including Bath,
Bristol South, Leeds West, Norwich South and Sheffield Central. Strong
performances in several constituencies in Glasgow and Edinburgh may have
been further helped by the presence of seven MSPs (see below).
The Greens have achieved greater success in elections to the European
Parliament. After attracting an average share of the vote in 1979 and 1984 that
was just slightly higher than for general elections, the Green Party secured an
astonishing result in the 1989 election. With candidates contesting all 78
constituencies for the first time, the Greens gained 14.9% of the vote (2,292,718
votes) and saved every deposit. Green candidates polled over 20% in 17
constituencies, finishing second ahead of Labour in six and ahead of the Social
and Liberal Democrat candidates in all but one seat. This result was
remarkable both because th (...truncated)