25 May 2014

The hidden Green surge

If you look at this BBC demographic, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/vote2014/england-council-election-results you’ll see that apparently the Greens hold 36 council seats, up 16 with last week’s voting.

Go to the Green Party website http://greenparty.org.uk/news/2014/05/24/local-elections-the-surge-is-on!-green-party-gain-ground-across-britain/ and you’ll find a whole other story – in which we are up 23 seats, giving us 162 councillors across 56 councils, and making us a bigger presence than UKIP.

If you’ve been following election news in the mainstream media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Green Party doesn’t exist.

What happened locally? We had candidates for all wards. We gained Central (previously Independent). We held RWR and with a new candidate. There was an outstanding result in Coaley/Uley where Jim Dewey came just 27 votes short of defeating the Tory. Our vote share was 18.5% of the total votes cast (Lab 28.1, Con 38.1) which made us winners in 2 seats and 2nd in 5. That’s a very significant presence and a firm basis for future growth.

Our story is being ignored by national media, and the treatment of Labour’s successes at local election is really shoddy. We should be profoundly uncomfortable about this – democracy does not function without good information, so we need to protest not only what’s happened around the Green surge story, but also the media mistreatment of Labour and the misleading, right wing narrative that is being fabricated with no reference to facts.

There’s a petition here:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/bbc-news-stop-this-media-blackout-of-the-green-party?bucket=&source=twitter-share-button via @38_degrees

You can also complain directly to the BBC.


Finally, if you are on social media, please copy and share these links and help raise awareness of what’s going on.

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