Greening Newcastle Welcome to Issue 11 of the Magazine of Newcastle Green Party, June 2011 Newcastle Electoral Green Party Branch Meeting
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Greening Newcastle Welcome to issue 11 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, June 2011 Newcastle Electoral Green Party branch meeting All welcome! Roll? 19.00, Wednesday, June 1st, cross the country, the Green Party had 116 councillors British Legion Club on 42 councils before the recent elections. That has in- (just down from the Lonsdale pub) Acreased to 130 on 43 councils. The best result was down south in Brighton where the Party won 23 seats, making it the largest on the council. Norwich Green Party now has 15. Seats Metro: West Jesmond were also won in Bolsover, Bristol, Herefordshire, Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, Malvern Hills, Mid Suffolk, Reigate, Solihull, Further south, Joe Michna was (re-)elected down in Mid- South Hams, Stafford and St Albans. However Lancaster Green dlesbrough [first time as a Green], topping the poll with 860 Party lost 4 of its 12 seats on the city council to Labour. votes. Sunderland Greens did notably well, getting between Some of those results, notably Brighton of course, are quite 5.3% and 18.6% of the vote and were firmly the 3rd party ahead cheering. It might be wondered how many of those ‘green’ vot- of the LibDems, UKIP etc. The result exceeded expectations, ers are really endorsing a fully blooded Green programme. creating a really firm basis for future political development. There is always the danger that we run the risk of a ’Nick Clegg’ Here in Newcastle, the best result was in East Gosforth situation, either promising things we won’t do or, much more with Frances Hinton, a well known and well respected cam- likely, not making clear what we really want to do, leaving our- paigner on many local issues, scoring 403 (10.7%). In South Jes- selves open to a backlash. None the less, there are genuine rea- mond, Tony Waterston clocked up 266 (an impressive 12.2%) sons to see the local elections as on-going progress, albeit not Tim Dowson also did well in North Jesmond getting 273 votes at the speed the objective situation demands. (11.7%). In South Heaton, Andrew Gray beat the Conservatives Within the region, the performance of the Green Party, as getting third place with 293 (11%). John Pearson got 5.7% in might well be expected, did not match the achievements further Wingrove and Sandy Irvine 6.9% in West Gosforth. south. Yet there are still some striking results. Particularly no- We distributed an extra large number of leaflets, with sever- table in the region was the success of Rachael Roberts, coming al non-party members helping. More importantly, the quality of top at Alnwick with 531 votes. [See her blog @ http://rachael- this propaganda was better than anything ever produced in the robertsalnwick.wordpress.com/.] past (thanks to Alec Ponton). More street stalls were also held In North Tyneside, Green candidates fared as local activ- than before. The next branch meeting will discuss the results, ists expected. 4.9% of the vote was won in Wallsend, very similar evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of our campaign. But to past results. A vote of 5.1% in St. Mary’s was a good result. the main focus will be on the future and what issues we ought Last year the Green Party got 10% but then there was no Lib. to take up over the next period. Part of the discussion will, of Dem. in the poll so this May’s outcome was a more realistic course, be the council wards on which we ought to concentrate figure. The challenge is to mobilise more members in leafleting, our efforts next time round. reports Martin Collins, the election agent. Across the river in South Tyneside, the Party did par- ticularly well in the Simonside & Rekendyke ward. There, David Rachael Roberts, left, is the Moore came 3rd (8.8%), beating the BNP and Lib Dems and first Green Party member more than doubling the previous poll. Vicki Grist got 6.0% in to be elected to Alnwick West Park while Lyne Barber scored 5.8% in Westoe and Tony town council,. Gair 4.1% in the Bede ward. The Green Party election David’s result may be partly due to a letter he got published broadcast was especially in the Gazette, which criticised the Labour Council for imple- helpful, she reports. menting the ConDem cuts without a fight, and indeed being harsher than necessary in its dealings with the workforce. He finished with a pledge that if elected Green councillors would reduce the amount councillors have claimed by at least 10%, in See Stop Press on final page solidarity with the workforce and the residents. 1 College Vandalised! In the recent local elections, the two Green Party candidates in Gosforth spotlighted the menace of ‘concrete creep’, destroying Most college libraries (often rebranded as “Learning Centres”) garden habitats for car ports and BBQ patios. have a Business Studies section. In it are works by management But this poem puts the matter better than our leaflets. gurus like Peter Drucker and Charles Handy. They teach that (Thanks to Laurence Ellacott for the submission) the best way to motivate staff is to treat them well, value their experiences and opinions, consult with them and otherwise “Uproot those trees genuinely involve them in the process of running an organisation. That way, they claim, win-win situations can be created. (where the blackbirds nest) Today, top managers of colleges consistently ignore such advice. Indeed they zealously pursue the mushroom theory of Wrench out that bush management, keeping ordinary staff in the dark and then crap- ping on them. Staff are treated as pawns on some drawing board, (that the bees like best) to be arbitrarily moved or simply discarded. All failures and set- backs are deemed to be the fault of the ‘troops’ on the ground. Take up that lawn of peaceful green A new generation of ultra-aggressive college managers has embraced the bullying ‘kick-ass’ approach. They never examine Its where we want a car to be their own failings and indeed, whilst cutting staff pay and condi- tions, are quick to boost their own salaries and perks. Bring in pebbles,sand,cement These days, students are treated more like customers in a shop, always to be placated, never to be offended. That, of Paving, bricks and mortar course, only leaves the staff to be blamed for bad exam results and the like. Instead of education, colleges now talk of the ‘offer’, We’ve bought a lovely motor car that mix of courses and subjects most likely to make the most money. The concept of intrinsic value, so central to real educa- for our seventeen year old daughter. tion, has been flung in the dustbin. Of course, like other such institutions, colleges operate in And once the concrete’s all been done the context of general government cutbacks. They have included the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance payment We’ll plant a Peugeot for our son.” to poorer students and the slashing of support for several parts of the curriculum as well as valuable ‘enrichment’ activities. Yet (Eileen M.C. Gray) routinely money is blown on absurd projects, ‘cross-curricula’ initiatives that initiate nothing, quality control ‘systems’ merely designed to give the impression but not the substance of quality, super-pay and assorted perks for management and so on. But the management’s main route to money-saving is ‘efficiency’,…‘sweating the assets’, i.e. making the teachers and genuinely necessary support staff work harder (bigger classes, longer class contact time etc.) for less pay and shorter holidays. Newcastle College is showing just how bad this can get. In the process, a really valuable educational resource for the locality is being trashed. Essentially teachers are being progres- sively turned into a much smaller group of lower paid ‘instruc- tors’, with students increasingly dumped in front of computer screens to disguise the reduction in real tuition. At present, cuts are looming across the college. Over all, 185 staff are threatened with redundancy. In the Sixth Form centre, 20 jobs out of a total of 128 staff are at risk. Holidays will be cut by 12 days while some lecturers could lose between 10- 50% (sic) in pay. Senior management posts and pay are all safe, Above, the Green Party stall in Exhibition Park at this year’s May however. Day march. Below, the Making Wave choir entertains the rally. At the same time, the college has found monies for a “multi- Spot the ‘usual suspects’ in the two pictures. million pound” building programme and a merger with North- umberland College. The Newcastle College Group announced a significant surplus this year, of which it is estimated the Rye Hill campus contributed £10.4m. This makes the funding shortfall of £4m look like “small beer” out of a turnover of £150m. The rank and file staff deserve our support. Support them by singing their petition @ http://newcastlecollege.web.ucu.org.uk/sign-the- petition. There is also a letter-writing campaign. See: http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=5552 2 the NE than, say, Yorkshire or Scotland. Membership of the Trot- skyist Revolutionary Communist Party on Tyneside at the height of its (very modest) influence peaked at just 13 (during the ap- prentices’ strike against being drafted down the mines in 1944). Many local unions similarly towed the right-wing line, some- times sailing into straight corruption (notably the infamous Andy Fog Cunningham, regional boss of the General and Municipal Work- ers, then the North East’s biggest union, and chairman of the North Region executive of the Labour Party).