The Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW; Welsh: Plaid Werdd Cymru a Lloegr) is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including the semi-autonomous Wales Green Party. The party currently has one Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, Caroline Lucas, who represents the constituency of Brighton Pavilion, and was the party's first leader, serving from 2008 until 2012, when she was succeeded by Natalie Bennett. They also have two MEPs in the European Parliament and two members of the London Assembly, as well as 141 councillors in various local councils across England and Wales.
The Green Party of England and Wales was created in 1990 when the former UK Green Party, which itself had grown out of the 1970s’ PEOPLE party, devolved into separate parties for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales. It currently has friendly relations with its Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts, and is affiliated with the Global Greens and the European Green Party. While primarily known as an environmentalist party, it has a history of support for communitarian economic policies, including well-funded, although locally controlled, public services within the confines of a steady-state economy. The party is strongly supportive of proportional representation and follows a line of euroscepticism based on its suspicion of the domination of European policy-making by corporate interests. It takes a liberal approach to social policies such as animal rights, LGBT rights and drug policy reform.
The Green Party of England and Wales won its first seat in the House of Commons in the 2010 general election, following the election of its first two MEPs in 1999.
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Famous quotes containing the words green, party, england and/or wales:
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one’s party three times a day.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“I just come and talk to the plants, really—very important to talk to them, they respond I find.”
—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)