Tuesday night and we were invited to the local Green party meeting. The mood was one of electoral defeatism. The Party had fought all three local parliamentary seats and had made little impact. Having said that the candidatures in Chelmsford and Safron Waldon were purely paper candidatures and in Brentwood we did little other than one Saturday morning street stall. The long term members who obviously had raised the money for the deposits were deflated , yet from what was said there had been inquiries regarding membership during the campaign.
It was obviously just a business meeting but there was a real need to engender such enthusiasm and activity. No one came forward for next years local elections and the meeting came to an abrupt halt when the main organiser said she couldn't see the point of holding another meeting. To say we went home in a deflated state would be no exaggeration, neither of us expected a robust campaigning political unit, but to see an organisation so close to stagnation and collapse was a shock.
Thankfully early the next morning the Green Party sent me a link to follow following article published in The Guardian written by Caroline Lucas. The thrust of the article was that there is an alternative to the policies being pushed by the three main parties , the Green alternative would create rather than destroy jobs and begin to tackle climate change. Just what I needed to read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/01/green-new-deal-economy
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