In mid-January, Green Party meetings headlined by Zack Polanski attracted notably large enthusiastic crowds across West Yorkshire.
This matches the party’s recent claim to have almost tripled its membership to 180,000 since Polanski became leader last year.
A Wakefield event sold out its 400 tickets almost straight away, and had to change venues to meet demand, while a meeting in Bradford saw a similar crowd of 500 gather. Reportedly Labour insiders were “shocked” at the turnout.
In years past this may have seemed rather out of place as, despite the odd councillor here and there, the Greens have never had much of a foothold in largely working-class and deprived areas like these. The party has been associated with middle-class NIMBYism and environmentalism, with its strongholds in southern cities like Bristol and Brighton.
However, the turn toward ‘bold politics’ and anti-establishment audacity, expressed in Polanski’s many viral moments, has connected the party with a new layer of supporters, including in similar working-class areas like Stockton and Hartlepool in the North East.
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Elsewhere – in Lewisham, South East London – the Guardian reported that the Greens pentupled their membership from 500 to 2,500 in the borough last year, and welcomed an unprecedented 600 attendees at a recent meeting. The local party is well-poised to take several council seats from Labour in the coming May elections.
The Bradford Communists have noticed in our work that working-class South Asian youth are looking with interest at the Green Party. They hate the rotten establishment parties, and their hopes in the farcical Your Party have been dashed.
In Green meetings themselves, the focus is often on local issues like austerity cuts, and the crippling of local councils, as well as tackling international questions like Gaza.
In cities like Bradford, one of the poorest and most diverse in England, where council tax has been hiked by nearly ten percent while vital services have been decimated, it is no surprise that this kind of politics is finding an echo.
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Far from the ‘Green surge’ being a flash in the pan, we are noticing a growing layer of people lending their support to this new Green party – a layer we, as communists, can connect with. Whether this support is deeply-felt or tentative is hard to gauge at present.
But what we do know is that this same process of radicalisation is pushing some youth beyond the left-reformism of the Greens and Your Party.
The most radical young people in Bradford, Wakefield, and no doubt many other areas, are looking beyond the vague ‘politics of hope’ that Polanski is peddling.
Some of them are seeking the politics of revolution that we – the Revolutionary Communist Party – are putting forward. We will welcome them into our ranks!
