Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 29 September 1989
The journalists in the bar at the Green Party conference in Wolverhampton last week, uneasy in their cheap suits and polished shoes, grumbled that the chaos made it impossible to report anything, and the weekend's papers were unanimous in bemoaning the Greens' lack of a "professional" hierarchical structure — but the Greens can afford to be just a little pleased with themselves this week.
With the exception of a procedural row that lost two hours of conference time on Thursday, nothing happened in the Wolverhampton Civic Hall to put the party in a particularly bad light. The Greens came across as somewhat anarchic and eccentric, but the rabid extremists warned about by right-wing leader-writers were nowhere to be seen.
The Greens applauded warmly when Sara Parkin, the party's number-one television star, warned that "parasites" might turn their attentions to the Greens; Jonathon Porritt, the nearest the Greens get to an intellectual figurehead, got a similar reception when he attacked those who accused the party of "authoritarianism".
The party's left, the Assocation of Socialist Greens, was routed in policy debates, and there was no sign of either right-wing romantics or hair-shirted Calvinists. The cleancut media professionals who believe the Greens to be "neither right or left but ahead" were in the driving seat, supported by members as reasonable, libertarian and middle class as the old Liberals.
The party's policies belie this refusal to be situated on the left-right continium. On most issues, the Greens are well to the left of Labour. The one area where the Greens do seem to have a good case for claiming to be "neither right nor left" is their opposition to industrialism; but so vague are the Greens' proposals that this is a matter less of policy than of attitude.
In the end, the Greens' insistence on not being "left" is a signal that they want neither to be associated with the grim realities of social democracy and Leninism in power — nor to be submerged by manipulative Trotskyist entrists.
It has worked so far. The Greens have reached parts of the affluent south that. other left parties cannot reach, and up to now Ms Parkin's "parasites" have steered clear. The party has an openness, enthusiasm and friendliness about it that few labour movement institutions can match, and there is none of the cloying deference before leaders that afflicts all the major parties.
The problem is what happens next. For the foreseeable future, the Greens have no hope, barring a by-election miracle, of winning seats, except in local government.
Labour will not offer them an electoral pact — which in any case the Greens decided at the weekend they did not want.
The media's cure for the Greens' ills is a "proper leader", but the evidence. of Wolverhampton is that having the party represented to the media by people with little or no executive power works perfectly well.
The Greens' problem is not their internal organisation, even if it could do with being tightened up, but the British electoral system – and there's nothing they can do to`change that. The Greens face a long, hard voyage and, although only a fool would write them off, the wrecked hulks of the Liberals and the SDP are a terrible warning.
