This interview originally appeared in the 26.04.2010 issue of The Badger, the newspaper of the University of Sussex Students’ Union. As such, it was written before the May 2010 General Election, in which Caroline eventually went on to win her seat with a majority of 1,252, making her the UK’s first Green MP at Westminster.
The edition of the interview printed in The Badger was significantly abridged because the week before the newspaper had conducted an interview with Charlotte Vere, the Conservative candidate for the seat. She hadn’t had nearly as much to say, so in the interests of balance (and paper) the article was shortened.
Interestingly, although the race in Brighton Pavilion was widely framed as a two horse race between the Tories and the Greens, the Tories actually came in third after a surprisingly strong showing by Nancy Platts, the extraordinarily capable Labour candidate.
Caroline Lucas, thank you for agreeing to speak with The Badger. What do you see as the main challenges facing Brighton in the next five years?
Brighton is an incredibly exciting place to be, but it does face some very serious challenges. I think one of the most important is the issue of affordable housing – that we have so many people local to the city who are struggling to find housing that they can afford. We have a very large private rented sector here, and I think that we need to make sure that landlords are giving tenants a fair deal. Councils should be able to keep receipts from the sale of council housing, for example, and plough the money back into more affordable housing, so the money doesn’t leave the sector.
Jobs is also the big issue that’s on everyone’s lips, and understandably so. I think Brighton has the potential to be an incredible hub for green jobs – we’re already strong in areas like digital media – but when you look at developments like the windfarm about to be built just off the Brighton coast, I think those are real opportunities for us to kick-start a new reputation for Brighton as being a centre for those kinds of green jobs.
I think a distinction between the Greens and the other parties standing is that all of the other parties are talking about the need to make “savage cuts.” Alistair Darling is even talking about making cuts deeper than those we had under Mrs Thatcher. The Greens are saying that the deficit is important, but not as important as getting people back to work. The deficit isn’t high by historical standards – for example, we had a much higher deficit when we managed to create the NHS. For us it’s about getting people back to work, not only in Brighton but right across the country, too.
Its interesting that you should mention jobs – The Badger recently ran an interview with Charlotte Vere, the Tory candidate for Brighton Pavilion. She called you an “anti-capitalist” and said you would be bad for job creation. She also said to us that you were an “ecological Marxist” and last month likened the Greens to the BNP, saying that there “wasn’t much difference” between the two parties. Do you think that’s fair?
To be honest, its such a ridiculous statement that I’m not sure its even worth exploring very much further. She’s apologised for her statement about the BNP, and rightly so – it was a very silly remark. I want to focus on the issues, I don’t think labels are helpful. We went into the European elections with a pledge to create a million jobs, job creation is absolutely what we’re about. We’re about a fairer society, we’re about standing up for people on lower incomes and people who have been discriminated against. We think that it’s a scandal that after 13 years of Labour government, in many respects we have a more unequal society today than when they came to power. Those are the values that the Greens stand for, and I think it’s a shame that the other parties don’t seem to stand for them anymore.
You brought up the fact that Labour hasn’t been as successful as people might have hoped they would have been when they came to power in 1997. Do you think that one of the reasons the Green Party has been getting more attention recently is because you’re perceived as an alternative positioned to left of the Labour Party?
I think what’s happened is that people are increasingly looking for alternatives because the other three parties are becoming increasingly interchangeable. Labour simply hasn’t lived up to the promises it made when it came to power in 1997 – I think its the fact that the Green Party does care about inequality, and that we have policies like increasing the minimum wage to a genuine living wage, introducing a Citizen’s Pension of £170 a week in line with recommendations by the National Pensioners Convention so that pensioners aren’t living in poverty, and talking about more progressive taxation. We’re the ones who are saying, contrary to Peter Mandelson that we are not “intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich” – his famous quote. I think Labour has betrayed those people who thought that they were going to have a government that really would stand up to injustice, and that would tackle inequality in a much more serious way.
Mandelson’s attitude seems to have genuinely shocked a lot of people. We want a more equal society, a fairer society, because we genuinely believe that it’s a better society for everybody in it – and I think more and more people are realising that if they’re not going to get that from Labour, there’s a good chance they can get it from the Greens. And of course here in Brighton & Hove where we have 13 councillors on the local council people can see the track record we’ve got when we get positions of influence, and I think they’re attracted by that.
You spoke at the huge Trade Unionist rally outside the Labour Party conference here in Brighton last year. It seemed like you were well received by the members of the traditional left and TU movement who were present, and you all talked about building links between the Green movement and Trade Unions – the general atmosphere seemed to be one of working together for common aims.
But at the moment down the road in the Brighton Kemptown constituency where a lot of students live, the Trade Union & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which is backed by local TUs, and the Green Party are both running candidates against each other in the same constituency. Do you think there’s scope for a greater level of cooperation here, or do you have irresolvable differences?
I think the electoral system in this country makes it more difficult for us. If we had a system of proportional representation there would be much for scope for us to work together and we wouldn’t have to be thrown into competition with people with whom, on a very large number of issues, we strongly agree.
I’m very pleased that Trade Unionists are also backing me here in Brighton Pavilion, and that the TUSC aren’t putting forward a candidate in Brighton Pavilion, where many of them are supporting my candidacy. – it’s all very positive. But I do think that we need to get better on the Left at working more cooperatively together. For instance, I think it was a very good thing that in the European Parliament elections Salma Yaqoob from RESPECT didn’t stand against the Greens in the North West and that RESPECT actually campaigned for us. Similarly, we’re not standing against Salma in Hall Green at the General Election, so I do think there are examples of where that kind of cooperation can happen. But I also think that the electoral system works against that kind of cooperation, which arguably we need more today that we have done in politics before.
I was on Question Time recently, and it was interesting to see that even though the panel also included Margaret Beckett from the Labour Party, when a question about the British Airways UNITE dispute came up, the former Labour minister would not defend the UNITE workers. It was the Greens who were actually saying that it looked like BA boss Willy Walsh’s actions were likely to escalate the dispute rather than to resolve it. It’s the same in the European Parliament where I’ve been an MEP for 10 years – it’s the Greens standing up for the TUs, against privatisation of public services and things like the UK’s opt out of the Working Time Directive. I think trade unionists are joining the long line of people who are realising that their long-standing allegiance to Labour isn’t actually delivering the kinds of policies that they would have expected and hoped for.
You mentioned electoral reform. Are there any other specific reforms to politics that you’d like to see?
Yes there are – on the electoral system itself I think its important to say that Gordon Brown’s reluctant last minute conversion to the Alternative Vote (AV) system is really a cop out. AV wouldn’t give us a fairer or more proportional voting system, even though Tony Blair promised us that back in 1997. There are ways of making the system really fair whilst still maintaining the constituency link, like the Additional Members System (AMS) for example. We need that not just because it helps smaller parties, but because it helps people engage more in their political system and be more likely to actually go out and vote because they feel that their vote actually counts for something instead of feeling thatit makes no difference in a safe seat. I don’t think it’s surprising that people feel so disempowered by the existence of safe seats in this country – they breed a kind of complacency. Its interesting to see that there’s a direct correlation between MPs in safe seats and their likelihood to abuse expenses – it seems like that kind of complacency makes them think that they can just ignore their voters.
We also need a recall system for MPs – the Greens have long argued that it should be possible for a percentage of people in a constituency to come together and trigger the recall of an MP, rather than waiting a full 5 years before they can pass judgement if they feel their MP has done something wrong.
We’d also like to see the voting age lowered to 16 – again, it’s about engagement. It would get people involved in politics at a much younger level and would mean we would have people coming through our schools and colleges who are more politically aware than perhaps some people are today. The fact that the House of Lords still exists as a largely unelected chamber in the 21st century is a scandal in itself. We need more women in parliament – less than 20% of MPs are woman, which puts us 67th in the world in terms of our proportion of women MPs – behind Afghanistan, Rwanda and Cuba. We’re supposed to have the “mother of all parliaments!” We also want to see more power decentralised from Westminster to local councils where it’s appropriate, so that you don’t have this enormously centralised system of men in grey suits behind closed doors. I think that image of politics is very damaging.
It seems like one of the more common reasons given by people for not voting Green is the perception that the party is somehow “anti-science.” I know that at your most recent party conference there was some change to your policies on issues like stem cell research, alternative medicine and animal testing. What would you say that people who claimed that the Green Party was anti-science?
I would strongly make the case that the Green Party absolutely is not “anti-science.” We’re a democratic party, conference makes policy and its true that some parts of it have become out of date. That’s what we were looking to update at our most recent conference .
But the perception I think is genuinely mistaken. For example, to take the issue of animal testing, we haven’t changed our position. We want to see an end to animal testing not only on the grounds that it is cruel, but because we think that there’s good evidence to suggest that it is often ineffective and inefficient on scientific grounds. We think that we can demonstrate that an investment in non-animal alternatives is more likely to yield useful results in determining human reactions to different chemicals. There are several famous examples of where the introduction of helpful drugs was delayed because animal tests gave false results. Our position on animal testing hasn’t changed.
We’ve always had a commitment to complementary medicine and said that there should be space for it in the wider health service. Now we’re being more rigorous and while there is certainly still space for alternative therapies, we want serious evidence and scientifically based assessment of whatever measures are proposed.
You’ve been very supportive of the student and staff campaign against the cuts at Sussex. At the end of last term the Students’ Union passed a vote of no confidence in the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group (VCEG) Do you think that this was the right thing to do?
Yes, I think it was the appropriate response to the current situation, unfortunately. There are two things going on here – one I think is the fact of the cuts themselves, and the other is way the way in which everything has been consulted, discussed and debated on. On the fact of the cuts: The university management might be able to turn around and say that they have no option and that its all being handed down from national government, and there’s some truth in that, although it is arguable that other decisions could have been made about ways to save money. I think the fact that the top 20 people working at the university earn between them over £2.6million is something that seriously needs looking at. But I’ll accept that to some extent the university’s hands were tied, because the government is cutting money from education – something that we’re against because the middle of a recession is exactly the wrong time to be cutting back on education, when we ought to be investing in it instead.
But that apart, even if we were to accept that it was the case that some cuts had to be made then I think the way in which the management have gone about doing it is incredibly unhelpful and damaging. Even well before we had the issue of riot police on campus there was the issue of rooms mysteriously becoming booked out when students were trying to meet to discuss how to respond to the cuts. We want young people who go to our universities to be aware of how they can influence decisions and how they can work together to change things for the better, and the idea of management actually stifling that, of trying to stop students debating, discussing and organising… well, I think that’s hugely worrying. It sounds like in many respects the consultation hasn’t been done very well at all.
There’s also the issue of what is just clear short sightedness on behalf of the management. I’ve been quite involved with the debates about the cutting of the crèche and nursery, and a group of people who use the facility have put together a different business plan to management that looks, as far as I can see, incredibly rigorous. I really hope that management will actually look at that, because there are constructive ways of moving forward that haven’t been properly examined.
So I sadly think that students were right to pass the decision of no confidence in management, because it look as if the ways in which decisions are being made by management at Sussex are not inclusive, are not transparent and are not constructive.
So in this context, what is The Green Party’s wider policy towards universities?
We absolutely oppose cuts to higher education, especially during a time of recession and believe that education isn’t simply a commodity to be privatised, but an essential human right. That means that we believe that tuition fees are unhelpful and barrier to people getting involved in higher education, and we would want to scrap those. Jobs are a priority for us, and we’re deeply concerned about a generation coming through our universities and colleges who risk becoming a “lost generation” because there isn’t a job market out there thanks to the hype about cutting public services and jobs. As I mentioned earlier, the deficit is important, but not more important than jobs.
You’ve recently had a lot of good coverage in the press and the polls, with The Economist newspaper printing that Brighton Pavilion is shaping up to be a two-horse race between the Greens and the Tories. Do you think that it’s realistic that you might win here?
It’s really important that people should know that the Greens are standing in Brighton with a very real chance of winning. It’s not just us that are saying that – the bookies odds almost all predict us as favourite. A huge amount of electoral data supports this – we have more councillors than any other party on the city council in Brighton Pavilion, we came ahead of all the other parties in the 2009 European Elections, double the vote of Labour and 6000 votes ahead of the Tories. An ICM poll in December put us on 35%, 8 points ahead of the Tories and 10 points ahead of Labour. Some students might be coming from other parts of the country where the Greens aren’t so strong, and they don’t stand a chance of winning, but Brighton Pavilion is different, and we can make history here. We’re on the cusp of getting the first Green MPs elected into Westminster and I think that’s a really exciting thing to be part of – to feel that your vote can count in that way, so I’d really urge Sussex students to vote Green.
Sometimes the other parties will say that the choice at the election is a choice between a Labour government and a Tory government. But that’s misleading – the choice facing you is what kind of MP you want for Brighton Pavilion, and I’d argue that the first Green MP would have far more influence than just one more Labour MP or just one more Tory MP. That’s particularly true if it’s a hung parliament, because then the Greens will be even more influential. It took about 24 years between the first Labour MP being elected and the first Labour government – that’s still quite a long time, but its not that long! The first Green MP wouldn’t be on their own for long, all of our experience shows that once you get the first Green elected, more soon follow. I think we could really shake up Westminster, and I’d hope that students would like to be a part of that.
Caroline Lucas, thank you very much for talking to The Badger.
