Bristol visit

I had not been to Bristol for several years, the last time was when I attended a meeting of the Green Party Regional Council there which was held in the Youth Hostel with wonderful views over the waterfront. Last weekend I was back in Bristol for the very same reason - a meeting of the Regional Council - this time held i a building in one of the Georgian streets near the city centre and quite close to the university. I also had the opportunity to meet up with an old friend, Geoff Collard, a Bristol member who also served with me on the Regional Council, and with whom I stayed this Saturday night. Geoff has been a member of the Green Party for 33 years so he has been in for the long haul. Meeting Geoff and also Bristol members Katie and Nick Busie, I heard about how the local elections there had returned a councillor on May 6th, which is good news, as there was a Green councillor before then and there was always the danger of losing the seat.

Bristol is a beautiful city with some tremendous Georgian and Victorian architecture and looked resplendent in the sunshine this weekend. Closeted away for most of Saturday and half of Sunday, I was at least able to enjoy the nice weather on the Saturday evening when we went to a very pleasant beer garden where I had the opportunity of tasting some genuine West Country cider. As we finished somewhat early on Sunday (having also started earlier than usual) to allow the football afficionados to watch a certain World Cup game, I was able to enjoy the sunshine sitting down in the docks outside a very atmospheric old pub called 'The Ostrich Inn', complete with a dummy skeleton inside. We were somewhat intrigued about the history of this inn, but as Katie and Nick are fairly recent arrivals in Bristol (having lived there 3 years) they were unable to enlighten us despite Nick taking a Masters degree in local history.

The meeting itself went well and we had presentations from both the party's Elections Coordinator and the Local Party Support Coordinator. The Regional Council discussed the constitutional provision about setting up delegate conferences in 2012 and agreed to hold a series of workshops at autumn conference in Birmingham where this will be discussed in full. There was a full turnout of Regional Councillors from Newcastle in the north to Winchester in the south as well as the Welsh Regional Councillor. Thanks is due to Leon Quinn, the South West Regional Councillor and the members of Bristol Green Party for organising things for us so well there.

There was a lot of discussion about the national basis of the party and a call for more non-London and non-Southerners to stand for the party's Executive and other leading postions in the party. I strongly agree with this, despite being a London member and strongly suggested that the party reads Alan Thornett's article on the future of Respect and the dangers of becoming a party concentrating only on one MP and two constituencies, which is the mistake which Respect made over the last five years. Of course, the victory of Caroline Lucas in Brighton is historic and an incredible achievement but the party must remain a national party with national input. There are major differences between Respect's history in the last 5 years and that of the Greens now but there are also important parallels. For anyone interested Alan Thornett's article is here:

http://socialistresistance.org/?p=962