SCOTTISH GREEN PARTY

The 'Scottish Green Party' () is the Green party of Scotland. It currently has two MSPs in the devolved Scottish Parliament.
The Scottish party is fully independent, and works closely with the other green parties of the British Isles: the Green Party of England and Wales, the Green Party in Northern Ireland and the Green Party of Ireland. It is a full member of the European Green Party.
Until the 2007 elections, the Party had gained only one councillor at local level: in May 1990, Roger (aka Rory) Winter, representing the Highland Green Party (''Uainich na Gàidhealtachd''), was elected in Nairn as Scotland's first Green regional councillor to the then Highland Regional Council. Cllr Winter broke away from the Greens in 1991 and continued his four-year term as an Independent Green Highlander. In 2007 the Single Transferable Vote was introduced for council elections in Scotland and eight Green councillors were elected.
Excepting the 2007 election, the Party had increased its vote at every comparable election since 1999. Although it currently only stands for the Scottish Parliament, it contested 19 seats in the 2005 Westminster election, getting 25,760 votes. Its top result was 7.7% of the vote in Glasgow North, a major breakthrough in the West of Scotland. In the European Parliament election of 2004, it missed out on a seat, with 6.8% of the vote. However, the Party lost 5 of their 7 seats in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election.
According to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission for the year ending December 31, 2006, the party had an income of about £139,000 that year, and expenditure of around £76,000 and a membership of 963 up by 50 on the previous year. ^[1]

History

The Scottish Green Party was a constituent part of the former UK Green Party until 1990, when the Scottish Green Party became a separate entity. The separation was entirely amicable, as part of the green commitment to decentralisation: the Scottish Green Party supports a referendum on Scottish independence.
The Scottish Green Party benefits from the fact that the British government created a Scottish Parliament, which is elected using the additional member system of proportional representation. In the first election to this Parliament, in 1999, the Scottish Green Party got one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) elected by proportional representation, Robin Harper, the UK's first Green Parliamentarian. On May 1, 2003 the Scottish Greens added six new MSPs to their previous total.
In the 2007 elections, the Party lost five seats in Holyrood. However in the council elections, taking place under the new Single Transferable Vote voting system, they gained three Councillors on the City of Edinburgh Council and five Councillors on Glasgow City Council.
On the 11th of May 2007 the Greens signed a working deal with the Scottish National Party. This agreement ensures that the Greens will vote for Alex Salmond as first minister and support his appointments. In return, the Nationalists will back a climate change bill as an early measure and will nominate a Green MSP to chair a Holyrood committee.

Policy

The Scottish Green Party is committed to forming a sustainable society. Their policies are guided by these four interconnected principles:

★ Ecology: Our environment is the basis upon which every society is formed. Whenever we damage our environment, we damage ourselves. Respect for our environment is therefore essential.

★ Equality: A society that is not socially and economically just cannot be sustainable. Only when released from immediate poverty can individuals be expected to take responsibility for wider issues.

★ Our society must be founded on cooperation and respect. We campaign hard against discrimination on grounds of gender, race, sexuality, disability, age or religion.

★ Radical Democracy: Politics is too often conducted in a polarised, confrontational atmosphere and in a situation remote from those that it affects. We must develop decentralised, participative systems that encourage individuals to control the decisions that affect their own lives.

★ Peace and Non-Violence: Violence at all levels of human interaction must be rejected and succeeded by relations characterised by flexibility, respect and fairness.
These principles taken together give the Scottish Green Party a holistic view that is in common with all Green Parties around the world.