Green fig leaf: the weakest link.

The Green Party’s decision to enter government with Fianna Fáil hardly came as a surprise given that party’s drift to the right but the scale of the sell-out leaves one breathless. Anyone expecting radical reforms will be sorely disappointed as swathes of Green policy vanish leaving only vague aspirations. Gone are all the key principles.

Suddenly John Gormley, who demanded the end of US military use of Shannon repeatedly on anti-war platforms, finds that it’s ok, since the UN sanctioned the invasion of Iraq. Stop corporate donations to clean up Irish politics? On mature reflection, Irish politics is all Daz whiteness! Maybe the Greens should take up Mary White’s suggestion and go to the fat cats, begging bowl in hand - I’m sure they’d get a few coppers now they’ve taken the shilling. All that talk about reform of local democracy ends up with an elected mayor of Dublin: more concentration of power, no mention of participatory democracy. As for major tax reform: a commission will examine it and inevitably continue with policies favouring higher income earners and multi-nationals. Then there’s the commissions (read fudge) on climate change and electoral reform: commissions, ah don’t you love them, looks like something is being done about the issue but makes sure it’s bogged down in endless reports and waffle. Oh yes, Trevor is ever so principled, resigning as leader only to be reincarnated as a junior minister. Some man of principle! Needless to say, not a word about Rossport, the EU constitution, Tara etc…all junked in the rush for position.

Remember this is not just government with Fianna Fáil but with the PD’s as well. Not only are the Greens willing to go into government with the most right wing party on the spectrum but they dropped their opposition to co-location of hospitals and acceded to Harney’s continuation as Minister for Health. So our already grossly unequal, two-tier system will be pushed further in that direction, only bigger profits will be made by private interests. The classic reformist argument of ‘if we weren’t in it would be worse’ falls at the first hurdle as the Green Party accepts this ferocious drive to commodify health with hardly a whimper. Working class people will continue to die while the better off skip the queue and ‘health entrepreneurs’ suck off a profit like latter day vampires.

The Green Party long ago ceased to be a radical ecological party. Gone are the days when the party had no leader, when internal structures were based on participation of members, when parliamentary politicians did not run the show. Now the final chapter in this transformation has happened. This is why the mainstream media love them, now that they have ‘matured’. To use their own slogan: now they really are ‘good for business’! They will grumble a bit now and then, but like all centre left parties who enter coalition with the right, they will quietly grip their ministerial seats as their alleged commitment to fundamental change disappears in a puff of exhaust from the ministerial Mercedes.

This happened, not because Green leaders are power-hungry or opportunistic, though most of them undoubtedly are. It is the result of a total failure to see that environmental problems are intrinsically linked to the destructive imperative of capitalist accumulation. This failure arose, at least partly, from a support base and membership largely confined to upper and middle income groups. This social foundation was clearly revealed in the overwhelmingly pro-coalition majority at the party’s special conference. Hence their hostility to working class struggles such as the anti-bin tax campaign and to direct action tactics in the anti-war and Shell to Sea campaigns. It is also because, like Labour and Sinn Féin, they fail to see that being in government is not the same as being in power, that real power lies in the hands of an unelected elite who control economic, cultural and social structures. Inevitably, they will suffer the same consequences as all such parties but one thing we can promise them: that every anti-corporate posture, every piece of hypocritical anti-war rhetoric, every save-the-planet stunt, will come back to haunt them. They are the weakest link in this right-wing government and they will suffer the consequences of their short-sighted embrace of Bertie and co.

Contrary to the simplistic view that sees all environmentalists as middle class do-gooders who are more concerned about getting fair-trade coffee than about the low wage of the check-out worker who sells it to them, in the past many genuine radical environmentalists turned to the Greens because the left had failed to integrate the fundamental question of the environment into their analysis of capitalism. With the Green Party now clearly exposed as just another ‘(big) business as usual’ party, there is a unique opportunity for socialists and radical environmentalists to integrate class struggle and radical environmental campaigning. Our common enemy is capitalism: the system that exploits both humans and nature for profit, the system that is charging towards catastrophic climate change, the system that sees the environment as endlessly exploitable. Red and green, united in this understanding, can start to build a grassroots mass democratic movement to challenge and overthrow this system.