History
The party's first annual conference was in 2003, after the merger of Leeds Left Alliance (mostly a collection of former Labour Party members) and the Green Socialist Network (whose origins lay in the Communist Party of Great Britain.
The first general election the alliance contested was the 2005 general election however it did contest the 2004 elections, both local and European elections, securing 13,776 but no seats in the European election.
Since the 2005 General Election the alliance has contested three local elections and the 2010 general election.
During the 2009 European elections the party campaigned as part of the No2EU alliance which combined many minor parties on the left-side of politics to campaign against the perceived 'pro-business' and xenophobic attitude of the European Union. The alliance secured 153,236 votes, but no seats. However the AGS left this because the name suggested that they are firmly against the EU, which they are not.
Read more about this topic: Alliance For Green Socialism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I’m bloody close.”
—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)