Greens Saddened By Loss Of Friend And Colleague

Tamworth Green Party have been shocked and saddened by the death of their friend and colleague Sarah Walters.

Sarah was a long-standing member of The Green Party and her presentations about her beloved Alvecote Wood and its fantastic biodiversity were fascinating and always well received by the local party.

Sarah stood as a candidate several times and will be sadly missed by all Tamworth Green Party members.

Our thoughts are with her husband and best friend Stephen.

As a result of Sarah’s death, the borough council election for the Glascote ward – which should have taken place on Thursday, May 3, 2018 – has been postponed until Friday, May 25, 2018.

The Green Party Candidate for the countermanded election in Glascote Ward is  Kevin Jones.

Kevin is a Yoga and Pilates instructor who holds classes at The Sacred Heart Community Centre.

Greens Break Election Record

Tamworth Green Party will be standing a record number of candidates in next month’s Borough Council Elections.

The Greens will be represented in more wards than ever before across the borough, providing voters with the option of supporting genuinely progressive candidates on Thursday, May 3rd.*

In total, candidates will contest six wards and be promoting core Green Party principles such as:

• Rebuilding our economy
• Bringing the railways back into public hands
• Keeping the public at the heart of the NHS, preventing privatisation by stealth
• Education being free for all
• Action on climate change with a fierce opposition to fracking.

For full details of all Green Party policies, please visit the Green Party Policy website.

The names of the candidates and the wards they will contest are as follows:

Amington – Andrew Tilley

Belgrave – Lesley Edmunds

Glascote – Kevin Jones

Mercian – John Scattergood

Trinity – Wil Goodridge

Wilnecote – Nicola Holmes.

* The election for the Glascote ward has been rescheduled for Friday, May 25th, following the death of previous Green Party candidate Sarah Walters.

We Support Moorgate Action Group

Nothing brings communities together like a local issue. And there can be no better example of this in Tamworth than the uncertain future for the former Moorgate Primary School buildings on Hospital Street, The Leys.

The now vacant Victorian school premises, which form a key part of the Hospital Street Local Conservation Area, are under threat of disposal by their owners Staffordshire County Council (SCC).

Having been provided with a brand new two-storey school, built at the back of the existing school site – accessed via Moorgate and funded directly by the government during the school’s conversion to academy status – the school moved out of the Victorian buildings in 2015, leaving SCC with a headache; what to do with the old site?

Clearly, SCC doesn’t want to maintain empty buildings when they are short of funding in these times of Tory austerity, so are seeking to dispose of the site. But how should this be done?

Enter Moorgate Action Group (MAG) who think the buildings need to stay intact (certainly externally unchanged) and reused, preferably for the good of the whole of Tamworth as much-needed community spaces.

As MAG state on their website, Tamworth has lost many local community venues due to redevelopment and sale leaving the town short of appropriate and affordable places to deliver community-led services.

Tamworth Greens are proud to support MAG and their initiative to have the site reused for the benefit of the people of Tamworth and have now included a link to their campaign from our ‘Issues’ list (see main menu).

We hope that you support them too!

Tamworth Greens Canvassing For Molly Scott Cato in Bristol West

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Tamworth Greens were in Bristol at the weekend (Saturday, May 27, 2017) to help boost Molly Scott Cato’s drive to become MP.

Molly is in a neck-and-neck race with Labour to win the Bristol West constituency where the Green vote surged by 23 per cent at the last election.

Currently MEP for Bristol and South West England, Molly was boosted by hundreds of Green Party members who descended on the city for a weekend canvassing effort. The new arrivals had travelled to Bristol from across the U.K. and among them were Tamworth Greens who pounded the pavements, knocked on doors and spoke to voters in the Redland area of the constituency, promoting Molly and the Green Party message.

Also among the volunteers at Molly’s side were Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jon Bartley as well as Sir Jonathon Porritt who told supporters: “We have absolutely the right combination to win”.

And Molly said: “We’re working to make sure that on June the 8th, Bristol will elect our second Green MP.

“For the people of Bristol West it’s time. We truly are at a crossroads but the Green Party’s campaign for a bold, positive future for our country is in wholehearted opposition to the extreme Brexit and far-right agenda threatened by another five years of Tory government.”

Jon said: “Bristol West could have just another Labour MP or it could elect a Green MP with a strong vision. Molly is a formidable candidate who would give Bristol a distinctive voice in Parliament, just as Caroline has done for Brighton.”

Said Caroline: “We’ve got an incredibly strong chance of winning our second Green MP here in Bristol West. Molly is incredibly well known and respected and in Bristol in 2015 we went from 4 per cent of the vote to 27 per cent – that is almost unprecedented in electoral history in this country.”

“So with a swing like that, we’re very confident we can get another MP here in Bristol West.”

Vote Progressively #GE2017

Tamworth Greens are not standing a Tamworth candidate in the General Election 2017 and urge you to vote progressively against the Conservative candidate.

See here for more details.

County Council Election 2017 – Results

The Conservative Party managed to take all six Tamworth Divisions in the County Council Elections.

The closest contest was in Amington, with the Conservative candidate beating Labour by just 15 votes.

This is the first time that The Green Party have contested all six Divisions in Tamworth, with Conservative, Labour and UKIP also contesting all six Divisions and the Lib Dems standing in three.

Whilst the Green Party candidates did well and maintained our base level support of around 4% of the vote, it was clear from the results that our share of the vote was lower in the Divisions contested by the Lib Dems. This is something that we need to consider for future elections.

The most visible trend identified was the drastic reduction in UKIP’s share of the vote which appears to have moved to the Conservatives. 

Thank you to our candidates for their efforts, especially Lesley and Wil who were first time candidates.

Please see here for full details of the results.

Vote Green on 4th May

Tamworth goes to the polls on Thursday 4th May to determine the town’s County Councillors. And we have a candidate standing in each Division.

So, you know what you need to do to ensure that Tamworth is a progressive, thriving, healthy place to live and work.

Vote Green! For the common good.

See details of our candidates here.

Autumn Conference 2016

The Green Party Autumn Conference 2016 will be held at the University of Birmingham between 2nd and 4th September.

Green Party Autumn Conference 2016

There will be a stimulating and packed three-day programme of policy-making, topical discussions, training and evening social sessions. By the end of July there will be a detailed timetable including three panel debates, 24 fringe sessions on a variety of topical subjects and a training programme. See the outline timetable here.

Members can register online via the members’ website. They can book for as many or few days as they like, and can even pay on the door if they don’t wish to book in advance. Non-members are also welcome to attend as ‘Observers’ at the same rates. There is a limited access fund for those who would struggle with the costs.

For more information on travel, accommodation, and creche, please visit the website.

To find out more about the policies we will be discussing at this conference, see the First Agenda on the members’ website.

There will be regional tables and meet ups arranged at conference, too, and once registered you should get information from your Regional Co-ordinator about these.

Keep up to date with plans for the Autumn Conference on Twitter with #GPConf and there is a facebook event here.

Brexit – What Next?

A message from former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett

People in Britain are angry at the status quo – and they’ve expressed that anger by voting to leave the EU. We cannot hide our disappointment at this result having campaigned strongly for a vote to Remain. But, we must now turn our attention to the task at hand: unifying our divided communities after an extraordinarily bitter period in British politics. We cannot allow the problems of racism, inequality and alienation that have, at times, been worsened by this campaign to grow.

The referendum campaign was carried out in a manner which does a disservice to the people of Britain. It was a Tory leadership campaign fought out over an issue of huge importance to this country and to Europe. People will have been turned off politics to an even greater degree than before. To help fix this democratic deficit we need electoral reform for the House of Commons to help build a more representative, inclusive democracy.

During the campaign the Green Party repeatedly stood up for migrants much more boldly than any other party, and are hugely concerned that this country’s commitment to the free movement of people is now in peril. We pledge to continue to stand up for migrants and to demonstrate how the free movement of people has enriched not impoverished people’s lives both in Britain and beyond. Please stand with us, and pledge to be a part of that campaign now.

Our party will now mobilise alongside the trade unions, environmental groups and others to defend our hard-won rights at work and environmental protections. Greens will not allow this shock to destroy what we hold dear, and we will redouble our efforts to protect our NHS and public services from privatisation and both safeguard and enhance environmental protections.

Many people have been joining the Green Party in the time since the result emerged. Now is a good time to ask sympathetic friends, colleagues and family to consider doing the same, to join the struggle to protect our hard won gains in coming months and years.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with me about where the UK goes from here: you can reach us directly on leader@greenparty.org.uk.

 

Chilcot Report: Natalie Bennett and Shahrar Ali Respond

Reacting to the publication of the Chilcot Report, Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, said:

The Green Party believes the report’s final confirmation that the Iraq war was ‘not a last resort’ and that the British government decided to invade before all the peaceful options had been exhausted is a verdict that must produce action. We must not just say ‘never again’ but act to make that fact.

 

That the judgements about the severity of threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were presented with a certainty that was not justified is simply inexcusable. Never again must the executive be able to lead us to war based on massaged information.

 

And never again should MPs be told how to vote on such a critical matter. The Government should, immediately, announce that all future military interventions will have unwhipped votes in the House of Commons. We must never again see MPs being cajoled into voting along party lines when their conscience tells them otherwise. No MP should answer when asked why they voted for war ‘I was told to.’

 

Those MPs must be given genuinely independent legal advice about the legality of the action. They must know it is their responsibility to act legally, and that they could face sanction if they don’t live up to it.

Speaking from Westminster, Shahrar Ali, Green Party Deputy Leader, said:

The Green Party is resolutely committed to finding non-violent solutions to conflict situations and unequivocally opposed the war in 2003.

 

The headline points of this mammoth report are chilling, yet unsurprising to all those who have been calling for Blair to be investigated at the International Criminal Court. Whether on grounds of Blair’s intent to bypass the UN, diplomacy not having been exhausted, or critical papers being denied to the Foreign Office, I support those renewed calls for a criminal investigation.