We were delighted to have Caroline Lucas, Co-Leader of the Green Party, visit the North East in December. She spoke first at a public meeting in Durham on Thursday 8th on what the city would look like if it really met all of people’s needs. Her key point was that a Green Industrial Strategy is a vital part of ensuring we can have a stable economy with proper jobs and vibrant independent local businesses. Only this kind of economy will support a resilient, much more equal society as we tackle the climate and ecological crises.
The Durham Greens are now preparing a Durham Future City Plan as an
alternative to the flawed ideas that the County Council are still pursuing of
road building, allowing huge building on the Green Belt for executive housing and out of town retail or business parks. [Link to Durham Future City Plan coming soon]
Caroline was then interviewed by the BBC for the Sunday Politics programme particularly focusing on air pollution from traffic and our policies for reducing this major cause of ill health and early deaths in all our cities and towns.
Her first campaign event on Friday 9th also focused on air pollution from the terrible traffic congestion in Durham city. She was shown around by Sarah Thin and Jonathan Elmer who are standing in Neville’s Cross as Green Party candidates in this year’s county council elections. The Northern Echo then interviewed Caroline for a feature article.
Her next visit was to the village of Warden on the river Tyne near Hexham,
which was flooded in 2015 by Storm Desmond. She heard from local people about the impact of the flooding while looking round the village seeing how they have recovered since then, after the Boatside Inn and several houses were flooded.
Tynedale Greens including Wesley Foot, local Green Party candidate, had lunch with her in the Boatside Inn and talked about our campaigning for natural flood management.
Finally, she came to Newcastle for an informal meeting with members. We had a wide-ranging discussion, covering questions about getting an electoral pact for PR, how we work for progressive alliances, how we strengthen our work on social justice issues like homelessness, precarious work, food bank use and campaign for our solutions like basic income, how we involve more people in the battle to stop the open cast coal mining planned for Druridge Bay in the run up to the Public Inquiry at the end of May and how the NHS Reinstatement Bill is progressing in parliament and much more!
We look forward to another visit to the North East from Caroline and also from Jonathan Bartley, our other Co-leader, this year…