After a democratic debate inside the Green Party about whether we should stand in this by-election, I'm thrilled to announce that today the national party gave the go-ahead to us standing in Haltemprice and Howden, after I was selected last night by the local party to contest the seat against the Conservatives' David Davis on July 10th.
That's 16 days time!
Our constituency-wide leaflet is due to go to the printers tomorrow, and we're starting campaigning in earnest. Any offers of campaigning help can be directed to Martin Dean at sokuto12 'at' sokuto12.karoo.co.uk
I'm looking forward to highlighting the Tories' hypocrisy on civil liberties.
Hull Protest for Gaza
11 months ago
39 comments:
Congratulations Shan! I think you've got what it takes to show up Tory hypocrisy on Civil Liberties. Sock it to him!
Well done Shan! Davis mistakes civil liberties for neo-liberal economics, a free society is so different from a free market. Best of luck.
Go Shan! Please make sure details of how we can help get circulated to the London list!
Hi Shan,
well done, I am very proud to be in the Green Party because at the end of day the grassroots make the decisions and I as Principal Speaker support what is decided,
good luck my cheque is in the post honest
This is brilliant news. You have a unique opportunity to provide the only credible, progressive alternative to Davis's posturing. I am very proud of you and Hull/East Riding GP for providing the electorate with this choice.
Darren Johnson AM
London Assembly Member
Good luck Shan! I shall follow the campaign with interest. How does one donate to your campaign?
I think that, at the end of the day, the Green Party can be proud of itself for coming through the strife of internal disagreement, and, in a very short time period, pretty much uniting behind the decision of the local Party to contest this byelection...
Very good luck, Shan!
But, to get the message through to the media and the public about how freedom is, as Stuart says above, something opposite to what neoliberalism and neoconservatism say, and how it is just laughable to resign over 42 days when you loudly backed 28 days, you'll need more than just luck...
Which is why I am about to put a big fat cheque in the post, and am busy persuading Green activist friends of mine to get up there and give you a hands-on hand in this unique byelection opportunity...
Good luck, Shan. I'm so happy that the local party and grassroots got there way when it comes to selecting the candidates. I wish you all the best!
Martyn Post
Dear Shan Oakes and supporters, colleagues, and activists -
With NewLabour, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the BNP successfully removed from the contest, it is now Greens versus Davis.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for the election of the first Green MP to Westminster. If so, Ms Oakes, you will lead the way for hundreds more to follow.
David Davis has, possibly, just made the same manoeuvre as George Lansbury, who lost a self-proclaimed by-election in 1910 and later became leader of the Labour party (back when it was the Labour party). Davis knows intuitively that Cameron is no leader. His gamble will quite possibly give the seat to you, but he may be playing a far more long-term game than appears to the case, particularly given the myopia and short-termism of our addled political culture.
Please read Sun Zi's "The Art of Strategy" in the next two weeks as you campaign, and ponder and reflect on the deep wisdom contained within it. Turn Davis's advantages into disadvantages, and turn Green disadvantages into advantages, and all will follow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War
The way is open.
There are many thousands of us in the Green movement who stand in solidarity with you. Many of us will be on the train to campaign.
An ancien regime is ending; a new era beginning. Lead the way!
Best,
LouTze
WHY STICK TO CIVIL LIBERTIES?
What about Trident renewal? Withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the war crimes trial of Blair and Brown? Greenhouse gas emissions? Peak oil? The renewable revolution? Antidotes to NHS privatisation? Rail re-nationalisation? A citizen's income? Reform of the terrible tax credits system?
CIVIL RIGHTS?
Andy McKenzie
SHAN -
Please use this website to invite campaigners to join you in H&H:
http://www.millioncampaignhomepage.net
Luca
Good luck to you! I'm not a Green but I'm glad the voters will have a progressive choice available.
Forget cheques for donations. In the age of instant bank transfers and instant futures trading, cheques are rubbish.
Get somebody with the know-how to set up an Obama-style online (small) donations system so we can chuck our tenners at you.
'Loadsahoney'
From tomorrow, set up a daily surgery in the constituency in a specific place. Or, alternatively, peripatetically, from one place to another, over the next 16 days. Get people to come to you, tell you their grievances and what they need, and start acting as their MP straight away.
'EgoCandidatusSum'
Please make a big issue about the continued turning of food into fuel, soon for power stations as well as cars.
The Green Party, unlike all 3 main parties, has called for a moratorium on the RTFO/ turning food into biofuel.
Such conversion is at the expense of the hundreds of millions now unable to feed themselves properly because of food price inflation, clashing with Millennium Goals, as well as felt in household budgets here.
UK was a net importer of food as it is and consumes more bio-commodities than it has bio-capacity to produce, according to WWF data. Biofuel is by orders of magnitude more land-intensive than almost any other energy source.
Calls for a moratorium on biofuels from foodstuffs, or incentives for them, have already been made by the heads of the International Monetary Fund, IFPRI and IRRI, economists C. Ford Runge and Jeffrey Sachs, former IPCC head (and Defra advisor) Robert Watson, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Cafod, IIED, Greenpeace, the RSPB, the Environmental Audit Committee and 30 Members of Parliament, the Green Party, several Republican senators including Sen. John McCain, the New York Times, New Statesman and Guardian (editorials).
Although I argued that we shouldn't stand in this election, I am pleased that we have a strong democratic tradition in the Green Party to allow debate and a collective decision to be made.
I wish you all the best in the election and hope the media give you the space your campaign deserves.
Pledge to halve your salary and halve your expenses allowances
You'll double your vote
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7472352.stm
Love from Cornwall Greens
I am not a member of the Green Party nor do I want to be but on this issue I applaud your stance as I think it is crucial that a progressive case is made against Davis....
Please campaign hard for all us Ninjas - no income, no job, no assets.
Unemployment (including Incapacity Benefit) is at least 3 million (I reckon 5 million) and inflation is at least 10% (Daily Mirror says 11.6%) not the false CPI and RPI figures of 3-5%.
Fight for us Shan!
Hi Shan,
Well done for taking on David Davis - I am glad that we are standing to inject a more progressive stance into the election, and to widen the debate to talk about civil liberties, civil rights and the wider authoritarian agenda pushed by both New 'Labour' and the Tories.
Here's my take on the kind of the issues we need to talk about - http://aleddilwynfisher.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/will-the-real-civil-libertarians-please-stand-up/
The real civil libertarians have stood up!
Best of luck,
Aled:)
YOU NEED A CAMPAIGN PHONE NUMBER
Can somebody organise one ASAP?
How about an electoral pact/collaboration with Chris Talbot, the Socialist Equality candidate?
In the Reg Keys campaign against the Bliar in Sedgefield in 2005, several other candidates made way for Keys in the course of the campaign.
How about offering some kind of deal to Talbot? I am sure that you can find points of agreement in your opposition to Grey Davis.
There is a comment from somebody called Hind Hassan on the Shan Oakes Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33635377720).
Hind lives near Haltemprice and understands the follies in the Grey Davis position.
Is there somebody in your team who can contact people like Hind and invite them to the doorsteps of the constituency to join the campaign?
LM
This is, I think, the right decision for the citizens of this country. I am delighted that there is a candidate to explain what civil liberties really are.
Also, on the note above, Hind Hassan is a (very good) member of RESPECT (but not the SWP, I understand), and of the NUS executive committee, if you can get her to campaign, that will be very helpful.
Good luck Shan!
Adam Ramsay
Can somebody film an interview with Shan Oakes and put it up on YouTube ASAP?
Joseph
Can you get whoever did the Sian for London Mayor posters to get designing again? They were brilliant. Was it Gary Dunion?
When you set up the online donations page, please make it international. We now have Facebook links to our Facebook group in groups in the USA, Canada, France, Greece...you name it.
How about some sort of electoral pact/collaboration with the independent anti-rape candidate Jill Saward?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get Caroline Lucas up to Haltemprice and Howden to campaign!
Set up a climate camp in the constituency from now until July 10th!
PLEASE give us information on who to contact if we want to join the campaign on the ground, including info on accommodation.
AND QUICKLY - every second counts in this campaign.
Let's get you into the Commons, Shan!
Get a list together of underground media - Resonance FM, Red Pepper magazine, New Internationalist magazine, Resurgence magazine etc. and get interviews with them.
GreenPeaceNik
It's great that the Green Party are contesting this seat. This is a real opporunity for genuine values covering civil liberties, social justice and environment to be championed.
Good luck Shan!
Shasha
good - i'm not a green party member but i am glad the greens are contesting this seat. how can i donate? i hope tony benn et al will be speaking in support of shan, not in support of DD, now.
the biggest threat to civil liberties is the societal collapse predicted by our own security services if we don't tackle climate change pretty damn quick.
i hope the greens will put to bed the lie that green politics are all about interfering in individual rights. in fact it is the major parties that limit their environmental responses to hectoring individuals, whilst protecting the rights of big business to do exactly what they darn well please. the greens need to make really clear that their whole agenda is less about interfering in individuals lives, and more about regulating business to stop it profiting out of pollution and passing all the costs (both environmental and financial) onto ordinary people.
for example, it is disgusting that the labour government has been so reluctant to tax the £9bn windfall profits made by power companies and spend it on insulating people's homes.
Congratulations Shan. I'm very pleased to learn that you've been selected. I believe you will be an excellent representative of all the views and aspirations we all share.
Best wishes,
Dave Callaghan
I really hope to see the media coverage ratcheting up starting this evening! Should be on all the main TV news this evening.
DAVID DAVIS CONCEDES DEFEAT
And posts Gumtree advert looking for office work from 10th July onwards:
http://www.gumtree.com/london/16/25482916.html
What is the Green's Position on 42 days detention? I have tried to find it on your website, but can't>
The online donations/international donations idea is a very good one. As is the idea of a YouTube channel video.
What the Green Party could do is use Shan's candidacy as a springboard, i.e. immediately after the by-election, organise 42 anti-42 days, pro-civil liberties events in areas where we are strong around the country.
We need to keep up the pressure after the by-election for a non-Davis point of view against detention without charge.
Scott (Coventry Green Party)
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