":Campaigning for an alternative economic strategy

Synopsis

The resolution commits the GPEW to campaign for an emergency programme of economic and social reconstruction, based on the proposals of the New Green Deal pamphlet, but broadened and reinforced in order to transform fundamentally, rather than simply to try to stabilise and regulate, the current financial and industrial system.

The authors of the New Green Deal pamphlet are right to say that the current crisis undermines the credibility of the whole neoliberal project and to point out the need for good old-fashioned direct government spending and job creation, putting new demand into the economy through investing in infrastructure and public services. However, the scale and intensity of the crisis has worsened since the report's publication and it is clear that a programme of infrastructural renewal even more ambitious than that envisaged by the pamphlet´s authors is needed. Such a programme will require determined government and popular action to end the domination of the market and to use society´s resources to transform fundamentally, rather than simply to try to stabilise and regulate, the current financial and industrial system.

It will require a programme of industrial restructuring of wartime proportions and a determined social programme that puts measures to advance equality at the centre of its proposals. In order to gain the active support of working people it will be necessary to make the defeat of unemployment an explicitly central objective of government economic policy, along with measures aimed at steadily reducing income and wealth differentials and safeguarding the homes of families threatened with repossession. In addition, workers affected by major changes in industrial strategy must be confident that their futures will be secured and improved, rather than threatened, by those changes.

Therefore, the Green Party will actively campaign, particularly within the trade union movement, for an emergency programme of economic and social reconstruction, based on the proposals of the New Green Deal pamphlet, but broadened and reinforced by the following measures:

1. The permanent retention of RBS, Lloyds/HBOS, B&B and Northern Rock in effective public ownership and their conversion into more responsive and democratically controlled institutions, a surplus profits tax on the clearing banks and the introduction of powers to control the investment policies, dividends and bonus payments of all privately owned financial institutions.
2. The active development and promotion of alternative vehicles for the provision of credit, including publicly owned and accountable banks, local community banks, credit unions, building societies and other mutuals.
3. Government powers to direct the investment policies of the pension funds, including the requirement to invest a certain percentage of their funds into government bonds each year.
4. Implementation of a direct taxation policy aimed at steadily reducing income and wealth differentials.
5. The regeneration and restructuring of our public transport system,including the return to public ownership of the railways and democratic public control of local and regional bus services, including the reintroduction of municipal and other commonly owned services.
6. Funding for a major programme of social housing construction and refurbishment by local authorities, housing co-operatives and housing associations in order to respond to the aspirations of the four million families currently on housing waiting lists.
7. Powers to enable families in mortgage arrears to transfer the tenure of their homes to social tenancies.
8. Taking all large scale energy production and distribution into public ownership. [amend MfSS section EN400 to: The large scale production and distribution of electricity and gas will be brought into a fully accountable public sector.]
9. A programme of large scale direct public investment in the conversion of existing engineering and construction component manufacturing to more socially useful production, the development of their productive capacity and a big expansion in relevant R&D.
10. An absolute guarantee of jobs and retraining with no loss of pay or security for workers having to redeploy from declining to expanding sectors as a result of the major changes in industrial strategy that are required for example, the contraction of the motor vehicle, armaments and aero-space industries and the run-down and replacement of much of the existing electricity generation capacity."

"This Conference notes the success of The Convention of the Left, which took place in parallel with, and as an alternative to, The Labour Party Conference in Manchester. The Convention provided a forum for a large number of people and organisations on the left to come together to debate issues and strategies, concentrating on what unites us rather than what divides us. The sustainability of the planet was a central theme throughout. The Convention of the Left seeks to maintain the spirit of the Manchester convention and is intending to organise future events. Conference agrees to become a sponsor of The Convention of the Left and to commit the GPEW to become actively involved in the organisation of a Convention of The Left in Brighton during the week of The Labour Party Conference in 2009"

The meeting noted supported opposition to the section on independent midwives on the grounds that this would introduce privatisation of part of NHS services,