1

Greening NewcastleWelcome to issue 11 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, June 2011

NewcastleGreen Party branch meetingAll welcome!

19.00, Wednesday, June 1st,British Legion Club(just down from the Lonsdale pub)

Metro: West Jesmond

ElectoralRoll?Across the country, the Green Party had 116 councillors

on 42 councils before the recent elections. That has in-creased 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 were also won in Bolsover, Bristol, Herefordshire, Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, Malvern Hills, Mid Suffolk, Reigate, Solihull, South Hams, Stafford and St Albans. However Lancaster Green Party lost 4 of its 12 seats on the city council to Labour.

Some of those results, notably Brighton of course, are quite cheering. It might be wondered how many of those ‘green’ vot-ers are really endorsing a fully blooded Green programme. There is always the danger that we run the risk of a ’Nick Clegg’ situation, either promising things we won’t do or, much more likely, not making clear what we really want to do, leaving our-selves open to a backlash. None the less, there are genuine rea-sons to see the local elections as on-going progress, albeit not at the speed the objective situation demands.

Within the region, the performance of the Green Party, as might well be expected, did not match the achievements further south. Yet there are still some striking results. Particularly no-table in the region was the success of Rachael Roberts, coming top at Alnwick with 531 votes. [See her blog @ http://rachael-robertsalnwick.wordpress.com/.]

In North Tyneside, Green candidates fared as local activ-ists expected. 4.9% of the vote was won in Wallsend, very similar to past results. A vote of 5.1% in St. Mary’s was a good result. Last year the Green Party got 10% but then there was no Lib.Dem. in the poll so this May’s outcome was a more realistic figure. The challenge is to mobilise more members in leafleting, 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 Moore came 3rd (8.8%), beating the BNP and Lib Dems and more than doubling the previous poll. Vicki Grist got 6.0% in West Park while Lyne Barber scored 5.8% in Westoe and Tony Gair 4.1% in the Bede ward.

David’s result may be partly due to a letter he got published in the Gazette, which criticised the Labour Council for imple-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 solidarity with the workforce and the residents.

Rachael Roberts, left, is the first Green Party member to be elected to Alnwick town council,.The Green Party election broadcast was especially helpful, she reports.

Further south, Joe Michna was (re-)elected down in Mid-dlesbrough [first time as a Green], topping the poll with 860 votes. Sunderland Greens did notably well, getting between 5.3% and 18.6% of the vote and were firmly the 3rd party ahead of the LibDems, UKIP etc. The result exceeded expectations, creating a really firm basis for future political development.

Here in Newcastle, the best result was in East Gosforth with Frances Hinton, a well known and well respected cam-paigner on many local issues, scoring 403 (10.7%). In South Jes-mond, Tony Waterston clocked up 266 (an impressive 12.2%) Tim Dowson also did well in North Jesmond getting 273 votes (11.7%). In South Heaton, Andrew Gray beat the Conservatives getting third place with 293 (11%). John Pearson got 5.7% in Wingrove and Sandy Irvine 6.9% in West Gosforth.

We distributed an extra large number of leaflets, with sever-al non-party members helping. More importantly, the quality of this propaganda was better than anything ever produced in the past (thanks to Alec Ponton). More street stalls were also held than before. The next branch meeting will discuss the results, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of our campaign. But the main focus will be on the future and what issues we ought to take up over the next period. Part of the discussion will, of course, be the council wards on which we ought to concentrate our efforts next time round.

See Stop Press on final page

2

In the recent local elections, the two Green Party candidates in Gosforth spotlighted the menace of ‘concrete creep’, destroying garden habitats for car ports and BBQ patios.But this poem puts the matter better than our leaflets.(Thanks to Laurence Ellacott for the submission)

“Uproot those trees

(where the blackbirds nest)

Wrench out that bush

(that the bees like best)

Take up that lawn of peaceful green

Its where we want a car to be

Bring in pebbles,sand,cement

Paving, bricks and mortar

We’ve bought a lovely motor car

for our seventeen year old daughter.

And once the concrete’s all been done

We’ll plant a Peugeot for our son.” (Eileen M.C. Gray)

Above, the Green Party stall in Exhibition Park at this year’s May Day march. Below, the Making Wave choir entertains the rally.

Spot the ‘usual suspects’ in the two pictures.

College Vandalised!Most college libraries (often rebranded as “Learning Centres”) have a Business Studies section. In it are works by management gurus like Peter Drucker and Charles Handy. They teach that the best way to motivate staff is to treat them well, value their experiences and opinions, consult with them and otherwise genuinely involve them in the process of running an organisation. That way, they claim, win-win situations can be created.

Today, top managers of colleges consistently ignore such advice. Indeed they zealously pursue the mushroom theory of management, keeping ordinary staff in the dark and then crap-ping on them. Staff are treated as pawns on some drawing board, to be arbitrarily moved or simply discarded. All failures and set-backs are deemed to be the fault of the ‘troops’ on the ground.

A new generation of ultra-aggressive college managers has embraced the bullying ‘kick-ass’ approach. They never examine their own failings and indeed, whilst cutting staff pay and condi-tions, are quick to boost their own salaries and perks.

These days, students are treated more like customers in a shop, always to be placated, never to be offended. That, of course, only leaves the staff to be blamed for bad exam results and the like. Instead of education, colleges now talk of the ‘offer’, that mix of courses and subjects most likely to make the most money. The concept of intrinsic value, so central to real educa-tion, has been flung in the dustbin.

Of course, like other such institutions, colleges operate in the context of general government cutbacks. They have included the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance payment to poorer students and the slashing of support for several parts of the curriculum as well as valuable ‘enrichment’ activities. Yet 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, however.

At the same time, the college has found monies for a “multi- 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

3

Fog on the Tyne?Newcastle’s political history is perhaps more mixed than

is widely recognised. Way back in the English Civil War, it supported the Royalist side. It might also be noted

that the Conservatives had a strong presence on Newcastle Council for decades (ruling 1918-1945, 1948-1958, and 1968-1974), sometimes in alliance with the amusingly named ‘Progres-sives’ (i.e. Reactionaries – “slash my rates now and sod every-body else”)

Later, in the 70s and 80s, ‘grassroots’ Liberals began to chal-lenge successfully dead-head Labour councillors in several wards, though their programme was not particularly radical, more a matter of making sure the bins got emptied, doubtless important but scarcely the road to a whole new society. Before then, ‘Liberal Unionists’ had been led by rather backward ele-ments like William McKeag (who actually worked for the Whites in the Russian Civil War!).

There have indeed been moments of mass radical protest locally. There was, for example, a strong movement against the slave trade (in which Newcastle was a significant dealer). Men-tion should be made of the 1819 meeting on the Town Moor, demonstrating against the Peterloo Massacre. It apparently at-tracted some 40,000 people. Suffragettes gave Winston Church-ill a ‘hot’ reception when he visited the city in 1909. There is certainly a radical side to city history.

Yet such protests were sometimes characterised by a certain lack of ‘combativity’. The famous march of the unemployed from nearby Jarrow, for example, notably lacked the militancy of simi-lar protests in areas like South Wales. In several ways, progres-sive radicalism has been balanced by a certain ‘conservatism’.

For a start, the local labour movement has always tended towards the Right. Indeed it would be accurate to describe most local Labour politicians, both MPs and councillors not as “right-wing” but “Neanderthal”, except that such a description is un-fair to Neanderthals, given they were more intelligent, forward-looking and responsive. The main exception was the left-wing Konni Zilliacus, Labour MP for Gateshead 1945-50.

The Communist Party did build up pockets of strength in lo-cal villages like Chopwell (“Little Moscow”) but, generally, it did not make big inroads and, by the 1950s, was declining faster in

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 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). There have been pockets of militancy (the old C.A. Parsons, etc) but, generally, nothing to match that of cities like Liverpool. It was striking on the recent May Day march in Newcastle, for example, how few actual rank and file members of unions like Unite and Unison were marching behind such banners, despite the serious threat to public sector workforces from the cutbacks.

In recent years, various radical initiatives have struggled to flower on Tyneside. A notable example was the Tyneside Social-ist Centre which struggled on for nine years before collapsing in the mid-80s. Indeed, in the 70s & 80s, a lot of radical activity in the area depended on a layer of talented individuals employed initially by various Community Development Projects. But the communities themselves did not seem able to sustain much pro-gressive political life without such an input.

The record of the broad peace, environmental and social jus-tice movement has been a bit rocky too. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace never managed to sustain active local branches in Newcastle. CND did attract sizeable numbers, both in the late 1950s wave and during the later cruise missile protests. Yet those who remained involved for any length of time could sometimes be counted on the fingers of one hand. Thus meet-ings of the Tyneside Anti-Nuclear Campaign in the late 70s and early 80s normally attracted 4-5 people. Today, the anti-cuts Coalition of Resistance seems to be attracting more support at its meetings but it is early days yet.

In many ways then, Newcastle and many other parts of the NE have a somewhat ‘conservative’ if not Conservative charac-ter. It is hard to say why. Perhaps the former dominance of coal-mining and heavy engineering created a distinct mindset, with lots of people becoming very set in their ways and loyal to the organisations ‘bred’ by that economy, including the Labour Party. A certain resistance to new ideas may have developed. During deindustrialisation, perhaps such people looked back to a revival of what had been, remaining resistant to the ideas of groups like the Green Party who argue that a whole new economy and new ways of living are necessary.

Ironically some radically minded middle class individuals who, in other parts of the country, have switched to the Greens or busied themselves with single issue campaigns, here remain even T. Dan Smith surveys some ofthe tower blocks he threw upin the 60s

4

more attached to Labour than the mainstream working class. Just look at the social background of some of the Labour can-didates who stood in the last election! Perhaps it stems from some personal need to identify with what they see as the “Peo-ple’s Party”. Perhaps it is caused by a perception that there is no viable alternative. Perhaps both, fertilised by a certain romanti-cism about the ‘labour movement’. [See critique in GN 7]

Then, of course, there are the straight Conservatives. Mass industrialism bred mass slum housing and then giant council house estates. Those living in posh detached houses and the like usually rallied to the Party that promised to keep the richer lay-ers of local society rich while the toiling masses would have to make do with crumbs off the table.

Conservative forces have been reinforced in the past by sup-port from those working class people who believe that their ‘superiors’ know best and who duly accept their lowly place in society (the ‘Alf Garnett’ syndrome). Alternatively they believe that they can make on their own, thus thinking and acting indi-vidualistically (they duly supported Margaret Thatcher’s call to enrich yourselves).

There is another factor at work reinforcing a certain apoliti-cism, which, in practice, further aids Conservatism. Nowadays, in Newcastle as elsewhere, many young people work in shops, fast food outlets, leisure clubs, call centres, and other workplaces where trade unionism is weak. That sense of solidarity, essential to all truly progressive traditions, is thus less likely to develop than in big, well organised factories and offices.

There is also another large group worth a mention. It is growing army of people living on private cul-de-sac develop-ments and who travel everywhere by car, whose former gardens are now paved car ports for their SUVs, who shop at out-of-town malls, and use various private facilities, from private health care to private gyms. They don’t use local shops nor frequent local pubs and cafes.

Such social layers are detached from society, treating eve-rything from the perspective of an acquisitive consumer, not a responsible citizen. In many ways they are more distanced from the green worldview than some old-fashioned Tories,with their (restricted) sense of social obligation. The habitats of this new layer have sprouted around Newcastle, creating often unrecep-tive territory for the green message.

Green challengeSo the recent Green Party election results in Newcastle need to be put into the context of an environment that, down the decades, has proved somewhat tough-going for all sorts of radi-cal movements. Compare the local scene to what is happening in places like Totnes, Todmorden, Norwich or Brighton (ignore that daft award for our city by Forum for the Future).

Perhaps the critical task is to steer a line between naïve op-timism (which can only lead to crippling disappointment) and equally unwarranted pessimism (leading to cynicism or despair). History is in fact full surprises. In a speech in December 1916, the 46 year old Lenin told his audience that he did not expect to live to see the Russian Revolution and then …

The key thing is not to read too much into this or that elec-tion result but to build an organisation capable of exploiting opportunities when they do come along. To do that, we Greens need to put on ‘muscle’. In other words, perhaps the most im-mediate challenge now is to identify sympathisers and turn them into active members. Only then, with those extra resourc-es, might we really be able to wage serious campaigns to win over more of those now unaware of or resistant to green ideas.

A Fair Cop?There have been numerous protests in recent months against

the government austerity programme and the related issue of tax justice. Yet the policing of marches and other protest activity suggests that the government is trying to suppress what is legitimate dissent.The following story by the parent of one local activist who went to the big TUC rally encapsulates this anti-democratic and unjust trend. ‘Susan’ is a pseudonym since the case is still underway.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Susan was in Fortnum and Mason on March 26th participating in a protest organised by UK Uncut. The focus of the protest was to bring attention to the tax avoidance carried out by many corporate businesses and their owners - money that could otherwise be collected for the common good. She did not damage nor deface any property nor verbally abuse or assault anyone. Her actions at all times were non violent. She was quite simply exercising her right of freedom to assemble and to express her beliefs.

Unfortunately the police thought otherwise. The protesters were told that they could leave as soon as the “trouble” outside was contained. They were in fact told that the only reason they were being kept from leaving the building was to protect them, the protesters, from getting caught up with what was happening outside. Subsequent events proved otherwise, because as soon as they started leaving they were corralled and hemmed in by the riot police.

After some time, Susan then realised that they were not be-ing “protected” but were in fact being arrested. She was cau-tioned, handcuffed, put in a coach and taken to a police station situated in one of the outer London Boroughs. Once there, the process of being taken into custody began. She was kept over-night in a police cell. Her clothes were removed along with other possessions. She was given a white paper suit to wear and subsequently go home in. Her purse and other belongings were returned, except her phone and clothes. She was finally al-lowed to leave on Sunday evening, about 20 hours after she was arrested. The offence she has been charged with is aggravated trespass. She was arrested along with 144 other people.

The court hearing is due to be heard soon. Maybe the Crown Prosecution Service will not proceed with the charges, maybe they will. But should the police have arrested people like Susan in the first place? Are the police sending out the message that if you try and push the boundaries a bit, not walk nicely along on pre-designated routes and attend a well organised rally at the end then you are doing something which the state will crimi-nalise. Marches and rallies should be well organised but there is a fundamental right to carry out non-violent direct action. It is part and parcel of true democracy.

See: http://www.fortnum145.org.uk

Local Green Party member Tim Dowson took this shot of the Fortnum and Mason protest, whilst on the march outside.

5

The green movement in Newcastle scarcely appears in standard histories of the area nor is it any the more vis-ible in feature films and TV programmes set here. Yet it

has existed for many years, albeit much weaker than in other parts of the country. Indeed one of the first mass movements with a strong environmental element was the local Dicky Bird Society founded in 1874. Membership reached some 100,000.

In more modern times, from the 60s onwards, local aware-ness of green issues was of course driven to a considerable extent by national and international events. These included a series of high profile oil tanker disasters (Torrey Canyon etc) plus some landmark conferences and publications (the 1972 ‘Only One Earth’ gathering in Stockholm and books like The Population Bomb, Limits to Growth and the Blueprint for Survival, all of which attracted much media coverage at the time).

The main platform for environmental concern had tradi-tionally been rather ‘respectable’ organisations, particularly the Northumberland and Newcastle Society (founded 1924) and the North of England Civic Trust (1965). The Northumberland Wildlife Trust was registered as a charity in 1971. The Campaign to Protect Rural England (formerly ‘Council’) has had branches in the region since the 1970s and has campaigned on many local issues, most notably opencast mining and the creation of the strategic green belt.

The good work of such bodies notwithstanding, they might be deemed a ‘loyal opposition’ in that they posed no wider cri-tique of the society that was causing the very problems about which they were concerned. The same might be said of various educational initiatives such as the Tyne and Wear (now North East) Environmental Education Programme (NEEEF) set up in 1975, the first in England (its leading light was, for many years, David Lovie, a professional town planner). It seems fair to say that until the latter part 20th century, environmental concern on Tyneside was small-scale, middle class and focussed largely on what might be called preservationism (historic buildings, favour-ite scenery etc.)

Radical shiftHowever, the same process that led to the launch of more radi-cal national and international pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace caused similar ripples on Tyneside. Bodies such as Tyneside Environmental Concern (TEC) and particularly SOCEM (Save Our City from Environmental Mess) arose in response to local issues like destructive road devel-opments. At the time, six (sic) motorways were planned which would have almost obliterated the old city centre.

SOCEM was almost entirely the creation of Alan Brown, a Tory supporter, who lived in the area of south Jesmond that was under assault from bulldozers. They had started to carve out what were planned to be new roadways (even removing 1,000 bodies from the local cemetery). The construction of the cen-tral motorway not far away also cost much housing (Sandyford Road area) as well as many trees and open space in Exhibition

Park. The traditional Left, however, failed to address the issue of the private motor car, even though it embodies a great class injustice, effectively excluding groups like the poor, the young and the elderly from many activities, while endangering children in particular.

TEC also made the link between social poverty, poor health and unhealthy eating. One action was to open one of the city’s first health food stores, not in leafy Jesmond but in the working class suburb of Walker, where lots of shipyard workers lived. The point was that there were more nutritious but also genuinely less expensive alternatives to ‘junk food’ which was of course, also the produce of an ecologically unsustainable agricultural system. One local activist, Monica Frisch, launched Earthright Publications which helped to popularise green ideas.

The radical bookshop Days of Hope (c1977-1986, first in the suburbs on Jesmond Road, then Westgate Road in the city centre) had carried a decent environmental section, unlike the older ‘Peoples Bookshop’ (Communist Party) up the road. This reflected the increasing traction of green ideas in the area. Of course, both bookshops have now disappeared under the tidal wave of chain stores and Internet shopping. The former had been the child of the Tyneside Socialist Centre, one of a se-ries of stalled ‘left unity’ initiatives. The leading light was Hilary Wainwright who went on the found Red Pepper magazine, which continues to feature (somewhat shallow) green material.

Union currentsThere were (very modest) ripples of green concern inside local trade unions too. A very early instance was a meeting in 1972 convened by the local trades council in the then quite grand sur-roundings of the Royal Station Hotel at which Professor Barry Commoner, the American socialist biologist and author of a not-ed book The Closing Circle, and the Australian trade unionist Jack Mundey (leader of the ‘green bans’ movement in Sydney) spoke on environmental issues. It owed much to the enthusiasm of one person, Colin Randall, an organiser from a local Community Development Project. The building workers union, UCATT, also played a part through its representative Davey Ayres.

The main other trade union connection was to be found at C.A. Parsons, a power plant manufacturer. There, members of what was then the draughtsman’s union TASS (Terry Rogers, Bob Murdoch, and Harry Blair to the fore) had been arguing the case for combined heat and power plants, instead of conven-tional coal burning power stations. Also involved were Friends of the Earth via an energy conservation advisor David Green, who particularly stressed energy waste in the home and its link to fuel poverty.

The campaign featured in a BBC community access pro-gramme at the time (the kind of broadcast that usually goes out when no-one is watching). Dave Elliot and Frankie Ashton from Socialist Environment and Resources Association were centrally involved. There was also a local branch of SERA in Newcastle. It usually met at the home of a local architect Ted Nicklin. Its main

Black and White… and Green

6

focus was energy conservation. The Labour Party connection was not particularly pronounced at this level, though there was more interest from local LP members than from the ‘Hard Left’. The idea of ‘alternative plans’, following the inspirational lead of Mike Cooley at Lucas Aerospace, had also caught the interest of some trade unionists at the Vickers factory along Scotswood Road.

No nukesLater in the 1970s, following the establishment of a national campaign over nuclear energy, one of whose sponsors was miners’ leader Arthur Scargill, Tyneside Anti-Nuclear Campaign (TANC) was set up. It had half a dozen activists, Future La-bour government minister Mo Mowlam, then a local university lecturer, passed through the doors of TANC. It had hoped to replicated the campaign against nuclear weapons. Ironically the rebirth of CND, around the Cruise Missiles controversy, helped to sap its energy. Locally, TANC did manage to organise protests against proposed nuclear waste dumping in the Cheviots, an-other proposal for a power station at scenic Druridge Bay and the transport of nuclear waste flasks by train through Tyneside. On that last issue, one meeting organised by TANC packed a church hall in the suburb of Boldon.

The protection of Druridge Bay had mobilised considerable numbers of people. Bridget Gubbins, arguably its leading light, also played a notable role in exposing how the nuclear power industry has been heavily subsidised via public funding of its in-surance cover, quite contrary, of course, to what is normal in businesses and households. The public response was such that there was a basis for Greens to contest the Northumbria seat in the 1989 Euroelections (and, sadly, sharing in the ‘false dawn’ of that success when nationally the Party got 15% of the vote)

SCRAP (previously Newcastle Schools and Community Re-cycling Project) has now been working with schools in New-castle since 1993. It is based within the Children’s Warehouse and strives to raise awareness amongst young people of envi-ronmental issues, with a special focus on paper recycling. In the late 90s, BAN Waste was to emerge, starting life as Byker Plant Working Group with a vociferous and angry meeting of over 200 people opposed to the Byker incinerator.

Ecology turns GreenA local branch of the then Ecology (now Green) Party, had been founded at the end of the 1970s. Its first member was Alec Pon-ton. It had a fairly fitful existence but began to mount consistent election campaigns, establishing a small but firm foundation on Tyneside. It published a well researched pamphlet called Don’t Catch the A-Train on nuclear waste transportation. Its circulation was modest, however. Now there are four separate branches where there was just one. Green party members are promi-nently involved in a variety of individual campaigns today, from the anti-cutbacks movement to the Transition Town movement. Indeed at least a couple have taken up significant trade union roles, in contrast to the days when there was a wide gulf be-tween many environmentalists and the labour movement.

That said, many local ‘Reds’ resolutely resisted and continue to resist becoming deeply Green, while recent recruits to the Green Party have included as many people with no political background as those switching organisational loyalties. Perhaps the real lesson from this potted history is that the primary audi-ence for Green ideas is more likely to be amongst that layer of concerned citizens who are currently uncommitted but rather than those who are members of established movements.

Insane road plans like the one above from the 60s and the then Labour council encouraged interest in greener alternatives as did the

nuclear power station proposed for Druridge Bay, below.

Q&AWe will be featuring on a regular basis questions that both opponents and simply curious members of the public raise about the Green Party, its values and policies. Please send in real ones you have encountered at public events, in conver-sation or read in books, magazine and newspapers as well as (plausible) imaginary ones. We’ll try to carry in the following issue speedy, memorable and persuasive rejoinders to these questions. Remember that, in most situations, we get little opportunity to develop our ideas so brevity is critical.Round one1. What is the Green Party’s perspective on the population is-sue? Is the green perspective so pro-Earth that it is actually anti-human!!2. How can the Green Party address the mentality of consumer-ism which prevails in all of us to a greater or lesser extent...Greens included!3. Does nuclear power play any part in the energy needs of the UK?4. What is the citizen’s income? The current government are going to introduce a benefit called universal credit, which will amalgam-ate several means tested benefits. Is this the same as citizens income? Won’t it just encourage scroungers?Answers please!

7

Fiction on TV and in film can create powerful impressions of people, places and events yet there can be huge dis-crepancy between reality and what is depicted on screen.

Newcastle has not appeared in cinema or TV with anything like the frequency that its size alone might merit. Little country vil-lages (but with giant murder rates as in Midsomer Murders and its ilk) appear far more often.

The city did feature in early movie documentaries but its first notable appearance in a feature film didn’t happen until the end of the 30s. In 1939 there was Night of the Fire and, in the follow-ing year, The Stars Look Down (renamed ‘Tynecastle’). Things have improved in recent decades, starting with TV’s Likely Lads (1964) and films like Get Carter (1971), Stormy Monday (1988) and Billy Elliott (2000)

Such representations of Newcastle society, economy and environment sometimes shed much light. Thus The Likely Lads did track how the city was changing, notably the progression of Bob Ferris into the ranks of the growing middle class of the area, duly moving to an out-of-town private housing estate. That said, there has been a certain tendency to exaggerate certain features of the area, notably the rate of violent criminality as well as the degree of municipal corruption, Get Carter being a famous example of both tendencies. The townscape of the area also tends to be stereotypical treated in terms of row upon row of grim terrace housing and newer council estates whereas there has long been much greater variety, not least the graceful ‘Grainger town’ area.

Of course such characteristics have been part and parcel of Newcastle life, though it must be remembered that, taking the theme of violence, cities like Sheffield were much more scarred by the problem, especially in the 30s. Nor has corruption been confined to Tyneside. It also has to be admitted that the demand of entertainment can force producers, directors and script writ-ers to play up certain aspects at the expense of a more meas-ured and rounded view. After all, they do not make claim to be making documentaries, even if they cannot completely wash their hands of any distorting impressions their products might create.

BBC triumphSometimes there are TV programmes and films that both enter-tain and yet provoke serious thought through their treatment of the issues that have faced a city like Newcastle. The BBC did just this its rightly acclaimed drama serial, Our Friends in the North, written by Peter Flannery. The story itself spanned four decades of modern British history, beginning in 1964. The 9th and final episode is set in 1995, the Tyne Bridge being the setting for the very last scene.

Most of the more overtly political action revolves around Nicky Hutchinson, newly returned from the USA and politicised by his involvement in the Civil Rights movement there. Then there is Austin Donohue, a local Labour politician, modelled on

the real life T. Dan Smith. Donahue’s plans for a new Newcastle soon seduce Nicky into working for him. Eddie Wells appears first as a (honest) Labour councillor and later an independent Member of Parliament (shades of the real Eddie Milne saga in Blyth in the mid-70s). Mary Soulsby start off as Nicky’s girl-friend, becoming more and more politically involved as the story progresses, first as a Labour councillor and then MP.Nicky is politically engaged and idealistic. Contrast is provided by his two friends Tosker and Geordie. Both are essentially apolitical. Tosker, who, for a period, snatches Mary’s affections leading to a doomed marriage, embodies the grab-what-you-can mentality that Thatcherism both reflected and encouraged. Geordie, however, is essentially the loser in this rat race, drift-ing into the world of seedy Soho strip clubs before being be-trayed by one of their owners. It is this sub-plot that allows the series to take in corruption amongst the Metropolitan Police Vice Squad and later a sleazy Tory cabinet minister (shades of the scandal-tainted Reginald Maudling).

Local PoliticsThe series cleverly covered a wealth of themes. They range from issues of a more individual nature such as family ties, loy-alty between friends, marital breakdown, domestic violence, teenage delinquency, and the terrible impact of Alzheimer’s dis-ease on its victims to wider social matters like the break-up of old working class communities, urban redevelopment, police corruption, media bias, industrial relations, and deindustrialisa-tion.

Most of the big events of the period pop up throughout the plot, not least key General Elections and the bursting of the Tory Party economic bubble in the late 80s. But it is the bitter miners’ strike of 1984 that really stands out. Of course there had been some memorable social dramas before, not least the widely celebrated Boys From the Blackstuff. But even Alan Bleas-dale’s tour de force does not match the political dimension of Our Friends, which manages to embrace both formal parliamen-tary processes and grassroots activism. Anarchist squatters and Trotskyist entrists into the Labour Party are there as well as ‘machine’ politicians and shady figures from the Far Right.

Some scenes are particularly sharp. For instance, Nicky stands as a Labour candidate. In the bitter selection meetings, left-wing middle class lecturers and the like, not from the im-mediate locality, are contrasted with local working class ward members who loyally support right-wing candidates. There is a degree of stereotyping here but it does perhaps touch some raw nerves since there is an element of truth as well.

Look Back In Anger?

Nicky, Mary, Tosker and Geordie in“Our Friends in the North” (BBC)

8

There is a rather depressing depiction of the quality of the average city councillor. The scenes of Parliament with MPs on all sides braying at each other are also less than endearing. Yet many people will have met intelligent, hard-working and honest councillors and MPs so the picture in Our Friends is a wee bit lop-sided. The predominance across much of the media of such portrayals must put many decent people off politics (compare to the more positive image in, say, The West Wing)

It might be argued that the series focuses too much on bat-tles in and around the Labour Party. The independent Far Left is largely ignored, though its cadres played a significant role in many industrial disputes of the period. So too is the Liberal Par-ty despite the fact that its local activists have managed to make inroads into some urban areas at the expense of the Labour Party.

Our Friends does not fully convey the explosive growth of new social movements and ‘identity politics’ such as feminism, gay rights, peace and environmental campaigning in the period. Issues like Cruise missile deployment or the construction of nuclear power plant (e.g. Druridge Bay) are left largely on one side. There was a big ‘anti-apartheid’ march, for example, against the 1969/70 Springbok Tour when the team came here. Yet such coverage might well have made the storyline too heavy, if not downright indigestible, to take on board much more.

If the series were to be remade, perhaps the single biggest improvement to the screenplay — within its own terms of ref-erence — would have been more emphasis on the role of min-ers’ wives in the 1984 strike. That said, Mary’s own storyline does capture some of the more general changes in the status and role of women over the time frame.

Changed worldFew TV programmes, fictional or factual have depicted so well how society, both particular institutions and general lifestyles, changed in the 1960s and after. The first episodes capture what some critics at the time damned as the growth of a ‘promiscu-ous society’. Growing working class material affluence in those days is also pictured. Family life too is seen to change: single par-ent households make more of an appearance as do divorce and remarriage. Even the loss of old pubs and working men’s clubs in the face of the growing ‘clubbing’ scene is vividly brought to life (the ghastly Tuxedo Royale duly makes an appearance though of course it now has mercifully sailed away).

The changing physical face of Tyneside is perhaps not quite so well depicted. There is a certain tendency to indulge in vis-ual stereotypes of tower blocks and terraces, though terraced houses in leafier Jesmond do feature. What is lacking is the dimension of suburbia. In the early 60s, many well-heeled folk had decamped to Darras Hall, first started in 1910 but really expanding only after World War 2. More affluent workers had begun to move to the new private homes in places like Chapel Park on the edges of the old city. They were also moving to new towns such as Killingworth, Cramlington and Washington all started in the mid-60s (Peterlee, further south, was – strange but true – advertised as “the place to be”!).

By focusing on slum clearance, Our Friends tends to stress the ‘push’ factor at the expense of the ‘pull’. In recent decades, mil-lions of people on Tyneside and across the rest of Britain have voted with their feet in favour of suburban sprawl, mainly filled with what the Malvina Reynolds song memorably called “little boxes, made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same”.

Blight-seeingOur Friends is slightly misleading in its picture of the motives for

slum clearance and especially city centre redevelopment. What is missing is the twisted modernist vision that led town planners to gut whole neighbourhoods and tear down beautiful areas like Eldon Square, the old City Library and Town Hall. Some read-ers may remember 60s Newcastle chief planner Wilfred Burns, author of the revealingly entitled New Cities for Old. He dreamed of creating what he called a “new Brasilia” while T. Dan Smith talked of Newcastle becoming the “Venice of the North” (with motorways instead of canals!).No wonder that one local critic, Jon Gower Davies, called such people “evangelical bureaucrats”. The American independent Marxist Hal Draper also had a good name: the ‘plannists’. In other words, it is not just a matter of corrupt deals with worth-less architects. Rather the key issue was — and still is — the combination of flawed assumptions, warped visions and faulty processes. Again the contemporary relevance of Our Friends is underlined by the fact that Newcastle City Council under La-bour recently repeated all the same errors in good old top-down fashion with its “Going For Growth” and “Newcastle Great Park” schemes.

It should also be noted that there was more organised and articulate opposition at the time to what the council was doing in the 60s. Our Friends does not do full justice to the fact that locals in areas like Rye Hill were able to expose the lack of real consultation beforehand (the near contemporary construction of Byker Wall did demonstrate that a more participative style of planning was possible).

There were also alternatives on offer: revitalisation of exist-ing properties, not wholesale demolition. This is not to deny that some slum areas might have gone beyond the point of no return. Rather it is a matter of spotlighting the extent to which architects, planners, and engineers (APEs!) can create, not re-lieve, blight, regardless of whether capitalist profiteering, illegal or legal, plays any part.

It might also be argued that Our Friends does not do justice either to the cultural richness of Tyneside. It tends to alternate between an Andy Capp image on the one hand and, on the oth-er, a Hen-and-Stag-Party caricature. For instance the three male friends are shown at the start discussing the formation of a pop group. Little is made, however, of the thriving rock, blues, folk, jazz and classical music scenes in the area.

There has also been a strong film culture centred on the Tyneside Cinema while other art forms, not least poetry read-ings at Morden Tower and exhibitions at the Laing and else-where, have not been entirely absent. Thousands of city people enjoy walking in the region’s hills and dales, as much a face of the North-East as the conurbations.

Of course, at this point, Peter Flannery and his colleagues might well protest against the injustice of expecting them to include everything and the kitchen sink. They would have a valid point since they do cover so much ground over the nine epi-sodes. Perhaps the weighting towards the first half of the 31 years of the storyline inevitably means that there were inherent limits to what could be shown of the extent to which Tyneside and the North-East changed over that whole period.

Myths of timeIt is here that a perhaps more serious charge might be made. There is a whiff of nostalgia hanging around the edges. It is most openly put into words by Eddie Wells. He rues modern youth, recollecting how, when kids themselves, they were weaned on the milk of socialism. Thus a golden age of lost political radical-ism is evoked.

Yet this is bad history. Socialist agitators in the late 19th cen-

9

tury faced violent opposition from not just the authorities but also many working class people. Often religion had a stronger hold over proletarian minds. Many struggles were not driven by political class consciousness but rather more limited goals, be it over craft dilution or rent levels. This is not to say that concern about ‘bread and butter’ issues cannot lead to a more compre-hensive radicalisation. Yet often it does not (and sometimes it has benefited the Far Right, not the Left). Stirring images of Red Clydeside and the like abound with much rosy myth-making.

Then, as now, radical socialism had but a small base, espe-cially over the long-term. In the North-East there have been times and places when left-wing groups have established some roots but right-wing Labourism has usually been able to rule the roost. Readers might remember how short a tenure Eddie Milne had as Blyth MP before being kicked out by John Ryman, fox hunter and subsequent Parliamentary absentee. Milne’s base quickly folded.

Our Friends is nostalgic in other ways. Much is rightly made of the disastrous impact of community dislocation and the tearing apart of the social fabric of old neighbourhoods. But notions of ‘good old days’ of neighbourliness, decency and tranquillity, ruf-fled only by minor misdemeanours, can be encrusted with much rosy nostalgia. Thus it is frequently said that people used to be able to safely leave their door open at night. Yet, if they did, one reason was that they had little worth stealing.

More generally, much of the much vaunted ‘solidarity’ of the past might have been more a matter of basic necessity, with individuals having to pull together in the face of adversity. Even if solidarity did exist (and there were many instances of scabbing during strikes and other contrary behaviour), it is something that has been difficult to sustain in the era of mass consumerism.

In many other ways, old working class communities had vices as well as virtues. Many a pitman’s wife got the occasional beat-ing while incest was not uncommon in some old industrial areas. Hooliganism marred many sporting events in the 20s and 30s while the tearing up of cinema seats was a popular pastime in the mid-50s. Many parts of Tyneside were unsafe in the late 60s and early 70s due to prowling gangs of skinheads who, at one point, starting copying the droogs from Clockwork Orange.

Yet Our Friends has a point. There is both a more vicious and more random aspect to violence in more recent decades. Cer-tainly drug abuse has well and truly poisoned whole communi-ties. The series features a sink council estate called Valley View where social order has virtually collapsed. In real life, some areas have become no-go areas where even the Fire Brigade is likely to be attacked with bottles and bricks.

It is Mary, in argument with Nicky, who voices the observa-tion that such social sicknesses cannot simply be blamed on poverty. On top of social exclusion, there is wilful self-exclusion, a problem that the traditional Left has been loathe to address.

Changing the world or yourselfFor readers of Greening Newcastle perhaps the most interest-ing aspect of Our Friends is the fundamental question it poses. Many of its events and the choices facing its characters pivot on what is the “way of the world”. For some, ‘realism’ is about embracing compromise for the sake of getting through some improvements, as opposed to the impotence, such people fur-ther argue, that flows from rigid adherence to abstract ethics.

This conflict between pragmatism and principle is of course embodied the most by the Austin Donahue character. It is here that the screenplay most shows its mettle. It would have been easy to depict him simply as a rotten apple in the barrel. Yet he is shown to want to do good. He is prepared to ride the tiger

and it is his tragedy that it devours him. After his downfall, he is shown still sticking to some of his early political ideals. Some may feel that the real T. Dan Smith was rather like his fictional counterpart.

But Donahue is not the only character who thinks that life’s a bastard and that all one can do is to adapt accordingly. There is Tosker, essentially a chancer with his eyes firmly on personal self-advancement. He embodies that army of working class peo-ple who were to embrace Thatcherism, though here the screen-play might have been even more explicit. He is echoed in com-edy television by the likes of Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses and Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney.

Opposite is the belief that the world can be improved via positive engagement in collective struggle. Here stands Nicky. His politics somewhat shift, however. In 1964 he is canvassing for Labour. When we encounter him later, he is more like an Angry Brigade member, utterly contemptuous of the political main-stream and prepared to support violent direct action (shades of Stuart Christie?).

Later still, he has entered the Labour Party to change it from inside, though he is a bit less boring than the average member of Militant (now Socialist Party). Humiliated by defeat in what had been a safe Labour Party seat, he puts his efforts into photogra-phy which in turn leads to his capturing on film police violence in the 1984 miners’ strike. Yet, like so many political activists, he runs out of steam, subsequently going off to live in Italy. He ends up in the final episode with his eyes firmly on the personal: recovering the girlfriend, Mary, he lost in episode one.

Mary and Eddie Wells engage with the world as it is trying to do things that actually will help people. Unlike Austin Donahue, she retains her personal integrity. In marked contrast to Nicky, there is something tangible to show for her efforts. Yet it is also true that the structures at the root of so many of the world’s problems remain untouched by the parliamentary reformism she and Eddie support. In its own way, it too is a dead end.

Corrupt compromise is also shown not to be justified by any worthwhile results. Austin Donahue’s schemes lead to the construction of disastrous tower blocks that eventually have to be demolished. Tosker struggles to find meaning in his life and is ruined in the stock market crash through, true to type, he is soon back with new schemes to make money. Deep fulfilment remains more elusive.

The more honest characters also pay a price for their choic-es. Mary’s political involvement comes at a cost to her family. Eddie Wells has to shut up in embarrassed silence when he is outmanoeuvred at the Parliamentary Committee where he had hoped to expose corrupt Tory MPs. We last see him caught in the great storm of 1987, his life’s work literally and metaphori-cally blown away as he collapses in the street.

The policeman who investigates the Vice Squad corruption crimes ends up totally frustrated by the depth of not just active corruption but also official complacency The corrupt officers themselves go to jail though they do ‘get away with it’ in that they receive only light sentences..

The last music heard in the final episode, Oasis’s Don’t Look Back In Anger, would seem to suggest that this is the message of the series. It’s all been part of life’s rich tapestry and one can only take lasting comfort from the smaller things in life, friends and family, even if they too can bring their share of woes.

The point, Our Friends appears to say, is not to waste time trying to make big changes to the world but to survive it the best one can. It ends then on a fundamentally conservative note, albeit with the smallest ‘c’.

10

Green: what does it mean? (3)This series has, so far, looked at the roots of the green world view and its historical development (part 1) as well as tried to outline its core ideas, not least how we Greens value things and analyse the world (2). Here we look at what Greens might mean by a sustainable programme for redevelopment. Of course national governments and local councils make much noise these days about ‘sustainable growth’, community regeneration and so forth. Likewise some universities have departments devoted to things like ‘sustainable cities’ and ‘renewable energy’. Yet often such approaches (when they are not just a matter of cosmetics to disguise the same old policies and goals) only see some of the ‘trees’, not the whole ‘wood’. The Green Party, by contrast, attempts to develop a holistic programme, ranging from wildlife habitat protection and rehabilitation to sustainable job creation and the redress of un-sustainable inequalities. Here is one checklist of the core elements of the really green alternative. It particularly draws on the work of the farmer, poet and deep green writer Wendell Berry, the town planner and bioregionalist Doug Aberley, educationalist David Orr and architect Malcolm Wells.A sustainable community could be defined as a settlement which:1. has a stable, healthy population, its size and consumption patterns well within the broad carrying capacity of its region.2. understands that humans are only one of many life forms which share a sustainable region and which must be protected.3. is a population with a strong sense of place, history, & global responsibility.4. is empowered to guide an ecologically regulated economy based on the sustainable harvest & conservation of local natural resources.5. shares both its surplus production & culture with other communities & regions.6. has a collective ethic of conserving its culture & natural resources for future generations.7. does not export pollution to other regions.8. does not base its affluence on the draining of other regions.9. reduces to a minimum income leakages which leave the community.10. gains fullest possible value from harvest & manufacturing of ambient resources through use of locally controlled & adapted appropriate technologies11. is committed to the goal of providing equal opportunity for a high quality of life for all residents of the community.12. is a population which strives to continuously learn of its changing needs through the passage of time.Such criteria can help sort out the ‘real thing’ from the foolish and fraudulent (‘clean coal’, biomass plantations, ‘green cars’, geo-engineering, massive bribes for ‘inward investment’, ‘export-led’ development, superstore-led development and so on)

11

12

What on Earth?

5. Woody Guthrie, Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck all

drew attention to this very big 30s ‘bowl’ which many locals left, often heading

for California… and usually more troubles

7. This god-like programme was designed to beat the Reds but showed something never

seen before

8. Ukraine ‘dusted’ large parts of north-west Europe

3. ‘Martha’ was the last one of a species that used to blacken American skies.

But it was only one of many to bite the dust in

the last 100 years

4. First harnessed by circus in-dustry then film promoters, it was encouraged by growth of (2) but only covered buildings after World War One.Now arguably the most suc-cessful of all business lobbies.

2. Benz first built it, though a model-T turned them into a

tidal wave

6. This development has spread across the face of the

Earth like skin cancer,first erupting on an

American long island.

1. Sight-seeing (or is it blight-seeing?), first ‘packaged’ in 1869

The events/developments depicted on this page all played a part in stimulat-ing the growth of the Greens or illustrate the kind of things Greens op-pose or would want to radically change.Can you identify them?

13

1. Mass industrialised tourismThomas Cook pioneered foreign package holidays. Areas like Switzerland, previously untouched by mass industrialisation, were to be deluged in an avalanche of tourist developments. Indeed the industry is now said to be the largest in the world, spreading its tentacles even into the polar regions. The novels of Carl Hiaasen provide a darkly comedic take on the industry’s impact on Florida. Start with his first one, Tourist Season.See also: http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/

2. Birth of the private motor car1895 saw the first test drive of a motor car, made by Karl Benz, in Germany. It was an invention that was to transform the world, not least by its facilitation of seemingly endless suburbanisation. 70,526,531 automobiles produced in the world in 2008 alone. About 74.6% of all automobiles produced are private cars. In the light of all the hype about ‘green cars’, it ought to be mem-bered that more adverse impacts from the motor car come from its manufacture than its actual use.

3. Death of final passenger pigeonThe death of the last known passenger pigeon in a zoo in 1914 was a portent what was to be the biggest impact of humanity in the 20th century: the destruction of the Earth’s once rich biodi-versity. A plant or animal species now becomes extinct roughly every 20 minutes It is largely due to habitat destruction but with pressures like overfishing and poaching a factor too in some cases. The passenger pigeon was destroyed for ‘sport’.

4. Billboard industryIn this year, the International Bill Posters Association of North America was founded. It is one of the most successful lobbies in history, managing to frustrate most attempts to reduce an industry that has despoiled vast areas of urban and rural land-scape, largely in aid of consumerism. Part of its success stems from its secretive nature.

The tentacles of the industry spread around the world. ‘Glico Man’, for example, was the first billboard to cover a building (Osaka, 1919). McDonald’s and Pepsi were two of the biggest billboard advertisers The largest billboard (as of 2010) was ‘Pad-dy Power’ a gambling promotion, erected near Cheltenham in England.

However the industry has not always had its way. One of the first bans on billboards was in Hawaii in 1927. In 2007, the world’s fourth largest city, Sao Paolo, almost completely banned the visual pollution of billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses whilst limiting the size of store frontage signs, under its ‘clean city’ law.

Some interesting background can be found in John Miller’s Egotopia: Narcissism and the New American Landscape (1997).

5. Dust bowl stormsIn the droughts of the early 30s, the Great Plains of the USA were swept by soil erosion. During the spectacular storm of May, 1934, some 350 million tons of topsoil were blown away, some even landing on ships 300 miles out in the Atlantic.

It provided dramatic confirmation of what pioneer environ-mentalists like George Marsh had warned. Contemporary com-mentators, notably Paul Sears, campaigned against the folly of

land degradation. Some soil conservation measures were initi-ated subsequently but the general intensification of agriculture after World War 2 has led to a situation where progressive soil impoverishment and loss has become endemic in many coun-tries, including the USA.

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the less well-known but excellent follow-up In Dubious Battle told the story of those driven off the land, migrating to California. Woody Guthrie’s Dustbowl Ballads similarly spotlight the shameful treatment of such people while Dorothea Lange’s camera caught the human tragedy and environmental disaster in some of the greatest pho-tographs of all time.

6. Suburban estatesLevittown on Long Island was probably the first planned pri-vate suburban development in the world. It heralded what is the most sustained and comprehensive assault on the rest of nature, one which goes arm in arm with the explosive growth in private car usage as well as the ‘green cancer’ of suburban lawns. The flip side was the decline of many old inner city areas, some degenerating into violent ghettoes. The loss of revenue as people moved out of town left city councils less and less able to fund regeneration and other programmes to address urban ills.

7. ‘Race to the moon’ Apollo programmePerhaps the most significant photographs ever taken were those shot during the moon spaceflights. Some showed what liked a blue ball floating in space, a veritable oasis of life in the seem-ingly endless expanses of our solar system. No state boundaries could be seen nor was there anything that represented the class, ethnic, racial and other divisions that sunder the world.

All that was to be seen was only one Earth, the home shared by all humans and a myriad of other species. It is the basis of life and civilised living the ultimate reference point, for all of us. No wonder then that many cultures have referred to Planet Earth as feminine, as a veritable ‘mother’. Its life-nurturing and life-enhancing capacities become more obvious when juxtaposed against the barren moon.

8. Chernobyl nuclear disasterLittle needs to be said about the risks of nuclear energy, except to note that there are still some who deny that accidents like Chernobyl were really serious, They include Guardian columnist George Monbiot, though the paper did carry some excellent rebuttals of his flawed assessment of the health consequences of Chernobyl. Also see:http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/l-3/5-social-economic-impacts.htm and http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/

Green Quiz Answers

An article on adult care in Newcastle and specifically the threat to centres like Chirton House is being held over while the situation under the incoming Labour administration becomes clearer. We will probably publlsh it in the next issue: up-date information will be especially welcome.Newcastle Green Party did have a speaker at the ‘Save Chirton House’ meeting last month. Labour, Tories and LibDems all turned down the offer to come and state their point of view.

14

Current officers and their contact details are listed below. If you know of any opportunities that the local Party might take up or want to raise any other matters, get in touch with Laurence or one of the other officers.

To reduce the number of emails in circulation, please use this newsletter to draw attention to any papers you want to put forward for discussion. Just send your name, email address and the title of the topic and we’ll try to give it due publicity.

Laurence Ellacott, Branch co-ordinator manyellacotts@tiscali.co.ukAndrew Gray, Election Agentandrewgray123@virginmedia.comJohn Pearson, Treasurerjohn.pearson@unn.ac.ukTony Waterston, Literature and Publicity.A.J.R.Waterston@newcastle.ac.ukSandy Irvine, Newsletter editor and Policy Responsesandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk

Branch officers

This is the issue 11 of a regular publication.Please send material for the next one

directly to Sandy Irvine(tel: 0191 2844367 or

email sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk)

Thanks to various Green Party members on Tyneside and be-yond for information and comment on the election results. Other thanks must be passed to the author of the article on the Fortnum and Mason demonstration: good luck! A number of past and present activists in the broad green movement helped with the little green history of Newcastle and the surrounding area. Thanks also to certain Newcastle college staff.

The article on Our Friends in the North illustrates the kind of cultural criticism we would like to expand in these pages. Novels, poetry, plays, dance, fine art, sculpture, exhibitions, music (live & recorded), photography, films, radio and TV programmes (factual and fictional) are all suitable ‘raw material’. Please in-clude visual illustrations if you can. Even very short pieces will be welcome. Also don’t forget to suggest new questions and/or offer answers for the ‘Q&A’ feature. “Every little” does some-times actually help!

Please pass Greening Newcastle to any person or organisation you like, and they can in turn pass it on themselves, provided it is transmitted at all times in its entirety as a PDF file and un-changed. Anyone may quote from our magazine, provided this is in context and Newcastle Green Party is acknowledged as the source.

Forthcoming eventsDate Event OrganiserFriday, May 27th19.30, Newcastle Uni Fine Arts Lecture Theatre(near Haymarket metro)

Debate on parliamentaryEnergy Bill

Friends of the EarthPlease try and attend to voice the Green Party view.

Wednesday, June 1st19.00, British Legion, 3, West Jesmond Ave.(near West Jesmond metro, down from ‘Lonsdale’)

Branch Meeting Newcastle Green Party

Weekend, June 4th-5th12.00-18.00, Leazes Park, Newcastle(near Haymarket and St. James metro stations)

Newcastle Green Festival Contact:http://www.newcastlegreen-festival.org.uk/

Tuesday, June 14th18.00-20.00, Brunswick Church (Monument metro)

Newcastle Cycle Campaign group meeting

newcastle.cycling.cam-paign@gmail.com

Saturday, June 18th12.00-14.00, Cafe 1901, St. George’s Tce, Jesmond(near West Jesmond)

‘Go Solar’ exhibition Access Renewables &Transition Jesmond

Tuesday, June 21st18.45, Gosforth central park war memorial(South Gosforth & Regent Centre metro stations)

Open Air Laboratory (OPAL)climate survey (kits provided)

Transition Gosforth

Saturday, June 25th11.00-16.00, Bill Quay Farm (Pelaw metro)

South of the Tyne Green Festival South of TyneTransition Town group

Volunteers are ur-gently needed to staff the Green Party stall at the Newcastle Green Festival(see above).Please contact Tony Waterston [A.J.R.Waterston@newcastle.ac.uk]as soon as possible

15

Stop PressProtest against Nick Clegg: Thursday 26th, 12.30 - 13.30 Civic Centre, Newcastle Clegg is due to give a keynote speech on “rebalancing the economy” (i.e. wrecking it!).Groups currently attending this protest according to the invite are: Anti Cuts Network, CoR, Keep Our NHS Public, Newcastle Free Education Network and Sunderland Against the Cuts.

The regional Green Party network is organising our presence. Please do your best to attend if you are free: wear a GP badge and some green clothing!

Contact Shirely Ford if you can come and/or meet before hand to prepare/make placards etc: shirley.ford@stgreens.org.uk or 0771 440 1466–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

UK Uncut:Saturday 28th May,12 noonat Grey’s Monument, NewcastleAnother action is the UK Uncut rolling protest next Saturday. The focus is on the tax (in)justice issue.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

GPRC: 9th and 10th July, WallsendThe Green Party Regional Council is holding its next meeting on 9th/10th July on Tyneside at the Memorial Hall in Wallsend. Like all GP meetings this one is normally open to all members to attend so please feel free to come along.

Holding the GPRC meeting in the locality means that we need to accommodate the council’s members who will be coming from all over England and Wales. Some will need accommodation for both Friday and Saturday nights, others just for Saturday night.

If you can help with this and if you live in range of Wallsend i.e. near the Metro or a bus route that runs on a Sunday morning, please offer a bed. Contact Martin Collins, one of our two GPRC reps., as soon as possible.

It is also traditional for the regional council members to eat out on Saturday night, so if you know of a good eating place on Tyneside that can accommodate thirty odd people, again please let Martin know about it. Local members will be very welcome to join in.

More info from Martin Collins:martin@sandmartyn.freeserve.co.uk