Greens welcome new co-leader to town

The Green Party is riding high, in Hastings as elsewhere after winning their first borough council seat last May. Newly elected co-leader Carla Denyer was in town last week to meet local supporters and add heft to the campaign to win more seats in elections this May. Chris Connelley reports.

2021 was a vintage year for the Green Party, which saw it obtain some of its best results over its 40-year history, with 447 councillors elected nationwide on 141 different councils, including near neighbours Brighton, Rother and Lewes.

Hastings joined that list last May, when Julia Hilton won the Old Hastings Ward from Labour on an epic swing that also helped her take Old Hastings and Tressell Ward in the County Council elections on the same day.

Green good fortune was reinforced in December, following the defection of Castle Ward councillor, Claire Carr, who wrote to local voters saying she felt she would “never be treated fairly or have my voice properly heard on behalf of the residents of Castle Ward if I remain in the Labour Party.”

With another set of Hastings Borough Council elections due in May, local Greens are hopeful that they are on a roll, and can build on their recent success in a town that has seen Labour and Conservative dominance for as long as anyone can remember.

Supporters were buoyed by a two-day visit last week from one of the party’s new co-leaders, Carla Denyer, who led a Question-and-Answer session and met some of the local candidates for the upcoming elections. She also took to the doorsteps of St Leonards to hear more about issues that matter most to residents.

Parliamentary candidate

Ms Denyer, an engineer by training, is a councillor in Bristol, where the Green group is one of the largest in the country and now serves as the official opposition party. She proposed the first climate emergency motion in the country there and is also parliamentary candidate for Bristol West, the party’s main target for a second seat in the House of Commons.

Addressing local supporters, she attributed the party’s increasing success to widespread concern about climate change, the high profile around last autumn’s COP summit in Glasgow, but, most importantly, to its sheer hard work connecting with voters and putting in the time to listen to, campaign for, and deliver on, improvements on those local issues that matter.

“People have an incredibly positive reaction to what they are being asked about,” she said, “and with just 2% of the funding Labour and the Conservatives have access to, we have to get out there and punch well above our weight.”

For the Green Party, visibility is all, which means community-led campaigning all year round. It is a ‘bottom-up’ strategy that certainly seems to be paying off, with Ms Denyer revealing that the party won more by-elections than any other last year, taking seats from all other parties in towns, cities, villages and shires, in the north and the south, and everywhere in-between.

“The Green Party is going from strength to strength. Since 2018 we have more than tripled our number of local councillors elected all over England, from Hastings to Herefordshire and Bristol to Burnley. We are optimistic that 2022 will be another strong year for us.”

Exciting opportunity

Hastings Green Group leader, Cllr Julia Hilton echoed the optimistic mood, saying, “The people of Hastings have an exciting opportunity to elect a talented group of Green councillors this May to inject fresh ideas and a spirit of collaboration into the Council. Our candidates have a wide variety of backgrounds from small business owners to social workers, and they have been out in their local communities listening to people’s concerns. They will make fantastic representatives for our town.”

Local supporters welcomed the opportunity to meet their new co-leader and were enthused by the visit. Tony Collins, who has been active in clean-up campaigns around St Leonards, shared information about his recent work out on the streets, while Amanda Jobson talked about her efforts to hold Southern Water to account for polluting sea water with raw sewage.

Glenn Haffenden focused on the high cost of public transport and the need to engage with residents living away from the town centre. “It was exciting to hear about what is going on nationally and to discover that we are winning in places that are not obviously Green hotspots, but where people respond to the fact that we work hard and deliver real results after years of being taken for granted,” he commented.

Hastings Borough Council elections take place on Thursday 5 May, when half the overall number of seats will be up for grabs, with registered voters able to elect one councillor in each ward.

 

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