In the run-up to the General Election 2015, the SNJ will be interviewing all the candidates hoping to become Stroud’s next MP.

This week, reporter Jamie Wiseman spoke to The Green Party's Sarah Lunnon

 

Why did you join the Green Party?

Whenever anyone asks me this it always expands in my mind, there are so many reasons really. If I had to give a simple answer though, the Greens were the only political party linking social justice and the care for people, with environmental justice and the care of the planet.

What are the flagship policies of the Green Party?

We believe in the stewardship of people, communities and the environment. We have got to see our economy as part of the environment and not separate from it. Within that, you can look at our economy and how it is not working for the majority of people.

Instead it’s enriching the few while others at the bottom are becoming more impoverished and suffering huge levels of debt. Our policies look at rebalancing the economy with a fair and just redistributive tax system, and combating the massive transfer of wealth from the many to the wealthy 1% that has taken place in the last twenty years.

We also need to protect our public services, most importantly stopping the marketisation of our NHS. We want to see a truly public health service, free from the influence of profit. We also want real and meaningful action of climate change on a nationwide level, and the introduction of a £10 minimum wage.

What does the Green Party offer that other parties on the political left don’t?

At the moment the Labour Party wants to press on with George Osborne’s spending cuts, that is not a policy of hope and it is not a recipe for success. The Green party says very clearly that we need an anti-austerity agenda.

We have got to stop believing in the dogma of the market, that somehow if we privatise our public services it will benefit us, because history shows you create an economic system that ends up costing more and one that alienates the more vulnerable in society. The conservative’s austerity experiment has failed; the poorest in society have been hit the hardest. It’s time the system changed.

In what ways have you seen the effects of austerity here in Stroud, and what is the Green Party’s alternative?

In Stroud, like across the whole of the country, the most obvious impact of austerity is the growth of food banks, the fact that we now have hundreds of people so impoverished that they can’t afford enough food to eat for their families. I think that is an absolute indictment of the current conservative policies and an appalling record for one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

Alongside that we have seen a huge rise in the number of people going to the CAB with chronic debt problems. Wealth is ending up in the hands of the privileged few while others suffer is poverty, the dogma of austerity has to be broken.

The green alternative is to fairly and ethically rebalance our economy. We think everyone in the country deserves to have enough money to afford food to eat. This is one of the main things I would work to fix in Stroud. But we also need to make sure that if you have a job you need to be earning a living wage, which is why we plan to increase the minimum wage to £10 per hour.

As well as that we need affordable social housing, it needs to be available so that all people have secure places t live. We also need to get rid of student debt so that people don’t leave university with £50,000 worth of debt, it’s obscene. Education is a social benefit to us all, not an individual benefit. Education should be a right, not a privilege.

In an interview on Tuesday (April 7) with the green party leader Natalie Bennett, John Humphreys called the green party a “pressure group” – would you agree with this?

I think that’s a very fair analysis of the impact that the Green Party has had historically and I think what we have done is held the other parties in the UK to account. We have stood up and been a real voice of protest for the environment and social justice.

Given the massive rise in membership we’ve had recently I think we are going to become more than a pressure group in the UK in the coming years. We will, and have already started to become, a real political force capable of shaping law and governmental policy.

You mentioned a green surge, how has that translated here in Stroud?

We have more than doubled the number of members in the Stroud constituencies and people are still joining the green party. The Stroud Green Party now has 500 members, up from around 200 a few months ago. Our support is continuing to grow; it has not peaked, every day we have more people joining, particularly younger voters who want a viable option rather than Labour or the Conservatives. In England we are now the third biggest political party by membership, which is quite remarkable.

Will this support transform into more Green MPs on May 7th? What are you realistic expatiations in Stroud and more broadly in the UK?

My expectation is that we will have a greater political representation at Westminster. What is very interesting about Stroud is that if you look at online polls like ‘vote match’ and voteforpolicies.org, you can see how various postcodes and constituencies are voting and on both of those websites Stroud is Green. People like Green policies, and if we had a sensible voting system Stroud I think would be a Green constituency.

How much effect can a few Green MPs really have in Westminster?

Caroline Lucas has been incredibly influential in parliament, and she’s proposed a number of very progressive pieces of legislation which other parties are now scrambling to catch up with, such as the NHS reinstatement bill. She also tabled legislation to renationalise the railways. So Caroline has been incredibly influential. She’s been voted MP of the year twice. She is a great example that even though we might not have a massive representation we can be very influential. We have a very clear vision of what needs to happen, we have indentified the problems and we know what we need to do about them. I think that clarity makes us very powerful.

What have you personally been campaigning for recently?

I’ve worked very hard since 2007 with regard to the issues of flooding in Stroud, cleaning out the culverts, having a proper maintenance regime and on a wider scale, looking at the system across the whole of the Frome catchment, so we can reduce flooding and how that can be done with rural suds. This is something that is really important; we are the only place in the country that is doing catchment-wide rural suds for flood mitigation. It’s very exciting, and it will benefit the people living in the Stroud valleys.

I also did a lot of work personally with regard to the incinerator. I sat on the County Council and opposed the incinerator from the first second. This incinerator will be a stain on our countryside, and I will continue to fight it whatever happens on May 8. There are alternatives, many of which we put forward to the government.

What environmental policies would you work toward in Stroud?

Climate change is an issue that you can’t tackle on a constituency by constituency basis; it needs a overall national and international plan to tackle it. Would I would like to do as an individual MP would is to look at the work the district council is doing for example, on making properties more energy efficient. That looks at insulation and energy consumption at home, making sure electic vehicles and bikes become more widespread and looking at what is needed to kick-start that technology. How you could encourage the use of eclectic bikes in Stroud as a means of transport. These are the kinds of issues that begin on a local scale that can help bring about a shift in opinion and habit.

What are the Green’s policies on fracking?

Fracking is a ridiculous answer to energy security and really to climate change. We will never invest in fracking. It will ruin our countryside, lead to chemical spills, constant drilling and slumping property prices. It’s so disappointing that Labour and the Lib Dems supported the Infrastructure Bill and have given their backing to fracking. What we should be doing is investing in renewable energy sources and clear carbon technologies.

What are your views on the rise of anti-austerity parties in Europe like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain?

What’s so important about those organisations is that they are standing up and saying no to the EU and the IMF and saying there is a different option to deal with the debt crisis. To insist that hugely indebted countries have to borrow more money to pay back the debts that they already cannot afford is economically illiterate.

On the subject of Europe, Natalie Bennett said that she would support an EU referendum, do you agree?

It is a green party policy to have an EU referendum, but it’s also our policy to campaign to stay within Europe. I wouldn’t argue against it. It’s such a complicated issue, with issues on both sides of the debate, it’s by no means a perfect system, but on an emotional level I would say we have more to gain from staying in the EU.

Why should people vote for you on May 7?

The policies that we want to put forward are based on hope, being courageous and taking control of our own future, as well as being just and looking after people who are vulnerable. The Greens have correctly analysed the problems with our economy and our environment and we propose clear solutions to the problems that face both.

We offer an alternative to the same system that people have been voting for year after year. We have seen how much effect one Green MP can have in Westminster, so imagine how much a few more could have. We offer a positive alternative - to work for the good of all, not enriching a privileged few.

 

For more information visit stroud.greenparty.org.uk/