Green Party, Universal Income, nuclear power and growth!

Terrible news this week is trumped by the best news in 41 years. A motion in favour of nuclear power at the September Green Party conference, but the Citizens’ Basic Income is at long last to feature in the 2015 election campaign.
I am told that the pro-nuclear motion has been brought by new members, physics students, immediately on joining the party. As I keep saying, the Green Party was formed in response to ‘Limits to Growth’, which warned that humankind was over-exploiting the planet. New members can be forgiven for ignoring that, or even being unaware of it. I have just looked at the Party’s website and tried to think like an enquirer. We don’t like climate change. That’s it. No mention of the fundamental need to end the dependency on growth. Some forms of growth are OK. It is the drug like dependency that is the problem. If the proposers of the pro-nuclear motion are young, being students, and such a bull at a gate approach suggests they are young, they are unlikely to have joined because of the ‘Limits’ aspect, or to feel the visceral objection to nuclear power than many of my generation do: they might overlook the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, the various re-namings of Windscale (Sellafield) after each er, mishap, Three Mile Island (1979) or Chernobyl (1986), but Fukushima?? My natural naivete hopes for dialogue rather than the polarised confrontation which looks more likely.
Fortunately, although the foregoing will deeply upset many long standing GP members, I shall plead with them not to give up because of the good news. Natalie Bennett has announced that the ‘Universal Income’ is to be featured prominently next year. The new name is probably tactically astute. The Universal Credit, as originally envisaged, could have been described as an emaciated Citizens Basic Income with unnecessary cattle prods (sanctions). It was me, one of the party’s oldest, but certainly the longest serving member, who made sure the Citizens Basic Income became Green Party policy from the outset (1973). So to make sure there are not too many half baked objections, two points:
Cost. All the Citizens’, sorry Universal Income does is abolish means testing. The donkey work has been done for us by the most unlikely source imaginable: In September 2009 Iain Duncan Smith’s Think Tank Centre for Social Justice produced a report ‘Dynamic Benefits: towards Welfare that works’. The first part could be used word for word, graph for detailed graph, as the case for the Universal Income. Instead, the rest of the report, which introduced the Universal Credit, avoids that natural conclusion. Just read ‘Dynamic Benefits’ for yourself. Find centreforsocialjustice.org.uk and click ‘Publications’.
Secondly, just so we don’t get accused of hiding anything, my 1973 vision had among its aims making a recession acceptable to whole populations – no growth whenever necessary to prevent planetary over-exploitation, and a rapprochement of the now outdated ‘left’ and ‘right wing’ ideologies. But the Party has attracted mainly socialists who are still unwilling to make friends with anyone from the enemy tribe, so that many who would have responded, and split the ‘capitalist’ vote, have remained outside. Meanwhile ‘Target to Win’ has taken the Green Party some distance from its 1973 roots. Success at a local level inevitably meant playing down aspects of sustainability that would be difficult to explain to many people in the sound bites we get. ‘Target to Win’ has achieved success within its own terms of reference, with a significant Green presence at all levels of representation, but until we get back to the original, fundamental questioning of growth as an automatic essential permanent necessity there can be no rational discussion on the sustainability of nuclear power, genetically modified crops, hydraulic fracturing, solar panelled roads or any other technological innovation. They are all absolutely necessary. My original suggested slogan, rejected by more sensible party members, was ‘A Recession can be Fun!’
The real value of what I must now remember to call the UI, not the Cits BI, is that it allows ordinary individuals, everywhere to consider what will be condemned as a recession with equanimity. But for now, that the Green Party has forgotten why it was created does not matter. The immediate need is to get rid of Iain Duncan Smith, Esther McVey, Lord Fraud, ATOS, workfare and sanctions, using their own ammunition from ‘Dynamic Benefits’. A particularly unpleasant example of mainstream anti-scrounger thinking is exposed this week by Johnny Void: TUC guidance on workfare. My slogan now would be ‘Persuasion is better than Force’. Only the Green Party has this vision.
Good on you Natalie!