Motion #24

Campaigns Committee.

This report must include a list of all groups currently recognised by Campaigns Committee

Tom Scott

The last year has been a busy and productive one for Campaigns Committee. Our activities have included:

• Launching a campaign flatpack, petition and website as part of the campaign for Zane’s Law (transparency and remediation of toxic landfill sites), to coincide with the first motion calling for this to be passed by a local authority – Lewes District Council in February. We worked closely with the Truth About Zane (TAZ) campaign on this, with TAZ activist and Green Party member Liz Mansfield being coopted temporarily onto Campaigns Committee to act as a lynchpin.

Local Government Political Adviser Julian Dean has also been very helpful in getting information about this and other campaigns out to Green Councillors nationwide. Since February, several more councils have passed similar motions. We are continuing to work with TAZ to keep up the momentum.

• Producing guidance and materials for Greens taking part in Gaza protests, including a placard/ banner design that has now been widely used at these. The guidance was produced in consultation with Muslim Greens and Jewish Greens, and aimed to make sure that the Party’s messaging on Israel/Gaza was not overshadowed by anything that might be seen as threatening by Jewish communities. Campaigns Committee member Ben Samuel has been particularly active in coordinating with Gaza protesters.

• Launching a ‘Don’t Sell Climate Hell’ flatpack aimed at highlighting the need to stop advertising of products and services that do severe damage to the climate. The flatpack included social media materials, a template letter to the Advertising Standards Authority and a model council motion based on one brought by Green councillors in Hackney to update Hackney Council’s advertising and sponsorship policy.

• Producing a campaign flatpack highlighting the Party’s policies on housing, focusing in particular on the need to allow local authorities to be empowered to introduce rent controls. Meetings with the External Communications Committee have highlighted housing as an area in which Green Party policies have a strong electoral appeal, and this is a campaign that we would like to give a further push to, as it became somewhat subsumed in the general election campaign.

• Giving a further push to the ‘Chateau Sewage’ action. This was originally part of our campaign flatpack aimed at highlighting the Party’s policies on environmental protection and our call for a Rights of Nature Act, and is designed to highlight local Green parties as champions of clean water and public ownership of water and sewerage services. This action has now been taken up by local parties from Cornwall to Derbyshire. We have also been working on materials to highlight the Party’s call for nationalisation of the water & sewage industry at the upcoming March For Clean Water.

• Producing and circulating a Greens Against Fascism flatpack within days of the far-right riots breaking out in the summer. This was widely used by local parties, and we followed this by producing a set a set of anti-fascist beermats, after consulting with Greens of Colour and Muslim Greens. We have now distributed several thousand of these, and also co-organised a very well attended conference event focusing on the rise of the far right. Our aim has been to make the Green Party more visible at the forefront of resistance to the rise of fascism.

• Working with parliamentary Greens to produce a mini-flatpack and petition designed to help bring pressure on Labour peers and MPs to oppose the Rwanda Bill and the serious attack on human rights that this represented. While Labour ultimately failed to back the ‘fatal motion’ that would have stopped the Bill in the Lords, the campaign helped to highlight Greens as defenders of human rights and decent treatment of refugees.

• Meeting with campaigners on various issues, including Greens campaigning for Covid-safe public spaces, with whom we have produced a campaign flatpack.

• Meeting with a representative of the professional libraries organisation CILIP to discuss how we can work with their Green Libraries campaign. With our help, CILIP have produced an information pack for circulation to Green councillors.

Reports of member groups recognised by Campaigns Committee