A productive day at the UK Green Party conference

Safe Landing’s focus is in aviation itself, in workplaces and in the industry more broadly. We are also not party political. However, because our demands are political in a broader sense, requiring not just workplace but broader campaigning to win action from governments, we engage actively with political parties – to learn about what they are saying, try to influence them and make connections in their networks.

By the end of the 2023 “UK political party conference season” we will have attended the Labour Party, Lib Dem and Green Party conferences. (We missed the Conservative party conference last weekend, partly due to capacity, but also as our engagement with the current UK Government over the past few years has been almost universally met by deaf ears.)

Here is our report of the day we spent at Green Party conference, in Brighton, on 6 October 2023.

A warm welcome

Firstly, we should mention that the Green Party conference organisers were very helpful in making sure we could attend, and express our thanks. We also received a particularly warm welcome from members of the Green Party’s Trade Union Group, including the group’s chair Robert Magowan and the trade union liaison officer on the party’s national executive (Matthew Hull, pictured with Finlay at top of report). It is very positive that the Green Party has an active trade union organisation, and it has been consistently supportive of our work. We hope they will be able to strengthen it in the months ahead.

The Trade Union Group also introduced us to a pilot who is a Green Party member, and wants to get involved in Safe Landing, which was obviously very welcome!

Engaging with Green activists and politicians

With Green Party trade unionists, other party activists and other visitors at the conference, we explained and answered questions about Safe Landing’s perspective, in particular the idea of Workers’ Assemblies to develop detailed plans for transitions in high-emitting sectors such as aviation.

We were invited to attend the party’s Transport Working Group, one of a number of volunteer groups trying to come up with more detailed policy recommendations to feed into the party’s policy-making process and its general election manifesto. (In various respects the Green Party seems to be the most democratic of the mainstream political parties, certainly far more democratic than the Labour Party!)

The discussion mainly focused on how to oppose the Tories’ push to undermine public transport in favour of road-building. We spoke to advocate both stronger connections with transport workers’ trade unions and a perspective of taxing aviation to fund public transport. There was, however, also a report from the working group member responsible for aviation; we were given their written notes towards proposals on aviation, are now in contact and will pursue further discussions.

We also discussed with Green Party elected representatives and candidates, including local councillors and London Assembly member Zack Polanski (who agreed to schedule more in-depth further discussion). We attended the speech by party leaders Carla Denyer and Adam Ramsay, with introductions from Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas and candidate to replace her Siân Berry.

Green engagement with the wider labour movement

We also attended a packed panel discussion entitled “Fairer and greener: a climate changed world we can all sign up to”, hosted by Siân Berry, London Assembly member and Brighton Pavilion parliamentary candidate.

We were pleased to discover the speakers at this panel included the PCS union‘s Assistant General Secretary John Moloney, with whom we have been discussing about Workers’ Assemblies and other issues. John made forceful arguments for the central role of workers and unions in winning a rapid and socially just climate transition, for creative attempts to organise industrial action over climate issues, and for a campaign to scrap the many laws that hinder such action.

John is a prominent advocate of climate campaigning but not a member of the Green Party. Just as with welcoming Safe Landing to the conference, inviting him to speak was a good move by the Greens, and we strongly encourage this kind of wider engagement with the trade union and labour movement.

Ecotricity

Also at the conference were Ecotricity, self-proclaimed zx ‘Britain’s greenest energy supplier’ – who had a stall in the main concourse.

Ecotricity are planning to launch “Britain’s first electric airline” in a move designed to prove polluting industries can decarbonise. Ecojet, styled as a “flag carrier for green Britain”, will launch early next year with a 19-seater plane travelling on a route between Edinburgh and Southampton. The planes will run initially on kerosene-based fuel for the first year, before being retrofitted with engines that convert green hydrogen into electricity.

We discussed this move with Paul Sands, ‘Chief Growth Officer’ in their energy business. Paul previously worked for Virgin Atlantic for 10 years as global ‘Head of Customer Experience’, so it was very interesting to hear how he left this job to complete a PhD in Hydrogen Aircraft, before joining Ecotricity in 2018.

Hopefully, this will be a connection that will flourish – as Ecotricity are innovators across various industries: from renewable electricity, to ‘green gas’, and now to aviation – we’re keen to hear their vision of a sustainable future for air travel, while presenting our own distinct worker-led vision ourselves.

🌱🌿☘️🍀🌴