The Green Party's manifesto for the 2024 General Election outlines their positions on various issues, including Palestine and Islamophobia. Below are detailed summaries of their stances on these topics:

1. Stance on Palestine

The Green Party's manifesto takes a strong stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, emphasizing the need for justice, human rights, and international law. Key points include:

• Immediate and Permanent Ceasefire: The Green Party calls for an immediate and permanent bilateral ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian groups.
• Political Solution: They advocate for a durable political solution that ensures security and equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians, viewing this as essential for long-term peace.
• Recognition of Palestine: The manifesto supports the recognition of the state of Palestine and calls for an urgent international effort to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
• War Crimes Accountability: The Green Party pushes for the investigation and prosecution of war crimes committed in the conflict. They believe there is strong evidence to support claims that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
• End to UK Arms Exports to Israel: They demand an end to all UK arms exports to and military cooperation with Israel, arguing that such actions make the British government complicit in war crimes.

2. Stance on Islamophobia

The Green Party is committed to combating Islamophobia and other forms of hate crime. Their manifesto outlines several measures to address these issues:

• Condemnation of Islamophobia: The Green Party condemns the rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism, recognizing the importance of tackling hate crimes and opposing societal divisions.
• Support for Religious Expression: They support the right to religious expression and pledge to work with religious communities to defend the safety of places of worship.
• Scrapping Prevent: The manifesto includes a commitment to scrap the Prevent strategy, which they view as counterproductive and discriminatory.
• Legal Protections: The Green Party aims to defend the Human Rights Act and ensure continued access to European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) protections in domestic courts. They also plan to restore legal aid for public law cases to help individuals uphold their rights in court.

These positions reflect the Green Party's broader commitment to human rights, social justice, and international solidarity.

 

Statement to voters

An elected representative should be a person who has the information required to come up with solutions that address issues raised by constituents - not well funded lobby groups or party whips. Greens are not only environmentalists but also independent individuals.

Simon Anthony was born in Hanwell in 1957. He grew up in Ealing and joined his parents in preventing a road scheme that would have ripped the Heart out of Ealing. In Nottingham he worked to prevent a fourth Trent crossing, both local campaigns took 20 years to win.

He left school at 17 and worked as a Post Office Apprentice before spending over a decade as a BBC Broadcast VT engineer, then thirty years part time as an Acorn computer journalist, Special Needs software writer, Web Developer, Cambridge QA Engineer, an IT college lecturer, teacher and parent.

He joined the Greens as a life member in 1991 and was general election candidate in 1992 and 2005 in Rushcliffe Nottingham, also standing for election to the European Parliament and in local authority elections in Nottingham and in London.

Simon loves all aspects of technology and science in general and has attended many hundreds of BBC Promenade concerts.

His second wife is Iranian. They met through a dating agency, surprisingly in Australia, where they lived for over four years returning five years ago to live in Barking. Between them they have four adult offspring and two grandchildren.

Personal statement:-

Individual voters have their own lives to lead, they may not have the time, interest or the information with which to see the best solution - an MP should to that job for them.,

My job as an elected Green representative would be to listen to the issues raised by all voters - not just for the Greens. I would see how they could be addressed in an environmentally sustainable and socially, multi culturally acceptable way. I may not have the answers myself but I will have the time and the support required to find the right people to ask.

I would check the validity of the requests by establishing the level of support for them. It is not possible to give everyone everything they may want - simply because the desires may well contradict each other. Also, it could be that I may be asked to do something that does not feel very ‘Green’. In that case I would dig deeper and see why the question was asked and find a better, greener way to address it - one that would not only be acceptable to everyone but also be possible to achieve.

I do not believe that anything should be rejected on a matter of cost. There are many ways to get things done and some of them do not need financial support. Communities would be encouraged and enabled to continue and expand their work - not as a charity, but as a social benefit for all - indeed a universal right.

Greens address the causes of problems, not just cover them up or clear away the mess as if nothing had happened.

Response written before publication of the Times article 7/5/2024

In the comments made in past Twitter threads I compared the situation of being invaded by one country to the situation regarding Israel and Palestine. I also compared it to the German Nazis invading France, and further the effect of what may have occurred if the Nazis invaded Great Britain. I believe that the people who have been invaded would fight back in some way shape or form. This is legal under international law. That is as far as my comparison was intended to go. 

I do not under any circumstances, support violence of any type by anybody.  I condemn all forms of violence.

I am pacifist and it is my considered opinion that the only way to deal with situations of this type is through negotiation and an attempt at reaching a common understanding.

I call for an immediate cessation of the Hamas and IDF violence, the return of hostages from both sides and the setting up of a truth and reconciliation system as a matter of urgency.

My Father lived in occupied Jersey during the second world war. His family managed to co-exist without violence with the Nazi occupiers. This did not make them collaborators but it did allow society and the mechanisms of civilisation to continue as far as that was possible.

I hope and believe that if cool heads can be kept on either side of any conflict, it should be possible to reach some degree of understanding. If however this is not possible, I do not consider myself capable or indeed willing to make any further suggestion. I myself however, would not use any sort of violence and I would make that clear.

In many other tweets I have intended to make the following points:

Pressure groups come in all types, one group is never representative of the entirety of the people they may claim to represent. This is clearly true of both the Israeli and Hamas leaderships.

Further, supporting a group does not and should never be used as an indication of support for every action taken by any member of that group.

It is not antisemitic to disapprove of the actions of the Israeli Government.  

It is not pro Hamas to wish Palestinian people to live in peace.

I stand by my comments and am happy to enter further debate.

Dear Barking

I am your green party candidate for Barking and I really don't expect to be elected, but don’t bet on it. Why, am I standing then? The reason is that I do not trust anybody else to do the job any better than me.

The issues are so very important that I can’t just stand by and let the same lot, or a different version of the same lot, make exactly the same mistakes they kept making over the last few decades. 

The ‘greys’  only think the electorate can cope with simple concepts, like more police would mean lower crime - which it could, or, better pay for teachers and medical staff would result in better educated kids and fewer ill adults - which again would be true, but, the big question of ‘why’ is considered too complex for the voters to grasp, so it is not even mentioned.

 

Oddly, most of the pressures we are all suffering from come down to the way we treat our environment, well, I would say that, but I have been saying so since I first stood as a Green in 1992. Finally now at last even the greys know there is a climate crisis but they don’t mention that either  - let alone the other effects of the way we have been ‘growing’ our economy, and they certainly don’t want to spend any money putting things right. All they do is offer big budget quick fixes rather than asking why do people get ill, why do schools not manage to educate children and why are there so many criminals and so few police on the beat. Greens ask these questions.The greys just want votes for hiding the evidence.  The ‘Change’ we offer is that we shall address the causes. 

Greens know it will cost a lot of money, more than the greys want to spend. If we had been heard in 1992 it would have been far less expensive and far less damage would have been done to our and everyone’s society, environment and life support systems. Greens have fully costed, far greater sums, and allocated the money for these headline issues

This is all detailed in our manifesto - available in three degrees of depth from https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/ But - you don’t have to read them. That’s our job. All we are asking you to do is to trust with your vote so that we can find the sustainable, environmental and socially equitable solutions that the greys keep blaming on other people.- that’s what a government is paid to do. 

All you need do is Vote Green. We do the hard bits.

       Simon Anthony 
    green@torty.org.uk

  Candidate for Barking

Promoted by Melanie Collins
on behalf of Simon Anthony
          GreenParty
London - PO Box 78066, 
       London SE16 9GQ