What Will It Take For The Greens To "Make A Difference"?

Not This Time - But Never Say Never: James Shaw and his fellow Greens cannot put off forever the hard decision of whether or not to reverse out of the Left-of-Labour cul-de-sac in which they have stranded themselves. As Nandor Tanczos so succinctly put it in a recent blogpost: “players only respect other players”. To negotiate the treacherous rapids of political power successfully, the Green waka’s load must be lightened – by offloading the excessive weight of its conscience.

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE of the “opportunity” the Green Party now has to “make a difference”. Unsurprisingly, most of this much-making has come from the right of the political spectrum. The prospect of being robbed of his “kingmaker” role by a last-minute display of National Party + Greens political jiu-jitsu, is clearly intended to keep Winston Peters on his tactical toes.

Not all of this tactical advice, however, is coming from the Nats. The former Green MP, Nandor Tanczos, is also urging the Greens to escape the self-imposed confinement of their Left-of-Labour cul-de-sac. In a recent blogpost, he identifies the Greens’ fundamental problem as having bought into an “inadequate conceptual model” of twenty-first century politics. Specifically, “the idea that political philosophy can be represented in one dimension on a straight line between left and right.”

The New Zealanders that Tanczos holds up as the unfortunate victims of this one-dimensional conceptualisation of New Zealand politics are the “450,000 small businesses in Aotearoa employing five people or less.”

Self-employment, according to the former Green MP, “speaks to core Green ideals of supporting local economies, building self-reliance and personal autonomy, helping people lift themselves out of poverty and fostering stronger linkages between businesses and the social ecological communities in which they are located.” Tanczos claims to know “a great many small business owners who support the ideals of the Greens but who don’t connect with us a party because we are not speaking to them.”

This is smart thinking on Tanczos’s part. Right from the start, the Greens most obvious electoral deficiency has been a solid socio-economic base from which to strike out in pursuit of political power. Unlike the National Party, with its businessmen and farmers; and the Labour Party, with its wage-workers and Maori; the core of the Green Party vote has never consisted of a social class whose interests it protects, but always of a social movement whose ideals it expresses. Since movements tend to be as varied as they are volatile, it is no wonder that the level of Green Party support can fluctuate wildly between one election and the next.

Historically-speaking, the transition from a movement-based, to a social-class-based, political party is neither easy nor painless. To get some idea of just how difficult and painful these ideological and sociological shifts can be, one has only to study the evolution of the German Green Party – Die Grünen.

Within all Green parties, the most obvious division is invariably between those who come to the party from what might best be called the conscientised, publicly-funded salariat (academics, scientists, teachers, bureaucrats) and those who have made themselves into exemplars of alternative ways of living in a world dominated by consumption-driven capitalism (students, artists, hippies, anti-capitalist artisan-activists).

In Germany, the former group was dubbed the “Realos” (realists) and the latter group the “Fundis” (fundamentalists). The tension between the two factions became a constant feature of Die Grünen’s internal politics. The event which tipped this tension into open and bitter intra-party conflict was – of course – the German Greens’ acquisition of real political power.

In alliance with Germany’s Social Democratic Party (the equivalent of New Zealand’s Labour Party) the Greens soon found themselves confronted with a decision that went to the very heart of their political philosophy.

It was 1999, and NATO was bombing Serbia. The Greens’ leader, and Germany’s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer (a Realo) argued that, for the first time since the Second World War, German fighter aircraft should be sent to attack a nation which had not violated Germany’s borders. The Fundis – many of them veterans of the huge German peace and anti-nuclear movements of the 1980s – were horrified. Fischer was proposing to violate the core Green principle of Non-Violence. A Special Conference of Die Grünen was convened in the city of Bielefeld, in north-west Germany, to decide the matter.

Getting An Earful: Joschka Fischer's "realo" foreign policy prevailed over its "fundi" opposition within Die Grünen, but only at the cost of bitter internal strife.

New Zealanders who lived through the 1981 Springbok Tour would have recognised all the signs of strife. The conference hall was ringed with barbed-wire and guarded by hundreds of armed police officers. Delegates were jostled, and as Fischer entered the hall he was struck by a bag of blood-red paint. The anger of the Fundi protesters outside the hall was equalled only by the fury of the Fundi delegates inside. All to no avail. By a margin of 415/335 the German Green Party’s idealistic fundamentalists were required to make way for its power-wielding realists.

Eighteen years later, Die Grünen, alongside the Free Democrats (the German equivalent of New Zealand’s Act Party) are engaged in coalition negotiations with the conservative Christian Democratic Government of Angela Merkel.

As Nandor Tanczos so succinctly puts it: “players only respect other players”. To negotiate the treacherous rapids of political power successfully, the Green waka’s load must be lightened – by offloading the excessive weight of its conscience.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 October 2017.

An Appointment With Reality

Making Greens See Red: German Green Party leader (and Foreign Minister in Germany's first Red-Green Coalition Government) Joschka Fischer, copped an earful of abuse (and red paint) after endorsing the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Paint-bombs notwithstanding, the special Green Party conference which convened at Bielefeld to debate Fischer's decision voted to put the retention of political power ahead of its pacifist principles. Sometime between now and 2014 New Zealand's Greens face an equally uncomfortable appointment with reality.

“WARMONGERS! WARMONGERS!”, chanted the protesters as Green Party delegates, escorted by police, made their way into Bielefeld’s Seidensticker Hall. It was May 13 1999 and the Children of May 1968 had an appointment with Reality.

 

Over the rogue state of Serbia NATO bombers were staging a “humanitarian intervention” on behalf of the threatened citizens of the breakaway province of Kosovo. For the first time since the end of World War II, German forces were engaged abroad.

 

Joschka Fischer, Green Party leader and Foreign Minister in Germany’s first Red-Green Coalition Government, had endorsed the decision to intervene. At Bielefeld, 800 delegates would decide whether or not his dramatic departure from the Green Party’s founding principle of “Non-Violence” would stand. The long-simmering battle between the right-leaning “Realos” (Realists) and the left-leaning “Fundis” (Fundamentalists) was about to be decided.

 

As it usually does, “Reality” won the day at Bielefeld. The German Greens, faced with the choice of modifying their principles or stepping away from their coalition with the Social Democrats, decided (415/335) to modify their principles. All violence might be awful – but some forms of violence were more awful than others.

 

The NATO sorties continued.

 

Whether they believe the German Greens grew up – or sold out – at Bielefeld, New Zealand’s Greens, at some point during the next three years, will inevitably be faced with a Bielefeld of their own.

 

It is entirely unrealistic for a political party to join a coalition government without first acknowledging the inevitability of compromise. This is especially true if the party in question attracted fewer votes, and thus has fewer seats, than its prospective partner. The larger party cannot be expected to re-order its policy priorities or sacrifice its leading personnel merely to keep its junior partner happy. To do so would attract – and merit – universal scorn.

 

Such are the brutal realities of coalition politics. Parties either accept them – and become genuine players in the political game. Or, they reject them and remain permanent political spectators.

 

It is really only the world’s Green parties which struggle to accept these largely self-evident rules. As the ideological offspring of May 1968 (the year in which the great counter-cultural uprising of the world’s youth reached its zenith) the prototypical German Greens eschewed all political hierarchy in favour of “Appropriate Decision-Making” – by which they meant “grass-roots”, “bottom-up”, consensus-based democracy. And this was no mere rhetorical flourish: Greens really do believe that the way they arrive at major decisions is every bit as important as the decisions they make.

 

All of which lays a heavy burden on the shoulders of Russel Norman and Metiria Turei. Rather than laying claim to portfolios their prospective coalition partners in the Labour Party couldn’t possibly agree to assign them (not without opening up huge divisions within its own ranks) the Greens’ co-leaders should be thinking about how to reconcile their fellow party members’ to the unavoidable compromises of coalition politics.

 

Because these are likely to be both numerous and unpalatable. On practically every economic and social issue that matters the Greens have positioned themselves well to the left of Labour. That being the case, very few, if any, of the Greens’ preferred solutions to the high dollar, unemployment, child poverty, homelessness, climate change and dirty dairying, will win Labour’s unqualified endorsement.

 

As a political party on its way to the Treasury Benches, the New Zealand Greens would be wise to learn from the experience of their German counterparts. Tumultuous gatherings on the model of the Bielefeld Conference make for the most stunning political theatre, but the long-term consequences in terms of preserving ideological coherence, or even the enduring good-will and commitment of the party rank-and-file can be extremely debilitating.

 

It wasn’t just an earful of red-paint that the “warmonger”, Joschka Fischer, received in the Seidensticker Hall. His role in undermining the Green’s pacifist traditions won him a new and much less flattering image than the “principled activist” persona he had worn since 1968.

 

Reality plays no favourites.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 December 2012.

Baden-Wurttemberg's Brave New World

Definitely NOT a Hippy!: The new Governor of Germany's third-largest state is the Green Party's Winfried Kretschmann. For the first time - anywhere - the Greens have come second in a significant electoral contest. In the recent Baden-Wurttemberg elections Kretschmann's party won more votes than the left-leaning Social Democrats (who now become the junior partner in a Green-Red coalition) and shattered the 50-year dominance of the conservative Christian Democrats. Russel Norman's suits and ties suddenly make a lot more sense.

BADEN-WURTTEMBERG is one of those curious names that only students of European history and geography – and frequent flyers – recognise. Located in the south-western corner of the Federal Republic of Germany, it is both geographically and by population (10.7 million) that country’s third largest state.

The only reason Baden-Wurttemberg is in the headlines (at least internationally) is because, for the first time in a state election, anywhere, a green party came in second. By giving Die Grunen more support than its social-democratic coalition partner, the eight million voters of Baden-Wurttemberg ensured that their next governor will not be the usual Christian Democrat, or even a member of the left-leaning Social Democrats. For the first time – ever – he’ll be a Green: Winfried Kretschmann.

Now, New Zealand is a very long way from Baden-Wurttemberg, and what happens in Germany doesn’t necessarily happen here. But the surprise victory of the Green-Social Democrat coalition in Baden-Wurttemberg – a German state which has returned nothing but conservative Christian Democratic governments since the 1950s – bears more than a little antipodean scrutiny.

What could make a deeply conservative state like Baden-Wurttemberg – the home of Mercedes and Porsche – abandon its traditional allegiances and embrace a party which the good burghers of Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Ulm, only a few years ago, would’ve dismissed as irresponsible hippies?

If I wanted to be glib and superficial, I’d offer you just one word: “Fukushima”. The Japanese catastrophe occurred slap-bang-in-the-middle of the election campaign – throwing into sharp focus the voters’ hitherto ill-defined fears about the Christian Democrat-led Federal Government’s renewed commitment to Germany’s nuclear energy programme.

But, of course, the real reasons go much deeper than that.

The defection of so many conservative voters to The Greens reflects a political malaise that has already “gone global”. All over the world the social, economic and environmental status-quo is being challenged. This political distemper is exhibited not only in the so-called “developed countries”, but also, and with increasing ferocity, in the countries of what used to be called the Third World – especially the Middle East.

It is born, I believe, from the indifference and self-imposed isolation of the economic elites. These “One Percenters” rely upon a compliant media to filter out and/or distort the electorate’s cries for change. Failing that, they use their colossal wealth to manufacture bogus “grass-roots” movements” (such as the US “Tea Party”) whose duped participants will embrace as their own an economic, social and environmental agenda designed to make their masters even richer and more powerful.

The more sophisticated sort of Green politicians responds to this grim political malaise by making themselves as appealing as possible not to the down-trodden and oppressed worker and/or beneficiary (who have their own political party) but to the status-anxious, politically-disconnected (but still compassionate) members of the educated middle class.

A wise old television journalist once told me that the typical Green voter in Wellington was the wife of the local university lecturer, doctor, architect, engineer or senior civil-servant. If this is true, then the most obvious method of doubling the Greens electoral support would be to choose candidates these women’s husbands could conceivably vote for as well.

That appears to be what happened in Baden-Wurttemberg and, judging by the New Zealand Greens’ preliminary Party List, it also appears to be the strategic objective of their coolly cerebral co-leader, Dr Russel Norman.

Just compare the fourteenth-ranked candidate, James Shaw, with sixteenth-ranked Steffan Browning.

James styles himself a Green entrepreneur and is an energetic promoter of the Green technological fix. Steffan is a delver and digger-out of environmentally hazardous corporate secrets. James sees science providing pure and politically unencumbered solutions to the planet’s problems. Steffan recognises that science, like every other human endeavour, has a paymaster, and that the purposes of our paymasters are not always planet-friendly.

In the best of all possible worlds, James and Steffan would both get into Parliament. But, in the brave new world of political possibilities ushered in by Baden-Wurttemberg, it’ll be candidates like James who “sophisticated Greens” feel more inclined to push up the List.

As Green Party members throughout New Zealand turn to the task of ranking the definitive Green Party List, my hope is that they’ll weigh with equal care the political contributions of those who envision the world as it might be, and those who grapple with the world as it is.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 8 April 2011.