Beyond Today: a values story is the Green party’s story

On the fortieth anniversary of the Values party, a book is about to be published that celebrates Values, and tells the Green party’s story.

Beyond Today: a values story is all about the Greens, its author Claire Browning says. “It goes back to the party’s roots, considers the first principles in its charter, and offers a short, simple story about what it means to be green.”

“On the Greens’ fortieth birthday, it says Values is a history of which the party should be very proud, and Green values are the new way forward.”

The book will be launched on the eve of the Greens’ AGM on June 1, 2012. On May 30, 1972 Tony Brunt launched the world’s first national-level green party, in a speech about limits to material and economic growth, sustaining quality of life, and new Values.

Values was a remnant within a decade, but in the meantime it achieved some important and remarkable things.

Beyond Today starts where all green politics starts: with an ecological perspective, which is bleak. But it promises a future, and a way of bringing people together, inside and outside the party.

Claire Browning says she was interested in the Values story because of its potential to unite the Greens, and make sense of the parts of Green policy in a way not tried before. “It finds room for everyone, within the party, and beyond it. It explains how the parts fit together.”

“The other interesting thing about it is that it’s not just history. It’s politically relevant today.”

In 1990, some Greens rejected Values. Many won’t have heard the story, others may remember the Greens’ Alliance years. The party’s charter, written in 1990, shows its real origins, in 1972 with the formation of Values - Green politics, not left.

Independently written, the book includes a chapter from Jeanette Fitzsimons, asking hard questions about a green economy, answering some of them.

The Greens are an ecological economic party: a party that puts the environment first, with different economic ideas. It’s this that defines the party politically, along with values of simplicity, sustainability, reverence for nature, and kindness, to all.

ends

© Scoop Media