PEOPLE Party

This article is about the British party. For the Egyptian party, see People Party. For other uses, see People's Party.
PEOPLE Party
Leader Tony Whittaker
National Secretary Lesley Whittaker
Founder Tony Whittaker
Lesley Whittaker
Freda Sanders
Michael Benfield
Founded November 1972
Merger of Club of Thirteen
Movement for Survival
Preceded by None
Succeeded by The Ecology Party
Headquarters Coventry
Ideology Green politics
Political position Left-wing
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The PEOPLE Party was a political party in the United Kingdom. It was the first Green political party in the United Kingdom and Europe as a whole,[1] and the political predecessor of the Green Party of England and Wales, Green Party of Scotland and the Green Party of Northern Ireland.[1]

Origins

In the summer of 1972[2] Lesley Whittaker a surveyor and property agent bought a copy of Playboy magazine in which there was an interview with Paul R. Ehrlich about overpopulation and how he and his wife were giving up two years of their lives to the cause. This article inspired Whittaker and her husband Tony (a former Kenilworth councillor for the Conservative Party) to form a small group of professional and business people 'Club of Thirteen', so named because it first met on 13 October 1972 in Daventry. This included surveyors and property agents Freda Sanders and Michael Benfield, who had similar ideas to the Whittakers, and worked with them in their practice in Coventry.

Formation

Many in this 'Club' were wary of forming a political party so, after a few weeks, in November 1972 the Whittakers, Sanders and Benfield agreed to form 'PEOPLE' as a new political party to challenge the UK political establishment.[3] Its policy concerns published in 1973 included economics, employment, defense, energy (fuel) supplies, land tenure, pollution and social security, as then seen within an ecological perspective. Subsequently recognized as perhaps the world's earliest Green party this had the first edition of the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society as a background statement of policies inspired by A Blueprint for Survival (published by The Ecologist magazine). The editor of The Ecologist, Edward 'Teddy' Goldsmith, merged his Italian 'Movement for Survival' with PEOPLE. Goldsmith became one of the leading members of the new party during the 1970s.

General elections

Election February 1974

The party stood five candidates in the February 1974 General Election which cost the party £900, PEOPLE received 4,576 votes in six seats. Following the election, an influx of left-wing activists took PEOPLE in a more left-wing direction, causing something of a split. Lesley Whittaker and Edward Goldsmith were two of the five which stood in the election.

Constituency Candidate Votes Percentage Position[4]
Coventry North East Pickard, Alan H.Alan H. Pickard 1,332 2.8 3
Coventry North West Whittaker, LesleyLesley Whittaker 1,542 3.9 3
Eye Goldsmith, EdwardEdward Goldsmith 395 0.7 4
Hornchurch Percy-Davies, BenjaminBenjamin Percy-Davies 619 1.3 4
Leeds North East Lord, CliveClive Lord 300 0.7 4
Liverpool West Derby Pascoe, D. B.D. B. Pascoe 388 0.9 4

Election October 1974

Membership rose and the Party stood five candidates eight months later in the October General Election which cost the party £450. This affected preparations that election, when PEOPLE's average vote fell to just 0.7%.

Constituency Candidate Votes Percentage Position[4]
Birmingham Northfield Davenport, Elizabeth A.Elizabeth A. Davenport 359 0.7 4
Coventry North West Whittaker, LesleyLesley Whittaker 313 0.8 4
Hornchurch Percy-Davies, BenjaminBenjamin Percy-Davies 797 1.8 4
Leeds East Russell, NormaNorma Russell 327 0.7 4
Romford Sampson, L. H. C.L. H. C. Sampson 200 0.5 4

1975 conference

After much internal debate the party's 1975 conference adopted a proposal to change its name to 'The Ecology Party' in order to gain more recognition as the party of environmental concern.[5]

Party co-founder Tony Whittaker noted in an interview with Derek Wall '… voters did not connect PEOPLE with ecology. What I wanted was something that the media could look up in their files so that, when they wanted a spokesman of the issue of ecology, they could find the Ecology Party and pick up the phone. It was as brutal and basic as that. PEOPLE didn't communicate what we had hoped it would communicate'.[3]

Derek Wall, in his history of the Green Party, contends that the new political movement focused initially on the theme of survival, which shaped the "bleak evolution" of the nascent ecological party during the 1970s. Furthermore, the effect of the "revolution of values" during the 1960s would come later. In Wall's eyes, the party suffered from a lack of media attention and "opposition from many environmentalists", which contrasted the experience of other emerging Green parties, such as Germany's Die Grünen. Nonetheless, PEOPLE invested much of its resources in engaging with the indifferent environmental movement, which Wall calls a "tactical mistake".[5]

References

  1. 1 2 Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management. John Wiley & Sons. 15 July 2009. p. 220. ISBN 978-1-4443-1324-6.
  2. ↑
  3. 1 2 Derek Wall (2006-10-17). "Another Green World: green party hist ch1, pt 2". Another-green-world.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-08-08.
  4. 1 2 F. W. S. Craig, Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections, p.77
  5. 1 2 Wall, Derek, Weaving a Bower Against Endless Night: An Illustrated History of the Green Party, 1994
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