WORLD WORLDWIDE UK News Journal Update - (en) UK, ACG: Green Party abandon opposition to NATO (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 At its March conference the Green Party of England and Wales reversed its

long-standing opposition to NATO. The Green Party had said for a long time that
its aim was to take the UK out of NATO and that NATO was not a "suitable
mechanism" for maintaining world peace. ---- Yet now the Green Party has decided
that "NATO has an important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to
respond to threats to their security". Now it calls for NATO to guarantee that it
would not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict and that NATO should act
"solely in defence of member states".
Now the Green Party in England and Wales is at loggerheads with the Greens in
Scotland, which maintains a strong opposition to NATO. This is because of a
long-standing tradition of anti-militarism in Scotland, which would see it
totally discredited if it changed its policies.

Linda Walker, co-convenor of policy working group on Peace, Security and Defence
made excuses for this drastic change of policy by saying:

"During the Conference debate on Peace, Security and Defence there was nothing
which aroused stronger emotions and more conflicting views than our membership of
NATO. This was the case for the Working Group too. Our membership included some
who believed that NATO is generally a force for good; some who thought it would
look bad for the Green Party to be speaking out against NATO whilst the war in
Ukraine is raging; and some who believe that NATO is an aggressive alliance which
tends to act as an arm of United States policy and the Green Party should have
nothing to do with it. So we had to come to a compromise which all could accept.
The section starts with ‘The Green Party recognises that NATO has an important
role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their
security'. This was hard to swallow for some of us."

The Green Party further fudged the issue by then stating: "Other security
arrangements may be considered should such reforms become unattainable'.

Following the passing of the motion, a spokesperson said: "Russia's war on
Ukraine has underscored the fears of other neighbours that their territorial
integrity and independence is under threat. Conference showed the party's
commitment to international solidarity, where nations support one another through
mutual defence alliances and multilateral security frameworks...Conference's
support for this motion does not mean a direct role for NATO in Ukraine. We do
not support an escalation of the crisis there. But it does mean that NATO has an
important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats
to their security."

An amendment calling for the UK to try to use its nuclear weapons as a
"bargaining chip" in setting up a new treaty to reduce nuclear arsenals was
rejected but nevertheless this indicates some of the forces now active within the
Green Party.

Many Green Parties throughout the world have their roots as much in the peace
movement as in environmentalism and ecologism.

The onset of the war in Ukraine has led those Greens involved in government to
renege on their pacifist and anti-militarist positions. Previously, the Greens in
West Germany were voted into parliament because of a very large movement against
the use of short-range nuclear missiles by the US in their country in the early
1980s. It was then an anti-NATO party that was strongly in favour of disarmament.
In the UK there was a strong crossover of Green Party Membership with that of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The same held true in the Netherlands and Sweden.

Later, the Green parties that developed in central and eastern Europe were
similarly anti-militarist, because of their experience of occupation by Soviet
forces. However, this was tempered by their failure to oppose membership of NATO
because of the fear of Russian aggression.

The anti-militarism of the German Greens changed in the 1990s after Germany was
reunited. The Greens, now ensconced in federal government, faced widespread
internal controversy before the Green leader and foreign minister Joschka Fischer
managed to get backing for intervention in Kosovo by a delegate vote of 444 to 318.

Despite major opposition, this led on to German Greens supporting the German Army
in ‘peacekeeping' around the world. This prefigures the change on NATO with the
Green Party of England and Wales.

In 2011 European Green parties backed military intervention in Libya, even if
‘limited'. Further shifts came with the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2014
and the occupation of Crimea by Russia.

German Greens months before the recent Russian invasion were calling for support
for the Ukraine regime up to military aid, including its traditionally
anti-militarist left wing.

This is not because of simply lack of political principle or personal failings,
although the pursuit of careers and power do play a part, but because of a
politics rooted in a reformism based on winning support on an electoral level
through a series of elections, and integration into the governmental and
parliamentary system. To do this, the Greens, not just in the UK but throughout
the world, need to preserve their parties as a broad church, uniting right,
centre, and left. As a result, concessions are increasingly made to the right of
their parties, and the traditions of anti-militarism and pacifism are sacrificed
as the cost worth paying to preserve their continued existence. This is true not
just over positions on war but on other issues like nuclear power, opposition to
which was seen as another fundamental position of the Green parties. Now the
Greens in Finland have moved to back the use of nuclear power, and similar moves
are afoot among the Dutch and German Greens, as well as the development of
pro-nuclear positions among some Greens in the UK.

As one Green Party member enthusiastically commented online about the decision
over NATO: "This is great news. The more we engage positively with mainstream
sensibilities, the easier it will become to promote our climate and biodiversity
concerns." Another Green Party member commented: "This decision is a major
retrograde, rightwards step. One of the key reasons I joined the Greens to begin
with was our thoroughgoing unilateralism. I fear too that we will regret our
wording. Does no nuclear first strike imply tacit support for the possession of
nuclear weapons? NATO, after all, is a nuclear alliance".

All of this illustrates what we in the ACG have been saying all along. One,
radical change can not come through reformist parliamentary parties, however
radical, and secondly, as we noted in a recent article, war fever has split the
Labour left and is now causing ructions within the Green Party.

www.anarchistcommunism.org/2023/02/28/the-war-in-ukraine-military-escalation-and-nato/

It remains for revolutionary internationalists to continue to defend a position
of No War But the Class War and for escalation of the class struggle here and
everywhere.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2023/03/27/green-party-abandon-opposition-to-nato/
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