Peter Cranie's opening speech to conference, 20 March 2009

On behalf of the North West Green Party, I'd like to welcome everyone to Blackpool.

I've got very fond memories of Blackpool. Growing up in Scotland, I remember coming here – it was the first time I'd ever been abroad. As a child, Blackpool was a wonderous place, a fabulous resort and a place to bring a family.

It still is great for kids and families. I've brought my wife and my four month old son here and while we are all working hard here at conference, they will be spending quite a bit of time enjoying themselves. He is fortunately not yet at the stage where he wants to go on rides and eat candy floss, but I know my wife will be very busy with him. So I'd like to start with a quick thank you to my wife.

I'm standing as the lead candidate for the Green Party on the Euro list in the North West. You are entitled to ask, what could possibly possess someone to give up time with their family; to put your life on hold; to throw everything you can humanly muster at an election and want to become a Euro MP?

Let me tell you. It starts with a belief that a single act and a single person can make difference. You grow in belief as you meet other people who care passionately about the real issues and campaign alongside you. You draw strength from the people you support and simple differences that you can make to the lives of people.

Issues matter. As Greens, our elected councillors, Assembly members and Euro MPs are better than average. Voters know that if they want the party with the best policies on the environment, they can vote Green. They know that if they want the best policies to promote peace not war, they can vote Green. They know that if they want politicians who outperform the red, yellow and blue parties in their standards of political practice, they can vote Green.

So I'm not going to stand here and talk about those issues. We know the other parties are second rate to the Greens on the environment, foreign policy, animal welfare and peace. So do our voters.

But is time for the Green Party to reach out to a wider audience and to let people know that there is real political hope in Britain, real economic hope and a real prospect of a better life for you, your children and your grandchildren.

If you are struggling to pay the bills, we are here for you.
If you are drowning in a sea of debt, we are here for you.
If your job is under threat, or you face redundancy, the Greens are here for you.

Greens will cut your bills. We've shown it can be done at council level. We've made houses of pensioners warm in winter and cut their fuel bills at the same time. We've put money back into the pockets of working class families at the time they needed it most. Warmer homes in Huddersfield. Lower fuel bills in London. The Green Party promises and we deliver.

Greens will cut the debt. How many consumers have been overcharged in the last decade by the banks? How many consumers were sold policies they didn't want and didn't need? How many consumers and small businesses are still being charged huge interest on loans, overdrafts and mortgages by the Scumbag Millionaires that have run our banking system for the last decade?

Interest rates stand at 1%. Today, here in the North West of England, we are launching our campaign for a Green New Deal on interest rates. It's unfair that mortgage holders are locked into expensive deals when it the excesses of our own banks which have caused a collapse in interest rates. It is disgraceful that consumers and small businesses can't get loaned money at less than 10%, and it is grotesque that our banks charge 20% on an overdraft when that money costs them 1% to borrow from the Bank of England.

Join the Green Party campaign today. We want regulation now to protect British consumers. We want lending that helps ordinary people live their lives without fear of repossession or bankruptcy. The British people don't need a bail out but they need a fair deal, a Green New Deal, on interest rates, and they need it now. Never again can we allow our reckless and greedy banks to rake in grotesque profits and grotesque bonuses at the expense of the British people. The Green Party makes this promise and if you elect Green Euro MPs and Green MPs, then we will deliver.

But what matters most now, for most people, is their job. A job isn't just about money. It's about pride in what you are doing. It's about pride in providing for you and your family. You might be a single mum working long shifts at your local supermarket. You might be a student about to graduate, in the toughest graduate job market in history. You could be a family just about managing to hold everything together.

Every day, you see it in the local paper, you hear it on the radio and every evening you see it on TV. More jobs gone. More jobs under threat. And you sit at home, trying to stay positive. You already know people who have lost their jobs. You worry for your friends, your relatives. You know that crime goes up when the economy hits a downturn and you worry for your safety. And you continue to worry about your job.

This is no way to live in a civilised society. This is no way to live in the sixth richest country in the world. So let me warn you now that a vote for a Conservative party that let unemployment go above 3 million in the 1980s recession to satisfy the free market ideology they still believe in, will be a disaster for Britain. And why would anyone want to vote for a Labour Party that promised us a different vision of Britain, but instead have delivered a privatisation agenda and false economics on our borrowed money. They have left us with a financial mess worse than anything seen since the 1930s. Because of these governments – your job, your family and your life are put under threat.

Despite this, everyday life goes on. We still laugh, and who can fail to laugh? Have you heard the one about the Prime Minister who promised an end to boom and bust? We call him Bailout Brown.

The Prime Minister says they had to bail out the banks. They had been run incompetently and have run up debts that look like they can never be repayed. As a result, the Chief Executives have had to resign with a huge taxpayer funded pension.

Let's look at that again. The banks were run incompetently. They have run up huge debts. Their Chief Execs are retiring on huge taxpayer funded pensions.

This government has been run incompetently..! they have run up debts for the British taxpayer that might never be repayed..! Gordon Brown gets to resign with a taxpayer funded pension..! Can the Labour government see any irony in this situation at all?

And yes, we should laugh, because this Labour government has been foolish and has betrayed the people who first elected it. It believed that Financial Empires really did have new clothes. It does not deserve to get re-elected.

But we need to come back to jobs – this can't be about party politics. Although life goes on, people are rightly worried. I know what that feels like.

In the depths of the 1980s recession, my family had to reluctantly leave our home in Scotland, because there were no jobs. My family is a migrant family. We were economic migrants and we moved to England because we had to. What other choice was there? There were no barriers because we were white and the border we crossed didn't have barbed wire or require us to sell ourselves into economic slavery to organised criminals. When we talk about migration, let's talk about removing the injustice and appalling global inequalities that force people to risk their life to come to Britain.

But people are still worried about jobs. So the scene is set for a far right political party to slip in lies and mistruths, fed by the cowardice of a national government that claimed it would create British jobs for British workers. The BNP are marching. They are outside job centres and in our town and city centres. They are able to march because working British people have been betrayed. In an environment of economic fear and insecurity, the seeds are being sown - racism and intolerance – from a party that in its constitution bars any British Black or Asian person from joining, because of the colour of their skin and the home of their ancestors.

So let me tell you about my experience. We moved because my parents needed jobs. They came to England and paid taxes. We lived in a street with other migrant families; Irish, Indian, Pakistani – all here to work. All paying taxes. Taxes that fund our NHS, taxes that pay our social security, taxes that mean we have emergency services and an education system. Migrants come here to work, to pay taxes, to fund our services, our pensions and our NHS, and I am proud to be an economic migrant in England.

Which brings me back to jobs and the role of government. It is taxation, when used wisely, that can create essential new jobs and fund useful services, and it is a great pity that no other political party that is brave enough to say that we must be willing to use taxation to fund necessary government spending, and that we must balance the books. Taxation will have to go up for the super rich and the very rich in Britain, and we must bring an end to the disgraceful existence of international tax havens where wealthy donors to the Conservative Party hide their cash when working people in Britain are paying through the nose.

In just one council in England, thanks to the work of a few Green councillors in Huddersfield, hundreds of jobs were created insulating homes and installing renewable solar energy. Just imagine that if we repeat that in the other 317 councils in England and Wales, creating 10s of thousands of jobs. Just imagine if our national government put their support behind a massive programme of home insulation – we could create 100s of thousands of jobs, right now, this year. Real jobs with a real impact – that is the Green New Deal and that is the heart of Green Party policy.

The BNP want to capture the anger and the protest vote of British people on June the 4th. But the BNP haven't created jobs, the BNP haven't delivered warmer homes and the BNP haven't delivered lower fuel bills to the communities they represent. The BNP are relying on hate, discontent and disgracefully poor standards in modern British politics.

Ultimately it's the red, yellow and blue parties who share the blame for this. If they had done their job properly we wouldn't be in the situation where some people are actually desperate enough to think the far right might have something to offer.

But it isn't only the extremists who bring British politics into disrepute. it is the Liberal Democrats who consistently disgrace themselves with shoddy, deceitful and misleading election campaigning, as they sacrifice every political principle in a naked grab at every level of power.

It's time for the Liberal Democrats to clean up their act. That means no more misleading bar charts claiming to be in second place in council seats where they finished third or fourth. That means no more Goebbels style propaganda where you make claims for actions that you deserve no credit for. And that means no more scorched earth politics, when you put out negative, negative, negative attacks that put people off voting, instead of campaigning on your record. Nick Clegg – clean up your local parties – they are a mess and they are a disgrace to the decent historical figures of liberalism.

If shoddy politics from the red, yellow and blue parties continues to undermine the trust of people in local politics, you will continue to lower turnout and in doing so, you will open the door to the politics of hate.

The politics of hate.

The BNP have councillors convicted of housing benefit fraud and violence. A BNP candidate in Manchester was convicted last month of racially abusing his European neighbour. The BNP on the Wirral delivered leaflets around the streets of an anti-racism campaigner, urging his neighbours to call round and give him a piece of their mind - only months after he had been stabbed on his doorstep by suspected far right thugs. The heart of the BNP hasn't changed, but they are active, working hard and well financed. The British public deserves a political alternative and they deserve one that is better than hateful BNP.

The Greens are the only positive alternative left. We are the last best hope for Britain. We are the last party with new ideas. And when the Greens make promises, we deliver.

Elect Green Euro MPs in your region and we will demand every council in your region creates jobs. Elect Euro MPs in your region and we will deliver hope not hate in the communities we represent. Elect Green Euro MPs in your region this June, and bring real hope back to working people in our country once again.

Lower bills. Cut the debt. Create new jobs. You can help us. Join the Greens, support our Euro election campaign and vote Green in June. Every single person can make a difference this time. You can make a difference.

You can help. You can join. You can campaign and you can vote.

Welcome to the start of Green Party conference, and welcome to the start of our most important campaign ever.

Thank You for your support.