Why The Greens Can’t Solve Their Class Problem

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Why The Greens Can’t Solve Their Class Problem

In the wake of Keir Starmer’s announcement that he would slash the foreign aid budget to fund extensive military spending, Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie, in the same breath as criticising the rollback of international aid, endorsed the British Government’s drive to militarisation. He argued there is a “strong case for Europe taking more responsibility for its own security”. This position has not changed since it became clear that spending on welfare state would also be slashed to fund a new rearmament programme.

Earlier this month, representatives of the English and Welsh Green Party at Westminster submitted a joint letter in agreement that the British Government’s plans were part of “the ongoing need to stand up to Putin”. In this, Greens offered some ethical principles on which decisions around defence spending should be made, none of which opposed the transfer of more public funds to the arms manufacturers.

Thus the Greens have joined both the Labour government and the Conservatives in building a disastrous wall of consensus in mainstream British politics. In Scotland, the terrain is no different with the SNP quick to throw their weight behind arming the British state. Indeed, former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford even called for the party to abandon its long held anti-nuclear weapons position. Blackford's remarks have left the leadership to defend their anti-Trident stance on the basis that such money would be better spent on conventional weaponry.

In recent months, well-meaning eco-socialists in the activist wing of the Greens both north and south of the border have indulged in a bout of hopeless consternation, keen to address their parties disreputable relationship to the working class as Reform makes steady gains across the country. Unfortunately, neither a turn to increased “community engagement” nor “amplifying working class voices” within the Greens will shift this relationship. Nor will such efforts be sufficient for Greens to become a credible anti-establishment party able to present an alternative pole of attraction on the left.

The Scottish Greens have only recently emerged from a power sharing agreement with the SNP which saw the Scottish Government preside over austerity budgets and large scale cuts to local authorities. In the last three General Elections, the English and Welsh Greens did nothing to dampen their middle-class image by tailoring their campaign to localist sensibilities as a means to pick up votes from disgruntled Conservative and Liberal Democrat voting constituents.

Most tellingly, a genuinely anti-establishment politics has failed to emerge as Green parties have aligned themselves with institutions that are precisely the opposite. The British incarnations, once mildly Eurosceptic and anti-Nato (like their European counterparts), have since rushed to support these two institutions at critical junctures. Both the Scottish and the English and Welsh Greens not only backed Remain in 2016 but went on to join the disastrous People’s Vote Campaign, a coalition with leading establishment figures including the right of the Labour Party, the Lib Dems and a faction of the Tories, which sought to isolate Corbyn’s leadership and overturn the result of the 2016 EU referendum.

Not long before this, then leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, stepped down as a patron of Stop the War Coalition and publicly criticised Corbyn’s strong opposition to British military intervention in Syria. Here marked the beginning of a trajectory which took them to their current position on military spending. The Greens have sought to justify pro-war decisions with dubious moral qualifications. In 2023, the war in Ukraine prompted the English and Welsh Green Party to overturn their opposition to Nato, the same nuclear alliance responsible, among other crimes, for the twenty year long occupation of Afghanistan. In a statement they explained: "Greens are asking for a commitment to 'no first use' of nuclear weapons; a focus on outreach and dialogue, based on democratic values; a commitment to upholding human rights; and a promise to undertake no out-of-area operations or military exercises.”

Whilst the Scottish Greens remain opposed to the alliance in policy terms, senior members actively took part in the flood of jingoism that followed the first phase of the British Government’s military drive. Ross Greer MSP called on Ukraine to “not cede an inch” of territory in the war of attrition which has now taken hundreds of thousands of lives, mainly of conscripts. Like every other mainstream party, only now the war is being forced to a conclusion can they condone peace negotiations.

Rarely mentioned in discussions on war is an issue that the Greens, in theory, should have an obvious basis for opposition. It has been estimated for instance that 20% of all environmental degradation globally is due to military-related activities and the Iraq War alone accounted for some 141 million metric tonnes of CO2. That’s more than 60% of all the countries in the world. Nothing in the pages long, meticulously laid out, environmental policy of the Green’s 2024 manifesto, made mention of the devastating climate impact undoubtedly produced by the masses of weaponry they supported being sent eastwards.

For the Greens, talking left cannot hide these priorities. Indeed, the foreign policy positions provide some insight into the nature of their “class problem”. Meek suggestions that the British Government could tax the rich to fund militarisation - an industry which is raking in record profits - does not amount to a progressive alternative. At the very least, socialists should demand at every turn that each penny funnelled into defence - however raised - is a penny that can and should be spent on our public services, affordable housing or any other socially usefully outlet.

It would be unfair to ignore the generally principled position of the UK Green parties on Gaza. The Scottish Greens, for instance, have rightly opposed the Scottish Government’s subsidies to arms manufacturers through Scottish Enterprise, arguing that public funds are being funnelled to companies like BAE, which produce weapons used to devastate Gaza. However, they are now advocating for Scottish Enterprise to implement more thorough human rights checks to prevent similar outcomes in the future.

But on what basis would these checks be conducted? What wars would meet the criteria? And, crucially, who determines these judgments? Herein lies the Greens’ implicit faith in the benign nature of the state and its institutions. The past 18 months alone should demonstrate that neither British, US, nor European weapons, nor the interests driving their detonation, can serve progressive ends. How can it be coherent to oppose the arms trade over Gaza, only to call for a tsunami of new public funds to precisely the same corporations to feed an arms race with Russia or China?

Much of the current push for rearmament has been steeped in calls to return to a "rules-based order" and "international law." Greens have been particularly vocal in this regard, with Harvie declaring: “Either we stand reunited with democratic Europe, or we assist Trump in ushering in a frightening new era, one where international law is replaced by the whim of tyrants and their billionaire backers."

Yet it is no secret that US imperial power had long enforced this order through its military weight and oversight of western member-state institutions. The Greens’ position is, then, rooted in a broader anxiety gripping the mainstream liberalism that this imperial influence is waning within the very structures they are aligned with. But this is to misunderstand what’s happening. The dichotomy presented: an independent, militarised Europe versus a vulnerable one subject to Russian or even US aggression, is a false one. The US is demanding homage from its allies in the form of European rearmament and Germany, Britain, France are all bending the knee. In this new world order, the rush to back “Europe” is essentially meaningless.

All the while, this call to arms will be made at the expense of workers and the poor. Thousands of jobs are set to be cut from civil service apparently to be replaced by AI. Billions of pounds are to be axed from the welfare budget, with the disabled first in the firing line. Despite this, billions have been found to fund military expenditure. As the Greens, SNP and others on the centre-left continue to stumble along with the new militarism, it’s time to insist on a simple choice: are we to have welfare, or warfare? It is that simple and stark.

By Conter columnist, Sophie Johnson

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The Fiery Spirits: Popular Protest, Parliament and the English Revolution

The Fiery Spirits tells the story of the MPs in parliament and the protestors in the streets who played a pivotal role in the English Civil Wars. Through their stories, John Rees reveals the hidden history of the republicans who brought a desperate nation to the brink of revolution.

At the start of the English Civil Wars, very few could have imagined that the country would soon become a republic. Practically alone in his republicanism was Henry Marten, MP and future regicide. But he soon gathered around him a group of radical Parliamentarians that included William Strode, the parliamentary firebrand, Alexander Rigby, the formidable soldier, and Sir Peter Wentworth, descendant of a long line of opponents of monarchy. They formed the nucleus of a group that allied itself to a popular movement outside parliament to defeat the king politically and militarily.

In our latest podcast we speak to the author about the inspiration behind the book, and the importance of revolutionary history today.