>The perception – real or imagined – of Greens in Scotland as just a bunch of middle-class do-gooders is a one which the party just cannot shake. This criticism is not an isolated one – the tag of well-meaning but well-off is one attached to environmental movements worldwide.
>But for any party member or environmental campaigner, this label is incredibly frustrating – especially for those working class activists who work in their own communities, only to be dismissed on the basis of an assumption.
>Undoubtedly, financially-comfortable individuals have the space to dedicate to politics. Those same people will likely be freer to consider the long-term impact of the climate crisis, rather than dealing with immediate concerns like putting food on the table, or paying rent.
>But it’s simply untrue to suggest the poorest parts of Scotland don’t care about the environment. Generations of community organising show that. Still, there remains a barrier to voting Green – and one which we need to overcome if we are to see Greens build their voting base, particularly in the housing schemes which would traditionally have been the sole domain of Labour.
>In 2022, Glasgow’s North East ward was the one whose residents were least likely to vote Green. Made up of working class areas in the city’s East End, such as Easterhouse and Ruchazie, this is about as far from fertile Green territory as you can get.
>Fast forward to late 2024, and Hayley McDonald was running in a by-election in the ward. Hailing from the East End, Hayley said the election – in which she hugely increased the party’s vote share, no longer making it the lowest in the city – was tough, as getting locals to resonate with who they saw as Greens proved very difficult.
>“A lot of the senior people in the party, people can’t relate to them. It’s about trying to meet people at their level. And that’s why we see parties like Reform whose policies aren’t as clear, but they’re out there speaking to a community and that makes them feel more connected.
>“I think we need a bit more of a shift focusing on socialist policies. Some people think that’s a dirty word – but I certainly don’t. How do we get that across alongside the environment?
>“We need more working-class voices, and how we tackle that, and how we get people in, is another question – I may not be the best person to answer. But if you hear those voices you’ll feel more comfortable engaging yourself.”
>Do the Scottish Greens, and Greens across Britain, exist in a “predominantly middle-class world”, or is that particular view of the party out of date? The honest answer – possibly, but it depends on how you see the middle-class, and what the indicators of their existence are.
>Purely looking at income, Greens exist in the middle of the road. Research found that across the UK, just over three-quarters (77%) of Green Party members in the UK belong to the upper income brackets – on par with Labour (77%), and behind the Tories (83%) and Lib Dems (85%). Only the SNP, among major parties, see their membership made up of a smaller proportion of the middle-class (71%).
>When it comes to supporters, that figure drops further. A YouGov poll last year found that 60% of those who could be deemed Green supporters were higher earners. The figure for Labour – the party founded to represent the working class – is marginally lower at 59%.
>But income cannot be the sole contributing factor of class.
>Looking at access to housing, fewer Greens are homeowners than Labour members, and Greens are more likely to rent their home than any other party. In a world where rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is on the up, and social housing becomes harder to find, surely how one accesses a basic human right must factor into a person’s class.
>As is outlined by analyst Stats for Lefties on social media: “The reality is that Labour’s base of support is pretty similar to the Greens’ base of support.”
>Even still, class is more than that. Cultural signifiers play a huge part in how people interact. In Scotland, with its feudalistic history – the legacy of which continues to this day – this is especially true.
>To get an authoritative view on Scotland’s upper class, Green Left Scotland sought out one who left the blue-blooded world behind.
>Adam Ramsay joined the Scottish Greens in 2001. He admits, as a teenager, he “used to shoot pheasants and grouse and things”, a pastime he gave up at 15, shortly before his time in the party.
>The self-described “posh socialist” comes from noble stock. His dad has, as Ramsay describes it, a “small estate” in Perthshire of over 1,000 acres, which has been in the family since 1232. As a baron, Ramsay’s dad belongs to the “lowest level of aristocracy”, which “financially doesn’t add up to much”.
>Having gone to what he describes as “possibly Scotland’s poshest school” – Ramsay, a journalist, says he maintains many of the key “posh identifiers” of Britain’s upper class – which he says sits within what he sees as a caste system, rather than a traditional class system.
>But Ramsay, who has spent over two decades campaigning against the establishment from which he was born into, admits that even he can see the problems Greens face in working class areas, learning from campaigns in Scotland, and south of the border.
>He references time as part of a campaign team in Norwich in the run up to the 2010 General Election, prior to which the Greens had achieved a record number of local councillors – largely elected on middle-class votes.
>However, when it came to the election to Westminster, it was not those better-off who stuck with the Greens when they may have wavered.
>“It looked like the Greens might win it,” he remembers. “But in reality, a lot of people went off and voted Lib Dem to unseat the Labour MP. But those who did vote Green were those in the council estates in wards that were already Green.
>“They hadn’t been the ones who had first voted Greens, but they saw us working hard for them once we got in. Middle class voters saw politics in the abstract, and voted Lib Dem, but in more working class areas, they saw that we were there for them, and voted for who had done work in the community.
>“The way to get culturally working class communities to vote for you is through years of hard graft. There’s not a short answer.”
>Those working class individuals who do work in the environmental spheres of influence – including those not party political spaces – agree with Ramsay’s assessment.
>The Working Class Climate Alliance (WCCA) was started by Emma River-Roberts in October 2023. Founded to address the realisation of those behind the project that “in the climate movement, the needs of the working class aren’t considered”, it exists to give room to the working class to share their knowledge and experiences.
>“Politicians should be going to communities and listening to them,” according to River-Roberts. “I find mainstream climate politics is built around a ‘build it and they’ll come’ mentality. But if you went to where people are talking about their issues they’ll learn more than theorising from a distance. It’s inviting them in, and meeting them on their terms and in their spaces.
>“There’s always something going on in a community, it’s just a case of finding it.”
>The WCCA’s founder, who also serves as the organisation’s director, told Green Left Scotland that in her year of experience, she has “only met a handful of working class people who trust the climate movement”.
>“The mainstream, like Extinction Rebellion and local groups with the most bargaining power, are shaped through middle class ways of being. But you have working class forms of environmentalism,” She said.
>“Communities in working class areas have naturally low-carbon lifestyles. It’s almost seen as a purity test with mainstream environmentalism – do you eat meat, dairy, drive a car. And that divides communities on this basis. It doesn’t take into consideration people’s living circumstances.”
>The polite culture of the middle class is something that permeates the internal culture of the Scottish Greens too, with an inability or unwillingness to forcefully challenge authority, or even disagree with each other.
>Ramsay admits there is “absolutely a perception of Greens as culturally middle class, and perceptions matter.”.
>“Having more people perceived by voters as culturally working class, centre-stage, is good. Also, to be honest, what matters more is what the person is saying. People who are financially struggling are more concerned about what you’re going to do than how you say it.
>“I also think that part of the product of Greens’ cultural middle classness is a strange conflict-aversion. People are scared of outright fights with institutions of power. The opposite of being controversial is being ignored. We need to get better at being controversial, picking fights with institutions. We are there to disrupt institutions we hate. That is very class coded.”
>Internally too, the Greens face problems. McDonald outlines the off-putting nature of party meetings for those who have never been before, recognising that these situations can be intimidating.
So just a link and no comment from op?
And frankly in the article I don’t find anything newsworthy, as in, nothing new.
Edit:thx for a copy of the article so ppl don’t have to go to source.
>Greens are more likely to rent their home than any other party
This needs to be corrected for age. It’s no surprise that young people don’t own homes.
I don’t think it’s a Scottish Greens problem, it’s much larger than that.
Environmental concerns an are seen as a “nice to have” but any inconvenience caused by addressing them is dismissed as _too much_. Yet, Anyone who prioritises them is seen as a middle class doo-gooder despite the inconveniences of actually taking action. That’s also partly because everything is on fire and people are struggling and nobody has the time or the priority for environmental concerns expect those who are really committed.
The problem Greens have – not just in Scotland but across Europe – is that ultimately their solutions to their perceived problems is to tax higher.
Now, that works in boom times when people have a bit extra, but for the next twenty years or so times are going to be very lean, and asking decent working people to shoulder the burden of Green Party policies just isn’t going to cut the mustard any more.
Every extra penny on a carbon tax or a deposit return scheme or wasted on some madcap scheme to punish nightshift factor workers for having to drive to work is a lost vote for the Greens.
It also doesn’t help that the four most prominent figures in their party are completely repulsive to the average voter.
I expect them to lose all but one of their seats next year and frankly they deserve it.
No, posh twats 🤷🏻♂️😂 /s
They do not prioritise working class interests, that’s the greens problem. They care more about badgers than working class people
Change that and maybe the perception will change.
Don’t think they could solve a crossword, much less something this large.
The uncomfortable truth is politicians aren’t *normal* people. Playing to a gallery that you’re fighting for their rights to a living wage while renting out your second home for more per month than some will earn at an actual job is always going to make them disingenuous.
They aren’t invested in making everyone’s life better. They’re in it to win a vote.
The Greens, in particular, face the difficult challenge and reality of climate friendly options being ruinously expensive for the average person.
Sounds very nice on paper. Wildly impractical for most everyone.
That fits with my experience of the Greens back in the day, very middle-class, very cliquey. I’m hoping younger folk might be more clued in, but so far it looks like their concerns are not those that working class people have.
I honestly think the Green parties in the UK potentially do more damage than good to environmental causes.
There’s obviously the class problem they have and the fact they’re seemingly so out of touch with working class issues which turns a lot of people against them and the idea of environmentalism.
In addition to that, their NiMBYism and anti-nuclear stance do real, long term harm to any kind of net-zero ambition.
Even look back in history at the way they protested Hunterston and Torness, which have been the 2 single biggest producers of clean energy in Scotlands history. You think they would hold their hands up and admit they fucked up. But they’re just repeating the same mistakes.
There is the whole challenge in how do you articulate to a broad audience the position of a left wing party that are pro environment. It’s not a particularly easy thing to do but there are success stories across Europe of similar parties who have managed to hobble together a broad coalition of support and persist.
I’d argue though that there’s a more specific issue in that the Scottish Greens do just come across as a bit tinpot. There’s a lot that makes it onto their platform that really hasn’t been fleshed out and they can come across as a bit reactionary, getting dragged into fringe stuff at the expense of their core initiatives.
The leadership at least are uniquely bad at understanding the Scottish business environment and didn’t seem to have a knack for establishing relationships. In Scottish politics, that’s a MAJOR issue.
There’s always going to be friction over philosophy but ultimately left or right, there’s a lot of SMEs who can benefit from the Greens advancing many of their environmental initiatives and have genuine goodwill towards many of the things they were trying to do.
They seem to have the mentality of dragging business along with their change but there are very big limits to what you can do at Holyrood. Without going into much depth, they had some points that WM shafted them a bit with the DRS but they creatively managed to avoid discussing very obvious reality and in turn, created a real hostility in how they handled the fall out (much more so than anything I recall seeing between gov and Scottish business). The whole thing was completely unnecessary and there was zero practical or political benefit from the way they acted.
They’ve got plenty of credible and talented people in their ranks and they could be a force if deployed in the correct way; they just need a bit of a shake up and some new characters at leadership level. The membership as well also need to be a bit more open to listening.
They need to sort their anti-nuclear problem first.
Aside from their class problem, they’re getting blamed for things like making driving more expensive and public transport getting worse at the same time when they have no control over public transport.
In truth, – why do they. need to?
They are a fringe party that exists to move the overton window (and hence the mainstream parties) towards green polcies.
They are not an electable party who could govern.
They are the class problem.
Apart from the NIMBYism and anti-nuclear stance, the Green movement has a wider trend of middle-class reactionary luddites.
My local anti-vax campaigner was proud of being a Green campaigner for the last 30 years. (He tried standing as a candidate but struggled with the paperwork). Then he stormed out of the party when they offered half-hearted support for vaccines during Covid-19. However, since then they’ve reconciled a bit because the local party group’s *current* crusade is against a wind farm.
Hey, does anybody remember that story about mobile phone masts causing a wave of suicides in Wales? It got lots of headlines a few years ago. It got millions of people scared of radiation. It was made up by a Green politician.
16 comments
>The perception – real or imagined – of Greens in Scotland as just a bunch of middle-class do-gooders is a one which the party just cannot shake. This criticism is not an isolated one – the tag of well-meaning but well-off is one attached to environmental movements worldwide.
>But for any party member or environmental campaigner, this label is incredibly frustrating – especially for those working class activists who work in their own communities, only to be dismissed on the basis of an assumption.
>Undoubtedly, financially-comfortable individuals have the space to dedicate to politics. Those same people will likely be freer to consider the long-term impact of the climate crisis, rather than dealing with immediate concerns like putting food on the table, or paying rent.
>But it’s simply untrue to suggest the poorest parts of Scotland don’t care about the environment. Generations of community organising show that. Still, there remains a barrier to voting Green – and one which we need to overcome if we are to see Greens build their voting base, particularly in the housing schemes which would traditionally have been the sole domain of Labour.
>In 2022, Glasgow’s North East ward was the one whose residents were least likely to vote Green. Made up of working class areas in the city’s East End, such as Easterhouse and Ruchazie, this is about as far from fertile Green territory as you can get.
>Fast forward to late 2024, and Hayley McDonald was running in a by-election in the ward. Hailing from the East End, Hayley said the election – in which she hugely increased the party’s vote share, no longer making it the lowest in the city – was tough, as getting locals to resonate with who they saw as Greens proved very difficult.
>“A lot of the senior people in the party, people can’t relate to them. It’s about trying to meet people at their level. And that’s why we see parties like Reform whose policies aren’t as clear, but they’re out there speaking to a community and that makes them feel more connected.
>“I think we need a bit more of a shift focusing on socialist policies. Some people think that’s a dirty word – but I certainly don’t. How do we get that across alongside the environment?
>“We need more working-class voices, and how we tackle that, and how we get people in, is another question – I may not be the best person to answer. But if you hear those voices you’ll feel more comfortable engaging yourself.”
>Do the Scottish Greens, and Greens across Britain, exist in a “predominantly middle-class world”, or is that particular view of the party out of date? The honest answer – possibly, but it depends on how you see the middle-class, and what the indicators of their existence are.
>Purely looking at income, Greens exist in the middle of the road. Research found that across the UK, just over three-quarters (77%) of Green Party members in the UK belong to the upper income brackets – on par with Labour (77%), and behind the Tories (83%) and Lib Dems (85%). Only the SNP, among major parties, see their membership made up of a smaller proportion of the middle-class (71%).
>When it comes to supporters, that figure drops further. A YouGov poll last year found that 60% of those who could be deemed Green supporters were higher earners. The figure for Labour – the party founded to represent the working class – is marginally lower at 59%.
>But income cannot be the sole contributing factor of class.
>Looking at access to housing, fewer Greens are homeowners than Labour members, and Greens are more likely to rent their home than any other party. In a world where rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is on the up, and social housing becomes harder to find, surely how one accesses a basic human right must factor into a person’s class.
>As is outlined by analyst Stats for Lefties on social media: “The reality is that Labour’s base of support is pretty similar to the Greens’ base of support.”
>Even still, class is more than that. Cultural signifiers play a huge part in how people interact. In Scotland, with its feudalistic history – the legacy of which continues to this day – this is especially true.
>To get an authoritative view on Scotland’s upper class, Green Left Scotland sought out one who left the blue-blooded world behind.
>Adam Ramsay joined the Scottish Greens in 2001. He admits, as a teenager, he “used to shoot pheasants and grouse and things”, a pastime he gave up at 15, shortly before his time in the party.
>The self-described “posh socialist” comes from noble stock. His dad has, as Ramsay describes it, a “small estate” in Perthshire of over 1,000 acres, which has been in the family since 1232. As a baron, Ramsay’s dad belongs to the “lowest level of aristocracy”, which “financially doesn’t add up to much”.
>Having gone to what he describes as “possibly Scotland’s poshest school” – Ramsay, a journalist, says he maintains many of the key “posh identifiers” of Britain’s upper class – which he says sits within what he sees as a caste system, rather than a traditional class system.
>But Ramsay, who has spent over two decades campaigning against the establishment from which he was born into, admits that even he can see the problems Greens face in working class areas, learning from campaigns in Scotland, and south of the border.
>He references time as part of a campaign team in Norwich in the run up to the 2010 General Election, prior to which the Greens had achieved a record number of local councillors – largely elected on middle-class votes.
>However, when it came to the election to Westminster, it was not those better-off who stuck with the Greens when they may have wavered.
>“It looked like the Greens might win it,” he remembers. “But in reality, a lot of people went off and voted Lib Dem to unseat the Labour MP. But those who did vote Green were those in the council estates in wards that were already Green.
>“They hadn’t been the ones who had first voted Greens, but they saw us working hard for them once we got in. Middle class voters saw politics in the abstract, and voted Lib Dem, but in more working class areas, they saw that we were there for them, and voted for who had done work in the community.
>“The way to get culturally working class communities to vote for you is through years of hard graft. There’s not a short answer.”
>Those working class individuals who do work in the environmental spheres of influence – including those not party political spaces – agree with Ramsay’s assessment.
>The Working Class Climate Alliance (WCCA) was started by Emma River-Roberts in October 2023. Founded to address the realisation of those behind the project that “in the climate movement, the needs of the working class aren’t considered”, it exists to give room to the working class to share their knowledge and experiences.
>“Politicians should be going to communities and listening to them,” according to River-Roberts. “I find mainstream climate politics is built around a ‘build it and they’ll come’ mentality. But if you went to where people are talking about their issues they’ll learn more than theorising from a distance. It’s inviting them in, and meeting them on their terms and in their spaces.
>“There’s always something going on in a community, it’s just a case of finding it.”
>The WCCA’s founder, who also serves as the organisation’s director, told Green Left Scotland that in her year of experience, she has “only met a handful of working class people who trust the climate movement”.
>“The mainstream, like Extinction Rebellion and local groups with the most bargaining power, are shaped through middle class ways of being. But you have working class forms of environmentalism,” She said.
>“Communities in working class areas have naturally low-carbon lifestyles. It’s almost seen as a purity test with mainstream environmentalism – do you eat meat, dairy, drive a car. And that divides communities on this basis. It doesn’t take into consideration people’s living circumstances.”
>The polite culture of the middle class is something that permeates the internal culture of the Scottish Greens too, with an inability or unwillingness to forcefully challenge authority, or even disagree with each other.
>Ramsay admits there is “absolutely a perception of Greens as culturally middle class, and perceptions matter.”.
>“Having more people perceived by voters as culturally working class, centre-stage, is good. Also, to be honest, what matters more is what the person is saying. People who are financially struggling are more concerned about what you’re going to do than how you say it.
>“I also think that part of the product of Greens’ cultural middle classness is a strange conflict-aversion. People are scared of outright fights with institutions of power. The opposite of being controversial is being ignored. We need to get better at being controversial, picking fights with institutions. We are there to disrupt institutions we hate. That is very class coded.”
>Internally too, the Greens face problems. McDonald outlines the off-putting nature of party meetings for those who have never been before, recognising that these situations can be intimidating.
So just a link and no comment from op?
And frankly in the article I don’t find anything newsworthy, as in, nothing new.
Edit:thx for a copy of the article so ppl don’t have to go to source.
>Greens are more likely to rent their home than any other party
This needs to be corrected for age. It’s no surprise that young people don’t own homes.
I don’t think it’s a Scottish Greens problem, it’s much larger than that.
Environmental concerns an are seen as a “nice to have” but any inconvenience caused by addressing them is dismissed as _too much_. Yet, Anyone who prioritises them is seen as a middle class doo-gooder despite the inconveniences of actually taking action. That’s also partly because everything is on fire and people are struggling and nobody has the time or the priority for environmental concerns expect those who are really committed.
The problem Greens have – not just in Scotland but across Europe – is that ultimately their solutions to their perceived problems is to tax higher.
Now, that works in boom times when people have a bit extra, but for the next twenty years or so times are going to be very lean, and asking decent working people to shoulder the burden of Green Party policies just isn’t going to cut the mustard any more.
Every extra penny on a carbon tax or a deposit return scheme or wasted on some madcap scheme to punish nightshift factor workers for having to drive to work is a lost vote for the Greens.
It also doesn’t help that the four most prominent figures in their party are completely repulsive to the average voter.
I expect them to lose all but one of their seats next year and frankly they deserve it.
No, posh twats 🤷🏻♂️😂 /s
They do not prioritise working class interests, that’s the greens problem. They care more about badgers than working class people
Change that and maybe the perception will change.
Don’t think they could solve a crossword, much less something this large.
The uncomfortable truth is politicians aren’t *normal* people. Playing to a gallery that you’re fighting for their rights to a living wage while renting out your second home for more per month than some will earn at an actual job is always going to make them disingenuous.
They aren’t invested in making everyone’s life better. They’re in it to win a vote.
The Greens, in particular, face the difficult challenge and reality of climate friendly options being ruinously expensive for the average person.
Sounds very nice on paper. Wildly impractical for most everyone.
That fits with my experience of the Greens back in the day, very middle-class, very cliquey. I’m hoping younger folk might be more clued in, but so far it looks like their concerns are not those that working class people have.
I honestly think the Green parties in the UK potentially do more damage than good to environmental causes.
There’s obviously the class problem they have and the fact they’re seemingly so out of touch with working class issues which turns a lot of people against them and the idea of environmentalism.
In addition to that, their NiMBYism and anti-nuclear stance do real, long term harm to any kind of net-zero ambition.
Even look back in history at the way they protested Hunterston and Torness, which have been the 2 single biggest producers of clean energy in Scotlands history. You think they would hold their hands up and admit they fucked up. But they’re just repeating the same mistakes.
There is the whole challenge in how do you articulate to a broad audience the position of a left wing party that are pro environment. It’s not a particularly easy thing to do but there are success stories across Europe of similar parties who have managed to hobble together a broad coalition of support and persist.
I’d argue though that there’s a more specific issue in that the Scottish Greens do just come across as a bit tinpot. There’s a lot that makes it onto their platform that really hasn’t been fleshed out and they can come across as a bit reactionary, getting dragged into fringe stuff at the expense of their core initiatives.
The leadership at least are uniquely bad at understanding the Scottish business environment and didn’t seem to have a knack for establishing relationships. In Scottish politics, that’s a MAJOR issue.
There’s always going to be friction over philosophy but ultimately left or right, there’s a lot of SMEs who can benefit from the Greens advancing many of their environmental initiatives and have genuine goodwill towards many of the things they were trying to do.
They seem to have the mentality of dragging business along with their change but there are very big limits to what you can do at Holyrood. Without going into much depth, they had some points that WM shafted them a bit with the DRS but they creatively managed to avoid discussing very obvious reality and in turn, created a real hostility in how they handled the fall out (much more so than anything I recall seeing between gov and Scottish business). The whole thing was completely unnecessary and there was zero practical or political benefit from the way they acted.
They’ve got plenty of credible and talented people in their ranks and they could be a force if deployed in the correct way; they just need a bit of a shake up and some new characters at leadership level. The membership as well also need to be a bit more open to listening.
They need to sort their anti-nuclear problem first.
Aside from their class problem, they’re getting blamed for things like making driving more expensive and public transport getting worse at the same time when they have no control over public transport.
In truth, – why do they. need to?
They are a fringe party that exists to move the overton window (and hence the mainstream parties) towards green polcies.
They are not an electable party who could govern.
They are the class problem.
Apart from the NIMBYism and anti-nuclear stance, the Green movement has a wider trend of middle-class reactionary luddites.
My local anti-vax campaigner was proud of being a Green campaigner for the last 30 years. (He tried standing as a candidate but struggled with the paperwork). Then he stormed out of the party when they offered half-hearted support for vaccines during Covid-19. However, since then they’ve reconciled a bit because the local party group’s *current* crusade is against a wind farm.
Hey, does anybody remember that story about mobile phone masts causing a wave of suicides in Wales? It got lots of headlines a few years ago. It got millions of people scared of radiation. It was made up by a Green politician.
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